Paris Commune and secondly the assessment of it as the first experience of working class power by Marx and Lenin.
The lessons of the Commune were Lenin's starting point for forward his programme for the seizure of power in Russia in 1917 in the book State and Revolution. Many of the actions of the Commune have become a part of revolutionary programmes - such as Trotsky's Transitional Programme. important to see that revolutionary demands are not plucked from the air but result from living experience. It helps realise the debt revolutionaries owe to Parisian working class of 1871. In the words of Marx they were "willing to storm heaven."
The Central Committee of the National Guard, 300,000 armed Parisians, took power in Paris on March 18 Immediately they were magnanimous to General Vinoy and his troops who were allowed to leave the city after their unsuccessful attempt to seize the artillery of the National Guard (see Part I, SVII).
The second and final part of an article by MATTHEW JONES on a revolution which blazed the trail for others to follow. putting Thiers assembled. The central Committee of to the Commune to be convened on It March 26. is stated: 18, state the heroic the ruling classes, have understood that the hour has struck for them to save the situation by taking into their own hands the public affairs... representing 1871. governmental power. 5 The reaction Socialist Viewpoint No. 12 May 1986p32
Committee.
They went to Versailles where
Government of Rurals was volley the National Guard called elections
The manifesto of the Central Committee, issued on March
muster an proletarians of Paris. amidst the failures and treasons of Versailles.
time direction of They have understood that It is their imperious duty and their aboslute right to render themselves masters of their own destinies. by seizing upon the
(Marx, The Civil War in France, p.
Cof the Paris scruples. 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 Vendôme. On their way they attacked and disarmed National Guard patrols, killing two members and seriously injuring nine others, including a member of the Central
They were dispersed by a single
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
Warmed demonstration which ended with a mass stampede to
Again the Central Committee did not follow it up, this
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
Throughout the campaign any members of the National Guard
who fell into their hands were killed frequently enduring after tortures at the hands of the enraged, vindictive bourgeoisie. Even these two demonstrations, the "Party of Order" was allowed to stand candidates for the Commune! The Commune elected was March 26, and Committee resigned over power to it two days later. The politics of the members of the Commune were by and large of two Blanquists and the the camps, Proudhonist wing International Working Association, the First International set up by Marx and Engles. The Blanquists, followers of Louis- Auguste Blanqui believed that mankind freed from wage slavery not by means of the class struggle but through a by a small conspiracy intellectuals. They lost sight of the real conditions necessary successful and uprising contacts with the working class and peasantry. The Proudhonists were socialists of the small peasants and self employed master-craftsmen. In keeping this, they believed in a form of co- in which each operation owned his own means of production, They abhorred his tools. the working organisation of against the employers exceptional unnatural except in the case of large workplaces. Even in Paris, long by 1871 artistic artisans, enterprises were becoming the rule rather than the Circumstances, and the involvement of the mass of proletarian turned both these programmes their heads. Commune The was Blanquist and most of its delegates bourgeois of petty were Twenty-five working class delegates, 12 members of the including International were elected on March 26. Subsequent elections on April 16 brought in more socialist delegates including Marx's son-in-law Lorguet. The members of the were responsible for most economic measures Commune.The ministry of Trade and Labour was headed revolutionary, Frankel, the posts and telegraph, the Mint and taxation, and (towards the end of the Commune) finance were all directed by socialists. In keeping with its role at the head of an entirely new form of state, the Commune was an entirely new type of All delegates were subject to body. recall by the constituents at any time. The Commune was Parliamentary talking shop, it also the executive body, its members had to carry out their own policies, breaking down an important barrier
brutal after on the Central and handed and the Men's (1805-1881), would be minority of for a ignored with worker mass class Street barricade defends the Commune. seeing it as between people and state. In addition, a centre of declared that all judges, magistrates, large administrators and teachers would be exception. constituents. As Marx put it: "Instead of deciding once Paris, on majority ment, universal suffrage was to serve origin. search for workers, foremen and accountants for his business.' (Quoted in Lenin, State Revolution, Chap III). And Lenin: International of the the venal of parliamentarism society by a German freedom of opinion and discussion does not deception direct to work, have to execute their own laws, have themselves to test the results achieved in reality, and to constituents." (Lenin, Chap III) mere was in Socialist Viewpoint No. 12 May 1986 p33
the Commune elected and subject to recall by their capitalist one. in Guard three or six years which member of the ruling class was to represent and repress the people in parlia- standing administration. the people constituted in Communes, as individual sutrage serves every other employer in the and "The Commune substitutes for and rotten of bourgeois institutions in which degenerate into for the Parliamentarians themsleves have account directly to their State and Revolution, the This workers' democracy. developed and tested through the experience of the Commune and the wither away. Russian Revolution, is a key element (Lenin, every genuine revolutionary
socialist programme.
