Marx on the Paris Commune

[Bostana]

Can you guys give me an article by Marx about the Paris Commune. What did he say about it. Don't call me crazy if I am wrong he said that it was the highest point of Communism. Or the only Place to reach total Communism. Something along the lines of that.

Thanks
Peace

[NewLeft]

Marx did not consider it to be the highest point of communism, I think you're getting confused with something else. He considered it to be an example of the proletariat seizing the means of production.

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

Refer to your last thread, there's good replies: http://www.revleft.com/vb/commune-de-paris-t168907/index.html?t=168907

[KurtFF8]

Also Lenin appealed quite a bit to what Marx wrote on the Commune in State and Revolution

[bad ideas actualised by alcohol]

No, I think he saw it as an example what the final stage of Communism, should or probably will look like.

[Railyon]

No, I think he saw it as an example what the final stage of Communism, should or probably will look like.
More like what the beginning stages, the dictatorship of the proletariat, might look like, but hey.

I second the recommendation of Lenin's State and Revolution, the section on the Paris Commune is great.

[Grenzer]

No, I think he saw it as an example what the final stage of Communism, should or probably will look like.

Umm.. not really. He said that it was not socialism "nor could it have been".

[Paul Cockshott]

read Marx, Civil War in France

[bad ideas actualised by alcohol]

Umm.. not really. He said that it was not socialism "nor could it have been".

Okay, my bad. ;)

[bricolage]

Can you guys give me an article by Marx about the Paris Commune. What did he say about it. Don't call me crazy if I am wrong he said that it was the highest point of Communism. Or the only Place to reach total Communism.
Nah he didn't say that.

No, I think he saw it as an example what the final stage of Communism, should or probably will look like.
And he certainly didn't say that.

Marx did not consider it to be the highest point of communism, I think you're getting confused with something else. He considered it to be an example of the proletariat seizing the means of production.

More like what the beginning stages, the dictatorship of the proletariat, might look like, but hey.
This is more on the ball but it was actually Engels that said this:

Look at the Paris Commune. That was the Dictatorship of the Proletariat.
The key Marx quote is this:

It was essentially a working class government, the produce of the struggle of the producing against the appropriating class, the political form at last discovered under which to work out the economical emancipation of labour.

The point is that this emancipation of labour (DOTP/socialism/etc) hadn't actually happened but the Commune had put forward the structure under which it could, in another time, take place. As mentioned above Marx wrote that 'the majority of the Commune was in no wise socialist, nor could it be' (*) and it's quite clear the economic measures it took were not very far reaching at all. The most commonly cited example is the that of the 16 April calling for the establishment of co-operatives. However this was not very radical at all, co-operatives were already established in France and it specifically talks about providing compensation for previous owners as opposed to just appropriating them unilaterally. In the first instance 10 workplaces were occupied in response, by the end of the Commune I think it numbered 43. Stewart Edwards in his book writes that towards the end the Engineers Union suggested taking over the Barriquand works, one of the largest engineering factories in Paris (illustrating that most radical moves did not come from the Communal Council itself). In the first instance I'd like to believe this is true but I've never seen it mentioned anywhere else, in any case if it was so everyone was dead before this could be carried out. I mean Marx himself was unbelievably critical of how the Commune didn't even seize the Paris bank.

Like I've said on here before, the Commune was a lot of things, it was one of the most revolutionary events in history, but it certainly wasn't socialism.

* I've never known whether he is here referring to the Commune as an entity of the individual participants within it. If its the latter it doesn't necessarily prove much about the former in itself and I'm firmly of the belief that you don't need socialists for socialism. However everything else that happened shows that even if this was the case it's pretty irrelevant.