Quiz: The Civil War in France

All 33 questions. A perfect score earns the gold medal; 80% earns silver.

1. 1. What was the first decree of the Commune?

   The suppression of the standing army and its replacement by the armed people The dissolution of the National Guard and the formation of a new regular army The seizure of the Bank of France and the cancellation of the national debt The abolition of private property in land and its transfer to the rural communes
2. 2. What will be the international rule of the new society, according to the First Address?

   A socialist empire under a single world government Peace, since everywhere its national ruler will be Labour Universal suffrage and compulsory arbitration between nations Free trade
3. 3. What lesson opens “The Historic Significance of the Commune”?

   The working class must first win a majority in parliament before it can take power into its own hands The working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made state machinery and wield it for its own purposes The working class must strengthen the existing state machinery before it can begin to transform society The working class cannot act without a single revolutionary leader to direct all of its forces and its purposes
4. 4. Which of these measures of the Commune does Marx mention?

   A legal ten-hour day for all factory workers in Paris Abolition of night work for journeyman bakers Old-age pensions for all workers Free railway travel
5. 5. When was the First Address on the Franco-Prussian War issued?

   May 30, 1871 September 9, 1870 July 23, 1870 March 18, 1871
6. 6. What does Marx call the Second Empire (“Imperialism”) in relation to the state power of middle-class society?

   A new form of state power exercised by and for the working class Its first and purest form, quite free of feudal survivals The most prostitute and the ultimate form of that state power A return to the feudal absolute monarchy that preceded it
7. 7. Whom does Sanial’s 1902 preface attack for cutting passages from the addresses in a French edition?

   Jules Guesde, the Marxist leader Paul Lafargue, Marx’s other son-in-law Jean Jaurès, the socialist deputy Charles Longuet
8. 8. Who, as secretary of the General Council, answered Jules Favre’s circular in The Times?

   Friedrich Engels Karl Marx John Hales George Odger
9. 9. Which resolution of the Paris Congress (1900) does Sanial attack as cowardly?

   The May Day resolution The Kautsky resolution on socialists in government The anti-war resolution The Bernstein resolution on revisionism
10. 10. What kind of body was the Commune to be?

    A military committee of public safety, ruling by emergency decree An advisory council to the Central Committee of the National Guard A deliberative parliament, leaving the work of execution to the ministers it appointed A working, not a parliamentary, body, executive and legislative at the same time
11. 11. How were the members of the Commune divided, according to Engels?

    A Blanquist majority and a Proudhonist minority, mostly members of the International A Proudhonist majority and a Blanquist minority, mostly officers of the National Guard A Jacobin majority of old 1848 republicans and a minority of Internationalist workers A socialist majority of workers and a radical minority of middle-class republicans
12. 12. What did Thiers attempt on 18 March 1871?

    To move the National Assembly from Bordeaux back into Paris under armed escort To hold elections for a new municipal council of Paris under government control To seize the artillery of the National Guard, paid for by public subscription To hand over the forts of Paris to the Prussian army, as the armistice required
13. 13. What was the Commune, in relation to the “Social Republic” cried out in February 1848?

    Its opposite: a municipal council that renounced all social questions Its betrayal: a republic that preserved the rule of the bourgeoisie Its rival: a federation of communes seeking a restored monarchy Its positive form: a republic that would supersede class rule itself
14. 14. What maximum salary did the Commune set for any public servant?

    600 francs 60,000 francs a year No limit 6,000 francs a year
15. 15. Which historical example does the Second Address use to show that “material guarantees” against a beaten nation fail?

    The Treaty of Versailles Napoleon’s Treaty of Tilsit against Prussia The Peace of Westphalia imposed on the Habsburgs The Congress of Vienna against Napoleonic France
16. 16. What does Engels find hardest to understand about the Commune?

    Its decree on night work Its abolition of the army Its election of officials by universal suffrage, with recall Its sacred respect for the gates of the Bank of France
17. 17. What did the Anti-Plebiscite Manifesto of April 1870 call on workers to do?

    Take up arms against the Empire at once, without waiting for the vote on the plebiscite Abstain or vote against Napoleon III’s plebiscite, and demand the Social and Democratic Republic Boycott the plebiscite and support the Orleanist candidates in the coming elections Vote for Napoleon III’s liberal reforms, as a first step towards the Social and Democratic Republic
18. 18. Which killings of 18 March does Marx defend the revolution against being blamed for?

