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Lenin on Organization.

NO more important publication thanthis work has appeared in the

history of the revolutionary move-ment since the first formulations ofCommunist principles by Karl Marx.

In this, the first of probably sixvolumes, all of which will soon ap-pear, are the collected speeches andwritings of the > '.great leader andteacher, LENIN, dnJEundamental prob-lems of vital importance to everyworker.

|V Add "Lenin on Organization" toyour library—it can't be completewithout it.

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Paris Commune

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LENINLIBRARY

Lenin on Organization.

NO more important publicat ion thanthis work has appeared in the

history of the revolutionary move-ment since the first formulations ofCommunist principles by Karl Marx.

In this, the first of probably sixvolumes, all of which will soon ap-pear, are the collected speeches andwritings of the great leader andteacher, LENIN, on fundamental prob-lems of vital importance to everyWorker.

Add "Lenin on Organization" toyour library — it can't be completewithout it.

Attractively Cloth Bound,300 Pages, Library Edition

LlTTLK KED Li BRAKY Xo. EIGHT

1871The Paris Commune

By Max Shachtman

"This history. . . is due to theirchildren, to all the workingmen ofthe earth. The child has the rightto know the reason of its paternaldefeats, the Socialist party, the cam-paign of its flag in all countries. Hewho tells the people revolutionarylegends, he who amuses them withsensational stories, is as criminal asthe geographer who would draw upfalse charts for navigation."—Lissa-garay.

Published by the

Daily Worker Publishing Company,Chicago, III.

290

1871: The Paris Commune]>y Max Shachtman

The Fall of Second Empire.

The history of the origin of the Commune is the his-tory of the fall of the empire of Louis Napoleon after theFranco-Prussian war. The power of Bonapartism,which had skilfully utilized the struggles of the classesto perpetuate its own rule was being confronted by theprospects of disintegration and death. Opposed on theone hand by a rising bourgeoisie which squirmed underthe exactions of the imperial court and the absence ofany considerable political power, and on the other handby the workers who were daily feeling the burden oftaxes, hunger and unemployment weighing them to theground, their sons killed in the adventures of Napoleonin "the desert plains of Syria, Cochin-China and Mexi-co," and their leaders hounded and imprisoned, Napo-leon the Little sought an exit from the cul de sac bymeans of a new war.

Not for nothing did Napoleon have a sharp politicalinstinct. With the map of Europe torn into a multi-colored quilt of tiny nations, independent provinces anddubious border lines, the Frenchman was able to main-tain his own position by a well considered exploitationof natkmgl aspirations and wars. The famous principleof nationalities was

"• . . a Bonapartist discovery the aim of which wasto strengthen the Bonapartism of Napoleon inside ofFrance. . . After the coup d'etat of 1851, Louis Napo-leon, this emperor 'by grace of God and the will of thepeople,' was forced, to cover his foreign policy, to find

a slogan which would appear to be democratic andpopular. What then could have a better effect than theprinciple of nationality?"*

With this principle in mind he had carried on hismachinations during the German war to organize theCaucasian peoples against Russia, and later the upris-ings of the Poles and Finns; to follow, at the ParisCongress which was held after the Crimean war, witha demand for autonomy for the Roumanians and theconsideration of the national question in Italy; to in-cite with the help of Kos'suth a Hungarian uprisingagainst Germany during the Italian war of 1859; tosupport one year a policy of aiding Italy's struggleagainst Austria and the next time to pursue a policyof neutrality in the Austro-Prussian conflict—for theconsideration of "compensations" which he never re-ceived.

It was this last blow that Bismarck gave to Bona-parte that led onward to the war 'of 1870. This time,however, the all too cunning fimperor reckoned withoutthe developments which were taking place before hisvery eyes.

Austria, the oppressor of Italy, was being slowlyparte that led onward to the wor of 1870. This time,established. The campaign of national freedom of Italy''up to the Adriatic" was begun in the spring of 1859,under the benevolent aegis of czarist Russia and Bona-partist France; a national revolutionary movement ofgrowing profundity began among the masses of thepeople, and with the popular leadership of Garibaldi,they soon stood on the threshold of national unity. Andwhen, in August, 1870, Napoleon was forced to with-draw his troops from Rome in order to strengthen hispositions in his own war, the eternal city completedthe establishment of the Italian state under the boomingof the artillery of King Victor Emanuel II. The back-

* Friedrich Kngels: • "What Have the Working1 Classesto do with Poland?" 1866.

3

bone of the power of Pius IX was broken, Bonapartewas a man of the past, and Victor Emanuel was shortlythereafter able to establish his royal estate in Rome.Bonaparte had forever lost a stamping ground in theboot of Europe.

Much the same development was taking place inGermany, a country which had been deliberately splitup for centuries. The very condition for existence ofBonapartist power was German national disunity: inalmost the direct proportion that the German state grewtowards consolidation the power of the French ad-venturer disintegrated. The decade-long humiliation ofPrussia by the Napoleons from the west and Czardomfrom the east was, however, reaching an end. Thelatter's influence on Prussian affairs can be said tohave terminated jn the conference of Olmutz in 1850,where Prussia was forced to renounce alliance withSchleswig-Holstein; from that time onward Russia be-came a constantly more negligible factor in the strugglefor German consolidation.

Napoleon HI remained then the greatest hindranceto German unity up to the Franco-Prussian war. Be-ginning with the treaty of Tilsit, at the opening of thenineteenth century, Prussia was stripped to a popula-tion of less than five millions and less than three thou-sand square miles, and a close alliance against her wasmade between France and Russia. A year before thatin 1806, Napoleon, not satisfied -with the division 'be-tween Austria and Prussia, created the Rhine Alliancecomposed of a number of German princes, with thecondition that in any war, even one against Germans,an army of 63,000 was to be at his disposal.

With the creation of "la troisieme Allemagne" (thethird Germany) it was expected to aggravate the sepa-ratist condition of this potentially powerful neighborof France. Germany seemed so hopelessly weakenedthat even the tiny monarchy of Denmark was able tohold Schleswig-Holstein defiantly.

But powerful economic factors were driving towardsa national unity. While other nations continued tobuild up high tariff walls against German products, thedisorganized condition of Germany placed it in a posi-tion where in 1806 there were 67 separate customstariffs between the various provinces. With great dif-ficulties the German princes and the German free statesbegan to ally themselves in their Zollvereine, customsunions; trade treaties were negotiated and consum-mated between these alliances and Holland, England,Greece, Turkey and Belgian; in 1853 a trade treatywas signed with Austria; and, finally, after years oflabor, a customs parliament was formed at the time ofthe founding of a North German confederation underthe hegemony of Prussia in 1867.

Two decades before, the "spectre that w~as hauntingall Europe" was suppressed in blood in Berlin, Parisand Vienna, and the bourgeoisie fled into the arms ofthe reactionary forces, nowhere more so than in Ger-many, where the prestige of the Prussian Junkers wasenhanced by their victory ove!- the proletariat in 1848.And in Prussia, the "iron chancellor" Bismarck tookthe helm.

Inexorable as a juggernaught, and riding powerfullythe wave of historical development, Bismarck workedto, hammer into shape a mighty German nation, moldedin the image of Prussia. In 1864, a year after his handtook the rudder of the ship of state, Bismarck openedhis campaign with a war against Denmark over theduchies of Schleswig and Hdlstein. The German pa-triots raised a vehement agitation for the freeing of theprovinces from oppression by Denmark.

In a swift campaign with the aid of Austria, theprovinces were taken and divided among the victors:Holstein to Austria and Schleswig to Prussia. Thedivision of spoils again raised the years-old question:Austria or Prussia? Under whose hegemony was Ger-many to be united? Bismarck replied with blood and

iron. Assuring himself of the neutrality of Russia byaiding her against Poland, satisfying Napoleon withpromises of compensation, and securing friendlinessfrom Italy by the restitution of Venetia, he launchedhis war against Austria. In a few decisive 'battlesAustria was crushed; Bismarck took back Holstein,—which had been conquered in common with Austria in1864—and annexed Hanover, Kassel, Hessen-Nassau,and the free city of Frankfort. Only one thing nowstood in the way of complete German unity: the Sec-ond Empire of Napoleon III. Only the imperial tiaraof Bonaparte could fitly crown the German emperor andBismarck was most keenly aware of this fact.

". . . That the peace with Austria carried with itthe war with Prance was not only known by Bismarckbut even desired by him. . . Even before the Aus-trian war, interpellated by a minister of a minor stateabout his demagogic German policy, Bismarck an-swered him that he would throw Austria out of Ger-many and shatter the alliance despite . all phrases.—'And do you believe that the smaller states will standby silently?'—'You smaller states, you will do nothing1.'—'Then what will become of the Germans?'—'Then Iwill lead them to Paris and unite them there'."*

No lesis anxious for a military struggle was Nap©leon. While the minister of war, Lebeuf, declared him-self in favor of reducing the number of recruits %y10,000 and the president of the council of ministers,Olivier, replied to interpellations from deputies that atno time was peace so assured as at this moment, thepreparations for war went on rapidly. The immediatereason for declaring war was soon found by Napoleonin the question of the accession to the Spanish throne.

Three times the throne of 'Spain was offered to theHohenzollern Prince Leopold, and like Julius Caesar,

* Quoted by Engels from a report to the ManchesterGuardian by Mrs. Crawford, its Paris correspondent, inErigels'. unfinished work: Gewalt und Oekonomie bei derHerstellung des neuen Deutschen Reichs. Berlin, 1920.

fthree times he declined. The presence of a Hohen-zollern on the Spanish throne was an easy point ofagitation for the French war mongers; in furious lan-guage they incited France against this proposed insultto French dignity and interests. And as the momentneared for Leopold to take the throne, for he had finallyconsented in the face even of opposition on the part ofthe Prussian king, Wilhelm I, Napoleon sent his emis-sary Benedetti to Ems to meet with Wilhelm and de-mand Leopold's withdrawal from the throne. The Prus-sian, not overanxious for war, and threatened by Bene-detti, finally secured the withdrawal.

But Napoleon was not satisfied with this. He in-structed Benedetti to demand of Wilhelm guaranteesthat also in the future no Hohenzollern prince was un-der any circumstances to take the Spanish throne, andthat if such guarantees were not furnished then Francewould know where it stood and would halt at no meas-ures to defend its interests. Again Wilhelm assuredBenedetti, in a quite friendly manner, that the matterhad been completely liquidated and that France needhave no worry over the question of the Spanish throne.Still Napoleon urged his emissary to demand guaranteesat any price. An adjutant of Wilhelm'is then informedthe Frenchman that the question was settled and thatall other matters should be liquidated by negotiationsbetween the French and Prussian cabinets.

At the same time Wilhelm sent a dispatch to Bis-marck concerning the developments in the negotiations,a dispatch couched in most friendly terms, which Bis-marck was told he might publish should he so desire.Bismarck received the Ems dispatch at luncheon withMoltke and Roon. In his memoirs he relates how thetone of the message caused him to lose his appetite,and at the same time all prospects of war with France.But in a short five minutes of work at his writing tablehe had so well "revised" the dispatch that Moltke cried:"Now it has a different ring; it sounded before like a

parley; now it is like the flourish in answer to a chal-lenge."

The consequent publication of the Ems dispatch inthe press of the world gave Napoleon the opportunityfor which he had worked.' On July 19, 1870, Francedeclared war against Prussia and the Corps Legislatifapproved the action with opposition from only a smallminority.

Only a short time before the declaration of war,Napoleon had instigated a raid upon the Frenchbranches of the International Workingmen's Associa-tion, the First International, and arrested sixty of theleading agitators. Largely due to the work of the Inter-national in France, the famous plebiscite of Napoleon,by which he intended to place himself more firmly inthe saddle, was rejected overwhelmingly by the work-ing class population and carried only by the vote ofthe rural sections. Thruout the country the Interna-tional carried on a propaganda against the war. OnJuly 22 they published a manifesto declaring to the

". . . French, German, Spanish workingmen! Letour voices unite in one cry of reprobation 'against war!

War for a question of preponderance or a dy-nasty, can, in the eyes of workmen, be nothing but acriminal absurdity. . . Brothers of Germany! Ourdivision would only result in the complete triumph ofdespotism on both sides of the Rhine. . . Workmen ofall countries! Whatever may for the present becomeof our common efforts, we, the members of the Inter-national Workingmen's Association, who know of nofrontiers, we send you, as a pledge of indissolublesolidarity, the good wishes and the salutation of theworkmen of France."

