Socialist Action /April 2000
Paris Commune
By JAN BIRCH
Today many workers feel discouraged looking at the way society is
run. The economy and the governmental structure seem so complicated. The
seats of power seem omnipotent. It can make us feel that social change is
impossible.
And our rich history of heroic struggles by the working class is often
hidden from us. We have few examples to point the way.
But the past is full of examples of what the working class has done.
It is filled with cause for celebration and inspiration.
In this issue of Socialist Action, we honor the first example of the
working class in power-the Paris Commune-declared over 100 years ago in
France.
In 1871 the workers of Paris were "ready to storm heaven,"
or so said Karl Marx, the founder of modern communism. He was a great admirer
of the heroic and innovative struggles of the workers of Paris. The French
workers created the first example of worker's power-they showed what a government
would look like that was of, for, and by the workers ourselves.
How did this incredible change come about? What did the workers do? And
what happened to their amazing experiment?
The people of France had a long history of opposing tyranny. It was the
French Revolution in 1789 that launched the assault on the European monarchy-which
changed the face of the world. Again in 1815, the 1830s, and 1848, the French
people did battle to defend their interests and challenge their rulers.
In each battle, as they tried to challenge the monarchy, the capitalists
called on the workers to fight; but each time the workers put forward independent
demands, the capitalists turned around and compromised with the old order
of French bankers and landlords. They feared the workers as a threat to
their emerging order.
So going into 1871, the French workers had both a long tradition of struggle
and the experience that gave them an understanding of the need to organize
themselves independently as a class.
In the 1860s, there was a severe economic crisis in France. The French
workers responded with strikes. They organized labor unions and political
clubs. Revolutionary ideas were taking hold. The First International, an
organization of workers and revolutionary intellectuals throughout Europe,
defended the idea of workers power and socialism. It had 70,000 members
in Paris alone, at the time of the Commune.
The French rulers turned to war as a way out of their economic problems
and to extend their territory. In 1869, Louis Bonaparte, the French emperor,
led France into a war against Prussia. The war was a disaster for the French,
who lost battle after battle.
For five months Paris was under siege with constant bombardments. People
were starving. During the siege the government and the rich fled south to
Bordeaux. Finally on Sept. 2, 1870, France was defeated and 80,000 French
soldiers were forced to surrender to the Prussians.
In response to this military defeat, an uprising by the people of Paris
overthrew the Bonaparte monarchy. A republic was proclaimed in exile, and
parties representing the capitalist class were put into power. But the capitalists
were not ready to act decisively to save Paris. With the government operating
in exile, who would rule Paris? Who would organize the day to day life of
the people of the city?
The National Guard steps forward
Most workers in Paris had their own guns. They organized themselves into
the National Guard on a neighborhood basis. They elected their own officers.
They elected delegates to a central governing body, called the Central Committee.
In the vacuum created by the defeat of France, they were the only real power
in Paris.
The 20 men of the Central Committee organized the defense of the city.
They organized the distribution of supplies and pay for the guardsmen, etc.
While the National Guard was busy attending to the day-to-day needs of
ordinary people, the new capitalist government was surrendering Paris to
Prussia. The capitalists even agreed to allow the victorious Prussians to
enter the city as a conquering army. But the National Guard said "no"
and organized to back up their words.
On March 18, 1871, the new republican government, in a sneak attack by
the French army, tried to retake some of the cannons that the National Guard
had distributed around the city to protect Paris from attack. But the working
people of Paris, led by women on their early morning shopping errands, blocked
their way.
When the generals gave the order to their troops to fire on the Paris
working people, the army shot the two generals instead and fraternized with
the National Guard troops. The soldiers saw the National Guard as their
brothers and the generals as their enemies.
After this fiasco, the republican government quickly fled to Versailles,
and the red flag was raised over the Paris city hall. The National Assembly
of the rich at Versailles tried to pass more laws to crush everyone beneath
them. But their plans backfired and turned sections of the middle classes-the
shopkeepers, tradesmen, and merchants-into allies of the workers.
The Commune is born in action
The National Guard organized elections for the Paris Commune.This was
an election like no other before it. There was universal suffrage, with
representatives being chosen by district, so people actually knew the candidates.
