"Our interests are the same": the Paris Commune, 1871

20 posts / 0 new

Mon, 2010-12-06 14:23

Catchfire

The question of disbanding the police forces and military has come up occasionally on babble, with varying responses. I thought it might be a good idea to look at a time in history when police forces as such were in fact disbanded with positive effect. I don't know much about the Paris Commune of 1871, but it's probably one of the most positive moments the world has ever seen to an example of socialism at work.

I'm sure there must be some experts on the Commune de Paris here. What do you know?

Quote:
The old French order, the Republic…hah, Liberals, they called themselves…they did not dare come into Paris. They trembled with fear, because with the Germans gone, Paris was taken over by the workers, the housewives, the intellectuals, the clerks, the armed citizens. The people of Paris formed not a government but something more glorious, something that governments everywhere fear: a commune, the collective energy of the People. It was the Commune de Paris!

People were meeting 24 hours a day… everywhere lots of three and four, making decisions together. The city was surrounded by the French Army, threatening to invade it at any moment. Paris became the first free city in the world: the first enclave of Liberty in a world of Tyranny. If you want to know what I mean by the dictatorship of the proleteriat, look at the Commune de Paris… THAT is a true democracy!

Hah, not the democracy of England and America, where elections are circuses, where people are voting for one or another guardian of the old order, where whatever candidate wins, the rich go on ruling the country!”

—Howard Zinn, Marx in Soho

Mon, 2010-12-06 17:20

milo204

wow, that must have been a great time to be alive and living in paris!

Mon, 2010-12-06 17:40

George Victor

Fleeting as it was.

Mon, 2010-12-06 17:44

Papal Bull

When the revolution comes, one must ask oneself if the new status quo will be for society or the select few. Likewise, the status quo is infinitely defensible by the comfortable classes in times of peace - and revolution or true justice becomes considerably more difficult. The status quo can become intolerable, as its defence in times of war and strife can affect and disenfranchise even the comfortable classes. That is when the revolution is most likely, the old 'strike when the iron is hot' idea. However, that is when one must ask oneself of the revolution...will the new order be just?

I dunno, I was reading about Nestor Makhno and the left-wing resistance to the rising Bolshevik control of all the areas of the former Russian Empire and that thought kinda came up

Mon, 2010-12-06 22:04

N.Beltov

The Paris Commune, and not the revolutionary Bolshevik regime, was the first working class government in history. From it, Karl Marx made a number of significant generalizations about the characteristics of such regimes. Perhaps the most significant of those generalizations was that the workers can't simply "take over" the capitalist/bourgeois state and turn it to more democratic uses for the benefit of a wider citizenry than the capitalist overlords. The old state, said Marx, has to be broken/smashed and replaced by a new one.

Having noted that, I've recently read a book by Michael Lebowitz (The Socialist Alternative) in which the author outlines all sorts of "transitional" forms of state between capitalism and socialism. His arguments seem to suggest that things may not be as black and white as Marx laid out; of course, the devil is in the details.

Mon, 2010-12-06 22:25

Le T

Let us not pretend that "the proleteriat" is a mass. Hasn't that kind of "hegemony of hegemony" (Richard Day's term) shown itself to be thoroughly counter-revolutionary?

ps- the revolution already started, why aren't you fighting yet?

Mon, 2010-12-06 23:26

N.Beltov

Whatever OTHER wrong-headed analysis they undertook, the Paris Commune was so significant to Soviet era historians that they separated the historical periods based on those events. You have "before the Commune" and "after the Commune" in wc history in their view. All historical working class and/or genuinely socialist regimes are worth looking at and learning from.

The enemies of post-capitalist societies have learned from their defeats. It just seems common sense that those who support some sort of post-capitalist society should learn from their defeats as well. After all, if the current market idolatry, neo liberal fundamentalism, and capitalist indifference to the long term well-being of the environment is leading humanity to the precipice, then it's clearly the duty of those who support an alternative to work things out.

Tue, 2010-12-07 12:43

Snert

Well, the awesomeness of the Paris Commune was awesome and all, but what did they do with regard to keeping order? Were they even around long enough to require some kind of alternative to a police force, and if so, what was it?

Tue, 2010-12-07 13:25

RosaL

Le T wrote:

Let us not pretend that "the proleteriat" is a mass. Hasn't that kind of "hegemony of hegemony" (Richard Day's term) shown itself to be thoroughly counter-revolutionary?

There are people who understand some of these matters differently.