And from Germany they received an answer in thesame spirit. When the vote occurred in the NorthGerman Diet on war credits, the supporters of La/Sallevoted with the monarchy for war, while the members ofthe International, Liebknecht and Bebel, abstained fromvoting and entered their statement. Liebknecht and

8

Bebe<l, fearing to vote against war credits because sucha step might be interpreted as evasive 'support of Napo-leon, were nevertheless hailed by Marx from London forhaving for the first time raised the banner of the Inter-national in a European parliament on such an impor-tant point. Two days after the outbreak of the war,Bebel and Liebknecht appeared before the conferenceof the Saxon social democrats at Chemnitz, whichadopted a resolution denouncing the war as dynasticand calling upon the German workers and democratsto join in the protest of the French proletariat. Similarresolutions were adopted in masts meetings in Leipzig,Nurnberg, Munich, Berlin, Konigsberg, Furth, and else-where. In the declaration which Bebel read in thename of Liebknecht and himself they said:

"The present war is a dynastic war, undertaken inthe interests of the Bonaparte dynasty just as the warof 1866 was in the interests of the Hohenzollern dy-nasty. . . As opponents in principle to every dynasticwar, as social republicans and members of the Inter-national Working-men's Association, which fights all op-pressors irrespective of nationality, which seeks to uniteinto one great brotherhood all oppressed, we cannoteither directly or indirectly declare ourselves for thepresent war and therefore abstain from voting, thusexpressing the confident hope that the peoples of Europe,learning from the present disastrous events, will do theirutmost to achieve their right to self-determination andthrow aside the present rule of class and sabre, as thecause of all state and social evil."

In the General Council of the International, Marxprepared an address on the declaration of war whichwas spread widely thruout France and Germany. Al-ready before Sedan he warned the German workingclass that if they were to ''allow the present war tolose its strictly defensive character and to degenerateinto a war against the French people, victory or defeatwill prove alike disaistrous." And ominously he proph-ecied: "Whatever may be the incidents of Louis Bona-

9

parte's war-with Prussia, the death knell of the SecondEmpire has already sounded at Paris. It will end, asit began, by a parody."

The prediction of Marx was correct. Bonaparte hadcalculated badly. Austria, notwithstanding Napoleon'shope that she would support him in revengeful memoryof Sadowa of 1866, stood aside; Denmark, whose sup-port he had hoped for on the baisis of the annexationof Schleswig-Holstein, remained quiet; and Italy, whichwas celebrating its national unity by the taking of Rome—following the withdrawal of Bonaparte's troops—alsofailed to come to the aid of Napoleon. Bismarck, witha well- trained army and a stronger political base athome, cut thru the Napoleonic forces like a sheet ofsteel.

By August 9, the French army had suffered threesevere defeats within a week. Napoleon took over thenominal command of the army in an utterly futile at-tempt to bring some order into the chaotic forces ofFrance. On the 29th, MacMahon was caught andtrounced at Beaumont 1'Argonne and yet pushed on,leaving Bazaine shut up in Metz. On the 1st of Sep-tember the army of France was surrounded by 200,000Germans at Sedan and on the next day the miserableemperor delivered up his sword to the King of Prussia.A short time later, the King of Prussia was crownedthe emperor of Germany in the Hall of Mirrors of-theVersailles Palace. Bismarck had been as good as hisword: He had led the Germans to France to unite themthere.

The news of the defeat of Sedan and the surrenderof Napoleon immediately reached Paris. Exasperated,enraged and militant, the Parisians marched in massesto the Palais Bourbon, the seat of the Chamber of Dep-

» oities. Everywhere was heard the cry: "Vive la Re-publique!" The soldiers who guarded the bridge andthe palace refused to shoot at the demonstrators. Themob surged into the palace and ibroke into the sessions

XO

of the Corps Legislatif . Granger, a follower of the rev-olutionary party of Blanqui, seized the bell of thepresident and shouted:

"Citizens, in face of our disasters and the misfor-tunes of France, the people of Paris has invaded thisplace to proclaim the fall of the Empire and the Re-public. We demand that the deputies decree this."

Amid silence, Jules Favre, one of the deputies, spokefrom the tribune: ''Citizens, at the very moment whenthe people invaded this place, the deputies were delib-erating the pronouncement of the fall of the Empireand the proclamation of the Republic. Since the peoplehave penetrated into this Assembly, the Republic shouldnot be proclaimed here, but at the Hotel de.Ville."

On the same day, September 4, 1870, the republicwas proclaimed from the Hotel de Ville and the Gov-ernment of National Defense instituted. The war hadachieved the unification of Germany; it had broken theomnipotence of the Pope and realized the unity of Italy.And on the ashes of the Second Empire rose the phoenixof the Third Republic.

The Rise of the Commune."We hail the advent of the Republic of France," de-

clared the second manifesto of the International Work-ingmen's Association, written on September 9th, "butat the same time we labor under misgivings which wehope will prove groundless. That Republic has not sub-verted the throne, but only taken its place becomevacant. It has been proclaimed not as a social con-quest, but as a national measure of defense. It is inthe hands of a Provisional Government composed partlyof notorious Orleanists, partly of middle-class Repub-licans, upon some of whom the insurrection of June,1848, has left its indelible stigma."But the misgivings did not prove groundless, as

Marx had hoped.The war, despite the previous assurances of Wil-

helm II, did not end with the overthrow of the Second

11

Empire. The German patriots were demanding theprosecution of the war for the purpose of annexingAlsace-Lorraine. And against their agitation, the Ger-man workers were demanding "an honorable peace forFrance and the recognition of the French Republic."Engels, before Sedan, on August 15, wrote to Marxgiving six points of direction to the German social dem-ocrats in connection with the war:

"These people (the social democrats of Germany) can1. Join the national movement. . . so far and solong as it is limited to the defense of Germany. . .2. Thereby to emphasize the difference between Ger-man national interests and those of the dynastic Prus-sians; 3. To work against any annexation of Alsace-Lorraine; 4. As soon as there is at the helm in Parisa republican, non-chauvinistic government, to work foran honorable peace with it; constantly to hold up the

. unity of interests of the German and French workerswho did not approve of the war and between whom thereis no enmity; 6. Russia as in the Address of the In-ternational.

Marx fully agreed with Engels and he immediatelyproceeded to write to the Brunswick committee of theGerman party to work in accordance with such <an out-line. In the isecond manifesto of the committee, onSeptember 5, a ringing call for working class demon-strations was issued: for the ending of the war, thereeognition of the French Republic and the consum-mation of an honorable peace; against the annexationof t&e Alsace-Lorraine territory; the manifesto con-tained sections which included the very words whichMarx had written to them In four days, the .signers ofthe manifesto were 'seized by the military camorra anddragged in chains to the fortress of Latzen.

In the North German Diet, at its reconvening inDecember, not only Liebknecht and Bebel, but the

* Briefwechsel zwischen Marx und Engels, Vol. IV., p.319.

12

combined vote of the Eisenachers and -the LaSallleanswas cast against the granting of new war credits. Inevery speech of the former, in every issue of their jour-nals, they agitated against the continuation of the war,and with such effectiveness that they were finally ar-rested for high treason against the empire. In everycountry, the demands of the second manifesto of theInternational for an honorable peace, the recognitionof the Republic, and against the Alsatian annexation,were warmly and loudly echoed.

Bismarck, however, continued to besiege Paris andthe provisional regime of France became a govern-ment of national indifference. Installed by the com-mon agreement of twelve men, enthusiastically andalmost blindly supported by the thousands of Parisianswho had gathered at the Hotel de Ville, the govern-ment of national defense might have continued tohold France at its feet.

The day of its proclamation, the Bakuninist Alli-ance of the Socialist Democracy considered as anappropriate one "to unchain the hydra of Revolution."Manifestoes were printed in Switzerland calling forthe formation of free corps to fight against the Prus-sians. But the hydra was checked quickly by theseizure of the manifestoes in Switzerland. Bakuninhurried to Lyons. Together with other anarchists heseized the town hall of Lyons on September 26, andin the first point of his proclamation decreed the aboli-tion of the state. But the state is not to be abolishedby decree or pronunciamento, for despite the proclama-tion the state returned to Lyons thru an unguardedgate, in the form of two companies of the NationalGuard, swept the rebels out of the Town Hall andarrested Bakunin who managed to escape with the aidof some friends. He proceeded to Marseilles wherehe remained for almost a month; a few days after his*

13

fdeparture >to Geneva, the Commune was proclaimed inMarseilles and in four days overthrown.*

At St. Etienne the Commune existed for an hour,but in almost every instance it was only necessary tospeak a word in order to have authority back in thehands of the National Assembly. In the period ofstruggle against the Prussian everyone feared tocreate the slightest embarrassment for the govern-ment.

The Government of National Defense could do oneof the two things: it could mobilize all the forces ofFrance for an energetic struggle against the Prussianarmies, or it could point out to the people the hope-lessness of any manner of victory and attempt theconclusion of an honorable peace. But it did neither.While the Parisian masses demanded an organizedfight against the besieging Prussians, the governmentdid nothing but mask its unwillingness behind hopelessand anarchic sorties which accomplished nothing butthe killing of French soldiers and the enraging of theParisians. Trochu, the governor of Paris, failed tounite the National Guard, the Garde Mobile, and thearmed civilians who stood ready to defend France.Trochu, who had declared to his colleagues that itwould be madness to attempt the defense of Paris,spoke to revolutionary Parisians thru the mouths ofJules Favre and Thiers in quite a different tone: "Wewill not cede an inch of our territory, nor a stone ofour fortresses." "The Governor of Paris will nevercapitulate." And while they spoke they were begin-ning to conduct their shameless negotiations with the

* To maintain a critical attitude towards the activitiesof Bakunin in the France of this period is one thing, to de-ride, jeer and denounce it, as is the tendency of numerouscommentators, is quite another. Bakunin was called toLyons by the revolutionary workingmen, and while his"abolition of the state" was a theoretical and practical ab-surdity, his work in Lyons was a spirited attempt to awak-en the French proletariat to a spirit of struggle against theenemy on the outside and against capitalist society.

14

I

Prussians for a peace that would put an end to the re-bellious National Guard and to mutinous Paris

In October the agitation began again. On the 8.the crowds gathered under the windows of the Hotelde Ville shouting, "Vive la Comune!" On the last dayof the month, the Parisian proletariat enraged by thenews of the surrender of Bazaine at Metzi, againgathered in the streets. Led by Blanqui, the govern-ment was ousted and a new one installed, but whileBlanqui remained in possession of the city hall for amoment, his moderate colleagues withdrew. The over-thrown government returned with a few squadrons ofBreton soldiers and to avoid civil war in the face ofthe Prussian enemy, Blanqui agreed to withdraw onthe assurance that the old government would imme-diately hold elections in Paris.

Instead of the promised elections, a cunningly con-ceived plebescite was presented to the people: "Thosewho wish that the Government of National Defenseshould be maintained will vote: Yes." And in fearof a government composed, as the brief regime ofOctober 31, solely of Blanqui, 322,000 electors choseto sustain a government of national defense; only63,000 voted against its maintenance. With such amandate the government of Thiers and Jules Favreproceeded to arrest 25 of the revolutionaries; Blanquiwas forced into hiding and Flourens, one of his fol-lowers, was arrested.

The workers of Paris continued to starve and Trochucontinued his fake sorties. On the 19 of January, 1871,the sortie of a most pitiable nature which was haltedat Buzenval, brought to the masses the realization thatthe government was -preparing to capitulate to thePrussians.

The Republican Alliance, joining with the Clubsand the vigilance committees, planned a new uprisingwhich was swiftly suppressed on the 22. Its onlyresult was the replacing of Trochu by the monarchist

15

general Vinoy, whose debut was made with an announ-cement that he would not create any illusions for him-self, that the critical moment had arrived, he threatenedthe "party of disorder" more than the Prussians.

Five days later Jules Favre had negotiated an armis-tice with Bismarck with the provision that a nationalassembly was to be elected within eight days for thepurpose of concluding a peace. The peasantry thruoutthe country had been poisoned by the monarchistswith propaganda against the Parisians, and they raisedthe hue and cry against the Republic with the demandfor a peace at any price. Legitimists, Orleanlsts,nobles, well-to-do farmers, captains of industry, clergy-men, the blackest forces of reaction united to crushthe new menace of revolutionary Paris. Out of the750 members elected to the Assembly, fully 450 wereborn monarchists.

The menace of republican Paris grew daily. Theentry of the Prussian troops had been met by theParisians with barricades and an armed people. Thestreets were deserted, black flags hung from thehouses, the shops were closed, statues were veiled,and there were no gas lights. In two days the Prus-sians left the city, leaving in the hearts of the Pari-sians a most bitter and profound resentment againstthe new Assembly.