Ninety representatives were chosen, but quickly the liberals quit.The
large majority elected to the Commune were revolutionaries; 24 were workers.
The average age of the communards was 37 years old, whereas the average
age of the government at Versailles was 62. The Commune represented the
youth and the future!
All those elected were immediately recallable, so no one could serve
beyond the point that the electorate wanted them as their representatives.
And they were to be paid workers' wages, no sky high salaries! No one would
get rich off of being a delegate in the Commune. Devotion to the working
class, not greed was what characterized this new body.
The Commune saw itself as a working body-passing the laws but also responsible
for carrying them out. There was no passing the buck, no bureaucracy to
clog things up. The workers power meant cheap and efficient government whose
goal was a better life for working people.
On March 26, 200,000 people came to the Paris city hall for the inauguration
of the Commune.
The Commune proclaimed its internationalism and said that workers have
no country to defend-only their interests as a class. While at war with
Prussia, they chose a German as their minister of labor. They chose a Pole
to serve as the head of the commune's defense.
They tore down the Vendome Column, a monument to the past glory of French
imperialism and military ventures. They demanded that those who had benefited
from the war should be taxed on their profits.
They abolished the conscription that forced the poor to fight the wars
of the rich.They abolished the standing army and police that stood against
the population. Instead, neighborhoods would be policed by their own armed
population, with officers who were elected by the ranks. They even arrested
generals if they had been negligent in their duty towards soldiers.
They elected judges as well who were immediately replaceable if they
didn't serve the popular will. They proclaimed death to those who stole.
As a consequence the gangsters, prostitutes, and thieves ran to Versailles,
the center for the rich. Almost all crime stopped in Paris.
What did the Commune accomplish?
The Commune immediately tried to make a series of economic decisions
to help ordinary people get back on track. The Catholic Church was one of
the richest and most powerful French institutions and a pillar of the past
royal and feudal structure. The Commune abolished the church budget and
confiscated church property- proclaiming it national property. Another decree
removed religious symbols from the schools.
Rents had been suspended during the months of German siege but the capitalist
government had tried to reinstate them. The Commune put a moratorium on
rents. It spread repayments on loans over three years and proclaimed that
the payments would not start until July 15 of that year, with no back interest.
They forbid the sale of items in pawnshops because they knew that the
economic crisis had forced many skilled workers to pawn their tools-thus
making them unable to work. They ordered the release of all items pawned
before April 25.
The Commune established the eight-hour day. They tried to reopen closed
workshops and began to regulate wages and contracts. In some workshops,
factory councils planned the work and elected their own foremen. They came
up with workman's compensation for stone cutters who performed dangerous
work with no insurance. They abolished fines on workers that had been levied
if the workers made mistakes. This was truly a government that put the workers'
interests first.
They brought relief to the bakers who had been forced to work at night
so the rich would have fresh croissants in the morning. The Commune felt
that the bakers' sleep and health was worth more than the whims of the rich!
Members of the Commune went out to the bakeries to make sure this new rule
was enforced and closed down any bakeries that tried to violate it. The
Commune was a working, not a talking, body.
Women were active in the Commune. They fought against prostitution, seeing
it as the exploitation of women. They argued to do away with the stigma
of children who were considered illegitimate. They took care of the wounded
and were some of the most determined fighters on the barricades when the
Commune came under attack.
The Commune aimed to make education free, compulsory, and secular. They
opened a school where workers could get technical training. One school district
provided free school materials to poor children. Another provided free clothing
and food to school children, knowing that you can't do well in school if
you are hungry or poorly clothed.
Children were active defenders of the Commune. Over 600 children were
captured by Versailles troops in the final battles to defend the Commune's
vision of the future.
The Commune opened up culture, formerly the sole property of the wealthy,
to ordinary people. They proclaimed that art must be free of government
control. They opened up the Louvre Museum, formerly the private museum of
the kings, for all to see.
They gave support to contemporary artists. There was an arts council
for the Commune that included Corbet, Daumier, and Manet-well known French
artists of the time. Actors and musicians organized under the Commune.
