[Fourth International: Problems and Tasks . Significance of…]

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Fourth International: Problems and Tasks .

Significance of the Transitional Programme All available from Folrose Books, 31, Dartmouth Park Hill, ITSI On the Trade Unions..

Transitional Programme Revolution Betrayed..• TROTSKYISM TODAY The Fight for Revolutionary Leadership Perspectives for Work Among Women.. The Battle for Trotskyism..

London NWS 1HR plus plus 1.05 plus .15p plus 7p ..5p plus 7p .15p plus 7p . 5p plus 7p .00 plus 20p on the EGA work-in, the conference discussed arrangements for Colin Kenny, CLASH secretary proposed that CLASH should help organise morning rallies at the EGA and at Hounslow before joining the main march at Hyde Park.

Rather than just follow the main march in this political and physical route to nowhere, the committee proposed that CLASH should attempt to lead a section of the march to the TUC, to demand action from the trade union leaders in the fight against the cuts.

In this way, the day of action could be changed from a demoralising event into at least an attempt to give a political direction to the fight against the cuts.

Any shop steward in the NHS who would like further information about CLASH should write to: Colin Kenny, CLASH Secretary, Dept. of, Virology, Mary's St. Medical School, Praed London W2.

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May 16. 1871: The official Commune ceremony at which the statue of Napoleon I in the Place Vendome was torn down. Marx's remark of 1852 was more literally prophetic than he had in mind: "But when the Imperial mantle finally falls on the shoulders of Louis Bonaparte, the bronze statue of Napoleon will crash from the top of the Vendome column". • Paris ir 1871, as Marx L plain workingmen for first time dared to infringe the governmental Zege of their 'natural eriors". , and, under circumke of unexampled difficu.performed their work destly, conscientiously and iciently" lut even before it was officially bred on March 28, the seeds of Commune's defeat had begun jerminate. Already, in the week reen the assumption of power the Central Committee and the tons, an unrepeatable opporty had been lost for a military ick the disorganised mailles forces.

Then, during the election ipaign, more was lost. Although • Committee of the wenty bndissements, an alliance of the king class political forces domed by the trade unions and the rational, produced a manitesto ch was in Lissagaray's words tinent in several points' the kion was largely conducted in as of personalities and not of stamme.

The Commune arrived in power bout a clear mandate. And one ug which was particularly absent ¡ a plan to present to the rest of nce. As Lissagaray says: *If they had wanted to change revolution from a communal • a national one, they ought to e said so, boldly set forth their le programme and demonted to France the necessity of attempt"

VACILLATED The leaders vacillated for a ath before presenting any proome at all. And when it came, eemed to ofter to the rest of ince not a means of unifying struggle on a national basis but ply a plan for duplicates of the nmune of Paris in each ividual municipality. Meanwhile, alutions in several other large es (Lyons, St. Etienne, Creuzot, rseliles, Toulouse and Narbonne) I been crushed one by one by Most of the measures implemenby the Commune reflected nediate needs rather than a ught out programme. The paynt of debts was orce again susided and all rents due up to july I1 were completely rescinded ther than delayed as they had in before).

Measures were taken to abolish vnshops. Employers were no ger permitted to fine workers. In ticular industries reforms rking conditions were enactedinstance, bakers were no longer uired to work at night.

In its later days the Commune i evolving plans for the system* conversion of the abandoned tories of the capitalists to be iverted under trade union ¡trol into workers' co-operatives.

FUNDAMENTAL

These co-operatives were to have srity in all state contracts. Plans made for public works grammes, employment infortion centres and other measures issist the unemployed.

Most of these reforms emanated m the most revolutionary of the mmune's Commissions, the Comsion for Labour and Exchange, of whose members were mbers of the International. Its d was Leo Frankel, a Hungarian, D had been in close contact with Some very fundamental reforms ting to women's rights were posed by one of the best organI and most consistent political anisations which sprang to life ing the Commune, the Associa• of Women for the Defence of is and Aid to the Wounded. This, like the Commission of our and Exchange, was almost irely led by socialist revolutionIts principle driving force was •Polish revolutionary, Elizabeth nitrieff. Her role was an example the generous internationalism of | Commune in which several fsh, Italian, Hungarian and mian revolutionaries played leadI roles and were accepted by the isian proletariat as their true arades.