    The execution of Generals Lecomte and Clément Thomas The burning of the Tuileries The murder of the Archbishop of Paris and the other hostages The shooting of Thiers
19. 19. What “decisive mistake” does Marx say the Central Committee made?

    Abolishing the army Holding elections before securing the city’s defences Not marching at once on Versailles, then helpless Releasing the gendarmes and officers it had taken prisoner
20. 20. How does Marx describe Thiers?

    “That misguided idealist”, swept along by the fury of the rural Assembly “That honest patriot”, who alone saved France from the Prussian invader in 1871 “That puppet of Bismarck”, who had never held office before the fall of the Empire “That monstrous gnome”, who charmed the French bourgeoisie for half a century
21. 21. What does Marx call the monarchist National Assembly elected in February 1871?

    The Girondins The Mountain The Rurals The Constituent
22. 22. What did the First Address warn German workers against?

    Letting the war lose its defensive character and degenerate into a war against the French people Opposing Bismarck’s war loans in the Reichstag and so splitting the German labour movement Refusing to defend the Fatherland and so leaving Germany open to invasion by Louis Bonaparte’s army Trusting the French workers, who had already declared themselves for Louis Bonaparte’s war
23. 23. What does Engels tell the German philistine to look at, to see the dictatorship of the proletariat?

    The Social Democratic Party The Paris Commune The Prussian army The Jacobin Terror
24. 24. How does Engels define the state in his 1891 introduction?

    A neutral guardian of the common good of all classes, once it has been freed from the control of the monarchy An organ of the whole nation, which the workers need only capture by universal suffrage and use as it stands A machine for the oppression of one class by another, no less in a democratic republic than in a monarchy The realisation of the moral Idea, standing above all classes once monarchy gives way to a democratic republic
25. 25. What was the Commune’s “true secret”, according to Marx?

    It was essentially a patriotic uprising, the refusal of Paris to accept a shameful peace with Prussia and its Assembly It was essentially a working-class government, the form at last discovered for labour’s economic emancipation It was essentially a municipal reform, the old demand for local self-government at last granted to the great city of Paris It was essentially a conspiracy of the International, directed in secret from its General Council in London
26. 26. What does the 1902 publishers’ note claim for this edition?

    The first complete English edition: all three addresses with Engels’s full 1891 introduction A revised edition of the 1871 pamphlet, with a new preface by Marx’s daughters The first English translation of the addresses, made from Marx’s German manuscripts An abridged popular edition of the Second Address, with extracts from Engels’s introduction
27. 27. How does the address end?

    “Workingmen of all countries, unite! The Commune has shown the way for the proletariat of every land.” “Paris is crushed and its defenders lie in Père Lachaise; but the Republic they died for lives on for ever.” “Workingmen’s Paris, with its Commune, will be forever celebrated as the glorious harbinger of a new society.” “The Commune is dead, but the cause for which it fought will rise again in every land of the civilised world.”
28. 28. Where was Napoleon III defeated and captured in 1870?

    Waterloo Strasbourg Metz Sedan
29. 29. What did the Second Address predict the annexation of Alsace-Lorraine would do?

    End all European wars for a generation Make France a lasting ally of Germany Drive France into the arms of Russia Lead to French socialism
30. 30. Where, according to the reports compiled in Appendix II, did slaughter of Communards take place in the Père Lachaise cemetery?

    At the Mur des Fédérés At the Arc de Triomphe At the Bastille At Montmartre only
31. 31. What did the Commune do with the churches?

    Disestablished and disendowed them; priests were sent back to private life Closed and demolished them, and banished all priests from Paris Left them untouched and kept the clergy on the public payroll Made Catholicism the state religion and paid its priests from public funds
32. 32. What did the Commune aim at, in Marx’s phrase?

    The restoration of small peasant and artisan property Equal wages for all trades and grades Free trade and the end of all tariffs Expropriating the expropriators
33. 33. Whose entry into a French government alongside General Galliffet was at the centre of the debate Sanial joins?

    Alexandre Millerand Aristide Briand Paul Brousse Georges Clemenceau