The Paris Commune 1871
When workers first took state power
Part One of two articles by Matthew Jones
The last issue of Socialist Outlook compared the developments of mass struggle in Argentina with the Paris Commune of 1871. Indeed to this day the basic programme for the working class capture of state power put forward by revolutionaries is largely inspired by the experience of the Paris Commune.
It was the first time in history that the organised working class had seized state power in its own right and used it to establish what Marx and Engels later called the Dictatorship of the Proletariat.
Over forty years on, the lessons of the Commune were the first considerations of Lenin and Trotsky when the Bolsheviks overthrew the Provisional Government in Russia in October 1917. If, as Lenin put it, the 1905 Russian revolution and the Moscow insurrection were the dress rehearsal for 1917, then the Paris Commune was the political inspiration for the whole act.
The France of 1848-1870 was ruled by Louis Bonaparte, self styled Emperor Napoleon III. The regime had stepped into the vacuum created when the bourgeoisie had proved itself incapable of maintaining its rule over the working class, but that class was not yet politically and organisationally mature enough to take power in its own right.
After putting down the heroic Paris workers’ insurrection of June 1848 with great brutality, and whittling down to nothing the powers of the elected National Assembly, the Second Empire of Napoleon III was established in 1851.
The Second Empire was a regime of phenomenal corruption where bribery, embezzlement and speculation reigned supreme: however, rapid industrial development of the major towns, particularly Paris, did take place. Side by side with this expansion there was a growth in the size and influence of the working class.
But in size and influence the Second Empire was a mere parody of the First Empire of Napoleon Bonaparte. The French chauvinists and speculators around Louis wanted a war, to restore French domination of Europe, to enrich themselves by plunder, and to quell discontent at home caused by conditions of work and the ruinously high taxes imposed to maintain the immense bureaucracy of the state.
In particular they laid claim to the Western provinces of Germany which had been a part of the First Empire. After 1866, when the Prussians under Bismarck had defeated the Austrians, and established Prussian dominance over Germany, the cry became "on to Berlin" to crush the Prussians.
On July 15 1870 Napoleon III declared war on Prussia and marched to occupy the "left" bank of the Rhine.
The First International, the International Working Men’s Association, founded by Marx and Engels, protested against the war. Both the French and the German sections held large meetings and issued proclamations. In Paris on July 12, the members of the International issued a manifesto against the war, part of which reads:
"Once more on the pretext of European equilibrium, of national honour, the peace of the world is menaced by political ambitions. French. German, Spanish workmen! Let our voices unite in one cry of reprobation against war! ... Brothers of Germany! Our division would only result in the complete triumph of despotism on both sides of the Rhine."
Numerous other manifestos were issued in towns across France. In Germany, meetings in Berlin and Brunswick came out against the war. At Chemnitz delegates representing 50,000 Saxon workers unanimously adopted a resolution, part of which reads:
"In the home of the German Democracy, and especially of the workmen forming the Democratic Socialist party, we declare the present war to be exclusively dynastic... We are happy to grasp the fraternal hand stretched out to us by the workmen of France..."
The war was a debacle for the French. They were defeated at Sedan on September 2 1870 after being driven back across their own border. Napoleon III and most of the French army were taken prisoner by the Prussians.
On September 4, the Paris workers rose and delivered the death blow to the shattered Second Empire. A republic was proclaimed. The Prussians occupied a third of France and encircled Paris; and a siege began.
Inside Paris a Government of National Defence took over. This was a bourgeois affair, composed of the Paris representatives of the old Legislative Assembly of the Empire. In reality this was a Government of National Defence against the working class, openly trying to betray Paris to the Prussians and break the power of the Paris working class by treachery, famine and broken heads.
The leaders of the working class, particularly Blanqui, whose followers, the Blanquists, had a majority among the workers of Paris, were in jail. Thus a government composed of some of the worst swindlers, thieves and speculators in Europe, headed by Thiers, a former Bonapartist Minster of Police (!), was able to usurp the power seized for them by the workers of Paris.
The most important result of the rising of September 4 was the arming of the Parisian working class. The National Guard, over 300,000 strong, was made up of everyone in the city who was able to carry arms, and it was overwhelmingly working class.
The Prussians laid siege to the city, causing widespread food shortages and famine. Bismarck demanded the handover of Alsace and Lorraine, plus the payment of the cost of the Prussian invasion force, and an indemnity of 5 million Francs as terms for an armistice.
The Central Committee of the German Socialist Democratic Workmen’s party came out against these demands in a manifesto issued on September 5:
"We protest against the annexation of Alsace and Lorraine. And we are conscious of speaking in the name of the German working class. In the common interest of France and Germany, in the interest of Western civilisation against Eastern barbarism, the German workmen will not patiently tolerate the annexation of Alsace and Lorraine."
In addition, the manifesto called for the return of Louis Bonaparte to France for trial as a common felon and accused Bismarck of trying to get Bonaparte reinstated Emperor so that he could finish the job of ruining France.
Tensions between the bourgeois Government of National Defence and the working class National Guard were always apparent. On October 31, workers’ battalions stormed the Town Hall and captured part of the Government. However, they were released and the Government allowed to go on as the only alternative to civil war in the besieged city.
