hidden economic causes because, for the moment, to understand the reaction was to continue the work of the revolution. The same thing happened under other conditions and other forms 20 years later when Marx, in the name of the International made in the “Civil War in France” an apology for the Commune which was at the same time its objective criticism.

The heroic resignation with which Marx after 1850 abandoned political life was shown again when he retired from the International after the congress at the Hague in 1872. These two facts have their value for biography because they give glimpses of his personal character. With him, in fact, ideas, temperament, policy and thought were one and the same. But, on the other hand, these facts have a much greater bearing for us. Critical communism does not manufacture revolutions, it does not prepare insurrections, it does not furnish arms for revolts. It mingles itself with the proletarian movement, but it sees and supports that movement in the full intelligence of the connection which it has, which it can have, and which it must have, with all the relations of social life as a whole. In a word it is not a seminary in which superior officers of the proletarian revolution are trained, but it is neither more nor less than the consciousness of this revolution and especially the consciousness of its difficulties.