Paris Commune Reading List

[bricolage]

Any help would be appreciated.

[Dave B]

http://www.marxists.org/history/france/archive/lissagaray/index.htm

[Dave B]

You might want to read the following first as it provides background and interesting quotes as well as an overall summary of events.

But be warned it contains plot spoilers!



http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1871/civil-war-france/postscript.htm (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1871/civil-war-france/postscript.htm)

[Manzil]

But be warned it contains plot spoilers!
:D

Don't tell me what happens! Will there be a sequel? Did they win? Are we all Communards?

On second thoughts, I'll wait for the movie version.

[Pogue]

Live Working or Die Fighting - Paul Mason

[bricolage]

Live Working or Die Fighting - Paul Mason

Yeah I was thinking of buying that, not just for the Paris Commune bits.

I've heard some of his analysis is a bit suspect though, what did you think?

[gilhyle]

I've heard some of his analysis is a bit suspect though, what did you think?

I confess to having put a somewhat inconclusive review on Amazon:


About thirty years ago a popular writer called Eric Van Dankien wrote bestsellers to prove that aliens visited ancient civilsations. A BBC program criticising his arguments used the example of an 18th century bell tower ('The Campanile') in Trinity College Dublin which bore a resemblance to a three stage rocket. It used this example to show that van Dankien's arguments were superficial because based on mere formal analogy.

Paul Mason's book might be in danger of falling into Van Dankien-style argument....but, then again, maybe not.

Each Chapter takes a major event from the history of the emergence of the labour movement (Peterloo, Lyon Strike 1830, Paris Commune, The 19th Century German SPD, the Bund, Shanghai workers uprising, Italian sit down strikes of 1921, Flint Michigan strike) and places each of those beside his own reportage of a contemporary experience of labour in the globalised economy.

At the heart of the book is this method of formal comparison, which leaves its key thesis (concerning how the working class went global) unproven and only suggested. What is repeating and what is different remain mostly unknown to us at the end, but we have a sense that there is some degree of repetition in the current experience of unskilled industrial labour across the world.

In so far as there is a political argument, it is scattered thoughout the book and you have to look to find it. Mason believes that revolutionary syndicalism was built around a false theory of the revolutionary general strike, but that it had the incalculable achievement of developing "the union way of life" in the industries that had grown up in the 19 the century (P.142)

He believes that the 'war' (P.173, see also P.248) between social democratic reformers and revolutionaries that broke out in Germany and then Italy has been the key to determining modern history.

He believes that the competing ideologies of nationalism and communism made it impossible for the expermimentation of 19th century union organising to be repeated in the 20th century (P.194-195, see also P.206)

His sensitivity to working class culture is evident, reflecting his avowed working class background. At one point he quotes Simone Weil on the Renault Billancourt strike that was triggered by the election of the 1936 popular front in France:

"As soon as the oppression weakened, the suffering the humiliation, the bitterness silently accumulated over the years became a force strong enough to weaken the bonds...."(P.260)

This is what Mason highlights. The culture of the union, the way consciousness can weaken the bonds, the ideological minefield that marked the way forward from the most basic union victories.

His conclusion - "There is for the first time a global working class.."(P.280) and the past gives us some inkling of the future possibilities of this class - is worthy and even important.

But if we dig down from the carefully wrought appearance of this book (the use fo primary sources is quite brilliant), we see that things are not as they seem. The recounting of the historical events by contemporary activists and the reportage of current events are fundamentally different. Mason intervenes as the crucial voice in the latter, while leaving the former to the memoires of activists, however well edited by him. By this device he heightens those similarities he relies on. The map of the current situation bears little resemblance, by his own admission, to the profile of political forces in the 19th and 20th centuries and his optimism for anti-globalisation movements is merely parachuted into the book.

We are left with the rubrics of hope and expectation stil competing for our attention, and expectation has not been signficantly strenthened by this well written, clever book.

[chimx]

You might want to read the following first as it provides background and interesting quotes as well as an overall summary of events.

But be warned it contains plot spoilers!



http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1871/civil-war-france/postscript.htm (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1871/civil-war-france/postscript.htm)

I would strongly urge you not to read Marx's work on it to begin with. It contains many historical inaccuracies due to poor source/communication of the time.

[The Ungovernable Farce]

Memoirs of Louise Michel is meant to be good, not that I've ever read it myself.

[x359594]

The Civil War in France by Karl Marx. A contemporary analysis.

The Paris Commune of 1871:The View From The Left edited by Eugene Shulkind. An anthology drawn from contemporary participants and observers down to ex post facto comments from Lenin, Trotsky, etc.

The Paris Commune of 1871 by Frank Jellinek. A comprehensive Left history.

The Paris Commune 1971 by Stewart Edwards. Another good history.

The History of the Commune of 1871 by P. Lissagray. Translated into English by Eleanor Marx Aveling. The classic history of the Commune by an eye witness journalist.

If you read French, there's a veritable library of works on the Commune.

[Pogue]

Yeah I was thinking of buying that, not just for the Paris Commune bits.

