Importance of the Paris Commune

[Ritzy Cat]

I have begun reading State & Revolution by Lenin, however he references Marx fairly often, and notably some of Marx's viewpoints on the Paris Commune. However I do not know many specifics of the Paris Commune, and I cannot seem to find any precise information on this website (at least in the history section). In Chapter 2, Lenin quotes Marx:


One thing especially was proved by the Commune, viz., that 'the working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made state machinery and wield it for its own purposes'

He says the quote in the quote was from Marx's book, The Civil War in France, which I have not read yet.

How exactly was this proven in the Commune, and what is the general "takeaway" I should have from the events of the Commune? Can someone give me an unbiased, detailed summary of the leftist approach to the events of the Paris Commune?

[Ritzy Cat]

Any discussion on this matter yet ?? :wub:

[reb]

The Paris Commune was an entirely new creation and was not just proletarians staging a coup and running the regular French state in the name of the proletariat.

States arise out of class society, this is an internal contradiction within capitalist society. This means that state can only be an expression of class society, with standing army, police force, law courts, etc. The lessons of the Commune is that we can't just take hold of the state, such as voting ourselves in and then managing it to bring in socialism, and in this sense you can lump in the USSR as an example of why this doesn't work and the rest of Stalinist ideology. The task of the proletariat is to completely end class society, which also ends up with the end of capitalism. This involves smashing the state and property forms.

There are a few historical works on the Paris Commune that might be worth a look but there's little in the way of a Marxist look at the commune that I've come across is is worth any merit.

[Ritzy Cat]

So Basically in the Paris Commune they took charge of the state and tried to adapt socialist policy to it, instead of removing it? Hence according to Marxist theory, since the state is the product of class antagonisms, maintaining it would perpetuate the problem of class antagonisms that they aimed to solve in the first place?

[reb]

The Paris Commune took charge of running Paris. It gradually got more and more revolutionary towards the end. The point of the commune wasn't that it was socialist in the idea that it took on a socialist ideology, this is contrary to a marxian understanding on what socialism means. The point was that it took on a proletarian form from which could be used to smash the state, the bourgeois state. I would hesitate to call the commune a state and I wouldn't describe the dictatorship of the proletariat as a state because a state is one where there are irresolvable class antagonisms, this is why a state appears, but the dictatorship of the proletariat has the historic charge of ending class and class antagonisms, under the dictatorship of the proletariat, these class antagonisms are no long irresolvable.

[Lensky]

The Paris Commune didn't attempt to expand its power and made concessions to the bourgeoisie such as leaving banks untouched, not seizing property, and not committing to a decisive march on Versailles. By refusing to aggressively expand and turn the countryside of France into a river of blood, the blood of class enemies, the proletariat ensured their own annihilation to an overwhelming strike by the capitalist class, once their forces were reorganized.

[Danielle Ni Dhighe]

Despite the destruction of the Paris Commune, it represented the first embryonic form of the dictatorship of the proletariat. If it was never a purely socialist revolution and was always beset with the problems of a hastily created government under external threat, it was at least a new example of revolutionary organization, the democratic self-organization of the masses.

Also, in the words of Communard Edouard Vaillant, "If socialism wasn't born of the Commune, it is from the Commune that dates that portion of international revolution that no longer wants to give battle in a city in order to be surrounded and crushed, but which instead wants, at the head of the proletarians of each and every country, to attack national and international reaction and put an end to the capitalist regime."

[bricolage]

The Paris Commune was an entirely new creation and was not just proletarians staging a coup and running the regular French state in the name of the proletariat.
Well this is true but lets ask what the French state was at the time of the Paris Commune. In September 1870 Napoleon III was defeated at Sedan the Third Republic was formed on an ad hoc fashion, and I really mean ad hoc, ministers got positions by being the first to run into the respective office. In January the elections brought a monarchist majority and they would be lead by Thiers in butchering the Commune, in fact it was only be butchering the Commune that he could prove the Republic could be strong and could be 'that which divides us least' and hence defeat the monarchist threat. The point here is that there really wasn't a French state in any meaningful sence for the Commune to take over at the time. But was it an entirely new creation? The name Commune harked back to the original French Revolution and its form of municipal governance had much in common with the 19th Century clubs and so forth that had proliferated in Paris. The Commune was unique in measures like members being on an average workers wage and the ability to recall delegates and it was of course the 'political form at last discovered' but it wasn't entirely new. It built heavily on French revolutionary history and imagery (including the National Guard) and was a result of these points colliding with the growing workers/socialist movement. It should also be remembered that the real importance of the Commune lay not in the Communal Council itself but the sub-divisions, neighbourhood groups, vigilance committees, and so forth.


