March 28-May 28: Vive la Commune!
Posted by Mike E on March 24, 2008
A memory from the Wall of the Communards
by Mike Ely
It was a rainy morning. But it was the only day I had in the city and I wanted to pay my respects.
My walk took me slowly up the streets of Belleville, the old working class district on the eastern edge of Paris. The neighborhood was still poor. Sidewalks and cafes were full of Arab and African immigrants. The cops appeared only in groups, heavily armed.
And so it was not hard to go back to 1871 in my mind, and imagine the fighting, up those narrow streets. The skies had been lit by flames and heavy with smoke as the Communards retreated before troops, block by block, in fierce fighting, until the last of revolutionary fighters were cornered in Pere Lachaise cemetery.
The huge graveyard was deserted as I came in. Fog drifted among the massive mausoleums. I wandered for a while in the gray light, catching celebrated names on many stones: Richard Wright, Jim Morrison, Balzac, Isadora Duncan, Delacroix, members of Marx’s family, fighters from the Spanish Civil War, Nester Machno, Fourier, Proust, Modigliani, Gertrude Stein with Alice B. Toklas, Oscar Wilde…
But I had come for the Communards, and slowly made my way to that edge of the cemetery, to the wall where the last fighters of the revolution were mowed down.
I walked along that modest wall deep in thought, and came up to a man in his twenties. We started to talk, sharing an umbrella in the light drizzle. He was a sailor in the Greek merchant marine, and spoke to me simply about his hatred of capitalism, what he had seen in a dozen ports and about the treatment of people home in Greece after their Civil War, under the fascist generals and since. He asked my story.
A middle aged Chinese woman came up, standing apart from us wrapped in a shawl, looking quietly at the wall. The sailor softly said to her, “La Commune,” and she nodded. The three of us walked together, looking over the worn stones — finding names and comments scratched into the rock. Small mementos and tokens had been left behind, slips of paper stuck into cracks, a photo, and small bunches of flowers. Remembering.
I pointed out a set of Chinese characters carved near eye height. She looked at it closely, wanting to translate. But we had no common language, and so she simply said “Revolution.”
Here we have come, we working people and dreamers, over these many years, from every corner of this world to honor the daring of the Commune — animated by our common cause.
The three of us walked out to the gates together. We shook hands — then raised our fists in salute as we separated.
* * * * *
March 18 1871 — at dawn in Paris, the cries of “”Vive la Commune!” rang out and shook the world.
The Central Committee of that movement wrote in its March 18th manifesto:
“The proletarians of Paris amidst the failures and treasons of the ruling classes, have understood that the hour has struck for them to save the situation by taking into their own hands the direction of public affairs…. They have understood that it is their imperious duty, and their absolute right, to render themselves masters of their own destinies, by seizing upon the governmental power.”
It was the world’s first socialist revolution, born out of French defeat in a brutal war with Prussia and out of a thousand years of class oppression. This Paris Commune, which only lasted a few short weeks, was the first time oppressed people overthrow the state and instituted radical socialist changes in life and power.
* * * * *
For those not familiar with this important experience, I urge you to read this graphic introduction.
Another starting point is Karl Marx’s address on the Paris Commune. For his fuller historic analysis of this revolution read The Civil War in France.
Documents and images from the Commune at the Marxist Internet Archive.
This clip displays photos of the revolution — to the singing of the Internationale, the revolutionary anthem written by Eugene Pottier a participant of the Commune.
* * * * * *
A theatrical presentation of Marx discussing the Commune (from Marx in Soho — the acting and accent is irritating, but Howard Zinn’s script and musings are worth hearing.).
* * * * * *
Finally: I also urge everyone to see the epic film La Commune a radical work usually seen over two evenings. (Read a review of the film from NYT.)
The film is shot as a documentary, with actors speaking as participants of the revolution. 26 clips of the film are available on youtube.
Anon said
Awesome. Thanks for this.
Kalash said
well done with the multimedia aspect of this topic. i’m still dying to see ‘La Commune.’
Mike E said
It is one thing to appreciate the Paris Commune as an event — as a leap into the darkness, or the opening of a door.
It is another thing to correctly sum up its “lessons” — and to deal with the questions it was the first to pose about the forms and structures of revolutionary rule.
The Paris Commune was highly decentralized, rooted in “community control” (i.e. fractious and independent revolutionary neighborhood committees) with a rather weak and primitive central command. And as is generally known, this contributed (some of us believe) to their difficulty in mounting a more systematic defense of the city, or proclaiming a political policy that might reach beyond city borders.
There was no party leading this revolution. Government was by election, with instant recall, and with a series of other “mass democratic” policies that are discussed in the literature.
And ever since this “commune form” of socialist government has been an attraction:
It was roughly what Lenin proposed in “State and Revolution” (and roughly was inspired the idea of “all power to the Soviets”), while neither Lenin nor his successors were able to establish that, and in fact created a form of party-led-state that has since become associated with communism.
The commune form was what the revolutionary forces proposed (and implemented) in the great Shanghai uprising of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution within china — and what Mao opposed saying that the commune form was too weak at suppressing counterrevolutionaries.
It was what Maoists in India have proposed as a model for their coming state (not just K.Venu but now the CPI(M)) — and what the RCP’s Avakian has specifically criticized in his K. Venu polemic (which upholds the need for the “leading role of the party.”
The critique and rejection of the “party-state” form a key verdict (and assumption) of Alain Badiou’s influential “The Cultural Revolution: The Last Revolution?” (positions.2005; 13: 481-514, are there btw links to the text online?) And, by contrast, the RCP for example offers promises of “vigorous debate” under socialism (made dubious by their methods and approach now), and for broadening “the we” that exercises power (while insisting that the leading party must, in the final analysis, have a bulldog grip on power and the army etc.)