The Assembly of the "Rurals" quickly took to itstask. This body, whose sole function was to choosebetween peace and war and to negotiate, in the eventof the former, a treaty, was immediately transformedinto an executive organ for the extermination of Paris.The representatives of Paris were constantly insultedand provoked. "You are covered with the blood ofcivil war!" cried the conservatives. And Thiers* ap-

* Marx described him as "Thiers, the master in smallroguery, a virtuoso in perjury and treason, a craftsman inall the petty strategems, cunning devices and base per-fidies of parliamentary warfare; never scrupling-, when outof office, to fan a revolution, and to stifle it in blood when

16

pearing now in the role of too long injured innocence,made it plain that the treaty of poace must be endorsedwithout any palavering in order that Prussia mightpermit the opening of war against Paris and theRepublic.

But Paris, working class Paris was armed. Favre.in his negotiations of an armistice with Bismarck haddemanded that the arms of the National Guard be con-fiscated. But the cautious Prussian refused: "Youare foolish," he told the despicable and drunken forger.Bismarck was careful about inciting at that momentan armed force of over 200,000 men into a civil warwhich would mean a well-organized attack, at the sametime, against the invaders. During the siege there hadbeen distributed 450,000 arms to the Parisians; theywere in possession of almost 2000 cannon; they hadstored an almost inexhaustible amount of cartridges,powder and shot, which they jealously guarded. Andevery day, the republican army took on a more defi-nite form.

The battalions of the Guard founded the Federa-tion of the National Guard; at the second meeting,with the assembly of the Rurals menacing the republic,a commission was named to draw up a program andstatutes for the federation; on the 3 of March thestatutes were approved by the delegates, and finally,on the 13, the names of the Central-Committee of theFederation of the National Guard were announced.

With three delegates from each arrondissement,elected1 without distinction of rank, the representativesof the National Guard set as their aim the duty "toprevent every attempt which had as its aim the over-throw of the Republic; they declared their "absolute

at the helm of the State; with class prejudices standing himin the place of ideas, and vanity in the place of a heart; hisprivate life as infamous as his public life is odious—evennow, when playing the part of a French Sulla, he cannothelp setting off the abomination of his deeds by the ridiculeof his ostentation."

17

right to name all of their chieftains and to recall themwhen they have lost the confidence of those who haveelected them, always after a thoro inquiry destined tosafeguard the sacred rights of justice." From thebeginning the federation encompassed 215 batallionsof the Guard, which, with the exception of an isolatedBonapartist batallion or two, included the entire force.

The Central Committee became the master of Paris.All ablebodied citizens were invited to organize com-mittees of batallions, councils of legions, and to send^delegates to the Central Committee. The universalopinion among the Parisians was that the Committeehad saved Paris from destruction and disgrace by itscourage and calmness during the brief occupation bythe Prussians. And the venomous opposition of theRurals Assembly towards the Federation only enhancedits prestige among the mutinous Parisian workingmen.Paris was an armed camp of the proletariat.

The monarchists in the Assembly fumed, and foamedat the mouth in their denunciations of RepublicanParis. Victor Hugo, attempting to defend Garibaldi,was hooted and Wssed; Delescluze, demanding the im-peachment of the government of the national defensewas not even listened to. The reactionaries demandedthe arrest of the Central Committee and the prevailingopinion of the monarchists was that a blood bath wouldconsiderably .cool the ardor of the Parisian dogs.

On the 10 of March, the Assembly voted to changeits seat to Versailles, leaving Paris a capital withouta national government and a city without a municipalgovernment. The pay of the National Guard was prac-tically discontinued, which meant that thousands uponthousands of Parisians were left to starve. A bill waspassed providing for the payment of all bills due onNovember 13, 1870, in three days and all concessionswere obstinately refused. No bill for the protectionof some two or three hundred thousand workers, whoserent bills were due, was passed, throwing them on the

18

mercies of their landlords and creating a panic-strickenpopulation overnight. In four days, 150,000 bills weredishonored.

A tax of two centimes was put upon every pieceof printed matter, and Vinoy, the commander in chiefof the army in Parts, immediately proceeded to suspendsix Republican journals with the declaration that therecould not be permitted the preaching of "sedition anddisobedience to the laws." The Bonapartist Valeninwas appointed the prefect of police. The Jesuit gen-eral, d'Aurelles de Paladine, who had been accusedof incapacity and of being "brutal to the point ofcruelty," was appointed by Thiers the head of the Na-tional Guard, an appointment which the latter refusedto recognize. Flourens was couTtmartialed and sen-tenced to death for his (participation in the uprisingof October 31, together with Blanqui, who was noteven present at his trial.

The words of Thiers' provocative speeches alsoreached Paris, and the campaign of baiting and incitingthe Parisians reached its climax with the demand forthe surrender of their arms, the cannon for which theyhad popularly subscribed and which were the privateproperty of the National Guard, the defenders of theRepublic and of Paris.

To take the cannon was the first objective; to seizethe fortifications, the small arms and ammunition, tocomplete the disarming of Paris was the final aim.But to take the cannon from the hands of the Guard,which considered it their own private property, wasquite another thing from talking about it. Time andagain detachments of troops presented themselves anddemanded the cannon: on the 8 at Luxembourg; onthe 9 at Montmatre; on the 16 at the Place des Vosges;and the cannon remained with the Guard. The mayors,tools of the Versaillese, attempted the role of -con-ciliators with ill success. Clemenceau, then mayor ofMontmartre, secured the agreement of some officers

19

to surrender the artillery, but when the troops ofd'Aurelles de Paladine presented themselves the Guardrefused to deliver the cannon to the teams.*

Thiers, urged on by his own heroic boastings atVersailles, determined to 'take the cannon by force ofarms. Counting upon the National Guard of the bour-geois quarters, together with some 20,000 troops, hedecided, on the 17 of March, to seize the artillery.\\Tiether he actually meant to take the cannon at thetime, or if he meant his actions to be a gesture tocomplete the exasperation of the Parisians cannot beknown. A conservative writer, the Count d'Herrison,declares:

"When we study the affair of the 1.8 of March, onealmost comes to ask himself if M. Thiers really wantedto seize the cannon of Montmartre, and if his aim wasnot above all to obtain a popular movement that wouldpermit him to evacuate Paris for the moment in order toretake it afterwards in a blood bath."

Be that as it may, on the morning of the 18 ofMarch, at 3 o'clock the plan of Thiers was put intoexecution. Simultaneously, a proclamation of Thierswas being posted thruout the city which directed anattack against the members of the Central Committeewho "under pretence of resisting the Prussians, whoare no longer within our walls, have constituted them-selves masters of a part of the city, raised entrench-ments there and mounted guard," forcing others todo likewise "by order of a secret committee whichpretends to be the sole commander (and) wishes toform a government in opposition to the legal govern-ment instituted by universal suffrage. . . . The can-non belonging to the State will be replaced in thearsenals" and for this "urgent act of justice and ofreason" the government called upon the aid of allParisians.

Vinoy, in charge of the expedition, w;as to occupythe western half of Paris, and General Lecomte was

20

given the 88th Regiment of the »Line and some sup-plementary troops for the purpose of occupying theheights of Montmartre and seizing the cannon. At sixo'clock, after a painful climb of the heights, the sen-tinel was surprised, the guard imprisoned, and the can-non ^captured. There had been practically no resist-ance, and with the -exception of a wounded Guardsman,no Casualties. The problem of moving the cannonarose: and the teams had failed to appear. At seveno'clock only a score of pieces had 'been carried to thefoot of the heights, after considerable difficulty, andthere was still a great number to be removed; the tasks.eemed interminable.

In the meantime a crowd of all ages began to gather,composed mostly of women who began to speak tothe troops: "This is shameful; what are you doingthere?" While Clemenceau was congratulating Le-comte, a couple of guardsmen who had escaped fromthe heights had found 'somewiiere a drum and werebeating the rappel, and then the charge.

The streets were soon filled with the pealing ofchurch bells; the tocsin was sounded; bugles wereblown, and the National Guard came hurrying to thescene from all directions. Between them and thetroops of Lecomte were the women and children, whomthe general continued to threaten with dispersal. Apost of the regiment of the 88th had joined the hurry-ing National Guards, and the men of the 88th in Le-com'te's troops seemed ready to defend their comradesand go over to the Parisians. Lecomte attempted toarrest some of his own men without any success. Then,three times he gave the command to fire into thecrowd. In vain. The men on both 'sides surged for-ward, the soldiers throwing their rifles into the air.The men of the Line had completely fraternized withthe National Guard.

At nine 'o'clock the heights were retaken, the can-non replaced,, the surprised guard released from their

21

cells, and the news of the victory announced to allParis by the firing of three blank shots.

The crowd, ready to fall upon the arrested Lecomteand tear him .to tatters, incited by the soldiers whomhe had imprisoned in the Tower of Solferino, was heldback by the National Guard which took Lecomte tothe Chateau-Rouge, where the staff of the batallionwas seated. There he immediately signed an orderfor the evacuation of the Buttes.

In the Chaussee des Martyrs, the general Clement-Thomas was recognized by the crowd and arrested. Theinsulter of the revolutionary batallions, the man whohad drowned the revolution of '48 in blood, was seizedby the mob, and together with Lecomte forced to thewall in the garden. Both of them crumbled under thescores of bullets and fell dead. Lecomte, who thatmorning had ordered his troops three times to shootinto the crowd of women, children and Guardsmen,wept, begged for pity, and spoke of his family!

The death of the two generals no longer left thequestion of the government's attempt in doubt. Withthe exception of the Place Pigalle, there had been noarmed encounters between the .people and the troops.The operations at Belleville and at the Buttes-Chau-mont were editions of Montmartre. At eleven o'clockall the cannon, with the exception of ten pieces, wereagain in the hands of the Guard. Vinoy had fled thruthe gates of the South with his troops, baggage, andartillery, following Thiers and the rest of the govern-ment to Versailles.

The Central Committee of the Federals (as theNational Guardsmen were called) was master of Paris.On the day of the spontaneous uprising of the Federalsagainst the attempt of Thiers, they gathered -at theHotel de Ville. A number of the members of the Cen-tral Committee were liesitant: they had been electedto defend the interests of the National Guard and of theRepublic; they had no mandate of government. But

22

the old insurrectionary cry "Vive la Commune!" filledthe hall and the timorous ones were finally convincedby the assurances that the Central Committee wouldremain in the Hotel de Ville but a few days, only solong as it would be necessary to prepare for the elec-tions to the Commune.

These men, masters of Paris, with the enthusiasticsupport of almost the entire population, with a signalvictory to their credit, did not realize that they werethe only expression that the revolutionary proletariatof Paris possessed. With an unhappy carelessnessborn of indecision, unclarity and lack of direction, theypermitted their incompetent commander in chief, Lul-lier, to take charge of the occupation of the abandonedforts. While they themselves demolished their barri-cades, Lullier took two days to occupy the forts ofIvry, Bicetre, Montrouge, Vanves and Issy. The stra-tegic and impregnable fortress of Mont Valerien, thekey to Paris and to Versailles was left unoccupied tothe last day. Twenty muskets defended it, arid thefew chasseurs who had been imprisoned there burstopen the locks and returned to Paris.

Vinoy, who had received news of the evacuation ofthe fort, finally prevailed upon Thiers to give an orderfor its seizure, and on the morning of the 20, it wastaken by Versaillese troops. When the Parisians pre-sented themselves at eight, that night, they were dis-persed. And Lullier was at the same moment makinghis report to the Central Committee and even namingthe batallion in (possession of the fort Mont Valerienwhich was already in the hands of the Versaillese!

The conciliateurs, the mayors of the boroughs whofeared a civil war, already betrayed by Thiers andJules Pavre, duped with empty promises, were never-theless undiscouraged. They still sought to- bringabout a state of harmony between Versailles with fourproposals: the nomination of Colonel Langlois to thecommand of the National Guard, the nomination of the

23

I

republican Dorian as mayor of Paris, immediate mu-nicipal elections, and assurances that the NationalGuard would not be disarmed. Favre, the ministerfor foreign affairs, draped in all the dignity of a gnome,exclaimed: "Well, Messieurs, what do you come todo here? You bring some propositions? One does notdiscuss, one does not speak with assassins!" A newinsult, a final provocation had been added.

Danglois, nevertheless, took his nomination forgranted. An old internationalist, the executor of thewill of Prou'dhon, colonel of the National Guard andrather popular in Paris, he presented himself to theCentral Committee to inform them of his nomination."Who has named you?" "The National Assembly!""Do you recognize the Central Committee " "I havebeen named by the government, I do not recognizeyou!" And Langlois, "who expressed with fury themost moderate of ideas and preached pacification asone proclaims a revolt" proceeded to show the Commit-tee that unless they recognized the government of theAssembly they were working towards civil war and"yoji cannot have this pretension or you are madmen!"

it was explained to him that the National Guard in-tended to name its own chieftain, carry on the municipalelection and get guarantees against the royalists of theAssembly. He was even offered the appointment underconditions. But the old fellow left with a tirade andin anger, and broke the last thread that still held Paristo Versailles.