There are a few historical works on the Paris Commune that might be worth a look but there's little in the way of a Marxist look at the commune that I've come across is is worth any merit.
There are plenty of things worth reading on the Commune. Lissagary is the best primary source and then I'm sure people here would like stuff like Marx, Bakunin, Lenin and so forth but really I think only the former has anything interesting to say. Louise Michel's memoirs are fantastic and you can get an abridged version for very cheap. Stewart Edwards writes a very fascinating book albeit one that seems to have a few historical inaccuracies, but Jellinek also writes a good book. 'Surmounting the Barricades' and 'Unruly Women of Paris' are both worth reading on the subject of women in the Commune.


The Paris Commune didn't attempt to expand its power and made concessions to the bourgeoisie such as leaving banks untouched, not seizing property, and not committing to a decisive march on Versailles.
It is true that the Paris Commune never attempted to expand its power, partly as a result of the tensions between those (more influence by Proudhon) who wanted it to just be a form of devolved governance and those closer to the socialist movement who saw it as the start of a national revolution. Of course there were also those taking part because they saw it as their patriotic duty against the capitulation of the government and those taking part because they simply had no other option - this is not really relevant here but its always worth remembering the extent to which the Commune was divided in itself. The closest the Commune got to policy on this was the manifesto where it stated:

The recognition and consolidation of the Republic, the only form of government compatible with the rights of the people and the normal and free development of society.

The absolute autonomy of the Commune extended to all localities in France and assuring to each one its full rights, and to every Frenchman the full exercise of his faculties and abilities as man, citizen and producer.

The only limit to the autonomy of the Commune should be the equal right to autonomy for all communes adhering to the contract, whose association shall insure French unity.

The Paris Commune did *not* seize the banks and it did *not* seize property (the 16th April decree only took abandoned workshops and even gave compensation to previous owners, in fact the Commune would later actually reject more radical proposals to seize property) and these were some of its fundamental flaws. But not marching on Vesailles? Forces of the Commune led by Dombrowski did at several points move to engage the Versailles troops and at many points did re-take crucial positions but they would have had no hope in hell of marching on Versailles. The reason the Commune was initially victorious on March 18th was that the troops sent in by the government turned on their officers and joined the working class women of Paris. The reason why the Commune was defeated in the butchery of Bloody Week was that this did not happen. The Commune tried to several points to get other areas of France to rise up but the Communes were short lived. As such by the end of May Paris was isolated and the soldiers of the army remained loyal to Versailles. The real lesson of 1871 is then not that you are defeated if you don't attack but, as with all revolutions, you are defeated when you are isolated.

[blake 3:17]

I've heard the Michels stuff is great. A book I really like is Kristin Ross' Emergence of Social Space which is about Rimbaud & the Paris Commune --book is great and awesome speedy, worst title ever...

Will ask a friend who's done some scholarship on anarchism and the Commune.

Started with a rent strike! Sometimes it only takes a spark... Many of us see the Paris Commune as a model for socialist democracy -- the big issue is gender.

[bricolage]

Started with a rent strike! Sometimes it only takes a spark...
Technically the Paris Commune didn't start with a rent strike, it was a rent strike. Paris at the end of the Second Empire saw a massive period of urban growth, most symbolically shown in Haussmann's tearing up of the city and building of the boulevards. This meant two things, 1. that lots of poor people came from the provinces to work in construction and needed places to live and 2. lots of poor Parisians were displaced by the construction itself. In turn this lead to two other things, 1. that land speculation started getting people massive returns and became a major field of investment and 2. that the remaining areas that were not torn up or gentrified were overcrowded. Landlords would pack people into tiny apartments, police their activities, charge them enormous rents and evict them straight away if they fell behind.

On 13 March a decree was passed that said all unpaid rents had to be paid in full, meaning that everyone who had been stuck in Paris in the siege, who had eaten rats and spent all their savings trying to survive, that they all had to now pay money they didn't have or else be thrown out on the streets. On the 18th the army tries to take the cannon from the National Guard and the rest is the Commune. Most notably we get the decree stating that unpaid rents would be cancelled and that pawnshops (which had preyed on people unable to pay rent) would be forced to give back items that had been pawned.

The sad fact, however, is that after the Commune all these evictions that had been promised still happened. The interesting bit in 2013 is that the situation Paris was in prior to the Commune (minus the tiny differences of war, seige and fall of an emperor ;)) was one of gentrification, skyrocketing rent, rapidly changing populations and intense debt. Now if you want to transpose events to the present day that could be London or New York or any number of major world cities. What happens next is less clear.