The number of reforms carried ! or projected by the Commune emarkable in view of its short and the fact that it was in a anent state of war.

Yet at the same time the leaders refrained to take those measures which might have given them the opportunity to enact their reforms.

Lissagaray once again puts the point sharply:

"The members of the Council, in their childish impetuosity, had not seen the real hostages staring them in the face-the bank, the civil register, the domains and the suitors' fund. These were the tender points by which to hold the bourgeoisie. Without risking a single man, the Commune had only to stretch out its hand and bid Versailles negotiate or commit suicide.

The timid delegates of 26 March were not the men to dare this. In allowing the Versaillese - army to march off the Central Committee had committed a heavy fault; that of the Council was incomparably more damaging. All serious rebels have commenced by seizing upon the sinews of the enemy-the treasury. The Council of the Commune was the only revolutionary Government that refused to do so. While abolishing the budget of public worship, which was at Versailles, they bent their knees to the budget of the bourgeoisie, which was at their mercy "

UNEQUAL

The timidity, along with the increasing administrative disorganisation of the Commune (which it tried to solve by handing its powers on May 1 to a dictatorial Committee of Public Safety), meant that the forces of the Commune were unequal to the military attack from the versailles armies.

The indecision of the Commune had allowed Thiers to reorganise the armies and bring in soldiers from the provinces. Bismark gave his full cooperation by releasing prisoners of war to fight for Versailles.

Paris managed to hold out until May 21. In the preceding six weeks the Commune forces had made several forays against Versailles but these were completely unsuccessful. The Versailles authorities shot hundreds of the prisoners whom they captured.

On May 21 the Versailles army breached the walls of the city and for a week the civil war waged fiercely in the streets of Paris.

Every block was tenaciously and courageously defended by the Communards--men, women and children.

The physical heroism of the working class in this week was historically unprecedented. It could only be defeated by the brute terror of Thiers' army.

During the week the Commune soldiers shot 63 hostages including the Archbishop of Paris. It was the only measure of this kind ever taken by the Commune. It has This article, the last 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 earned the Communards the title of "butchers' bourgeois histories.

On the other side the "democratic, freedom-loving' bourgeoisie took revenge on the Commune in one of the most savage orgies of bourgeois violence in history.

Between 20,000 and 30,000 Parisians were killed in the street fighting. For every hostage killed by the Commune, the forces of reaction murdered 500 people.

'HUMANE'

Prisoners were taken off to concentration camps in cattle wagons. In the following thee years over 13,000 were sentenced to periods of imprisonmnet deportation to the colonies, hard labour.

The convictions only finally ended in 1880 when a general amnesty was granted. Thiers told the National Assembly that "the cause of justice, order and humanity has triumphed' This 'humane' bourgeoisie had extinguished a generation of

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"The Paris Commune of 1871 was the first, as yet weak, historic attempt of the working class to impose its supremacy. We cherish the memory of the Commune in spite of the extremely limited character of its experience, the immaturity of its participants, the confusion of its programme, the lack of unity among its leaders, the indecision of their plans, the hopeless panic of its executive organs, and the terrifying defeat fatally precipitated by all of these. We cherish in the Commune in the words of Lavroy, 'the first, though still pale, dawn of the proletarian "The multiplicity of interpretations to which the Commune has been subjected, and the multiplicity of interests which construed it in their favour, show that it was a thoroughly expansive political form, while all previous forms of government had been emphatically repressive.

Its true secret was this. It was essentially a working class government, the product of the struggle of the producing against the appropriating class, the political form at last discovered under which to work out the Workingmen's Paris, with its Commune, will be forever celebrated as the glorious harbinger of a new society. Its martyrs are enshrined in the great heart of the working class. Its exterminators, history has already nailed to that eternal pillory from which all the prayers of their priests Karl Marx, The Civil War in France, Manifesto of the General Council of the International Workingmen's Association on the Paris Commune, issued 30 May 1871, two days after the final crushing of the Commune.

