Marx in Paris, 1871
Jenny's ”Blue Notebook”
In celebration of the 150th anniversary of the Paris Commune, leftist writers Olivier Besancenot and Michael Löwy offer a deeply informed, and eminently enjoyable, imagined history of what might have been if Karl Marx and his eldest daughter, Jenny, had travelled to Paris during the heady weeks of April 1871. In disguise, employing imperfect but serviceable French, Karl and Jenny encounter and debate many important figures of the movement, including Leo Frankel, Eugène Varlin, Charles Longuet, Elisabeth Dmitrieff, and Louise Michel, eventually returning to England with a profoundly changed sense of political possibility.
Reviews
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“Far more than most dare admit, history and historians mix fact and fiction. The two were and are always inseparably intertwined. The 1871 Paris Commune – when a proletariat took political power from a bourgeoisie – transformed the social movement to do better than capitalism. Marx assessed the strengths and weaknesses of that transformative moment to advance that movement. Inspired by Marx’s analysis, Lenin did likewise. This book adds to the tradition evolving since Marx and Lenin. Remarkably accessible, it refreshes, provokes, and thereby develops that movement still further.” —Richard Wolff, author of Democracy at Work: A Cure for Capitalism“Michael Löwy and Olivier Besancenot ‘discovered’ a manuscript written by Jenny, Marx’s daughter, revealing a secret visit of her father to Paris as it was besieged during the fateful weeks of the Commune. Their book is not an exercise in counter-factual history – a ‘what if...’ – but rather an original and inventive form of history writing. They describe the Commune by emphasizing its greatness, pointing out its limitations, and assessing its historical legacy in a pleasant and vigorous literary account. Thus, Marx dons the habit of a hidden observer who, alongside the voice of his daughter, guides us through the labyrinth of a revolutionary experience in the making. Marx becomes a ‘witness’ and the Commune a living experience. This fictional account is a remarkable piece of historical criticism and revolutionary imagination.” —Enzo Traverso, author of Revolution: An Intellectual History“The authors embarked on an imaginary visit to the Paris Commune seen through the eyes of Karl Marx and his daughter Jenny, and the result is as true as real. Readers will learn more – and with great pleasure at that – from reading this well-researched little book of historical fiction than they would learn from reading a thick academic volume.” —Gilbert Achcar, author of Marxism, Orientalism, Cosmopolitanism
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Marx in Paris, 1871: Book Launch and Discussion
Join Haymarket for a discussion celebrating the release of Olivier Besancenot and Michael Löwy’s Marx in Paris, 1871.
Other books by Olivier Besancenot and Michael Löwy, edited by David Walters, translated by Todd Chretien
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The Selected Works of Eugene V. Debs Vol. IV
Edited by Tim Davenport and David Walters -
Rosa Luxemburg: The Incendiary Spark
by Michael Löwy -
Marx in Paris, 1871
by Olivier Besancenot and Michael Löwy -
The Selected Works of Eugene V. Debs Vol. III
Edited by Tim Davenport and David Walters -
Revolutions
by Michael Löwy
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The Selected Works of Eugene V. Debs Volume II
Edited by Tim Davenport and David Walters -
The Selected Works of Eugene V. Debs, Vol. I
Edited by Tim Davenport and David Walters -
Eyewitnesses to the Russian Revolution
Edited by Todd Chretien -
Ecosocialism
by Michael Löwy -
State and Revolution
by Todd Chretien and V. I. Lenin
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On Changing the World
by Michael Löwy -
The Politics of Combined and Uneven Development
by Michael Löwy -
The Theory of Revolution in the Young Marx
by Michael Löwy
Other books of interest
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The Paris Commune
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Communist Insurgent
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How Revolutionary Were the Bourgeois Revolutions? (Abridged Edition)
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The Spectre of Babeuf
by Ian Birchall -
Ten Days that Shook the World
by John Reed