Still the Committee did not take any decisive steps.The proposals of Eudes and Duval for an immediatemarch upon Versailles which would have forced Thiersto capitulate or to fly precipitately were not accepted,and the first sorties against the Versaillese were under-taken only when Thiers, in the breathing space gainedby the indecision and indulgence of the Central Com-mittee, had gathered together his motley but numerousarmy.

24

The same Committee, despite its anxious self-denialof the right of legislative functions, was acting like aprovisional government. It took possession andstrengthened the forts around Paris. It build up aform of ministerial cabinets by assigning Assi to thegovernment of the Hotel de Ville; Greiler, assistedby Vaillant, to the post of the department of theinterior; Varlin and Jourdes to finances; Combatz tothe postal service; Edouard Mbreau to the supervisionof the Officiel, the organ of the revolutionaries, andthe charge of printing; Duval and Raoul Rigault tothe prefectory of Police; Eudes to the department ofwar; and even in this field the driving force was thefact that the flight of Thiers and his supporters hadstripped Paris completely of any sort of administrativeapparatus.

They dared not even open the coffers of the minis-try of finance, but went begging to Rothschild, whogave them 500,000 francs and congratulated himselfupon having been let off so easily. The governor ofthe Bank of France, an institution which their un-reasonable legalistic superstitions prevented themfrom seizing, gave the Central Committee two millionfrancs, the second only upon the appearance of twobatallions of Federals who were ready to enforce thedemands of the delegates.

Assi, a member of the International, one day aft.erthe uprising, already proposed the lifting of the stateof siege and his words were unanimously approved.The Committee was so lenient and careless that ittolerated the threats of Lullier, their commander inchief who refused to march upon the bourgeois quarterswhere a counterrevolution was being hatched, andpractically permitted this most abominable incom-petent to escape from arrest so that he could hence-forth carry on conspiracies against the Commune. InLullier's place was put a military triumvirate of Brunei,Duval and Eudes, who, while declaring themselves

25

ready for action were already being occupied with thepreparations of the reactionaries for a counterrevolu-tionary coup.

The intrigues of the conciliating mayors, especiallyin the first and second arrondissements which werebeginning to look like armed forts, led to .the demon-stration of the reactionaries on March 21 and 22, anattempt to test the strength of the Central Committee.At the Place Vendome, on the first day, Bergeret, whowas in charge of the headquarters of the NationalGuard was able to disperse the mob of royalists, stu-dents, Bonapartists and bullies by peaceful means. Onthe next day they returned, after having disarmed andbeaten several isolated groups of Federals on theirmarch, and began to shout "Down with the CentralCommittee! Down with the assassins!" Under theguise of an unarmed demonstration, they planned tocapture the headquarters of the Federals. Bergerethad the riot act read and when they failed to disperse,a single volley sent them flying in helter-skelterfashion, leaving a street strewn with their knives,revolvers, sword canes and hats, with one Guardsmenkilled and seven wounded; among the "peaceful" de-monstrators, the most part of the casualties consistedof known Bonapartists.

The affair of the 22 not only convinced Thiers ofthe fact that the armed proletariat of Paris was inpower, but it settled the question of an immediatemunicipal election. But for the apparently intermi-nable negotiations with the mayors, thru which theCommittee hoped to gain a semblance of legality fortheir elections, negotiations which once went so far-that the Central Committee was forced by an arousedrank and file to disavow its emissaries for having com-promised the people's interests, the elections wouldhave taken place in a day. Humiliated by twice havingto put off the date of the elections, the Committeefinally set the day for the 26, after having first occu-

26

pied all the arrondissements which offered more or lessresistance, and forced the signatures of the mayors andthe deputies to the agreement.

All Paris was soon covered with election postersand announcements. The losses of war, the flight ofthe reactionaries and the bourgeoisie, the departure ofhundreds during the days of the siege, had diminishedthe vote from the 485,569 electors announced in March,1870, to 229,167, leaving an almost exclusively prole-tarian Paris. The bourgeois quarters elected theirrepresentatives to the amount of fifteen who nevertook their seats or resigned them. Of the other threeor four score members elected, the overwhelming ma-jority were revolutionaries, representing the workingclass of Paris. On Sunday, the 27, the results of theelections were already known and Paris took on aholiday appearance. The entire population' turned out,happy, joyous, dancing with glee, with the old revolu-tionaries of '48 weeping out of joy.

The next day, the Parisian masses marched to theHotel de Ville to the number of two hundred thousand.The cannon belohed forth their salutes. Drums werebeaten, bugles blown, hats thrown into the air, and thered flag, which decorated the facade of the building,flung to the air. The members of the Central Com-mittee of the Guard which had been so fearfully anxi-ous to give up its power, and the members of thenewly-elected Commune, decorated with red scarvesover their shoulders, appeared on the balcony. In aninterval between the singing of the Marseillaise andthe Chant du Depart, and the noise of the drums andcannon, Ranvier stepped forward and shouted abovethe din:

"In the name of the People the Commune is pro-claimed!"

From the throats of the assembled thousands camean echo: "Vive la Commune!"

All Paris was in a delirium of happiness.

27

Seventy Days of Working Class Power"The German philistine has lately been

thrown once again into wholesome par-oxysms by the expression, 'dictatorshipof the proletariat.' Well, gentle sires,would you like to know how this dicta-toship looks? Then look at the ParisCommune. That was the dictatorship ofthe proletariat." Frederick Engels onthe 20th anniversary of the Communeof 1871.

It is well known that Marx, following the affairs ofFrance very closely from his home in London, did notfavor the overthrow of the government of the nationaldefense and the setting up of the Commune at thattime. On September 6, 18^0, he wrote to Engels con-cerning a trip to Paris which was being made bySerailler for the .purpose of arranging things betweenthe Federal Council of Paris and the International,

". . . the French section of the International hastravelled from London to Paris in order to do foolishthings in the name of the International. They want tooverthrow the Provisional Government and establish aCommune de Paris."*

And tho he recognized the "circumstances of extremedifficulty" under which the French workers were mov-ing he declared:

"Any attempt at upsetting the new government in thepresent crisis,- when the enemy is almost knocking atthe doors of Paris, would be a desperate folly. TheFrench workmen. . . must not allow themselves tobe swayed by the national souvenirs of 1792. . . theyhave not to recapitulate the past, but to build up the

. future. Let them calmly and resolutely improve the. •

* Brief wechsel zwischen Marx und Engels, Vol. IV., p.ooU.

28

opportunities of Republican liberty for the work of theirown class organization. It will gift them with freshHerculean powers for the regeneration of France, andour common task—the emancipation of labor."*

But no sooner had the uprising of March 18 takenplace than Marx placed himself in accord with it.With all the energy he possessed he defended the Com-munards with ardor, and pilloried its defarmers with hismerciless pen. In a letter of reply to Frankel andVarlin, members of the Commune who atsked him foradvice anil aid, he wrote on May 13, 1871:

". . . For your cause I have written some hundredsof letters to all the corners and ends of the world,wherever we have connections. The working class how-ever has been for the Commune from the very begin-ning. . . . The Commune wastes, it seems to me.too much time with petty things and personal squab-bles. Evidently other influences than that of the work-ers are still active. All this will not matter, however,if you will still be able to make up for lost time."

Indeed, it was largely thru .the influence of theInternational that the sympathies of the workers ofEurope and America were aroused. In Berlin, Ham-burg, Hanover, Dresden, Leipzig and other Germancenters, the workers held huge mass meetings in whichthey expressed their isolidarity with the Commune. InEngland, its only supporters were the workers, and thesmall group of the Positivists, grouped around Profes-sor Beesly, Frederick Harrison and a few others whowrote favorable articles in their organ, "The Fort-nightly Review"; Fox Bourne, the editor of "TheExaminer-" also supported the revolution, news andinformation on which he .received from Marx by fre-quent calls at the latter's home in Maitland Park. Inthe Reidhstag, Bebel defiantly declared:

* Manifesto of the International Workingmen's Associa-,tion, -September 9, 1870.

29

". . . Be assured that the entire European prole-tariat, and all that have a feeling for freedom andindependence in their heart, have their eyes fixed onParis. And if Paris is for the present crushed, I reiiiintfyou that the struggle in Paris is only a small affair otoutposts, that the main conflict in Europe is still beforeus, and that ere many decades pass away the battlecryof the Parisian proletariat, war to the palace, peace tothe cottage, death to want and idleness, will be thebattlecry of the entire European proletariat." *

Just as true as the first declaration of Marx washis second. The Commune wasted too much time inthe discussion of petty things, it was cursed from thebeginning with unconscionably long-winded talkersand demagogues, it wa*s weighed down by sentimentaladherence to the traditions of 1793; it was character-ized by the indecision and unsureness of lack of leader-ship and clarity of purpose, program and aim; it didnot have a conscious and revolutionary working classparty which would have enriched it with the sure,dominating organization of action; the Commune waspalsied by a respect for that very legality which itwas vaunting; it tolerated the mouthers of phrases,the incompetence of its generals and anarchy of itsorganization; it suffered from a multitude of witlessopinions and neglected to build a powerful army outof the forces at its comand in order to take the offen-sive. It did not even organize its defense.

Yet, the very impetus of its own revolutionary ex-istence was tremendous. The Commune took hold ofthe old bureaucratic and militarist apparatus, the bour-geois state, and crushed it in its hands, and on itsbroken fragments it placed the dictatorship of theproletariat, the workingmen of Paris organized as theruling class of France. With a single stroke it abolishedthe standing army of the Second Empire and the Third

* Quoted by Kirkup from Mehring's History of the Ger-man Social Democracy.

30

Republic and replaced it with the people's militia, aforce, directly responsible to the Commune, of all themen capable of bearing arms. It took the firststeps towards the suppression of the enemy of theproletariat—weak and lacking in determination as thesesteps were—by the suppression of a number of anti-Communard journals, the arrest of the conspiring Ver-saillese within the walls of Paris, the virtual declarationof war against Thiers by the taking of hostages, thesorties against the Versailles forces and the appealsto the province for support.

The ruling body was based upon a real proletariandemocracy, providing for the recall of unsatisfactoryrepresentatives, abolishing special allowances, payingall state officials the wages of workers, and realizingthat "ideal of all bourgeois revolutions cheap govern-ment by eliminating the two largest items of expen-diture—the army and the bureaucracy." The parliamen-tarism of the bourgeois society was smashed and theCommune transformed itself into a 'working corpora-tion legislative and executive at one and the same time,"and held itself up to the provinces of France as themirror of their own future. Church and State wereseparated, ecclesiastical property was confiscated andall education secularized.

The pawned property and furniture of the workerswere returned, the workers were relieved of the pay-ment of the overdue rents, it abolished the sickeningpiety of charity and "relief," and resumed the pay ofthe National Guard. Thru Frankel, the Internationalistdelegate of labor, it took its first steps, however fewand unclear, to destroy the system of capitalist produc-tion and socialize it by turning it over to the tradeunions; to ameliorate the conditions of the workers; toenforce a "fair wage" proviso in Commune contractsand abolish the abominable system of fines and gar-nisheeing of wages by employers; it planned the in-stitution of the eight-hour day. Its internationalist

31

character was testified to by the Hungarian, Frankel'spresence as delegate of labor, Dombrowski and Wrob-lewski, the Poles, in the defense.

Its heroic and noble spirit of sacrifice has been leftas a revolutionary legacy to the new generations of theavenging proletariat. The Commune was a dim glass inwhich was reflected the rise of that greater and morepowerful dictatorship of the proletariat, the successfulproletarian revolution in Russia.

* * *The composition of the Paris Commune was a most

confusing one. There were the adherents to the Frenchsection of the International Workingmen's Association,of which there were in Paris alone more than four scorebranches, many of which, especially the trade unionswhich had been wiped out during the war and the siege,had disappeared. Their delegation in the Commune,numbering 17 members, was more attached to the doc-trines of Proudhon than to those of Marx. To that ex-tent, tho they comprised, according to Lissagary, withsome exceptions, the most intelligent and most clear inthe Commune, they were handicapped and transferredthis handicap into the work of the Commune. Theirobstinate attachment to the idea of autonomy for otherCommunes, their refusal to excercise any pressure onthe provinces, but rather to permit them to decide oftheir own accord, their vain hope that natural spon-taneous sympathy and a vague contact would rally therest of France to their support, served as much as anyother factor to isolate the Commune from the rest ofthe country.