I've heard some of his analysis is a bit suspect though, what did you think?

I think the whole book is fucking brilliant, one of the best books I have ever read and his analysis is spot on. I enjoyed it alot.

[New Tet]

:D

Don't tell me what happens! Will there be a sequel? Did they win? Are we all Communards?

On second thoughts, I'll wait for the movie version.

We have no time to waste waiting for made-in-Hollywood versions of what we ourselves must do.

Marx, our imaginary and long-dead film auteur, intended the script of his 'Civil War' to contain a sequel played out by you and me.

[New Tet]

I think the whole book is fucking brilliant, one of the best books I have ever read and his analysis is spot on. I enjoyed it alot.

One of the best primers on working class rebellion I've ever read.

If you like that, read John Nichols (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Nichols_%28American_writer%29)' 'The Magic Journey (http://www.amazon.com/Magic-Journey-John-Nichols/dp/0345410335)' part of a trilogy including 'The Milagro Beanfield War (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0095638/)'. There's even a chapter titled "What Is To Be Done".

It occurs to me that the more appropriate movie to make would be 'The Magic Journey'. But it would take a director and producer with as much money as true 'cojones' to adapt it without distorting it. Maybe someone like P.T. Anderson; he's one of Hollywood's pretty boys and untouchable if he makes it true to content.

[Dave B]

Whilst Karl’s Civil War in France may have contained some inaccuracies I think that the introductions to it by Fred written on the 20th anniversary that I linked could be expected to be more up to date and ‘reliable’.


Karl was in fact not keen on the idea as it was about to happen as he thought it would end in disaster as it did for many.


So Karl before the commune.


Marx to Engels 6th September 1870



"this is more necessary than ever, since the whole French Branch (of the international) escapes now to Paris, in order to do there all kinds of follies in the name of the international. They wish to bring down the Provisional government, to establish a Commune de Paris …….."


That is from a book and I assume it is reliable.


(As to whether or not the working class thought it was ‘folly’ at the end of the day, opinions may have varied amongst the working class victims, but the dead don’t speak much.)

On Karl's support for the commune with caveats etc;


The Third Address, May, 1871





Yes, gentlemen, the Commune intended to abolish that class property which makes the labor of the many the wealth of the few. It aimed at the expropriation of the expropriators. It wanted to make individual property a truth by transforming the means of production, land, and capital, now chiefly the means of enslaving and exploiting labor, into mere instruments of free and associated labor. But this is communism, "impossible" communism!


The working class did not expect miracles from the Commune. They have no ready-made utopias to introduce par decret du peuple. They know that in order to work out their own emancipation, and along with it that higher form to which present society is irresistably tending by its own economical agencies, they will have to pass through long struggles, through a series of historic processes, transforming circumstances and men.




http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1871/civil-war-france/ch05.htm

And on a more direct criticism of the commune afterwards

Marx to Domela Nieuwenhuis, In The Hague, London, February 22, 1881



Perhaps you will point to the Paris Commune; but apart from the fact that this was merely the rising of a town under exceptional conditions, the majority of the Commune was in no sense socialist, nor could it be. With a small amount of sound common sense, however, they could have reached a compromise with Versailles useful to the whole mass of the people -- the only thing that could be reached at the time



http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1881/letters/81_02_22.htm (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1881/letters/81_02_22.htm)

[The Ungovernable Farce]

Also, FWIW: http://libcom.org/intro/paris-commune and http://libcom.org/tags/paris-commune

[JohannGE]

As I have posted previously:-

Download free (and legal) here:-

http://www.archive.org/details/COMMU...1_PeterWATKINS (http://www.anonym.to/?http://www.archive.org/details/COMMUNE_Paris1871_PeterWATKINS)

"All of Peter Watkins films are events. When he tackles such a mythical moment of French and world history as the Commune (Paris, 1871), Watkins provokes, disturbs, jostles. The story, based on a thorough historical research, leads to an inevitable reflection about the present.

We are in the year 1871. A journalist for Versailles Television broadcasts a soothing and official view of events while a Commune television is set up to provide the perspectives of the Paris rebels. On a stage-like set, more than 200 actors interpret characters of the Commune, especially the Popincourt neighbourhood in the XIth arrondissement. They voice their own thoughts and feelings concerning the social and political reforms. The scenes consist mainly of long camera takes.

For Peter Watkins, to make a film is to question his own work as a filmmaker. La Commune represents an uncompromising challenge to modern media and a penetrating critique."

http://pwatkins.mnsi.net/commune.htm

edit... (Just noticed the above link to the download does not have English substitles. Versions are widely available "elsewhere" with subs.)

(http://www.anonym.to/?http://www3.nfb.ca/collection/films/fiche/?id=51056&lg=en&exp=&v=h)

[Manifesto]

Paris After the Liberation 1944-1949.

[Random Precision]

Paris After the Liberation 1944-1949.

I believe the OP was asking for resources on the Paris Commune of 1871. :)

[Manifesto]

Oh haha I did not see any years.