LOOK AT THE COMMUNE OF PARIS, THAT WAS DEMOCRACY!
“The big city has the warm pavement,
Despite your showers of oil,
And decidedly, we must
Shake you out of your role…” Arthur Rimbaud – Parisian War Song
*****
“Now, as my eyes filled with tears,
One night I heard a distant sound of weapons
In the repeated silence.
Do you hear, in the night, that voice calling you,
Listen, the hour is striking, come!” Louise Michel
*****
“The Commune was the greatest celebration of the 19th century. At its core was the feeling of the insurgents that they had become the masters of their own history, not so much in terms of the political declaration of ‘government’ as in terms of everyday life in the spring of 1871 (see how everyone played with weapons; which means: playing with power). Marx should also be understood in this sense: “the greatest social measure of the Commune was its very existence in action”. (issue 12 of the journal Internationale situationniste – September 1969).
“Despite all this torment of the head and understanding of social affairs to which I was not accustomed, I am enchanted. Paris is a true paradise! No police, no foolishness, no extortion of any kind, no arguments. Paris runs like clockwork. I wish I could stay like this forever. In a word, it is a true delight.” Gustave Courbet, April 30, 1871.
It was, in Marx’s words, “a revolution against the state itself, that unnatural abortive product of society, a revolution by which the people took back, for their own use, the control of their own social life.” (The Civil War in France)
“An entire people is discussing serious matters; for the first time, we hear workers exchanging their views on problems that until now had only been addressed by philosophers. There is no trace of supervisors, no police officers blocking the street or bothering passers-by. The security is perfect.” (Villiers de l’Isle-Adam)
And yes, there is the Commune and the Communards, and then there are the Versaillais: two irreconcilable visions, two languages of the world that in a way symbolize the historical struggle, the one that will resurface every time real history resumes its course. And this despite all the efforts of the supporters of domination and their accomplices to conceal it and to make us forget that they are the Versaillais under the various “democratic” masks they wear.
Histoire de la Commune de 1871 (History of the Commune of 1871) by Prosper-Olivier Lissagaray (1876)
The reference book on the history of the Paris Commune, one of the rare magical moments when the word democracy finally took on its full meaning against all false representations.
La Guerre civile en France (The Civil War in France) by Karl Marx (1871)
“It was not, therefore, a revolution against this or that form of state power (…). It was a revolution against the state itself, that unnatural abortive form of society; it was a resumption by the people, and for the people, of the control of their own social life. It was not a revolution made in order to transfer power from one section of the ruling classes to another, but a revolution for the purpose of smashing the whole hideous apparatus of class rule.”
Souvenirs d’un révolutionnaire (Memories of a revolutionary) by Gustave Lefrançais (1886)
from June 1848 to the Commune
“The real ‘crimes’ of the Commune, oh bourgeois of all stripes and colors: monarchists, Bonapartists, and you too pink and even scarlet republicans; the real crimes of the Commune, which to its credit neither of you will ever forgive, I will list them for you…
For six months, the Commune thwarted your treacherous work… The Commune demonstrated that the proletariat was prepared to govern itself and could do without you… The reorganization of the public services that you had abandoned is clear proof of this… The Commune attempted to substitute direct action and the constant control of citizens for your governments, all based on raison d’état, behind which your governmental pillaging and infamies of all kinds are hidden… You will never, never forgive it.”
Mes cahiers rouges au temps de la Commune (My red notebooks from the time of the Commune) by Maxime Vuillaume
Narrative, History
“During the terrible year (1871), their author, Maxime Vuillaume, was constantly in the front row, sometimes as a spectator, more often as a protagonist. A volunteer in the National Guard, he took part in the insurrectionary days of October 31, 1870 and January 22, 1871. From March onwards, he continued his fight with his pen, founding one of the most widely read – and certainly the most popular – newspapers of the communalist revolution: Le Père Duchêne. Finally, during the Bloody Week, he did not hesitate to take up arms to resist the Versailles assailant.”
L’Insurgé (The Insurgent) by Jules Vallès (1886)
“What a day! That warm, clear sun gilding the muzzles of the cannons, that scent of bouquets, the thrill of the flags, the murmur of this revolution passing by, tranquil and beautiful like a blue river… O great Paris! Homeland of honor, city of salvation, bivouac of the Revolution! Whatever happens, even if we are defeated again and die tomorrow, our generation is consoled. We are rewarded for twenty years of defeats and anxieties.”
Bas les cœurs ! (Down with the heart!) By Georges Darien (1889)
“The flag! … There’s Thiers, the old assassin, the man who has always made a mockery of justice and law: he is at the top. The jackal will rise even higher… He is a patriot…”
Étude Sur Le Mouvement Communaliste (Study on the Communalist Movement) by Gustave Lefrançais
In Paris, in 1871 – Full text here: https://archive.org/details/tudesurlemouve00lefr/page/n5/mode/2up
Inventer l’inconnu (Inventing the unknown)
Texts and correspondence about the Paris Commune by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels
“Thiers, that monstrous dwarf, has held the French bourgeoisie under his spell for more than half a century, because he is the most accomplished intellectual expression of his own class corruption.”
letter dated April 17, 1871 (K. Marx)
“It would certainly be very convenient to make universal history if one only engaged in the struggle on condition of having unfailingly favorable chances.”