Members of the Commune before the Council of War "The setting up of [free producer] associations would put an end to the exploitation and enslavement of Labour by Capital... It would simultaneously facilitate urgently needed reforms, in both production and product relationships to include the following points: a) variety of work in each trade-a continually repeated manual moveb) a reduction in working hours-physical exhaustion inevitably c) an end to all competition between male and female workers-their interests are identical and their solidarity is essential to the success of the (2) A local and international federation of various trade sections in order to ease the movement and exchange of goods by centralising the Faced by the present events, with poverty increasing at an alarming rate, and seeing the unwarranted halt in all work, it is to be feared that the women of Paris, who have become momentarily revolutionary in spirit, may as a result of the continual privation, relapse into the more or less reactionary and passive position which the social order of the past marked That would be a disastrous step backwards which would endanger the revolutionary and international interests of the working class, thereby Letter to the Commission of Labour and Exchange from E. Dimitrieff Secretary General, Executive Commission of the Association of Women for the Defence of Paris and Aid to the Wounded, late April or early May republic' "'.

Leon Trotsky, The economic emancipation of labour ...

will not avail to redeem them" rance's boldest proletarian ghters. But they were unable to tinguish the political meaning of le Paris Commune.

Paris in 1871 was not the first ace or time that the working class id fought independently for its vn interests. But on every evious occasion workers had ught revolutionary battles only to id the fruits of victory instantly atched from their hands by a ction of the bourgeoisie claiming be progressive.

The Commune lasted only for o months but it was the first ne that the working class had ntinued to assert its indepennce to the point of establishing own state. ...look at the Paris mmune'. • said Engels in 1871, nat was the dictatorship of the ›etariat' BALANCE SHEET ilt was in drawing the balance ret of the Commune that Marx il engels put forward tor the tirst e in its complete form the Defence of Terrorism, 1920.

The burning of the guillotine revolutionary socialist analysis of the State. In demonstrating the necessity for the working class to smash the bourgeois state apparatus they. showed how revolutionary socialism differed from reformism.

And by pointing to the way in which the construction of socialism required a new form of transitional state, the dictatorship of the proletariat, they differentiated revolutionary socialism clearly trom anarchism.

The lesson of the Commune that the proletariat could take power independently is complemented by the lesson that it must do so if counter-revolution is to be avoided.

Though large sections of the petty bourgeoisie in Paris saw that their interests lay with the working class and joined the revolution, the political leaders of the "progressive' republican sections of the bourgeoisie acted with unallayed treachery towards the working class.

Despite their protessions of democracy the 'left' democrats of the Versailles assembly, like Louis Trotsky Blanc, eventually lined up wholeheartedly behind Thiers savage vengeance. The workers learned for the first time that there was no progressive section of the bourgeoisie: that the bourgeoisie's fear of revolution was always greater than love of freedom.

These lessons about the independence of the working class and the need for permanent revolution is over 100 years old. Yet today it is still treacherously denied by the leadership of the working class in Italy and Spain and anywhere where the parties of Stalinism and reformism continue to dominate the labour movement.

The Commune also shows that the bourgeoisie has no scruples in combatting the threat of revolution and the ending of its own power.

UNPREPARED

The capitalist class permits no peaceful road to working class power today any more than it did in 1871. As Lissagaray said in condemning the National Guard for not attacking Versailles on March 18:

"The people never hold sway but for an hour, and woe to them if they are not yet ready, armed from head to foot. The elections of the 26 March were irreparable"

The streets of Chile in 1973, like those of many cities in the intervening century, were strewn with the bodies of workers because false "revolutionary', reformist and Stalinist leaders have denied this lesson.

In Paris in 1871 the people did not lack arms, but their leaders were unprepared to use them decisively. Though the responsibility for the violence always lies with the bourgeoisie, that does not mean that the working class must use no more than defensive tactics.

Revolutionary civil war, as the Bolsheviks later realised, must be fought to the hilt. It was, as Marx commented, the 'kindheartedness' of the Commune's leaders which helped to lead to their defeat.

