18713 Year of the Paris Commune

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Dual power... is of the same type as the Paris Commune of 1871. The fundamental characteristics of this type are: (1) the source of power is not a law previously discussed and enacted by parliament, but the direct initiative of the people from below, in their local areas-direct 'seizure", to use a current expression; (2) the replacement of the police and the army, whch are institutions divorced from the people and set against the people, by the direct arming of the whole people; order in the state under such a power is maintained by the armed workers and peasants themselves, by the people themselves; (3) officialdom, the bureaucracy are either similariy replaced by the direct rule of the people themselves or are at least placed under special control; they not only become elected officials, but are also subject to recall at the people's first demand; they are reduced to the position of simple agents; from a privileged group holding "jobs' remunerated on a high bourgeois scale, they become workers of a special 'arm of the service', whose remuneration does not exceed the ordinary pay of a [install the Hapsburg Prince, Maximilian, as Mexican Emperor.

At home Napoleon III ruled through a zig-zag policy of repression and political "concessions" in the form of largely mock elections and plebiscites.

But his elections were not enough to placate the republican bourgeoisie and his repression was not enough to prevent the rebirth ot working class pontical organisation after the disaster of 1848.

The rapid economic development which took place during his reign had increased the size of both working class and industrial bourgeoisie and diminished the relative weight of the peasantry on whose support Napoleon had come to power.

But by the end of the 1860s even this class had begun to abandon him.

•His political days were numbered even before he perpetrated the final crushing blunder of his foreign policy-the war with Prussia.

Behind the war lay the growing challenge to the French bourgeoisie from the rising, increasingly nationalist, industrial bourgeoisie Germany, led by the ruthless :Bismark.

WAR Bismark was looking to a successful war against France, the leading power in continental western Europe, to allow him to finally unify Germany under Prussian leadership and to establish German political ascendancy in ¡Europe all in one fell swoop.

Napoleon allowed himself to be drawn into this plan.

The immediate crisis which ¡precipitated the war was a dispute resulting from Bismark's plan to install a German prince to the vacant Spanish throne.

Bismark duped Napoleon into a declaration of war.

But it was not a popular war and soon became universally unpopular as Napoleon led the French army to catastrophe.

It was the shameful rout of the French forces at the Battle of Sedan, which convinced everyone that Napoleon was unfit to rule.

When the masses took to the streets of Paris demanding the Emperor's abdication they encountered no opposition. They forced the unwilling "left" deputies of Paris to declare a republic.

Napoleon and his hated Empress Eugenie fled to England. Fearing a rerolution, the French legislative body agreed to a provisional Gaterment of National Defence me Geari Tochu. including It was one of the latter, the lawyer Gambetta, who became Minister of the Interior.

After replacing all prefects (local officials) of the previous regime, Gambetta took a fateful decision.

He increased the size of the Paris National Guard to 360,000 in preparation for the expected German attack on Paris (which by September 25 was completely beseiged by Bismark's army).

On October 7 Gambetta lett Paris by balloon to become Minister of War and organise the relief of Paris from outside.

The reconstructed republican armies won a few victories but were at length pushed back.

The provisional government retreated to Bordeaux and resistance was confined to Paris where the Prussians intended to starve the capital into surrender.

Conditions in the beseiged city were abominable. Food and all basic commodities began to disappear, though somehow the rich managed to continue to eat well in the expensive restaurants.

SHORTAGES

For the workers and petty-bourgeoisie, shortages, inflation and semi-starvation were general. Unemployment grew rapidly as industry and commerce ground to a halt for lack of supplies.

And then in January Paris suffered three weeks of heavy bombardment by Prussian guns which killed 400 and wounded many thousands.

The workers were prepared to fight against Bismark's invaders, but not on the terms demanded by the bourgeois leaders of the Government of National Defence-namely as cannon fodder to preserve the property of the ruling class.

In the siege, therefore, the struggle for "national defence" constantly threatened to transform itself into social revolution.

Twice in Paris Ion October 27 and again on January 19) hopeless offensives against the Prussians were followed by attempts at revolutionary seizure of power by Parisian workers.

