The first proletariat dictatorship

Paris Commune 150

Author: Karl Marx, V I Lenin, Bertolt Brecht, Tings Chak, Vijay Prashad

Publisher: LeftWord Books

Pages: 108

Price: Rs 195

The late 1920s and 1930s saw Indian communists organising themselves into a party; they later lived in small “communes” in places like Bombay for example. The establishment of communes across the Soviet Union and China had historically established the idea of living in large communes, where resources were supposed to be owned and managed by the community. For generations, this has emerged as the only effective alternative design of socio-economic and cultural life to the one brought about by capitalism in modern times, where resources are owned by individuals and others work on/in them as labour. The Paris Commune of 1871, established by the workers of Paris, was maintained for 71 days against heavy odds, including the fact that the French National Guard was ready to crush it at any moment and the Prussian army, having defeated the French Imperial army, was waiting to do the same with the tacit support of the French political class. The Paris Commune provided the most significant historical example, for Marx at the time and also for latter-day revolutionaries, as the most effective working model of a communist order.

In this slim and well-produced book, the legendary essays of Karl Marx and Lenin on the Commune are brought together to celebrate the 150th year of the Commune. Introduced by an American scholar Vijay Prashad, the work has been released along with a group of sister communist organisations across the world. It is testimony to and celebration of courageous human beings who suffered for a cause.

The workers of Paris and the neighbourhood took control over the city and its administration and drove away the National Guards, who had been discredited when the French army lost ignobly to the armies of the Prussian-led North German States. The workers seized the moment and directly elected their representatives and administrators to different posts. The 71 days when they ruled Paris directly, from March 18, 1871 to May 28, 1871, was a rule of contrasts. Different groups of workers brought their novel experiences into play and the Paris Commune also became a site where French labour exhibited its innovative political and administrative understanding, which the Imperial and the successor Third Republic had demonstrably lacked. One of the most memorable events was when artists not only created their organisation but also their own manifesto (included in this volume) declaring their intention of making art more democratic than the way it was leveraged by the ruling powers and capitalist forces as an extension of exploitative relationships.

The workers and the Commune also revealed, even in defeat and crisis, how the ruling classes and the leaders of parliamentary democracy worked for personal limited gains and were in cahoots with the reactionary power centres. The workers also displayed, quite abundantly, that more democratic and egalitarian rule through direct Republican methods was not only possible but also required.

When the communards were killed and the life of the Commune was dashed in 71 days, with thousands mercilessly executed and killed, Karl Marx, wrote his famous tract, brilliantly analysing the context of the rise of the Commune, its achievements and the treachery and collaboration of the forces that sealed its fate. The essay also contained lessons for the future, which Lenin, Marx’s greatest follower and strategist, applied when he led the Bolshevik Revolution.

The Commune also brought out Marx’s own trust in the urban worker, since for him it is industrial labour that was the vanguard of change. This was the idea Lenin took to its fruition when the urban revolutionaries formed his Bolshevik party as the vanguard for revolution. No wonder all reactionary regimes hate urban radicals and try to pre-empt their rise.

One critical element during the Commune was that the workers allowed the Bank of France to operate. This, as Marx had underlined, became its nemesis. As he explained, the French under Adolphe Thiers and Prussians under Otto von Bismarck both needed to crush the Commune to make the French pay compensation for the war, and that payment was to be shouldered by the people. The workers, though they understood the issue, failed to “smash the bank”, allowing the enemies of the Commune to continue business as usual. Lenin, Castro and Mao all recognised the necessity of smashing capitalist institutions such as banks and creating their own financial institutions instead.  

The global financial crisis and the ruthlessness of extractive states today are both a manifestation of the new order characterised by communities increasingly losing control of their own resources, materially and financially, and suffering dehumanising experiences across the world. Any alternative thought to redress such a situation would be enriched by studying the work the French workers did 150 years ago. The Commune remains, despite its short-lived existence, a testimony to the human will to rise against regimes.

The reviewer is with the Centre for Media Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University