Tue, 2010-12-07 13:29

#10

Catchfire

Snert wrote:
Well, the awesomeness of the Paris Commune was awesome and all, but what did they do with regard to keeping order? Were they even around long enough to require some kind of alternative to a police force, and if so, what was it?

Quote:

Instead of continuing to be the agent of the Central Government, the police was at once stripped of its political attributes, and turned into the responsible, and at all times revocable, agent of the Commune. So were the officials of all other branches of the administration. From the members of the Commune downwards, the public service had to be done at workman’s wage. The vested interests and the representation allowances of the high dignitaries of state disappeared along with the high dignitaries themselves. Public functions ceased to be the private property of the tools of the Central Government. Not only municipal administration, but the whole initiative hitherto exercised by the state was laid into the hands of the Commune.

Having once got rid of the standing army and the police – the physical force elements of the old government – the Commune was anxious to break the spiritual force of repression, the “parson-power", by the disestablishment and disendowment of all churches as proprietary bodies. The priests were sent back to the recesses of private life, there to feed upon the alms of the faithful in imitation of their predecessors, the apostles.

The whole of the educational institutions were opened to the people gratuitously, and at the same time cleared of all interference of church and state. Thus, not only was education made accessible to all, but science itself freed from the fetters which class prejudice and governmental force had imposed upon it.

The judicial functionaries were to be divested of that sham independence which had but served to mask their abject subserviency to all succeeding governments to which, in turn, they had taken, and broken, the oaths of allegiance. Like the rest of public servants, magistrates and judges were to be elective, responsible, and revocable.

[...]

Wonderful, indeed, was the change the Commune had wrought in Paris! No longer any trace of the meretricious Paris of the Second Empire! No longer was Paris the rendezvous of British landlords, Irish absentees, American ex-slaveholders and shoddy men, Russian ex-serfowners, and Wallachian boyards. No more corpses at the morgue, no nocturnal burglaries, scarcely any robberies; in fact, for the first time since the days of February 1848, the streets of Paris were safe, and that without any police of any kind.

“We,” said a member of the Commune, “hear no longer of assassination, theft, and personal assault; it seems indeed as if the police had dragged along with it to Versailles all its Conservative friends.”

Karl Marx – The Paris Commune

Tue, 2010-12-07 13:35

#11

Catchfire

Quote:

"I do not wish to defend myself, I do not wish to be defended. I belong completely to the social responsibility for all my actions. I accept it completely and without reservations. I wished to oppose the invader from Versailles with a barrier of flames. I had no accomplices in this action. I acted on my own initiative.

I am told that I am an accomplice of the Commune. Certainly, yes, since the Commune wanted more than anything else the social revolution, and since the social revolution is the dearest of my desires . . . the Commune, which by the way had nothing to do with murders and arson.

. . . since it seems that any heart which beats for freedom has the right only to a lump of lead, I too claim my share. If you let me live, I shall never stop crying for revenge and l shall avenge my brothers. I have finished. If you are not cowards, kill me!"

Louise Michel, anarchiste

Tue, 2010-12-07 15:51

#12

Snert

Quote:

"We," said a member of the Commune, "hear no longer of assassination, theft, and personal assault; it seems indeed as if the police had dragged along with it to Versailles all its Conservative friends."

How long did this last? Not to be unduly skeptical, but not all crime (maybe not even most) is the result of poverty or the state. Jealous men stopped being jealous men in Paris? Everyone was simply satisfied to have what everyone else had in Paris?

Tue, 2010-12-07 15:59

#13

Catchfire

Sadly, Snert. We'll never know how long it would have lasted. From Wikipedia:

Quote:
Marshal MacMahon issued a proclamation: "To the inhabitants of Paris. The French army has come to save you. Paris is freed! At 4 o'clock our soldiers took the last insurgent position. Today the fight is over. Order, work and security will be reborn."

Reprisals now began in earnest. Having supported the Commune in any way was a political crime, of which thousands could be, and were, accused. Some of the Communards were shot against what is now known as the Communards' Wall in the Père Lachaise Cemetery while thousands of others were tried by summary courts martial of doubtful legality, and thousands shot. Notorious sites of slaughter were the Luxembourg Gardens and the Lobau Barracks, behind the Hôtel de Ville. Nearly 40,000 others were marched to Versailles for trials. For many days endless columns of men, women and children made a painful way under military escort to temporary prison quarters in Versailles. Later 12,500 were tried, and about 10,000 were found guilty: 23 men were executed; many were condemned to prison; 4,000 were deported for life to New Caledonia. The number killed during La Semaine Sanglante can never be established for certain, and estimates vary from about 10,000 to 50,000. According to Benedict Anderson, "7,500 were jailed or deported" and "roughly 20,000 executed".