The basis for the establishment of this new workers' state was the destruction of the old fundamentally
The last act of the Central Committee of the National
was the abolition of the notorious Paris "Morality Police", the first act of the Commune on March 30 was to abolish conscription and the
Barmy, plus the old state
The army was replaced by the National Guard in which all citizens capable of bearing arms were to be enrolled. The state as the repressive machine of the minority bougeoisie was replaced by the armed people, i.e. the majority, armed to repress the counter-revolutionary minority.
"It is still necessary to suppress the bourgeoisie and crush their resistance. This was particularly necessary for the Commune. and one of the reasons for its defeat was that it did not do this with sufficient determination. The organ of suppression, however, is here the majority of the population, and not a minority, as was always the case under slavery, serfdom and wage slavery. And since the majority of
people itself suppress its oppressors, a 'special force' for suppression is no longer necessary! In this sense, the state begins to
State and Revolution, Chap III, emphasis in original).
Lenin saw the Commune as a first step towards a classless Communist society in which no repressive state apparatus need exist.
Two additional completed the new state. The first was the decision on April 1 that all state employees including the members of the Commune themselves should be paid at most 6,000 francs (i.e. working men's wages) preventing any form of careerism at the expense of the state.
The second was the abolition of all state payments for religious purposes on April 1 and on April 8 the removal of the church from the clearing the way for education free from mysticism.
The Commune was able to manage with roughly a quarter of the number of functionaries employed by the old Second Empire, and moreover it paid them at most a salary barely amounting to one fifth of what Professor Huxley put forwards as a minimum for a secretary to a metropolitan school board:
"The Commune made catchword of bourgeois revolutions. cheap government. a reality by destroying the two greatest sources of expenditure -the standing army and state functionarism."
(Marx, The Civil War in France, p.
This had its effect. Shortly after the National Guard seized power in Paris there were risings in
Dijon and attempting to set up Communes along Commune's own programme was for a national federation of urban and rural Communes along the same lines as in Paris with a Federal body made communes to be convened in Paris as
Othe cities were suppressed, but the real fear of Thiers and his Rurals was that the programme of the
French peasantry. peasants had been ground down by
paid for the excesses Second Empire) and the weight of the
bureaucracy. promised the peasants freedom from the tax burden, from the petty state officials and gendarmes who under Communal rule would be elected by and responsible to the population, and from the superstitions priest in the schools.
