Marx in Paris, 1871: Jenny's ”Blue Notebook”

by Michael Löwy, Olivier Besancenot, Todd Chretien (Translator)

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.

Genres: Fiction

100 pages, Paperback

Published March 1, 2022

About the author

French-Brazilian Marxist sociologist and philosopher. He is presently the emerited research director in social sciences at the CNRS (French National Center of Scientific Research) and lectures at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS; Paris, France). Author of books on Karl Marx, Che Guevara, Liberation Theology, György Lukács, Walter Benjamin and Franz Kafka, he received the Silver Medal of the CNRS in 1994.

Reviews

[Sarah Ensor · Rating 4 out of 5]

A charming, clever imagining of of Jennychen Marx persuading her father Karl to visit Paris just as its working class declared the Paris Commune in March 1871. Disguised as an English merchant and his daughter looking for fine fabrics they get into the city and meet some of the leaders of the National Guard, the most active committees including Louis Michel and Elizabeth Dmitrieff and some of the Commune's elected leaders. In the process they unpick the different political strands and the Commune's challenges and possible future.

It's a short read yet contains in essence the question for every revolution - What about the state? And leaves us with a lot to think about.

[Corey Nyhus · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'd been wanting to learn more of the Paris Commune--to my knowledge the only major socialist revolution Marx endorsed in his life. As an avid lover of fiction, I thought this would be a great entry point. To my delight, the book read more history than fiction in my opinion, as the authors are primarily concerned with articulating the political beliefs of the time, and where they bolster and contradict one another in this electrifying glimpse of a freer world. Marx and his daughter Jenny talk with major revolutionaries and thought leaders of their days. Fascinating for me to see such a rich diversity of thought has always existed on the left.