Parisian workers
The Paris Commune 1871 took power TO this day the basic programme of working class state power put forward by revolutionaries is largely inspired by the experience of the Paris Commune of 1871.
This was the first time in history that the organised working class had seized state power in its own right nd usled 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 fist 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, who gave his name to the original Marxist definition of a Bonapartist regime (see Marx, The 18th Burmaire of Louis Bonaparte). 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 polifically and organisationally mature enough to take power in its own right.
After putting down the herole 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 11 was established in 1851, The Second Empire was a regime of phenomenal corruption where bribery. embezzlement and speculation reigned supreme: however, rapid industrial deviao Parior the Take powe. Side ticularly Paris, did take place. by side with this expansion there was a growth in the size and influence of the working class.
The Second Empire was in size and Influence a mere parody of the First Empire of Napleon Bonaparte. The
/TAF 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 Germany which had been a part of the First Empire. After 1866, when the Prussians Socialist Viewpoint No. Il March 1986 p34
By MATTHEW JONES 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, pro-
Communards on the barricades. tested against the war. French and the German sections held large meetings and issued proclamations. In Paris on July members of the International Issued a manifesto against the war, part of which reacis:
"Once more on the pretext of European equilibrium, of national honour, the peace of the world is menaced by political ambitions. French, German, 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 manifestoes were issued in towns across Germany, meetings in Berlin 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 Democracy, and especially of the workmen forming the Democratic Socialist party, we declare the present war to be dynastic... We are happy to grasp the fraternal hand stretched out to us by the workmen of France."
The war was a débacle for the French. They were defeated at Sedon on September 2 1870 after being driven back across their own border. Napoleon III and most of the French army were taken prisoners by the Prussians.
Both the the shattered Seth eat it to shattered Second republic was proclaimed. The Prus- 12, the encircled Paris; the selge began. bourgeois affair. Paris representatives Legislative Assembly of the Empire. Spanish Blanquists", and Thiers, a France. In and the workers of Paris. German famine and broken heads. exclusively mankind would be intellectuals. conditions necessary uprising and ignored contacts working class and peasantry. Paris Commune.
On September 4, the Paris workers Empire, important sians occupied a third of France and Inside Paris a Government of Na- tional Defence took over. This was a Guard, over composed of the of the old The leaders of the working class, particularly Blanqui whose followers. had a majority among the workers of Paris, were in jail. Thus a government composed of some of the worst swindlers, theives speculators in Europe, headed Bonapartist former Minster of Police (1). was able to mittee usurp the power seized for them by out 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 we are the Paris working class by treachery. After the Commune was establish- terest *Blanquists: Followers of Louis-Augusie Blangul (1805-2881) who believed that and Lorraine. freed from wage slavery not by means of the class struggle but by a conspiracy by a smail minority of They lost sight of the real for a successful wih the Blanquists had a majorily in the ruling body of the France. Socialist Viewpoint No. 11 March 1986 p35
ed its Journal Officiel de la République Fran waise published the correspondence of the government and army officers revealing this. The most September 4 was the arming of the result of the Parisian working class. The National
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 seige to the city. causing widespread food shortages and famine. Bismarck demanded the handover of Alsace and Lorraine, blus the payment of the cost of the Prussian invasion force, and an indemnity of 5 million Francs as terms for an armistice. The Central Com-
Cof the German SocialistDemocratic Workmen's party came
against these demands in a manifesto issued on September 5:
"We protest against the annexation of Alsace and Lorraine. And
conscious of speaking in their name of the German working class. In the common Interest of France and Germany, in the in-
Cof Western civilisation against Eastern barbarism. the German workmen will not patiently tolerate the annexation of Alsace
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
Tensions between the bourgeois Government of National Defence and the working class National Guard were always apparent. On October 31, workers battalions stormed the Gove menin coptered part the Government. However. were released and the Government allowed to go on as the only aiternative to civil war in the besieged city.
On January 28 1871 the Government surrendered. Two conditions went with the surrender: •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 o 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. •Secondly a National Assembly was to be elected eight days (!) after the Irish solidarity
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surrender to decide on whether to sign the armistice or continue the war.
Even before the surrender Theirs and his bourgeois cohorts were out in the coley camping with the one
Rallies they find, Rovalists, to return a reactionary majority in the National Asembly. Communications were in chaos, many areas only heard of the elections on the eve of voting, so it was not sur prising that out of 750 Representatives, 450 were Royalists.
This Assembly, known as the "Rural" Assembly because of the number of backward landowners present, sioned the armistice when it tirst met at 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 instalments.
Theirs 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 Socialist Viewpoint No. 11 March 1986 p36
capital. under the very eyes and patronage of the invader, to graft upon the foreign war a civil war -a slaveholders rebellion."
(ibid, p. 41) Three hundred thousand 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 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 seige 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.
Theirs started demanding that the National Guard hand over its artillery and Mitroilleuses Can 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 manufaptured in the thy. any of manulactured in the city. them had been saved from the Prussians by the National Guard who rounded them up from where the bourgeois capitulators had left them and secured them Inside the city. Finally Vinoy and a group of sergents de ville and some regular line regiments were sent to seize the guns on March 18 1871.
After the surrender of France and the flight of the bourgeois Government of National Defence, the National Guard reorganised itself. Most of its units, with the exception of a very few Bonapartists elected a supreme Central Committee to command the Guard. When Vinoy made his attempt to remove the gunds from one of the depots at Montmartre he was tolled by the women and chiidren of the area who called out the National Guard. His force was dispersed or taken prisoner, and in one instance the 8lst line regiment, after repeatediy refusing to tire on an . unarmed crowd, shot dead its own commanding officer General Lecomte.
The National Guard seized power in the city that day. March 18, and opened elections to the Paris Commune. At the same time sympathetic rebellions took place in Marseilles and Lyons — but these were swiftly crushed. Paris, having endured five months of tamine, stood alone against the shareholders revolt and the armed might of Prussia.
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