On January 28 1871 the Government surrendered. Two conditions went with the surrender:
l Firstly the line regiments and the Mobile Guard were to surrender their arms and be taken prisoner. The city walls were stripped of their guns, and the forts surrounding the city occupied by the Prussians.
So great was the Prussian commanders’ fear of the power of the organised Paris working class that the National Guard was allowed to keep its weapons including artillery and the conquering army occupied only a small part of the city, consisting mainly of public parks! Even this they left after a few days.
Despite entreaties from Thiers and the bourgeoisie, Bismarck was not going to put down the revolutionary Paris workers: the French bourgeoisie was going to have to do its own dirty work.
l Secondly a National Assembly was to be elected eight days (!) after the surrender, to decide on whether to sign the armistice or continue the war.
Even before the surrender Thiers and his bourgeois cohorts were out in the country campaigning with the only allies they could find, the Royalists, to return a reactionary majority in the National Assembly. Communications were in chaos, many areas only heard of the elections on the eve of voting, so it was not surprising that out of 750 Representatives, 450 were Royalists.
This Assembly, known as the "Rural" Assembly because of the number of backward landowners present, signed the armistice when it first met in Bordeaux on February 12 1871.
The bourgeoisie and its allies were facing economic ruin. To add to the cost of the French war effort and the vast parasitic bureaucracy of the state there was an army of half a million Prussians holding them by the throat demanding its costs plus the huge indemnity, with 5% interest on unpaid installments.
Thiers and Co. had one answer: the workers and peasants of France. As Marx put it:
"Thus the immense ruin of France spurred on these patriotic representatives of land and capital, under the very eyes and patronage of the invader, to graft upon the foreign war a civil war, a slaveholders’ rebellion"
300,000 armed Paris proletarians stood in the way: war was inevitable.
The government started chipping away at Paris, appointing Royalist ambassadors, levying a 2 centime tax on publications; passing sentence of death on the workers’ leaders Blanqui and Flourens; the suppression of Republican journals, laws on overdue commercial bills and house rents which hit Paris hard; the transfer of the National Assembly to Versailles; and the renewal of the state of siege, lifted on September 4.
The National Assembly appointed three vicious reactionaries to command the three agencies of state force in Paris: Vinoy, a Bonapartist, to command the army; Valentin, another Bonapartist, to head the police gendarmes; and Aurelle de Paladines, a Jesuit general, to command the National Guard... They never took up the appointments.
Thiers started demanding that the National Guard hand over its artillery and mitrailleuses (an early French form of machine gun mounted on a light gun carriage) as property of the state. This was the grossest insult. The guns had been paid for by public subscription during the siege and manufactured in the city.
Many of them had been saved from the Prussians by the National Guard who rounded them up after the bourgeois capitulators had left them and secured them inside the city. Finally Vinoy with a group of sergeants-de-ville and some regular line regiments were sent to seize the guns on March 18.
After the surrender of France and the flight of the bourgeois Government of National Defence, the National Guard reorganised itself. Most of its units elected a supreme Central Committee to command the Guard.
When Vinoy made his attempt to remove the guns from one of the depots at Montmartre he was foiled by the women and children of the area, who called out the National Guard. His force was dispersed or taken prisoner, and in one instance the 81st line regiment, after repeatedly refusing to fire on an unarmed crowd, shot dead its own commanding officer, General Lecomte.
The Central Committee of the National Guard, representing 300,000 armed Parisians, took power in Paris on March 18 1871. At the same time sympathetic rebellions took place in Marseilles and Lyons – but these were swiftly crushed. Paris, having endured five months of famine, stood alone against the armed might of Prussia.
Immediately the Central Committee were magnanimous to General Vinoy and his troops, who were allowed to leave the city … and went to Versailles, where Thiers’ Government of Rurals was assembled.
The Central Committee called elections to the Commune to be convened on March 26. The manifesto of the Central Committee, issued on March 18, stated:
"The proletarians of Paris, amidst the failures and treasons of the ruling classes, have understood that the hour has struck for them to save the situation by taking into their own hands the direction of public affairs... They have understood that it is their imperious duty and their absolute right to render themselves masters of their own destinies, by seizing upon the governmental power."
(Marx, The Civil War in France, p. 50. )
The reaction of the Paris bourgeoisie came four days later on March 22, when a demonstration of reactionaries armed with revolvers, daggers, sword canes and the like attempted to seize the headquarters of the National Guard in the Place Vendome.
They were dispersed by a single volley from the National Guard, dropping their weapons as they fled. But the Central Committee did not follow up their success and hunt down the offenders. Only two days later the same crowd were able to muster an armed demonstration which ended with a mass stampede to Versailles.
Again the Central Committee did not follow it up, this time committing a cardinal error. Versailles stood virtually undefended and within striking distance of the might of the Paris proletariat. Thiers could have been crushed easily, but the Central Committee did not want to continue the civil war. Tens of thousands of Parisians paid for this mistake with their lives.
The capitalists had no such scruples. Throughout the campaign any members of the National Guard who fell into their hands were killed, frequently after enduring brutal tortures at the hands of the enraged, vindictive bourgeoisie.
Even after these two demonstrations, the "Party of Order" was allowed to stand candidates in the elections for the Commune!