In Paris the working class was armed militarily; but it was still not armed politically. Not only did the Commune as a whole not have a clear political programme, neither did the main political organisations of the workers.

IDEALISTIC

Though many of the Communards were revolutionaries and socialists their demands were idealistic and owed far more to the bourgeois "socialist' Proudhon or to the anarchist Bakunin than to Marx and Engels.

The Paris section of the International, though they played a leading role in the movement for the Commune and its running, remained more like a debating club than a disciplined revolutionary party ready to provide a clear and decisive new leadership for the working class.

When members of the International acted, it was more as individuals than as members of a party.

As Engels later said, "The International did not raise a finger to make the Commune"

Nonetheless, he went on, it was "unquestionably the spiritual child of the International' in the sense that it was the first great struggle of the independent working class against the bourgeoisie.

SOLIDARITY What the General Council of the International could do was to organise a vast movement of solidarity with the Commune throughout Europe. Thus while Marx and Engels were not able to intervene in the struggle in Paris itself, they were able to see that its lessons were explained throughout the European labour movement.

The Paris Commune was not socialist, nor, as Marx asserted, could it possibly have been. Aside from the fact that most of the leaders who professed socialism were utopian socialists rather than Marxists, it did not occur to Marx that socialism could be established in a single nation, let alone a single city. Neither the subjective nor the objective conditions existed for the building of socialism.

The importance of the Commune is to be found not in its 'socialism' but in the fact that the workers discovered, in the course of the life and death struggle which was forced upon them, a new type of government-one which, had it been spread and preserved, could have created the form under which the transition to socialism could be effected.

ment damages both mind and body.

destroys man's spiritual qualities.

final world-wide strike of labour against capital.

The association therefore wants: (1) Equal pay for equal hours of work.

international interests of the producers. (...)

out for them.

endangering the Commune."

1871.

The state had not, as the anarchists claimed, been destroyed. A new form of state had been discovered, the dictatorship of the proletariat, which was the starting point for the final withering away of the state.

Lenin explained in State and "The Commune, therefore, appears to have replaced the smashed state machine 'only" by fuller democracy: abolition of the standing army; all officials to be elected and subject to recall. But as a matter of fact this 'only' signifies a gigantic replacement of certain institutions by other institutions of fundamentally different . туре. This is exactly a case of quantity being transformed into quality':

democracy introduced as fully and consistently as is at all conceivable, is transformed from bourgeois into proletarian democracy; from the state (= a special force for the supression of a particular class) into something which is no longer the state proper"

But the dictatorship of the proletariat does not consist only in this extension of democracy; it 'simultaneously... imposes a series of restrictions on the freedom of the oppressors, the exploiters, the capitalists' : The Commune, partly if not entirely through faults of its own, failed to impose those restrictions.

This, like its other deficiencies, sprang from the failures of the Commune's leadership. The absence of programme, the failure to take bold, decisive and united measures all betray the fact that a working class party organised with the objective of leading the working class to independent power had not been built.

DECISIVE CHANGE

As Trotsky wrote: "The Paris proletariat had no such party. The bourgeois socialists who abounded in the Commune looked up to Heaven as if they awaited a miracle of an oracle. And while they were thus hesitating, the people groped and despaired because of the vacillation of some and the fantasies of others... If in September 1870 the French proletariat had been led by a centralised party of revolutionary action, the history not only of France, but of al mankind, would have taken a different direction"

Such a decisive change of direction came 47 years later when the proletariat took power in Russia.

The world war, which acted as midwife to the Russian Revolution can trace its origins back very directly to the war between France and Prussia in 1870, out of which came the Paris Commune.

But in Russia the proletariat was led by a party which had overcome the deficiencies which led to the defeat of the Parisian workers.

In both these senses therefore, the story of the Paris Commune is not merely one of heroic failure. It is a landmark on the route to the building of the objective and subjective conditions for the world socialist revolution.

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wives and politicians, pontical meetings and even government intrigues are recorded with startling workers and even sections of Allende's Socialist Party were calling out for arms, Allende invited