Even on the night of March 18, the general opinionamong the Internationalists was that Paris had merelygained its municipal franchise and that a period of calmwas certain to ensue. The idea that a social revolutionwas taking place beneath their very eyes was very farfrom their minds. Varlin, one of their best, wrote tothe Swiss anarchists, grouped around Bakunin and Guil-

32

laume concerning the events in Paris. He attemptedto disabuse them of their notion that March 18 was thesignal for the approaching universal social revolutionby saying that it was only the right to municipal fran-chise that they had aimed for and won:

•

". . . the elections are fixed for the coming- 26 andthe moment the municipal council is elected, the CentralCommittee will resign its powers and all will be finished."

The fact that the mechanic Assi, a member of theInternational, headed the list of names signed to theproclamation of the Central Committee of the NationalGuard caused ignorant friends and foes to attribute therevolution to the International; and alphabetical coin-cidence was for them a conclusive proof. The attitudeof Marx and the French internationalists themselves issufficient evidence to disprove such a contention. Trueit was, however, that while there was no official par-ticipation at the beginning, if the organization was inertand did not react to the events of the 18, its ideas hadpenetrated into the minds of the masses of Paris wholooked to the Commune for a change in their social andpolitical lives.

The Blanquist party, which dominated the Commune,had been deprived of its leader oh the day before theoverthrow of the National Assembly. On the 17 of Marchhe was seized in bed because of the death sentencewhich had been passed upon him by court martial forhis participation in the uprising of October 31, 1870.So well did Thiers know the value of Blanqui to theCommune that he stubbornly refused to exchange himfor the whole lot of hostages which were held by theCommune, including the Archbishop of Paris, the in-spirer of Napoleon's illfated expedition in Mexico,Jecker, aad numerous others.

The Blanquists, whose program and organizationwere directly descended from Babeuf and Hebert, theconspirators of '92, had out little thought for the mor-

33

row of the revolution. Their single steadfast aim wasthe overthrow of the bourgeoisie, the arming of theproletariat, the iron-gloved suppression of the counter-revolution, and the revolutionary dictatorship of theproletariat. Toward this end they built a conspirative,highly centralized, disciplined organization, excludingall who were not absolutely trustworthy and tried andfanatically attached, and chosen because of their per-sonal courage, fidelity and self-sacrifice. With such &band of men, ready at any moment, Blanqui constantlyplanned for an armed uprising of a militant and deter-mined minority for the rule of the revolutionary prole-tariat. For him, the revolutionary dictatorship was thedictatorship of working class Paris over the rest ofFrance, since with the exception of a few of the largertowns, Paris was the real and only home of the revolu-tionary worker:

". . . One year of Parisian dictatorship in '48,"wrote Blanqui, "would have spared France and historythe quarter of a century now ending. If ten years areneed this time, there must be no hesitation." *

/This commendable singlemindedness, however, left theBlanquists without a single thought for the future. Witheyes centered upon revolutionary action, they main-tained that

". . . a social order, resulting1 from the social revolu-tion will never have for its rational bases aught but theFamily and the Commune, subject to the sole utilitarianmoral of the common interest."

Without Blanqui, and with their small organizationof a couple of thousand, they were left with a numberof energetic men who could more easily ride a revolu-tionary wave than build a new society. The Blanquists—the affiliated, and the Blanquists at heart—had apractical majority in the Commune, but without theirleader their revolutionary gestures, their slavish imita-

* Quoted by Postdate, Out of the Past, p. 66.

34

f

tion of the uprisings of '92 and '93, their disorder andinability to organize even the department of war bringsone almost to agreement with the words of one of theleading Blanquists, Raoul Rigault: 'Without Blanqui,there is nothing doing, with Blanqui, everything."

Whether with or without Blanqui, his followers reg-ularly opposed to the- Internationalists' Proudhonianautonomous Commune, the dictatorial, centralized Com-mune which was to spread, thruout the length andbreadth of France—and never did.

Besides these two groups, there were the unaffiliatedmembers of the old Central Committee of the Guard andthe Jacobins who lived in a mental revel of souvenirsof the revolutions of 1830 and '48. Their outstandingfigure, Charles Delescluze, was an enemy of Blanquibut a Blanquist at heart. His personality dominated theCommune to a large extent. Bakunin, who had no usefor the centralism of Delescluze declared that therewere two kinds of Jacobins, "the Jacobin lawyers anddoctrinaries like M. Gambetta . . . and the franklyrevolutionary Jacobins, the heroes, the last sincere re-presentatives of the democratic faith of 1793 . . .the magnificent Jacobins, at the head of whom is natur-ally placed Delescluze, a great soul and a great char-acter."

But there were others among the JacoWns, FelixPj^at, for example. A coward, blageur, phrasemonger,he had once been labelled by a friend of Blanqui eithera monomaniac or a police agent. Of less dangerousimportance, but equally romantic were those whogrouped themselves around him. And this diversifiedassemblage gave rise to the pettiest bickerings in whichPyat detested Vermorel, Vermorel had little use forDelescluze, Delescluze for Blanqui, and a dozen othersimilar personal discords which often threw the Com-mune into a frenzy.

Cursed with interminable talkers, the assembly ofthe Commune could sit and spend four hours in the

35

discussion of the most trifling subject while the mani-festo of the Commune was approved almost withoutdebate. Long drawn out discussions took place on thedemolition of the Vendome column, which was finallyordered destroyed "as a momument of savagery, a sym-bol of brute force and false glory, an affirmation ofmilitarism . . . a perpetual attack upon one of thethree great principles of the French republic—frater-nity." A lively discussion on the question of the thea-tres went on while the Versaillese were approaching thewalls of the city on the 19 of May. And one of themost important discussions on the role of the Commit-tee of Public Safety was interrupted by the endlessfeud between Pyat and Vermorel.

The Commune would organize one means of medicalservice and its general, Cluseret, another. On one dayit would vote for a permanent chairman and the nextweek it would decide to elect one at every session.Nine days after a decision not to print the proceedingof the sessions in the Official it is voted that they shallbe published there. The assembly sessions were a hugeopen forum with almost complete disorder, tolerant ofnuisances, confused and contradictory.

As tho the ordinary difficulties were not sufficient,new ones were daily placed in the road of the Commune.The old Central Committee, which had been so anxiousto unload its powers and responsibilities on to theshoulders of the newly-elected Commune, developed atendency towards a dual power. Its delegation of greet-ings to the Commune, behind their "Vive la Republique!Vive la Commune!" announced that it would leave thepower of government to the Commune and that theCentral Committee would limit (!) itself to the reor-ganization of the National Guard. The military powerof the Commune was to be under the control of the oldCentral Committee! On the 31 of March it announcedto the Commune that it "had 'delegated the generalCluseret to the department of war where he would re-

36

organize the National Guard under the direction of theCommittee." The Commune, fearing an open struggleand frightened by the failure of the sortie of April 3,finally conceded the point. Until the last day of theCommune ,the Central Committee practically defied itsauthority. While it would not permit the departmentof war of the Commune to do anything, it merely fol-lowed suit by doing nothing itself. Not all the blamemay be placed upon the Commune for not building anarmy, for not utilizing the forces at the command ofParis, and for not fortifying Paris even to the momentwhen the enemy were already inside lier walls.

The attempts made in the beginning to organize thework of the Commune were promising but ended almostwithout exception in failure. Commissions were createdfor war, general security, justice, finances, subsistance,labor-industry and -exchange, public service, foreignrelations. An executive committee of seven was elec-ted, charged with carrying out the decisions and lawsof the Commune. But these commissions were auto-nomous units, never attempting the coordination oftheir work and finally degenerating into a single dele-gate who was more often than not totally unfit forhis work.

The provisioning of Paris was carried on in a bettermanner than most of the other departments, the Com-mune opening a number of municipal markets and shopswhere food was sold at a lower price than ordinarily.The commisison of public service, which had been set,among other things, the modest task of studying "themeans of putting the railways into the hands of the

Hi Commune of Prance without hurting the interests ofthe companies," managed to put into functioning condi-tion the municipal service—and whether in doing that ithurt the interests of the companies is not known.

The work of the commission of postal service andtelegraphs was an extremely difficult one. The flightof Thiers and Co. had left the Post Office in a terrible

37

condition: the stamps were gone and with them theengravings; nine-tenths of the employees had fled; thetelegraphic wires to the provinces had been cut byThiers. Theisz, a silver worker, managed to bring someorder into the department. He created a functioningpostal service in Paris, and thru a system of secretagents who posted letters in other towns, a servicethruout the country. He reduced the staff of the postoffice and made plans for the creation of a sort of civilservice examination for new employees.

Camelinat, a bronze worker in charge of the Mint,was one of the most successful. He prepared newstamps and new imprints for the coins and broughtabout such improvements that the Versaillese providedhim with a safe conduct .after the fall of the Communefor the purpose of instructing their own head of theMint in the improvements Camelinat had perfected.

The attempts of the department of education wereonly a part of the progress made" by the Commune.Valliant, the delegate, created a commission for theorganization of primary and higher education whichannounced the opening of a school on the sixth of May.Attempts were made to reorganize the National Libraryand to reopen the museums. Education was secularized,and there the work stopped short.

Luckily for the Commune, the incompetence of thecommission for general security—the police forces—was even less than that of the groups or traitorous con-spirators who were in Paris. The spy Veysett, who at-tempted to bribe Dombrowski with 20,000 francs, wasapprehended. From the records of the old prefectureof police a number of other spies were discovered inthe ranks of the Commune and immediately seized. Thethreat of the Commune to shoot three hostages to everyone killed by the Versaillese was never carried outuntil the last day of its existence, altho Thiers kept righton with his horrifying murders of all Parisians thatwere captured.

38

The commission of labor, industry and* exchange,headed by the Hungarian Internationalist, Leo Frankel,and composed exclusively of socialist revolutionaries.*accomplished some of the most important and in asense the greatest tasks of the Commune. It had setbefore it the task, according to the official decree, ofbeing "charged with the propagation of socialist doc-trines. It (the commission) must seek the means ofequalizing labor and wages. It must also occupy itselfwith favoring national and Parisian industries." Eventhe Blanquists had agreed to the need of spreading theideas of socialism among the masses, as one of themeans of saving the revolution; and they turned thiswork over to the Internationalists ungrudgingly. Forthe Blanquists, however, that was the sum total of thework of the commission, and beyond a propaganda bodythey could see no further. With such an initial handicapit is astonishing that such a relatively great amount ofprogress was recorded.

Frankel, realizing the difficulties, and adapting him-self to the position of the Commune, proceeded with hiswork in a very careful and steady manner. Rents over-due since October, 1870, were remitted. The pawningof objects was prohibited and a delay of three yearswas given to debtors. Night work for bakers wasabolished together with the retention of fines and partof the wages by employers. A first small attempt wasmade to regulate employment by the registration of thesupply and demand of workers and the establishmentof offices to carry on the beginnings of what is nowknown as the employment exchange.

Unlike the revolution of 1789, which hurt the workeralmost as often as it did the monarchy, the abandonedfactories and shops were confiscated by workers' asso-

* Theisz, Avrial, Malon, Frankel and Eugene Gerardinof the International; Dupont of the Central Committee;Puget of the red republican club; Loiseau Pincon of thebourgeoisie.

39

ciations and a jury of arbitration fixed the indemnitiesdue to the employer, a compromise which did not changethe proletarian character of the action. The tradeunions, almost wiped out during the war and the siege,were energetically rebuilt by the commission so that atthe time of the fall of the Commune there were 34 dis-trict trade union councils, 43 productive societies and11 other working class societies.

By a decree of the Commune all contracts were bypreference to be given to workers' societies and towardsthe end all the needs of the National Guard were sup-plied in this way. An enlarged commission was organ-ized by Frankel out of the representatives of all thetrade union councils, for the purpose of considering thetaking over of all abandoned and closed factories. Thecommission met once or twice and little was accom-

-plished. Even this Proudhonist method of socialisingindustry was prematurelly killed by the death of theCommune. The difficulties of correspondence aloneprevented Marx from having a greater Influence uponthis' phase of the Commune's work.

Faced with disorder and weakness in all of the de-partments, the majority of the Commune again soughttheir inspiration from the days of '93. With a romanticgesture it constituted the first Committee of PublicSafety on May 1, with Felix Pyat as its most prominentmember, and armed it with dictatorial powers. Againstthe revival of this ancient corpse the members of theInternational, joined by a few others, protested vigor-ously, and denounced it as a step towards the creationof a dictator. From then on a bitter quarrel arose -be-tween the Commune majority and the minority.