These attempts were brutally put down by forces loyal to Trochu.

The "left" Gambetta put down "Workers, We have fought and have ciples. We cannot withdraw so of the social structure.

What have we asked for?

The organisation of credit, of exchange, atives in order to guarantee the worker the full Free, lay and complete education; The rights to assemble, to organise, the individual;

Municipal administration of police, etc."

From election wall-poster by the International Working Trade Unions, March 23 1871.

competent worker.

This, and this alone, constitutes special type of state...

similar moves in Lyons, and Toulouse.

The bourgeoisie had discarded Napoleon but now stood in terror before the working class.

It was time to make peace with the invaders. A three week truce was agreed on January 22 to allow time for elections to a new This article, the first of two parts dealing with the events and lessons of the Paris Commune, is the continuation of our series of articles on the revolutionary history of France which began with the 1789 Revolution. We went on to examine the Napoleonic conquests, and then to look at the processes involved in the learned to suffer for our egalitarian prinlong as we can help to lay the cornerstone and of production co-opervalue of his labour;

as well as the rights of candidates for the Commune presented Men's Association and the Federation of the essence of Lenin, The Dual Power, April 1917.

assembly which could produce a legitimate new government to sign a final armistice.

The elections of February. 8 produced a vote for peace at any price. Gambetta, though personally elected saw his policies of "national defence" rejected and left the country.

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The crowd drags off the guns of the National Guard a. The existence of the Republic not to be called into b. The necessity for workers to have political power. c. The overthrow of government oligarchy and industrial feudalism. d. The establishment of a republic which will guarantee political lib through social equality-by handing over to the workers their tool production, just as the Republic of 1792 distributed the land to From election wall-poster of the 43 candidates nominated to national assembly by the International Working Men's Association, mensures, us taut ullulla ale lit Wereyalur ur une i wenty Arron- Federation of Trade Ilnione and tha Malanstinn of tha T.ame., Adissements, February 8 1871. (29 of these candidates were later elected to ¡till serve you b n. ranks, who hips. he newly rich. vancement and [signed] Central over Best al e those whom you lead the same lives as One and the other are will always think they • prefer words to deeds. For them a icism is more important than anything has favoured excessively. The wealthy e working classes as their brothers... ›llow these suggestions you will at last 's representation and found represen¡ as your masters"

Town Hall Committee of the The new assembly was thoroughly right wing. It contained a large majority of monarchists.

who became Chief Executive of the new state.

Thiers, whom Marx called 'that monstrous gnome' , saw that his main task was to crush the workers' movement whose strength was concentrated in Paris and whose loyalty to the new regime was very much in doubt.

DEATH SENTENCE

He decided to do this by strong measures. August Blanqui, a leader of the October insurrection in Paris, was sentenced to death in his absence.

Debts in the form of promissory notes, which had not been paid during the siege, were ordered to be paid forthwith; and rents, which had also been suspended, were to be paid at once.

These measures further alienated the parısian working class from the Thiers government (which had now moved from Bordeaux back to Versailles though it still dared not return to Paris).

The fears of the ruling class centred around the fact that the Parisian working class was armed, having been incorporated into the National Guard.

RELIABLE

Thiers, therefore, replaced its commander with a more 'reliable' figure.

And then on March 18 he sent his own troops to Paris with orders to confiscate the 400 heavy guns which were in the hands of the , National Guard.

The attempt to remove the cannons was met with mass resisdance. The women were first in the arguing s Ith the soldiers. COMMUNE, their officers.

By the middle of the morning of March 18 Paris was seething with revolutionary crowds.

At length Thiers' soldiers did turn against their officers and shot three of them dead.

The rest fled and so, on Thiers orders, did the remaining sections of the central government.

They left behind them a political vacuum which was instantly filled by the elected Central Committee of the Federation of the National Guard, the representatives of the armed masses of Paris.

The Central Committee resolved to hold power only for the few days required to organise elections.

But elections to what? Most of the Central Committee wanted to establish a Parisian municipality only equivalent to that of other French cities.

