The Class Struggles in France

From the February Revolution to the Paris Commune

Presented here are Marx’s principal works on the 19th-century class conflicts in France: “The Class Struggles in France, 1848 to 1850”, “The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte” and “The Civil War in France”. Spanning almost a quarter century of tumultuous political developments, this was a period which saw the emergence of the modern working class movement and its heroic first attempts to overthrow capitalist exploitation and oppression and establish a socialist society.

Marx’s writings are masterful examples of the materialist method applied to contemporary political struggles and demonstrate its power to explain their meaning.

However, Marx was not a disinterested observer of these events but the leader of an international movement and its principal theoretician. His writings on France set out key lessons for the working-class struggle for emancipation, especially on the question of the state, lessons which retain their fundamental relevance for today.