"The Rurals - this was in fact their chief apprehension that three months free communication of Communal Paris with the provinces would about a general rising of peasants. and hence their anxiety to establish a police blockade around Paris, so as to stop
spread of the rinderpest. (Marx, ibid, p. 61). Before going on to discuss is necessary to say a word about its measures internationalism. surrounded on at thus revolutionaries including Dabrowski, National Guard. On March 30 schools, (quoted in Lenin, Paris Commune Dictatorship). burden imposed no rent would be to April 1871 and all that rent in advance for the future. elsewhere, - Karl Marx municipal loan pawnshop) was stopped outlawed the and the employment previously the majority, mayoralties arrondissements (districts) of Paris. April 30 saw the closure right of of industry when of the - knew employers - previous employees to operative bring plans to run them. the 137th Battalion the Guard, who dragged out Socialist Viewpoint No. 12 May 1986p34
the economic reforms of the Commune it Despite being its Eastern and Northern fronts by a hostile German elected German socialist Frankel as minister of Labour. In addition, several Polish the by a general, served in economic all military foriegners elected to the Commune were confirmed in office with the words "the flag of the Commune is the Flag of the World Republic" tasks of the Democratic The Commune lifted the financial by the big bourgeoisie and the Second Empire on the working class and the petty bourgeoisie. It declared on March 30 dwelling houses from October 1890 Payments already made would be booked as defending At the same time it also deferred the debts of the small shopkeepers and the like and proclaimed an end to foreclosures on their mortgages. The "Working men's Paris, with its Commune, will be for ever celebrated as the glorious harbinger of a new society. Its martyrs are enshrined in the great heart of the working class." sale of all articles pledged in the office the state For the workers, the Commune fines imposed by employers to claw back a part of the meagre wages they paid. Nightwork for bakers was abolished on April 20, were handed over to the deprived the pawnshops as private exploitation of the workers and a contradiction of the instruments of Labour and to credit. A start was made on workers' control April 16 the Commune ordered a list to be made of all factories closed down by the and called for The the The demolition of the symbols of the previous power was started by the National of the the
guillotine and publicly burnt it amid great rejoicing. The great victory column on the Place Vendome, cast from guns captured by Napoleon was ordered to be demolished because it served as a symbol of chauvinism and an incitement to national hatred; this was done on May 12
The Chapel of Attonement built in memory of the execution of Louis XVI
French Revolutionaries suffered the same fate. But in their
measures as in their and political Commune stopped short. the Bank of France, centerpiece of the bourgeois financial order. If they
could have offering cheap credit to workers and the petty bourgeoisie including
Tand at the same time bought the French bougeoisie to its knees by refusing to allow them the services of the Bank.
politically the Commune lacked the resoluteness of purpose to win an insurrection. After seizing power in Paris on March 18 the leadership went on the defensive.
against the skirmishes of the Versailles Rurals instead of delivering the deathblow to the crippled bourgeoisie.
Even then the problems posed for
"Party of Order" were massive. The municipal elections of April 27 in
35,000 remaining communes elected 700,000 councillors — of whom less than 1,000 were supporters of the assorted that made up the majority of the Versailles National Assembly. This
"Rurals" of their last claim to represent France in crushing intervene — signing a punitive treaty
Othe National in Frankfurt on May 10. The conditions included the release of the Prisoners of War held by the Prussians - for the specific purpose of crushing Paris, and that Prussian troops would stay in France, until Bismarck was satisfied with the state of the country.
Prussians remained occupying Northern and Eastern forts of Paris to assist in the smashing of the Paris workers. This was signed by the Assembly on May 18.
By May 21, the Versailles troops gained entry to the city and eight
The Commune confirmed for Marx, Engels and Lenin the folly of reformist attempts to use the copitalist state machine
days of slaughter began. women and children fought on the barricades as the bourgeois army forced its way across the culminating in the last stand in the cemetery Père la Chaise.
The firing squads mitrailleuses (an early French form of machine gun) to annihilate 20,000 men, women and children of the Commune. Their monument is the "Wall of the Federals" (BO because of their demand Federal Communist state) or "Wall of Communards" in the Père la Chaise cemetery where the last atrocities were carried out.