The first Committee of Public Safety was a miserablefailure. When the Versaillese had surprised a redoubtand the Committee was blamed for this defeat becauseit sent Wroblewski and Dombrowski to the fort of Issy,Pyat replied majestically: "Neither the Committee ofPublic Safety nor myself have signed any order com-

«40

manding citizen Wroblewski to go to the fort of Issy."But when he was confronted the next day with thewritten order and was compelled to recognize his ownsignature, he airily begged the assembly to pardon hiserror.

Such vain incompetence aroused the old JacobinDelescluze. In a fiery speech before the Assembly onthe 9 of May, after the fall of Issy into the hands of theVersailese, he denounced the Committee: "One can dovery great things by using simple words; I am no par-tisan of Committees of Public Safety; they are nothingbut words." Therefore the Commune deliberated fora short time—and decided to create another Committeeof Public Safety with different individuals. The minor-ity which demanded representation in the committeewas excluded, Vermorel was forced to quit the depart-ment of general security and Longuet the Officiel. Exas-perated, the minority quit the Assembly and announcedits return to the arrondissements. In their declara-tion of May 15, they say:

"By a special and express vote the Commune of Parishas abdicated its power into the hands of a dictator, towhom it has given the name of the Committee of PublicSafety.

By its own vote the majority of the Commune hasdenied its responsibility and left all responsibility forour situation in the hands of this Committee.

The minority to which we belong affirms on the otherhand the idea that it is the duty of the Commune to thepolitical and social revolutionary movement to acceptall responsibility and decline none, however worthy thehands to which it desires to entrust them. . . . (Inour own arrondissements we can) usefully serve ouiprinciples and avoid creating in the Commune dissen-sions which we should all regret. For we are convincedthat majority or minority, in spite of political differ-ences, we all pursue the same end.

Political liberty. Emancipation of the worker.

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Vive la Republique Sociale! Vive la Commune! *The joy created by this split in the camp of the

Versaillese and the anger of the workers they repre-sented brought the most of them back on the 17, butthe prestige of the assembly was considerably weakenedthenceforward.

The second Committee of Public Safety was not anymore effective than the first; and the declaration of theminority in the Assembly did not increase its prestigeamong the 'people to any degree. And the next stepwas the hunt for a dictator, a memory of '93 and Maratthe friend of the people. Garibaldi had written to theCentral Committee, refusing the post of commander ofthe National Guard: "Remember well that a singlehonest man must be charged with the supreme postwith full powers." For Blanquists, who had followedBlanqui unswervingly for years, it was not unnatural toaccept the idea of a dictatorship of a powerful indi-vidual. And while they hopefully awaited the returnof Blanqui so that he could fill the throne of the dic-tator, Rossel, the delegate of war, prepared for a coupwhich would give to him the supreme power. His at-tempt failed and he fled the city.

In the meantime the preparations for a struggleagainst the Versaillese had been either completely neg-lected or most stupidly or incompetently conducted. Thedepartments of foreign relations and of war, where theCommune should have been strongest, were its weakestpoints.

In the first place, the department of external affairswas in the hands of a Paschal Grousset, whose neglectof work was astounding in view of the tremendous vis-tas that lay before him. No efforts were made to gain

* Signed by Varlin, Theisz, Avrial, Clement, Frankel,Beslay, Pindy, Clemence, Eugene Gerardin, Lefrancais, An-drieux, Serailler, Long-uet of the International; Jourde ofthe old Central Committee; Tridon the Blanquist, ArnouldValles and Vermorel of the Revolutionary press and party;Ostyn of the red republican clubs; Arnold, and GustaveCourbet the painter.

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contacts with the hundreds of thousands of Europeanworkers who looked to Paris with anxious eyes andwhose hearts beat in unison with that of the Commune.No efforts were made to utilize the important docu-ments of the Napoleonic regime which lay in the olddiplomatic files, documents which would have "broughtmultiplied support to the Commune. Two sentimentaland meaningless manifestoes were addressed to theprovinces and hardly distributed.

The provinces might easily have been aroused ifany efforts had been made to maintain connections be-tween them and revolutionary Paris. The Communehad already seen its day in Lyons and Marseilles. TheCommune existed at Toulouse up to the 27 of March;in Narbonne to the 31; at Marseilles to the 4 of April.In Limoges the Commune lasted a day. The Parisiansmight have reawakened these movements and thrownall of Prance into the throes of revolt. There wereplenty of capable and trustworthy agitators, but theywere not used. There was money enough to subsidizehundreds of journals and pay for thousands of men.But it was in the Bank of France and the Communequaked at the idea of so violently trespassing the rightsof property, and the old Proudhonian, Beslay, had suf-fiicient influence to prevent the seizure of the money,which amounted to almost three billion francs—a mosttremendous sum of money in 1871. All that the Com-mune got was the nine and a half million francs owingto Paris by the Bank of France, and an additional 7,290,-000 francs was secured after much difficulty.

Nevertheless, the provinces had a repugnance forcivil war, and the bourgeois republicans began an agita-tion for the cessation of the attempts to attack Parisand for the recognition of the Republic, after the failureof the Parisian sortie against the Versaillese on April 3.The municipal elections, held on the 30 of April gavethe republicans a majority. Simultaneously, two con-gresses of municipal delegates were held, one at Bor-

43

deaux and the other at Lyons to organize common ac-tion. Thiers gave the order to arrest the delegates andthe two congresses were broken up.

The majority of the country, their delegates not-withstanding, was, however, quite passive concerningthe events in Paris. The peasantry had been poisonedby the lies of Thiers and the country squires. Theyknew that the war between Bonaparte and Prussia hadkilled 30,000 Frenchmen, most of them peasants' sons;thousands were still in the hospitals; the German pris-ons held a quarter of a million men. The peasants weretiring of war and the slaughter of their offspring.

Yet they might have supported a revolutionary Paris,a government which demanded a more energetic waragainst the Prussian, "guerre a Poutrance," war to thebitter end, if such a revolt had succeeded on October 31or on January 22. But March 18 was already after thebeginnings of the peace negotiations, and the peasantssaw in the Commune only a hindrance to the accom-plishment of a peace that would allow their sons toreturn to the plow. And the small towns of Francewhich always enjoyed their municipal franchise lookedwith only passing interest upon the struggle of Parisfor the same rights.

The bourgeois republicans, with their boundless faithin the "protector of the Republic" Thiers, looked witha jaundiced eye upon the disreputable Jacobinism ofrevolutionary Paris. Their shuddering fear of socialism,overweighing even their dislike of the monarchy, limitedtheir defense of Paris to a genial demand for no re-prisals and the achieving of some sort of acceptableagreement.

The weakening defenders of Paris also had to coun-teract the most malicious lies and calumniations whichThiers spread regularly thruout the country and thecontinent. The Parisians are pillaging the treasury;the people await with impatience the moment of theirdelivery from this horror; a dictatorship usurped by

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foreigners who inaugurated their reign by assasination;and scores of similarly unscrupulous slanders worthy ofthe shameless Haunters of their own tawdriness atVersailles. And France believed these frightful canards,after an incessant stream of them had flowed thru theland like bile.

The attempts of numerous conciliators to effect arapprochement between the Versaillese and the Pari-sians were invariably met with the refusal of Thiers.In the national assembly, the reading by Brunet of hisproposals for conciliation were met by wild interrup-tions: "We do not treat with brigands," cried themarquis de Dampierre. Delegations of all kinds weremet with the same reply: Let Paris lay down its armsand the military movement will cease. Let the assas-sins be given up and there will be no reprisals againstthe people.

It was only, therefore, by a strong military forcethat the Commune could hope to establish itself, to holdits own against the bloodthirsty Rurals and the cunningThiers who were planning the massacre of Paris. Many

f days had already been lost, decisive days. Thiers, with-out an army, had declared: "Come what may, I will notsend an army to Paris." Before the municipal elec-tions, the results of which gave the lie to the Assembly'sboast of representativeness, Thiers again spoke: "There

t exists no consipracy against the Republic but that ofParis, which compels us to shed French blood. . . .Let those impious arms fall from the hands which holdthem, and chastisement will be arrested at once by anact of peace excluding only the small number ofcriminals."

Bismarck, in the meantime, became impatient. Onthe 10 of May the treaty of peace was signed by Thiersand Jules Favre. It provided for the continued occupa-tion of Parisian forts until "order" had been established.And so that this "order" might be swiftly consummated,the Prussian agreed to release the tens of thousands of

45

captives for Thiers to use in the suppression of Paris,and even offered the use of his own troops. The pay-ment of the first installment of the indemnity was madedependent upon the victory of Thiers over Paris. TheAssembly ratified the treaty of peace on the 18, andon the same day Thiers was still able to say to a groupof delegates who sought conciliation: "Whenever theinsurgents will make up their minds for capitulation,the gates of Paris shall be flung wide open during a fweek for all except the murderers of Generals Clement "0Thomas and Lecomte." *

It was only on the day when victory was assured thattfiis repelling scoundrel shouted triumphantly to theAssembly that he would enter Paris, with the laws inhis hands, and demand a full expiation of the wretcheswho had sacrificed the lives of soldiers and destroyedpublic monuments. "I shall be pitiless," the wretch an-nounced. With the aid of Bismarck he had rebuilt hisarmy, fed and clothed it well, prevented it from cominginto contact with the people and skilfully incited it withhis fabrications against the revolutionary Commune.The troops that invaded Paris after the Commune werenot the troops who fraternized with the National Guard!And it was the naive idea of the Parisians that anyconflict with the Versaillese troops would be a repeti-tion of March 18 that accounts for a considerable partof their optimistic feelings.

While Thiers prepared his forces, nurtured them andtrained them, the Commune ran headlessly from oneremedy to another. Eudes, the delegate of war, Duval,in charge of the police, and Bergeret of the NationalGuard were the military power at the outset. Only onthe 2 of April did any serious military encounter takeplace. The Versaillese troops attacked a detachmentled by Bergeret, chased them to the bridge of Neuilly,murdered the prisoners they took, and departed in goo^order.

Paris immediately took up the cry: To Versailles!

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March on the Versaallese! Troops assembled spon-taneously, filled with enthusiasm and at three in themorning of April 3rd, the march began. Bergeret and

'Plourens, with 15,000 men were to attack Versaillesfrom the north; Eudes, with 10,000 men was to advanceby Chaville and Viroflay and Duval, with 3,000 men,by Chatillon and Villacoublay. The troops of Bergeretand Flourens were obliged to pass beneath the cannonof Mont Valerien, the fort which Lullier's drunken in-compentence had failed to take. The Communardsdid not believe that they would be fired upon: theythought that these were men of March 18.

But the thunder of the firing from the parapets ofthe fort awakened them in horror and surprise. Theremains of the Federals managed to reach Rueil, wherethe enemy had massed itself, and in a short combatthe Communards fled to Paris. Eudes was forced tobeat a retreat from the woods of Clamart. Duval,after a spirited defense of the plateau of Chatillon fora whole day, was surrounded and taken prisoner. Pariswas stunned. The failure of April 3 changed the entiremilitary basis of Paris from the offensive, which theyno longer dared risk, to the defensive.

For four weeks after the fiasco of the 3, Cluseretwas given the command of the Parisian forces. Witha mysterious reputation behind him—with Garibaldiin Italy, a general during the American Civil War, aFenian conspirator in Ireland—he began to destroy theremaining strength of the Commune. The organizationof the army, its division, and provisionment were com-pletely neglected. Confusion was made worse con-founded when the Central Committee began to inter-fere in the conduct of the military operations.

On the sixth of April, the Communards lost Courbe-voise and then the bridge of Neuvilly. On the ninth,Dombrowski repaired the defeat by taking Asnieresand the Chateau de Becon, and then, deprived of rein-forcements both of them were evacuated. On the 30

47

of the month, the fort of Issy, which had been strenu-ously defended, was evacuated by the greater part ofits garrison—and Issy was a strategic point in thedefense of Paris.

The Parisians were in a turmoil and demandedsevere action. On his return from the fort, Cluseret,the eternal adventurer, the American-taught fraud, wasarrested and placed in the prison of Mazas. Not onlyhad he lost for the Commune the" defensive points onthe outside of the city, but the internal defense hadbeen completely neglected. A young officer, colonelRossel, was given the delegateship of war and heproceeded immediately to organize the remnants ofthe defense.

In the place of the incompetent Cluseret was nowplaced this young officer. Unfortunately for the Com-mune he was not a revolutionary. He had placed hisservices at its command because of the refusal ofrevolutionary Paris to hand itself over to shamefuldefeat by the Prussian armies. On the 20 of March,Rossel, who had revolted against Bazaine for his sur-render at Metz, wrote to the minister of war that heplaced himself without hesitation upon the side of theparty "which has not signed the peace and which doesnot count in its ranks generals guilty of capitulation."

