Editorial

Paris in the Spring

From International Socialism, No.47, April/May 1971, p.4.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.

Centenaries are innocuous affairs. The hundredth anniversary of the Paris Commune is being celebrated this spring by Russian bureaucrats, French politicians and patronising liberal journalists. The French bourgeoisie in 1871 had a clearer appreciation of what was involved – working-class power. They responded – as a ruling class in danger always will – with blood and fire.

The two brief months of revolutionary power contain many lessons for the future, many anticipations of future struggles. But the continuing relevance of the Commune was summed up by Karl Marx in one sentence: ‘This was the first revolution in which the working class was openly acknowledged as the only class capable of social initiative, even by the great bulk of the Paris middle class – shopkeepers, tradesmen, merchants – the wealthy capitalists alone excepted.’ From now on, the working class had emerged as an independent revolutionary force, able to aspire to state power. All those who have talked since of peaceful roads to socialism, of Popular Fronts and such alliances, are in fact returning to the illusions of the period before the Commune.

Marx, as is well-known, warned of the dangers of a rising before the Commune took place. His greatness lay precisely in his ability to draw the lessons of the Commune, and to incorporate them into his theory. Marxism was not the creation of one man’s intellectual processes, it was the product of dialogue between intellectuals and the self-activity of the masses. The Commune was not led by Marxists, but by the disciples of Proudhon and Blanqui. But it was precisely their success which consigned these tendencies to the museum of history.

The Commune was defeated. But for the revolutionary movement no defeat is total. From Paris in the spring of 1871 to Paris in the spring of 1968 each advance has revealed the potential of the class, each defeat has helped to define the conditions for its success. To misquote Marx – the first time as tragedy, but ultimately as victory.

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