Most socialist historians I've read estimate 30 000 people killed.

Tue, 2010-12-07 16:02

#14

Ghislaine

Yes, and none of the 1871-era men ever committed sexual assault?

Tue, 2010-12-07 16:11

#15

Snert

I guess that's kind of where "disband the police" (or even a lot of anarchist ideas) kind of go off the rails for me. I'm not at all suggesting that a police force has to take the same form that our (or anyone else's) police force currently takes, but it's really hard to imagine that with NO police force whatsoever (and I assume, vigilantism discouraged) there wouldn't be a lot of victimized people. In all my time online, I've never seen someone say "Well, here's how it would work".

Tue, 2010-12-07 16:14

#16

Catchfire

But, Snert, here is exactly how it would work. And it did work. I don't understand your comment.

Tue, 2010-12-07 16:21

#17

Bacchus

Snert wrote:

Quote:

"We," said a member of the Commune, "hear no longer of assassination, theft, and personal assault; it seems indeed as if the police had dragged along with it to Versailles all its Conservative friends."

How long did this last? Not to be unduly skeptical, but not all crime (maybe not even most) is the result of poverty or the state. Jealous men stopped being jealous men in Paris? Everyone was simply satisfied to have what everyone else had in Paris?

You dont expect nostalgic writers about that time to say "oh yeah and the pickpockets were still active" do you? Kennedys Camelot wasm't the idyllic place many of its writers talked about and Kennedy was a dick

Tue, 2010-12-07 16:54

#18

Snert

Quote:

But, Snert, here is exactly how it would work. And it did work. I don't understand your comment.

Okay, so it worked for a couple of months, in a very particular sociopolitical place, a little over a century ago.

You're really comfortable assuming that if it worked then, it would work NOW, in Canada, in 2010, and for more than a couple of months?

Quote:
You dont expect nostalgic writers about that time to say "oh yeah and the pickpockets were still active" do you?

Are you suggesting that Saint Karl might have been wearing rose coloured glasses??? YOU TAKE THAT BACK!

Tue, 2010-12-07 16:56

#19

Catchfire

Well, first of all, the speaker in the quote you cite is not a "nostalgic writer," but a contemperaneous observer--not to say he doesn't have rose-coloured glasses, but let's be specific.

As for the sexual assault query, I can make no claims for its disappearance, but it seems pretty clear that incidences of rape did not go up. Instead, women took unprecedented authority and equal authority in the commune: they fought and defended the commune, the debated in political meetings, they established schools for women and children, and fought at the barricades in the final assault on Paris. I doubt they would have done this if they were being assaulted at every turn because there were no cops keeping them "safe."

As for the "pick-pocket" and petty crime comment, perhaps it's not clear that the Paris Commune is likely the most radical government ever established in the Western world. Rents were abolished, interest on loan debts frozen, pay was equal for legislators and workmen, and tools, furniture, and clothes that were pawned during the Prussian siege were returned free of charge. Why would there be pickpockets at all? For fun? Since policing followed a communal model, even if there was still petty crime, however unlikely, it would have easily been exposed and dealt with much more efficiently and quickly than the préfecture, the agents of the state, could have done.

ETA:

Snert wrote:
Okay, so it worked for a couple of months, in a very particular sociopolitical place, a little over a century ago.

You're really comfortable assuming that if it worked then, it would work NOW, in Canada, in 2010, and for more than a couple of months?

I'm saying nothing more than the OP: that radical politics are possible, if the will is there. There is historical precedent. Critics can no longer say "it would never work," because it has. It can. Would there be problems, hangups? Inevitably. But the line of arguing that I often see in these boards when radical solutions are suggested--abolishing the police, free education, rent and interest freezes/exemptions, equal pay for equal work--the response is usually a scholarly "pfft!"

I'm suggesting that the "pfft!" no longer holds water, if it ever did. It's been found out.

Mon, 2013-03-18 13:41

#20

Catchfire

La commune de Paris, le 18 mars 1871

Frère, on te trompe. Nos intérêts sont les mêmes. Ce que je demande, tu le veux aussi : l'affranchissement que je réclame, c'est le tien.