Rossel, with the aim of establishing himself as thesavior and natural dictator of Paris, immediatelyturned to the disciplining and organization of theforces. Quite energetically he divided the Communardarmy into precise and mobile sections, organized themunitions and provisionment. In a short time heassumed the pose of a "friend of the people" so thatinstead of a vain Cluseret the Commune was cursedwith a sly and ambitious Rossel, a warrior who soughtthe toga of the politician.

The carrying out of his plans for the constructionof a second fortification within Paris, with three cita-dels—Montmartre, the Trocadero and the Pantheon—

48

he entrusted to Gaillard, a well known orator, withthe hope of ingratiating himself with the revolution-aries. The result of his plan was the construction ofa scenic barricade at the entrance to the rue de Rivoli,quite a formidable one it is true, but one which wasnever used except in the street fighting during the lastdays of the Commune.

But the cannon of the Versaillese continued to roarat the gates of Paris, despite the energetic Rossel. Onthe 3 and 4 of May, the Federals suffered severe losseson the redoubt of Moulin-Saquet. Against the fort ofIssy the Versaillese suddenly uncovered 70 pieces ofartillery, which battered it down so sucessfully thaton the 9 it was captured.

The ten day regime of Rossel came to an end. Ina desperate attempt to lead a coup d'Etat against theCommune by taking advantage of the military defeats,he completed his own ruin and marked another unfor-tunate page in the too tolerant history of the revolu-tion. He asked for a cell in Mazas—a last momentgesture—and then fled with the aid of the memberof the Commune who had been charged with guardinghim, Gerardin.

The committee of public safety which followed soonearned its recall. The defense of the city was putinto the hands of a civilian, Charles Delescluze. Butwhere Cluseret and Rossel had not been obeyed, Dele-scluze's orders were as little heeded. Disorder stillreigned in the ranks. Of the 1740 pieces of artillerythat the Commune had at its disposal not more than320 were ever used, and only the indubitable valor andbravery of the Communard soldiers made up in partfor the constant shortage of cannon. The soldierssimply did not realize the essential necessity of dis-cipline. Tales quotes an agent of the Commune whocomplained bitterly about the state of the army:

"It is to the bad state of discipline in our advancepost that we must attribute all the unfortunate sur-

49

prises which we have suffered until now, and of whichthat of the Moulin-Saquet was the most grave and themost deathly."

To the aid of Delescluze in his difficult task camethe Pole Dombrowski: an old officer of the Russianarmy, an insurgent in Poland, a revolutionary interna-tionalist, calumniated by the Versaillese, a man whosemilitary ability made him the object of an attempt atbribery by Thiers. But it was no longer a question ofhonest or capable generals. The army of the Com-mune had been so disorganized that it was now onlya matter of a struggle for the 'preservation of life.

After Issy came the fall of Vanves, with displaysof such desperate heroism that the Communards re-took Vanves at the point of the bayonet on one dayonly to lose it forever on the 13 and 14 of May. Onthe next day the entire village of Issy fell to theVersaillese. Five days later, the troops of Thiersopened up fire with a powerful battery of 300 piecesand slowly the walls of the town began to crumble.Only ruins covered the southwest entrance to Paris.The enemy prepared for the decisive stroke.

On May 22 a spy named Ducatel, seeing the gateof Saint Cloud undefended, signalled to the Versaillesetroops who watched from their trenches. Beginningwith the afternoon the huge army of Versaillese filteredinto Paris, the army which already outnumbered theforces of the Communards by ten to one.

On the evening of the 21, Billioray of the old Cen-tral Committee, rushed in to the sessions of the Com-mune and tremblingly read a paper announcing theentry of the Versaillese by the gates of the south-west. Tumultusly, the session was adjourned. It wasthe last session of the Assembly of the Paris Com-mune. Together with it fell the tragic second Com-mittee of Public Safety.

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Golgotha

*'4'

"We are honest gentlemen;it is by ordinary laws thatjustice will be done. We willhave recourse to nothing butthe law." Thiers to the Na-tional Assembly, May 22, 1871.

With its last breath, facing extinction, the Com-munards fought like the most courageous of heroes.Delescluze, abdicating his authority as commander,called for revolutionary war by the people, war withnaked arms, war on the barricades. There was nolonger even a pretense at a strategic retreat, anorganized defensive. It was every man for himselfand only the natural tendencies of crowds united littlegroups of men to struggle in their various sections.Debouching everywhere the Versaillese gained ground,foot by foot, every hour. On the 22, La Muette wastaken, then the Trocadero; a bloc of Federal artillerywas taken in the capture of the Military School.

The Communards now made a desperate attempt torally against the enemy. At the first sign of the end,the cowards, with Felix Pyat at their head, removedtheir red sashes and fled. Dombrowski, Delescluze,Varlin, Rigault, Ferre and a few others made anattempt to organize the defense but it was hopeless.For a few days the tigerish heroism of the defenders,outnumbered as they were, even checked the enemy.Scenes of unknown setf-sacrifice and noble couragewere hourly occurences. The Comunards died with theMarseillaise on their lips and the shout "Pour lasolidarite humaine!" Dombrowski, realizing the endand saddened by the suspicions cast upon him, exposedhimself to the fire of the enemy and was riddled byballs in the rue Myrrha.

One after another: Montmartre, the historic battle-ground of the revolution was taken by 30,000 men be-cause the Commune had failed to send reinforcements

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and munitions; the cemetery of Montparnasse wasoccupied and the Federals were being flanked on everyside, driven to A corner. Raoul Rigault was foundlifeless in a street. Ferre, the Blanquist chief of police,saw to the shooting of the spy Veysett, and gave £heorder for the killing of the hostages—after the Com-munards, maddened by the savage slaughters of Thiers,demanded reprisals.

Delescluze, who had been sent in an attempt tosecure some sort of mediation between Paris andVersailles, thru the good offices of the secretary to theAmerican ambassador, was prevented from leaving thecity by the guard at the gate. The shame of beingsuspect was too much for him: "I do not want to liveany more, all is ended for me," he repeated. Heinarched to the barricades of the Chateau-d'Eau andwithout looking back, faced the Versaillese with onlya cane. The austere and noble old Jacobin fell deadwith fratricidal bullets.

The Commune now suffered its death pangs. Theleonine struggles on the barricades were of little avail.The Versaillese pressed forward. On Sunday, May 28,the last barricade was taken. At noon, the last can-non of the Communards was fired. The next day asmall squadron s-eized the outlying fort of Vincennes,shot the Communard officers against the wall, pulledthe red flag from the mast and ran up the tricolor ofthe republic of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity. . . .

But the monstrous scoundrel Thiers had not finished.It was necessary to thoroly purge Paris of subversivenotions, to drown its revolutionary spirit in a bath ofits own blood; a massacre was an essential prerequisitefor the achievement of year-long tranquillity. So therefollowed the bloody week of May, the most frightfulslaughter, the most cold-blooded murder of men sincethe days of the Byzantine Empire. To the scoundrellypatriots of Thiers' mold, the Communards were far

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_k

more detestable than the Prussians; indeed, it wasonly with the aid of the Prussians that they managedto conquer Paris. The party of "order" was in power.

"Pitiless murder!" With this order were the Com-munards exterminated. Those found with black markson their fingers, indications of having used gun powder,or those who still wore a bit of National Guard uniformwere shot in their tracks. Three hundred Federalrefugees were shot in the Madeleine. At the squareof the Pantheon hundreds of Federals were massacred.Huge heaps of corpses were piled against every wallin the city. The wounded and the medical corps equal-ly were killed by the bloodthirsty troops, despite theconcord of the International Convention at Geneva.

Members of the Commune were avidly hunted likedogs, and even Free Masons were murdered on sight.Varlin, one of the most capable figures in the Com-mune was cruelly assassinated. The Versailles presswould announce the execution of Cluseret, Valles, Fer-re, Lonquet, Gambon, Lefrancais: and all of them wereliving! Unfortunates, who could not prove their iden-tity were killed in their places.

Moderates, republicans, men who had never parti-cipated in the Commune but whose staunch republicanideas made them suspect were done to death. Mil-liere, the deputy to the National Assembly, was forcedto his knees in the Pantheon and shot; the doctorTony Moilin suffered the same fate. The presence offoreigners in official posts in the Commune gave riseto' a hunt against all strangers: Poles, Hungarians,Italians, Hollanders and Germans were shot almost onsight. Neither women nor children were spared:"They are probably Communards anyway."

Anonymous denunciations were sufficient in mostcases for the seizure and death of a Parisian, andthousands died in this manner. The fable of thepetroleuses, women oil thowers who were alleged tohave set fire to buildings, brought about the death of

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scores. Thousands were tried before drum-head courtmartials which devoted only a second to each indi-vidual. Those who were sent to Versailles for retrialhad to pass thru a gate guarded by the Marquis deGallifet. This horrible butcher stood there and selec-ted haphazardly hundreds of men and women out ofthe purest whim, and murdered them against the wall.

"To find a parallel for the conduct of Thiers andhis bloodhounds we must go back to the times of Sullaand the two triumvirates of Rome," wrote Marx.Where rifles failed to slaughter the hundreds of victimswho were driven to death like droves of cattle, themiltarilleuses were substituted. Huge graves, yardswide and deep, were dug for the murdered Parisiansand they were flung in like so much dirt. The has-tiness with which they were buried brought horriblenightmares to those who passed by or lived near thesemass graves. At night a still living arm wrould bethrust out of the ground, or a leg which still wore theuniform of the National Guard. In the butchery manyof the wounded had been buried alive! Unearthlygroans and heavings issuing from the ground, madeParisian life a ghastly nightmare. Bodies rotted inthe bleak rooms of the proletariat, awaiting a hastyinternment.

Every family in Paris gave at least one sacrifice tothe cause of the Commune. The insatiable sadism ofthe bourgeois hyenas spattered every wall of Pariswith the stain of noble proletarian blood. The riversof Paris ran red with blood, a constant broad streamstaining its course for days during the Semaine Sang-lant. A new amusement afforded the degenerates ofParis: ..La peche au federe, which consisted in bettingon the amount of Federals' corpses that would floatunder a bridge in a given time.

Gallifet, "the kept man of his wife, so notoriousfor her shameless exhibitions at the orgies of theSecond Empire," was the most frightful monster of

54

them all. He would gather hundreds of suspects intoa closely huddled mass and choose his victims; according to a report of a bourgeois contemporary journal.

". . . A mounted officer pointed out to General Gal-lifet a man and a woman for some particular offense.The woman, rushing- out of the ranks threw herself onher knees, and with outstretched arms, protested herinnocense in passionate terms. The General waited fora pause, and then with the most impassable face andunmoved demeanor said: 'Madame, I have visited everytheatre in Paris, your acting- will have no effect on me'.. . . It was not a good thing- on that day to be notice-ably taller, dirtier, cleaner, older, or uglier than one'sneighbors. One individual in particular struck me asprobably owing his speedy release from the ills of thisworld to his having a broken nose. . . . Over a hun-dred being thus chosen, a firing party told off, and thecolumn resumed its march, leaving them behind. A fewminutes afterwards a drooping fire in our rear com-menced, and continued for over a quarter of 'an hour.It was the execution of these summarily-convictedwretches." *

Not all died the death of heroes. Some boughttheir worthless hides with their own shame. At thetrials Urbain, who proposed the decree on hostages,grovelled before the court and denounced the "crimesof the Commune." Jourde, the delegate for Finances,servilely apologized for the relations of the Communewith the Bank of France. Rastoul announced that hisprotest against the Commune's murders and crimesexceeded that of the Versaillese. Courbet, the painterof delicate pastorals, declared that he had voted forthe demolition of the Vendome column only on aestheticgrounds (!) and repudiated the work of the Commune.The shameless drunkard Lullier, the first Communardgeneral, boasted that he was in the pay of Versailles.

* Quoted by Luci^n Sanial from the London Daily Newsof June 8, 1871.

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But the best of the Communards, as tho with deliberatethrusts as these fawning cravens, shouted on the gal-lows: "Vive la Commune!"

Estimates vary as to the number that were mur-dered by the Versaillese after the fall of the Commune.Beyond a doubt, however, there were between twentyand thirty thousand slaughtered. Hundreds wereexiled to bleak islands on the African coast. In allthe Commune suffered at the hands of the reactionariesa loss of some 100,000 of the flower of the Parisianproletariat. The Commune paid with seas of bloodfor its historic and audacious attempt to establish thefirst revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat, toemancipate the slave from the yoke.