* * * * *
This is a discussion that is at the center of challenges facing the whole world’s revolutionary project. It is being argued out wherever revolutionaries meet and plan. It is rooted in a very complex history, and a rapidly changing modern world. It is demanded by the questions of people curious about socialism, and relentlessly posed by enemies of any radical change.
In other words, the Paris Commune is not “just” a key historical event — but its forms, claims and principles remain one towering pole in an intense ongoing search for the forms of socialist transition.
We have had two actual socialist states (China and Soviet Russia) which though very different in many ways, shared a common element of “party leadership of the state” and a common condition under which elections (and other mass democratic forms) were often mere rituals. (With the exception, of course, of the high tides of the agrarian revolution, the great leap forward and especially the cultural revolution, where there were, in each case, radical forms of grass roots initiative and power.)
The Nepali Maoists have now proposed that their revolutionary path (and the 21st century more generally) must involve new forms of revolutionary power (and socialist transition) — and new forms of competitive elections and political struggle between revolutionary parties forming a new socialist “mainstream” (upon the shattering of the old capitalist-feudal political mainstream).
That makes at least three approaches (here described in extremely crude form for simplicity):
* a Commune-form (rooted in grassroots assemblies, immediate recall, the merger of executive and parliamentary, absense of a standing army and great diminution of the state bureaucracy etc.)
* the “party-state” in which a new socialist state has an institutionalized leading party, a standing army, an apparatus of economic ownership/planning and (as Mao uncovered and described) sharply opposing political forces colliding WITHIN that party-state (and deeply entwined with the struggle of the masses along various paths). And (as part of that approach) a view of waves of revolutionary advance (cultural revolutions) or (in an opposing theory) a redeeming policy of “core-elasticity” by the institutionalized ruling party. (a discussion of “competitive elections” sometimes, but not of competing parties.)
* A view of creating a “new mainstream” of politics — rooted in revolutionary transition, but represented by a diversity of organized political parties that ally-and-contest with each other (including in competitive elections).
We need to wade into all this — with eyes wide open — because what good is a revolution if you really don’t yet grasp what to replace it with.
Cassius Ghost said
Finally, I am hearing, seeing and reading some inspiration without all diatribes, dogma and discussion(s).
Thank you so much for these links – we’ll draw what lessons we need from these most important technological links.
I’ll keep reading from this site, and refrain from comment, if only, because of this one post.
Vive le’ Commune!
Vive le’ Internationale!
The Cold Lamper said
Any argument in favor of one of the three approaches Mike outlines can be easily wormed around by invoking one or two unpleasant hypothetical situations where it wouldn’t be effective. Want to argue in favor of the “benevolent despotism” of the party? Simply raise the facile objection that “if the people could just directly vote Mao out of office, and they foolishly exercised this right, there wouldn’t be another Mao to replace him!” Which is what Avakian argues in almost those exact words (I’m paraphrasing from memory, but it’s damn close to that). To which advocates of the Paris Commune/Congress of Soviets model, or the “socialist pluralism” (my formulation) of the Nepalese comrades, could just as easily shoot back, “What if the masses can’t vote for or against Mao, and then he somehow gets shoved out by Liu Shaoqi anyway?” Which is exactly what actually happened in China in the 1950s (although to the post of President of the PRC, not the Party Chairman — thank god the party still dominated the state, right?)
The question is not about institutions as ends in themselves, but which institutions best serve the continuation of the class struggle under the dictatorship of the proletariat, as Avakian correctly argues (or should I say correctly argued — his emphasis on class struggle having been recently diluted in favor of an idealist notion of pedagogy and debate in the search of “classless” truth). I’m personally not convinced that any of these “three alternative worlds” (if you don’t mind me bastardizing a formulation Avakian used to describe a different concept) is generally applicable, though I tend to sympathize with the “party-state” paradigm (the Maoist “Cultural Revolution” variant, not the Avakianist “elastic core”).
I do agree with Avakian that the relationship between the party and state, whatever it is, needs to be codified. I’ve perused the texts of the 1918, ’24 and ’36 Soviet constitutions and the ’75 PRC constitution a few times*, and (IIRC) the latter was the only one to state in explicit terms what the powers of the party over the state were, namely (a) the Central Committee appoints the State Council (technically, it “suggests” members of the State Council which are then “appointed” by the National People’s Congress — not that this made for much of a struggle when the majority of deputies to the NPC were Communists who could easily be reprimanded by the Discipline Commission if they chose the “wrong” candidate); and (b) the Chairman of the Central Committee is commander-in-chief of the People’s Liberation Army (previously the duty of the President of the PRC, which was abolished). Whether such direct and invasive means of leadership of the state were really desirable in China in the mid-70s — never mind the question of their general application — I think it’s a good thing that they at least said outright that the party had these specific powers, as opposed to the earlier situation in China (and the Soviet Union) where the party’s role was unmentioned or described in terms so vague as to allow it to get whatever it wanted out of the state through informal means.
(*I’ve never found the ’54 PRC constitution online, but as I understand it the 1982 revisionist constitution is very similar to it, in form if not in content. I’ll take a closer look at it for the purposes of further discussion).
Robert Paris said
I would like to inform you on a site which is dedicated to revolution on which you can have images of [the Commune of Paris (1871)-> http://www.matierevolution.fr/spip.php?article1185%5D
Robert Paris
bangla said
bangla…
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