Some escaped. Fifteen thousands were deported to New Caledonia. Many made their way through the Prussian lines with assistance of the Prussian soldiers. Marx's epitaph for the Commune was: mating men Pestowith or Commune. will celebrated as the glorious harbinger of a new society. martyrs are enshrined in the great heart of the working exterminators' history nailed to that eternal pilory from
Men, which priests will not avail to redeem them. city, The were largely democratic in nature, used carrying out the unfinished tasks of the 1789 freed the system from the fetters of over religion, the people from the fetters of usary and crippling taxation, and called opened up democracy for the masses. for a class allied to the ing bourgeoisie and extending the arm of liberation to the peasantry who made majority Population for his way i remitted fight for what Permanent (uninterrupted) Parryin are moratie carrying revolution as a part of the fight for socialism. ever Paris workers: regulation of employ- Its ment; abolition of unsocial hours; the workers' manufacturing industry, were what class. Its Lenin has already programme. Socialist Viewpoint No. 12 May 1986 p35
all the prayers of their 1917. (Marx, The Civil War in France). Commune's political tasks 1917 bourgeois revolution. It seizure But its driving force was the work- petty of the French still Marx called democratic The measures carried out by the takeover of parts of called a minimum socialist was the Proletariat."
The true heirs of the Paris Commune were the Bolsheviks of
Lenin wrote The Stafe and Revolution in August and September
Fusing the lessons of the Commune to urge opposition to the
power in Russia, smashing of the state machine, carrying into its full flower the Commune's embryo programme.
In 1891 Engels wrote an introduc tion to The Civil War in France to commemorate the twentieth anniversary of the Commune. He used it to argue against the reformist attitudes then creeping into the Second International (revolutionaries of the time
called themselves SocialDemocrats). His closing words were:
"Of late the Social-Democratic philistine has once more been filled with wholesome terror at the words: Dictatorship of the Proletariat. Well and good. gentlemen, do you want to know what this dictatorship looks like? Look at the Paris Commune. That
Dictatorship of the
fightback! Since the end of the miners' strike. Socialist Viewpoint has argued that although a battle has been lost, the working class has not been defeated.
Of course it has mainly been the ruling class that has drawn increased confidence from the miners' strike, and which has gone on the offensive. Nationwide. bosses follow the MacGregor example of sweeping, unprovoked attacks on the workforce, from smaller enterprises such as Silentnight to whole industries. such as print. The Tories continue their onslaught on the public sector, with the working class suffering doubly, as workers and as consumers.
More and more the state takes measures to weaken and the working class, such as increased police power and anti-union laws. and is backed up by the judiciary. Continually, the state exploits the divisions in the working class, with immigration policy, racist propaganda and surveillance. promotion of traditional family values, stilling or even abolishing the thin line of defence of local government.
The working class is unnecessarily at a disadvantage in the class struggle; for not only do we have a powerful enemy to fight in the ruling class, we are continually held back in the struggle by our "leaders" - the men and women who control the organisations of the working class. and who collaborate with capitalism for their own ends.
These people, too, the leaders and bureaucrats of the labour movement. have drawn a lesson from the end of the miners strike: that now the working class has the example of its traditionally strongest section on strike for a year and still not defeating the Tories, now the conditions are ripe for any further struggles to be stamped out.
The witch-hunt in the Labour Party has hit the news, as Kinnock carves out his own road to No. 10 on the backs of the class whose Interests he should be fighting for. But equally insidious is the degree to which we are seeing victimisations of shopfloor militants going undefended - or
Organise the
even encouraged - by the top
brass of the unions.
In the face of this onslaught, the
forces in the working class that are
prepared to fight must join forces in
our struggle.
On May 10, Labour Briefing will
be discussing how that task, of
uniting class struggle militants and
the organised left, can be
attempted (see advert), It is a large
task, for it involves the left making
a real break from its comfortable
role of armchair criticism and the Socialist Viewpoint No. 12 May 1986 p36
token attendance on demonstrations; and uniting to organise and lead the struggle in a genuinely non-sectarian way. It also involves recognising the diverse nature of the struggle, and realising both that many sections of the working class who are less obvious in the ranks of labour movement activists - women and black people - are part of the working class and have a role to play in the battle for socialism, and that these sections have their own demands, as do lesbian and gay comrades and the disabled. The task may be large, but it is necessary. This necessity is the driving force, which will hopefully at last be strong enough to bring about the unity in action in the struggle which is so desperately needed. Socialist Viewpoint encourages all our readers to come to the