". . . We shall remember June and October, andwe too shall cry: Vae Victis! The fruitless butcheriessince the June and October days, the wearisome sacri-ficial feast since February and March, the cannibalismof the counterrevolution will in itself convince the peo-ples that there is only one means of shortening, simpli-fying1 and concentrating the torturing death agonies ofthe old society, the bloody birth pangs of the new so-ciety, only one means—revolutionary terrorism."*

Thus wrote Marx on the aftermath of the revolu-tionary uprisings of 1848. The historic Wall of theFederals, around which more than ten thousand Fed-erals and Communards were slaughtered by the miltrail-leuses of Thiers, bears mute testimony to the failureof the Commune to make full, iron use of the powerwhich it had in its hands. It remained for the BloodyWeek of the hideous Thiers to write the costly lessonlarge in letters of blood in the primers of the Frenchworking class and the workers of the world.

Aftermath: The Fall of the InternationalMarx, as has already been noted, had opposed the

* Der Fall Wiens, von Karl Marx, Aus dem literarischeiiNachlass, von Karl Marx und Friedrich Engels, vol. Ill,p. 199.

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setting up of the Commune, believing rather that theworkers should use the relative freedom which theThird Republic afforded them to build up a mightyorganization which in time would be able successfullyto develop a proletarian revolution and hold it againstall enemies. But when the workers rose in their armedmight and fought to seize power Marx did not, likea pedant would, aid the enemy by an aloof chastise-ment or deprecating references to the untimeliness orincorrectness of the uprising. On the contrary he sum-moned all the genius at his command to aid them and

, threw the weight of his virile pen and the forces ofthe First International into an enthusiastic defense ofthe Commune.

". . . What elasticity, what historical initiative,what capabilities of self-sacrifice there are in theseParisians!" he wrote to Kugelmann immediately afterthe uprising. "After six months of starvation and de-struction by internal treason even more than by theexternal enemy, they rise, under Prussian bayonets astho no war existed between France and Germany andthe enemy did not stand before the doors of Paris!History has no similar example of such greatness!. . . The present uprising- . . . is the most glori-ous deed of our Party since the June insurrection." *

The real extent of his influence on the life of theCommune is not fully known. It is known from a letterby Marx to Professor Beesly that he was in fairlyregular communication with the Communards. On theday after the signing of the Bismarck-dictated peacetreaty with Favre and Pouyer-Quertier, he already in-formed the Communards of the facts. Thru an oldfriend, one Sigismund Borkheim, a successful winemerchant whose business called him constantly fortrips from London to Paris, he kept in touch with therevolutionaries, and received his information on thetreaty thru the right hand man of Bismarck, Lothar

* Brief an Kugelmann, April 12, 1871, p. 86.

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Bucher! Marx, who had a hold on Bucher because ofthe latter's former connection with the German revolu-tionaries, was able to inform the Communards of theagreement reached whereby the first installment of thewar indemnity was to be paid to Bismarck only afterthe victory of Thiers over the Parisians.

And when the Commune fell, it was not only a blowto Marx but also a death-thrust to the International.Jules Favre, the minister for foreign affairs of theVersaillese, called upon all the governments of Europeto suppress the International. Later the Spanish for-eign minister followed suit and also pleaded for thehounding to death of the First International. TheInternational was pointed to by all as the "insidiousand secret organization" which brought about the revo-lution.

". . . You know," wrote Marx to his friend Kug~el-man, "that during the whole period of the ParisianPwevolution I was constantly denounced by the Versail-les sheets . . . and par repercussion by the journalshere as the 'grand chef de I ' ln te rna t iona le ' . The ad-dress (on the Civil War in France) . . . made a stirlike the devil and I have the honor at the moment tobe the best calumniated and most menaced man of Lon-don. . . . The government sheet—the 'Observer'—threatens me with legal prosecution. Let them dare!I scoff at these canailles!" *

The knell of the International had sounded, how-ever, and its demise was hastened by the bitter strug-gle that now developed with dagger-sharpness betweenthe Marxists and the followers of the anarchist Bakunin.The German Eisenachers began to move away from theInternational and consider themselves as a partywithin the borders of the German empire. In France,Thiers and Jules Favre passed an exception law againstthe International, and the factional strife which de-veloped in the ranks of the Communard emigres in

Brief an Kugelmann, June 18, 1871, p. 88.

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London, some of whom Marx drew into the GeneralCouncil, did not considerably strengthen its influence.In Italy the strongest section of the International wassuppressed and the movement fell under the influenceof the Mazzinians. In Spain the Federal Council wasforced to flee from persecution to Portugal.

In England, Odger and Lucraft, trade union leaderswho had been with the International from its incep-tion, used the publication of the Marxian address outhe Paris Commune, as an excuse for withdrawal. Theyhad made use of the International to insure their strug-gle for electoral rights and were now flirting with theLiberals. Marx had commented on these intrigueswith the Liberals and bitterly denounced the departingBritishers as deserters who had sold themselves tothe ministry for a mess of pottage in the form of afew laws that were passed which apparently gavegreater liberties and rights to the unions only to ensurea deletion of any radical tendencies.

The London Conference of the International in 1871.from which a number of countries were absent, wasdominated completely by the Marxists. But the Bakun-inists were by no means crushed. They continued tobuild up their secret Alliance of the Socialist Democ-racy. Bakunin demanded that the International be amirror of the future of the anarchist society by abolish-ing all centralization and authoritarianism. Marx cor-rectly insisted upon a centralized revolutionary inter-national. The two factions of the dying Internationalbegan to work fevereshly for the capture of the comingCongress at the Hague, on September 2, 1872.

At the Hague the Marxists had a majority of thedelegates. The Bakuninists—Bakunin was not presentand Guillaume led the fight—accused Marx of havingpacked the Congress with falselyt-credentialled del-egates; and there is but little doubt that many of thedelegates might under ordinary circumstances havehad a more justified origin. A little more than a

59

month before the Congress Marx wrote to Kugelmann:"At the International Congress (Hague, opening Sep-

tember 2) it will be a question of life or death of theInternational, and before I step out, I want at least tosecure it against the disintegrating elements. Germanymust then have as many representatives as possible. Ifhowever, 3rou will come, write to Hepner that I beg himto provide you with a credential as delegate.

"Your, Karl Marx." *A similar letter was written to Sorge in America.

Marx came to the Congress with a credential fromNew York, and one each from Leipzig and Mainz;Engels received a credential from Breslau and NewYork. Hepner, of 'the Leipziger Volksstaat, was creden-tialled from New York; the Berliner, Friedlander, wasa delegate from Zurich. For three days the Congresswas taken up with the discussion of credentials and itwas only on the fourth that they were able to get totheir agenda.

The main aim of Marx was accomplished. TheBakuninist Alliance was roundly condemned andBakunin himself, together with Guillaume and Schwitz-guebel were forthwith expelled. The principle ofpolitical action was reaffirmed. The headquarters ofthe International were moved to New York.

In America a few more conferences were held be-fore the International was officially declared dead; inEurope the anarchists followed suit and dwindled downto next to nothing. The fall of the Commune, the bit-ter internal struggles, the coming to a close of arevolutionary period in Europe and the entry of thelabor movement into a "peaceful" stage of develop-ment, brought the great first International to an end.

The Heritage of the CommuneThe Commune is written large in the history of

the working class of the world. It was the first great

* Brief an Kugelmann, July 29, 1872, p. 91.

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•""•"̂

attempt of the proletariat of a nation to establish therule of the working class thru the dictatorship of theproletariat, accompanied by weak, unclear efforts toadapt to this overthrow of bourgeois domination a newsocial order.

The weaknesses, shortcomings, hesitance, lack ofclarity and insufficiencies of the Commune have beenpointed out. The lessons to be learned from its ex-perience must be studied by the struggling workingclass of the world.

The main source of the weakness of the Communecan be traced to the absence of a determined, consciousrevolutionary party wfcich would have given it direc-tion, firmness and decision.

"If in September, 1870, there had been found at thehead of the proletariat of France the centralized partyof revolutionary action," writes Trotsky, "the entirehistory of France and with it the entire history ofHumanity would have taken another direction. If onthe 18 of March power was found in the hands of theproletariat of Paris it was not .because they had con-sciously seized it, but because their enemies had quitParis."

Without a revolutionary proletarian party, withoutsuch an instrument the Paris Commune could not, de-spite the unparalleled heroism and th,e self-sacrifice ofits noble defenders, maintain itself. With a rulingbody in which almost every delegate represented adifferent viewpoint, in which there did not reign adominating single clear idea, it was natural that theresults would prove fatal to the uprising. Even thevague viewpoint which united its two leading groupswas shattered by the concrete experiences which theyunderwent. The Proudhonians found their doctrinairehatred for association of labor and industry confrontedby their own decrees in the Commune which aimedat the organization of great industries and the feder-ation of the workers in every factory into one great

61

association. The Blanquists, the cloctrinaries of highly -pitched dictatorial centralism, failed to follow outeven their own theories and neglected completely thecentralization of the political and military apparatus,as well as the agitation in the provinces for the unityof revolutionary Communes thruout the land.

The Communards made the error of failing to usethe power which had fallen into their hands to con-solidate the rule of the working class and completethe ruin of the bourgeoisie. The failure to push theattack upon the Versailles© and spread the hegemonyof the revolutionary proletariat thruout the countrywas a fatal blow to the uprising. Their refusal topush forward determinedly Jthe work of expropriatingthe expropriators, taking over the economic life andsubstance of the city was another source of weakness.

The feebleness of their attempts to put hands onthe Bank of France, which as Engels says was worthten thousand hostages, was an indication of this gravefault- This point was only a sharp indication of thefailure of the bommunards to take even a thousandthpart of the advantages of power to suppress with aniron hand the enemy, that the Versaillese took.

The history of Bloody Week ;s a bitter lessonlearned by the proletariat, a lesson which means un-relenting struggle against an unscrupulous enemy, theutilization of all the instruments and means of prole-tarian power for the extermination of the brutal vam-pire of the ruling class.

The difficulty of an insufficiently developed workingclass, the lack of a political party of clear principles,tactics and experience, and the absence of highly de-veloped industry, might have been overcome by theCommune had it not been forced to assume the defen-sive on the military field from the beginning. Itsnatural anxiety for defense from extermination by theVersaillese made it, to put it mildly, difficult to beginvery much economic work. The steps it took despite

62

these difficulties already gave an indication as to thereal socialist nature of its economic measures and quitesafe predictions can be made as to the developmenttowards a socialist economy that might have resultedthru the military victory of the Comunards over Thiers.

The Commune, slandered and calumniated by thebourgeoisie for decades, is the property of the revolu-tionary working class today, in the Communist move-ment where its spirit is embodied. The Commune

.lives in even more heroic form, in broader lines, withmore power and greater clarity of purpose in the revo-lution of the Russian workers and peasants. Theexistence of the revolutionary movement of the work-ing class today, honoring the great Paris Communeand carefully learning from its experience, the existenceof the first working class republic in Russia is thevindication which history and the working class haverendered the heroic efforts of the Parisian workingmen.

The working class of Russia has long ago learnedthe lesson of the Paris Commune. Painstaking!}' theybuilt up their iron regiments into a mighty Bolshevikparty, armed with the sharp weapons of Marxism, anddominated by the irrestisible will to power which ledthe first successful proletarian revolution in the world. "The revolutionaries of Russia knew that the chiefsource of success in the uprising for liberty was aconscious group, a party of the vanguard of the work-ing class which would be able to give leadership anddirection to the struggle, the lack of which was the -evil genius of the Commune.

And the Communist movement of the world today,learning equally the lessons of the Commune and of thethree revolutions in Russia; of the revolutions anduprisings in Germany, Hungary, Bulgaria, Italy andFinland, is preparing for the revolution by buildingup more strongly every day the fighting parties ofCommunism, steeled in every struggle.

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"Working-men's Paris," wrote Marx in his brilliantCivil War in France, "with its Commune, will be for-ever celebrated as the glorious harbinger of a newsociety. Its martyrs are enshrined in the great heartof the working class. Its exterminators history has al-ready nailed to that eternal pillory from which all theprayers of their priests will not avail to redeem them."

It is the admirable and fitting eulogy to the imme-morable action of the Paris workers. The celebrationof the Commune is the celebration of the approachingvictory of the most oppressed class in history. Thelessons of the Commune are being slowly learned bythe workers. In its lofty spirit of heroism the revolu-tion of today finds new inspiration and courage anddetermination.

"The cause of the Commune is the cause of thesocial revolution," said the greatest Communard of alltimes, Lenin, "of the complete political and economicliberation of the working class, the cause of the prole-tariat of the entire world. And in this sense it isimmortal."

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• Ite- .fittteMfibrarrNUMBERS NOW READY:

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No. 3.—PRINCIPLES OF COMMUNISM.By Frederick Engels—Translation by MaxBedacht.

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