AUTHORITY

But the masses had more revolutionary intentions-the establishment of a Commune, namely a government under which they would have full authority over justice and the police, and the administration of schools and hospitals and taxes and, in short, (as Lissagaray puts it in his famous MIStOry OTI the Commune) political form allowing them to work for the amelioration of their condition"

Marx and Engels had strongly warned their supporters in Paris against any precipitate and necessarily suicidal action while the war against Prussia continued and before the revolutionary political organisations of the working class had been sufficiently built up.

But once the decisive battle was forced on the Parisian workers by the actions of the bourgeoisie, Marx and Engels gave their unconditional support to the Commune and criticised . its leaders for not prepared.

The revolutionary socialist candidates stand for:

circumstances.

peasants."

the Commune).

In fact the firmness of revolutonary purpose was shown by the working masses of Paris, after six months of starvation and internal and external treachery, prompted Marx to declare: "History has no comparable example of such greatness"

This is borne out by the account of the events by P.O. Lissagaray, who was a journalist in Paris throughout the Commune. He fought the Versailles invaders, escaped, and later wrote his History of the Paris Commune which received the approval of Marx.

Lissagaray wrote:

"On the 2ist, the situation stood out in bold relief. At Paristhe Central Committee, with it all the workmen and all the generous and enlightened men of the lower middle class. The Committee said, •We have but one object-the elections. Everybody is welcome to cooperate with us, but we shall not London march in support of the Commune must be put forth.

erty of the the the Hall) before they have been made.

"At Versailles-the Assembly: all the monarchists, all the great bourgeoisie, all the slaveholders. They yelled, 'Paris is only a rebel, the Central Committee a band of brigands' "Between Versailles and Paris-a lew Radical deputies, all the mayors (in Paris), many adjunts. They comprised the Liberal bourgeois, that sacred herd that makes all revolutions and allows all the empires to be made. Despised by the Assembly, disdained by the people, they cried to the Central committee, 'Usurpers!' and to the Assembly, 'You will spoil all.' "

The extreme weakness of the government in Versailles and the massive pressure from the people of Paris soon showed plainly that the movement in Paris was completely incompatible with the authority of the government in Versailles.

The movement was a revolutionA scene after the bourgeois revenge the government, and one which increasingly saw itself in class terms as a movement of the working class against the bourgeoisie.

Dual power had been established and the scene was set for civil war. It was, Lissagaray wrote, "a spectacle unprecedented the world's history-the greatest town of the European continent in the hands of the proletarians"

On March 26 the "illegal"

elections went ahead and two days later the Commune was officially established.

The new body, which had 90 members, was to be both a legislative and executive institution. The members were to be subject to recall by their electors at any time.

The work of administration was done by setting up nine separate Commissions consisting of members of the Commune.

Out of the 90 elected members 60 regarded themselves as revolutionaries' of some kind.

The rest were mayors, Liberals and Radicals of the bourgeoisie.

24 of the representatives were manual workers; the rest of the popular representatives came from the liberal professions (doctors, lawyers, accountants and publicists).

The leaders of the Commune, at least in part, realised, in Marx's words that 'the working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready made state machinery and wield it for its own purposes' The Commune began to destroy that machinery. One of its first acts was to abolish the standing army.

The National Guard of which all adults were to be members became the only organisation permitted to carry arms.

The police were made able to the Commune.

Church and state were declared separate; religious propaganda outlawed in state schools and all church property was declared national property.

AVERAGE WAGE

All state officials were to be paid no more than the wages of skilled workers.

Through these measures the working class of Paris created a new form of state.

Marx's remark during the siege now became even more relevant:

... the struggle of the working class with the capitalist class has, thanks to the Parisian fight, entered a new phase. However the affair may end, from this time we have attained a new starting point, and one of world-wide significance.

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Stalinism. That is beca ase Borelli and the resistance are politically PRESS, Wednesday April 27th, 1977.

PRESS

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find and to take their place in the new order of things which is being The responsibility of the republican-socialist party

Nevertheless it was a republican, ace political opportunist, Thiers,