France had been defeated by the armies of Germany. On March 18 Adolphe Thiers chief executive of the recently elected French government attempted to disarm the National Guard militia of Paris and sent in the regular army, but, through fraternisation with Paris workers, they refused to carry out thier orders. Generals Claude Martin Lecomte and Jacques Leonard Clement Thomas are killed by their own soldiers. Many troops peacefully withdraw, some remain in Paris. The French government lost control of Paris and a siege commenced and it is continually bombarded. A municipal council — the Paris Commune — is elected by the citizens of Paris on March 26. The Commune consisted of workers, among them members of the First International and followers of Proudhon and Blanqui. Foreigners elected to the Commune were confirmed in office, because "the flag of the Commune is the flag of the World Republic" and its banner was the Red Flag They proclaimed the Emancipation of Labour. The Paris Commune was first and foremost a democracy. Never before had any government even claimed to represent the interests of the working class; never before had so many workers taken part in the political administration of a large city. What happened was indeed unprecedented. Engels’s remark, “Look at the Paris Commune — that was the dictatorship of the proletariat,” should be taken seriously in order to reveal what the dictatorship of the proletariat is not, such as various forms of state dictatorship over the proletariat in the name of the proletariat.
The Commune abolished conscription and the standing army; the National Guard, in which all citizens capable of bearing arms were to be enrolled, was to be the sole armed force. Rents from October 1870 until April 1871 were cancelled. None of its Communes administrators were paid more than the wages of a skilled worker. It did not expropriate the property of the bourgeoisie, but it handed to associations of workingmen all closed workshops and factories, whether the capitalist owners had run away or simply had decided to stop work . Factories which had been closed down by the manufacturers were to be organised in co-operative societies and one great union. The Mechanics Union and the Association of Metal Workers stated “our economic emancipation… can only be obtained through the formation of workers' associations, which alone can transform our position from that of wage earners to that of associates." They also advised the Commune’s Commission on Labour Organisation to support the following objectives: “The abolition of the exploitation of man by man... The organisation of labour in mutual associations and inalienable capital.”
The last stand of the Communards took place at the cemetary of Montmartre, and after the defeat troops and armed members of the capitalist class roamed the city, killing and maiming at will. 'The French army brutally suppressed the Commune and slaughtered at least 20-30,000 of the Communards. About 50,000 were arrested. Many died in prison. Those who managed to escape went into exile. (Two in fact ended up marrying two of Marx's daughters in Britain, Longuet and Lafargue ). The immediate consequences of the defeat of the Commune were disastrous for the French labour moment as a period of severe repression followed the blood- letting of the last week. Paris remained under martial law for 5 years and the International Working Men's Association was outlawed. Armed with new political powers, the police were active in rounding up political activists who were given heavy sentences. The International was practically forced out of existence. The leading activists of the working class were either dead, imprisoned or in exile.
Karl Marx had no input into the creation or running of the Commune and the Commune took nothing from Marx. He did write The Civil War in France in defence of the Commune, and from this the press mistakenly claimed that Marx was the mastermind or at least a strategist behind the Commune, conferring on him the title 'red terror Doctor'. Marx for the first time became notorious – but for an event which owed absolutely nothing to him.
Marx, however, held it up as an example of how the working class should exercise political power once they had won control of it writing:
"The Commune was formed of the municipal councillors, chosen by universal suffrage in the various wards of the town, responsible and revocable at short terms. The majority of its members were naturally working men, or acknowledged representatives of the working class. The Commune was to be a working, not a parliamentary body, executive and legislative at the same time...In a rough sketch of national organization, which the Commune had no time to develop, it states clearly that the Commune was to be the political form of even the smallest country hamlet, and that in the rural districts the standing army was to be replaced by a national militia, with an extremely short term of service. The rural communities of every district were to administer their common affairs by an assembly of delegates in the central town, and these district assemblies were again to send deputies to the National Delegation in Paris, each delegate to be at any time revocable and bound by the mandat imperatif (formal instructions) of his constituents."
The legacy of the Commune lives on. It lasted for 71 days and despite its failure, it remains a symbol of a vision when workers in Paris, to use Marx's phrase, “stormed the heavens” to give to the world, for the first time, the "political form at last discovered under which to work out the economic emancipation of labour". The workers anthem “The Internationale” was penned by a French in June 1871
For more see the previous 2012 post
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