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.

Michael Löwy is emeritus research director at the CNRS (National Center for Scientific Research). His books, On Changing the World and the Politics of Combined and Uneven Development have been translated into twenty-nine languages.
Olivier Besancenot was a leading member of the Revolutionary Communist League (LCR) and is one of the founding members of the New Anticapitalist Party in France. He was the LCR candidate for the French presidential election in 2002 and 2007.