“The ruling classes have never stopped trying to ward off the spectre of the Paris Commune, which has been resurrected several times (in 1936 with the strikes of the Popular Front, in 1945 with the insurrection and liberation of Paris, in 1968 with its general strike and barricades). Since then, all urban policies have constantly drained the Paris Commune of its popular energies, exiling the people of the neighborhoods to the gray zone of increasingly distant suburbs, to turn it into a city without citizens, a showcase city and a monument city.” (introduction by Daniel Bensaïd)
Rimbaud et la commune (Rimbaud and the Commune) by Steve Murphy
The importance of the Paris Commune for Rimbaud has long been underestimated. This book explores the issues of revolutionary ideology in his poems of 1871-1872, whether explicit or, as in Le Bateau ivre, implicit. The aim is to restore an indispensable historical context if we are to grasp the logic of poems and letters that express the enthusiasm of the insurrection and the horror of the Bloody Week and the victory of the reactionary forces.
La Guerre franco-allemande et la révolution sociale en France (The Franco-German War and the social revolution in France) (1870-1871) by Mikhail Bakunin
Although Bakunin was not present in Paris in 1871, we remember this magnificent statement about the days of February 1848 in Paris:
“It was a celebration without beginning or end; I saw everyone and I saw no one, because each individual was lost in the same innumerable and wandering crowd; I spoke to everyone without remembering my words or those of others, because attention was absorbed at every step by new events and objects, by unexpected news. (…) It seemed as if the whole universe had been turned upside down; the incredible had become usual, the impossible possible, and the possible and the usual senseless.”
Rimbaud Révolution (Rimbaud, “Revolution”) by Frédéric Thomas
“The short-lived Paris Commune (March 18-May 29, 1871) was of paramount importance in the eyes of both Marx and Rimbaud. It was “the political form finally found” for the former, the junction point of the poetry of the Future for the latter, the leverage point for overthrowing the old world, bringing out the seeds of a new society, regenerating beings and the world, for both of them.”
“All relationships in bourgeois society are duplicitous, all ties are distorted. Both Rimbaud and Marx agree on this. Their writings are grappling with social forces; their genealogies and transformations, their representations and their captures, their fixations in relationships and institutions, which change their meaning, turning against human beings. It is the critique of fetishism in Capital; it is the truth absent from the body, the soul and life – “True life is absent” – in Rimbaud’s poems.”
Commune(s) 1870-1871 by Quentin Delermuoz
Since Karl Marx’s famous analyses, the history of the Paris Commune has been central to our understanding of the revolutionary event. And the hope of “making common cause” is now returning to our political imagination. This work aims to carry out the archaeology of this power of actualization, but first by returning to the force of the event itself. The account is based on a meticulous archival investigation that makes it possible to reconstruct, from the bottom up, the strategies of the actors, their struggles and the opening up of possibilities that marked those days. From the outset, the event went beyond the Parisian context. From Rue Julien-Lacroix to the concessions in Shanghai, via the Kabyle uprising, the Croix-Rousse in Lyon and the Caribbean farmers’ republic, the book offers a history on different scales, from the local to the global, describing multiple interconnections.
“In a globalized world where forms of political and economic governance are imposed and standardized, the reference to the Commune seems to feed the increasingly present demands for more horizontal power as well as the principle of ‘movements without leaders’ that characterizes many of these contemporary protests.”
“Therefore, how can we understand the Commune, what is its significance? Faced with such a massive undertaking, most recent works suspend the answer, leaving the question unanswered. (…) The questions remain, simple: who are these men and women? What did they do and want? And general: how can we explain that these 72 days could nevertheless have such a political and symbolic impact in the 20th and 21st centuries, on a national, European and global scale? This will be the common thread of this investigation.”
Léo Frankel Communard sans frontières (Léo Frankel A communalist with a passion for travel) by Julien Chuzeville
This is the first biography in French of Léo Frankel (1844-1896), the only foreigner elected to the Paris Commune (1871). A militant of the First International, whose leadership he joined during his exile in London, he was a close associate of Karl Marx. He was imprisoned during the Second Empire. During the Paris Commune, he was elected head of the Labor Commission at the age of 27, then sentenced to death in absentia by the Versailles government. A goldsmith, then a proofreader, and finally a journalist, he worked and campaigned in many European countries (Hungary, Austria, Germany, France, Great Britain). A true internationalist, his career as an activist and his articles show the aspiration to a revolutionary socialism that would achieve the self-emancipation of the working class.
See: https://macommunedeparis.com/2021/01/30/leo-frankel-communard-sans-frontieres-de-julien-chuzeville/
Eugène Varlin Ouvrier relieur (Eugène Varlin Bookbinder) 1839-1871 by Michèle Audin
This book brings together all the writings to date of Eugène Varlin, one of the great figures of the International Workingmen’s Association and the Paris Commune. Together they constitute an autobiography of the International in France at the end of the Second Empire, and shed light on the bakers, miners, chasers and ovalists who fought to change their lives.
Dictionnaire de la Commune (Dictionary of the Commune) by Bernard Noël
The Paris Commune continues to challenge historians. The three months that separate the establishment of an insurrectionary power in March 1871 from its terrible repression during the Bloody Week gave rise to an abundant literature of varying degrees of commitment. Yet the event still raises many questions. Bernard Noël’s approach is original. Based on a previously unpublished collection of newspapers from the period, he offers an exhaustive presentation of all this information, leaving it up to readers to establish the relationships and, therefore, the interpretations based on this raw material. The men, the facts and the daily life of the Communards are related here in alphabetical order to facilitate research.
See: http://acontretemps.org/spip.php?article841
Translated by TerKo with the help of a free translation tool.
[…] The Commune of 1871 […]