The Commune opened reading rooms in hospitals to make life more pleasant
for those who were sick. They forbade the rich to take books from the library.
Paris was filled with people going to theater, concerts, museums, listening
to street corner speeches, reading books and the many newspapers that stuffed
the news racks.
The working class was bursting with life, ideas, and enthusiasm! And
all this was happening in a city surrounded by a hostile army and under
constant siege.
The Commune isolated and under attack
Attempts were made to create Communes in other major French cities. But
elsewhere they lacked the popular support and organizational knowhow that
existed in Paris. All these attempts were put down by Versailles. This left
the Paris Commune in desperate isolation.
The workers were busy redesigning society and creating a new future for
humanity. They thought that Versailles would leave them alone. But their
enemies were making their evil plans.
Both Bismarck (the leader of Prussia) and the French government in Versailles
were plotting the Commune's downfall. Bismarck even released 60,000 French
prisoners of war, to help the French government attack Paris.
For six weeks, Paris was bombarded by the Versailles government, at the
same time as it was surrounded by Prussian troops. The French army inflicted
the worst damage on their own capital. The capitalist governments of France
and Prussia, though at war with each other, soon found the way to cooperate
against their shared fear-real workers' power!
On May 21, the French army entered Paris. There was no centralized organization
for the defense of the city. Everything was still organized on a neighborhood-by-neighborhood
basis, including the dispersement of weapons and ammunition.
Barricades and cannons were set up around the city. For eight days the
people of Paris fought in the streets, bravely defending their new order.
On May 28, 1871, the Communards took their final stand in Pere Lachaise
Cemetery.
Having defeated the Commune, the capitalist government wreaked a hideous
revenge. The rich returned from Versailles to watch the slaughter of the
Communards and cheer. They wanted to teach the workers of the world a lesson.
They went on a bloody rampage, searching for anyone with powder on their
hands, a sign that they had fought for the Commune.
They executed 30,000 and imprisoned 45,000, including 500 children! They
exiled 30,000. Altogether Paris lost over 100,000 people.
The streets were piled high with rotting bodies from the slaughter. Disease
spread rapidly. Big sections of working-class neighborhoods were on fire.The
vengeance against the working class was so deep that it put France behind
economically for decades. That is how far the capitalists were willing to
go to punish the workers for daring to take power.
Lessons of the Commune
The Commune only existed for a few brief months. It had no road map to
show it the way. It blazed a brand new path! It made many mistakes along
the way. While the capitalist class was bloodthirsty and cruel, the Commune
tended to be too lenient and cautious. The Commune refused to attack Versailles
while they still held the initiative. Nor did the Commune have any central
coordination for the defense of Paris.
They didn't dare touch the Bank of France, center of capitalist wealth,
and thus allowed the capitalists to use the wealth against them. They didn't
find the way to spread their revolution to the peasantry, the majority of
the French population. The peasants ended up in the army attacking the Commune.
The Commune had an inexperienced leadership. They had no revolutionary
party to guide them. But the leaders of the Commune stayed on the side of
the workers throughout. They died on the barricades or went to prison.
Marx correctly hailed the Communards who were "ready to storm heaven."
He said that despite all of its mistakes, the Commune's most important accomplishment
was its very existence. No longer was the idea of workers' power an abstract
concept-now it had taken a living form! The Commune showed what the working
class can and will do when it gets the chance to rule.
The French workers had temporarily been defeated. But in spite of the
terrible wrath of the attacks they faced, they soon renewed the struggle.
In the 1880s, the French working class once again became active. Huge socialist
parties were built in France and throughout Europe.
Lenin and Trotsky, leaders of the Russian Revolution, and other revolutionaries
of the next generations, from all over Europe, studied the Commune, its
heroism, its mistakes.
They said that the lessons they learned from the Commune, prepared them
for the next round of revolutions.
Today when capitalism is proclaiming its eternal life, its victory over
communism, it is of the utmost importance for us to look back and remember
the Commune.
The Paris Commune opened up a new era of history. It showed that a new
society was possible. It proved that ordinary people can run their own lives
and run them better than the rich. The people of Paris began the fight for
a new world, for a socialist future-it is up to us to finish what they started.
Socialist Action /April 2000 |