With great regret we have to inform you that we are not able to attend your meeting. When the Commune of Paris succumbed to the atrocious massacre organised by the defenders of Order , the victors little thought that ten years would not elapse before an event would happen in distant Petersburg  which, maybe after long and violent struggles, must ultimately and certainly lead to the establishment of a Russian Commune; That the King of Prussia  who had prepared the Commune by besieging Paris and thus compelling the ruling bourgeoisie to arm the people that that same King of Prussia, ten years after, besieged in his own capital by Socialists, would only be able to maintain his throne by declaring the state of siege in his capital Berlin.  On the other hand, the Continental governments who after the fall of the Commune by their persecutions compelled the International Working Men s Association to give up its formal, external organisation these governments who believed they could crush the great international labour movement by decrees and special laws little did they think that ten years later that same international labour movement, more powerful than ever, would embrace the working classes not only of Europe but of America also; that the common struggle for common interests against a common enemy would bind them together into a new and greater spontaneous International, outgrowing more and more all external forms of association. Thus the Commune which the powers of the old world believed to be exterminated, lives stronger than ever, and thus we may join you in the cry: Vive la Commune!
Letters: Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Selected Correspondence 1881