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The theory of the state and the practice of the Commune
On March 18, 1871, the people of Paris rose against a despised and detested government, and proclaimed the city independent, free, belonging to itself.
This overthrow of the central power took place without the usual stage effects of revolution, without the firing of guns, without the shedding of blood upon barricades.
When the armed people came out into the streets, the rulers fled away, the troops evacuated the town, the civil servants hurriedly retreated to Versailles carrying everything they could with them.
The government evaporated like a pond of stagnant water in a spring breeze, and on March 19 the great city of Paris found herself free from the impurity which had defiled her, with the loss of scarcely a drop of her children's blood.
Yet the change thus accomplished began a new era in that long series of revolutions by which the peoples are marching from slavery to freedom.
Under the name of the Paris Commune a new idea was born, to become the starting point for future revolutions.
As is always the case, this fruitful idea was not the product of some one individual's brain, of the conceptions of some philosopher; it was born of the collective spirit, it sprang from the heart of a whole community.
But at first it was vague, and many of those who acted upon and gave their lives for it did not look at it in the light in which we see it today; they did not realize the full extent of the revolution they were inaugurating of the fertility of the new principle they were trying to put into practice.
It was only after they had begun to apply it that its future significance slowly dawned upon them; it was only afterwards, when the new principle came to be thought out, that it grew definite and precise and was seen in all its clearness, in all its beauty, its justice, and the importance of its results.
From the time that socialism had taken a new leap forward during the five or six years which preceded the Commune, one question above all preoccupied the theoreticians of the approaching social revolution.
This was the question of knowing what would be the form of political organization of society most favourable for that great economic revolution which the present development of industry is forcing upon our generation, and which must bring about the abolition of individual property and the taking into common of all the capital accumulated by previous generations.
The International Working Men's Association gave this reply.
The organization, it said, must not be confined to a single nation; it must extend over artificial frontiers.
And soon this great idea sank into the hearts of the people and took fast hold of their minds.
Though it has been hunted down ever since by the united efforts of every kind of reactionary, it is alive nevertheless, and when the voice of the rebellious peoples destroys the obstacles to its development, it will reappear stronger than ever before.
But it still remained to know what should be the component parts of this vast association.
To this question two answers were given, each the expression of a distinct current of thought: one said the people's state; the other said anarchy.
The German socialists advocated that the state should take possession of all accumulated wealth and give it to workers' associations and, further, should organize production and exchange, and generally watch over the life and activities of society.
To which the socialists of the Latin race, strong in revolutionary experience, replied that it would be a miracle if such a state could ever exist; but if it could, it would surely be the worst of tyrannies.
This ideal of the omnipotent and beneficent state is merely a copy from the past, they said; and they opposed it with a new ideal--an-archy: that is, the total abolition of the state and social organization from the simple to the complex by means of the free federation of popular forces, of producers and consumers.
It was soon admitted, even by a few 'statists' less imbued with governmental prejudices, that anarchy certainly represents a much better sort of organization than that aimed at by the people's state; but, they said, the anarchist ideal is so far off that just now we cannot trouble about it.
On the other hand the anarchist theory lacked a concrete and at the same time simple formula to show plainly its point of departure, to embody its conceptions, and to indicate that it was supported by a tendency actually existing among the people.
The federation of workers' unions and consumers' groups extending over frontiers and independent of existing states- still seemed too vague; and at the same time it was easy to see that it could not take in the whole diversity of human requirements.
A clearer formula was needed, one more easily grasped, one which had a firm foundation in the realities of life.
If the question had merely been how best to elaborate a theory, we should have said that theories, as theories, are not of so much importance.
But so long as a new idea has not found a clear, precise form of statement, growing naturally out of things as they actually exist, it does not take hold of men's minds, does not inspire them to enter upon a decisive struggle.
The people do not fling themselves into the unknown without some positive and clearly formulated idea to serve them, so to speak, as a springboard at the starting-point.
As for this starting-point, they must be led up to it by life itself.
For five months Paris, isolated by the siege, had drawn on its own livelihood, and had learnt to know the immense economic, intellectual, and moral resources it disposes of; it had caught a glimpse of its strength of initiative and understood what it meant.
At the same time it had seen that the chattering gang which had seized power had no idea how to organize either the defence of France or its internal development.
It had seen the central government at cross purposes with every manifestation of the intelligence of the great city.
It had understood more than that: the powerlessness of any government to guard against great disasters or to smooth the path of rapid revolution.
During the siege it had suffered frightful privations, privations of the workers and defenders of the city, alongside the insolent luxury of the idlers, and thanks to the central government it had seen the failure of every attempt to put an end to this scandalous system.
Each time that the people wished to take a free leap forward, the government added weight to their chains and tied on a ball, and naturally the idea was born that Paris should set itself up as an independent commune, able to put into practice within its walls what was dictated by the will of the people!
This word, the Commune, then came from all lips.
The Commune of 1871 could be nothing but a first attempt.
Beginning at the close of a war, hemmed in between two armies ready to join hands and crush the people, it dared not unhesitatingly set forth upon the path of economic revolution; it neither boldly declared itself socialist, nor proceeded with the expropriation of capital or the organization of labour; nor did it even take stock of the general resources of the city.
Neither did it break with the tradition of the state, of representative government, and it did not seek to establish within the Commune that organization from the simple to the 'complex which it inaugurated by proclaiming the independence and free federation of the communes.
Yet it is certain that if the Paris Commune had lived a few months longer it would inevitably have been driven by the force of circumstances towards both these revolutions.
Let us not forget that the bourgeoisie took four years of a revolutionary period to change a limited monarchy into a bourgeois republic, and we should not be astonished that the people of Paris did not cross with a single bound the space between the anarchist commune and the government of robbers.
But let us also bear in mind that the next revolution, which in France and certainly in Spain as well will be communalist, will take up the work of the Paris Commune where it was checked by the massacres of the Versailles army.
The Commune was defeated, and we know how the bourgeoisie avenged itself for the fright the people had given it in shaking off the yoke of their rulers.
It proved that there really are two classes in modern society: on one side, the man who works and gives up to the capitalist more than half of what he produces, and passes too easily over the crimes of his masters; on the other, the idler, the well-fed, animated by the instincts of a wild beast, hating his 'slave, ready to massacre him like game.
After shutting the people of Paris in and blocking up all the __exits, they let loose the soldiers, brutalized by barrack life and drink, and told them publicly:
'Kill these wolves and their young!'
And they said to the people:
"Whatever you do, you shall perish!
If you are caught with arms in your hands--death!
If you lay down your arms--death!
If you use them--death!
If you beg for mercy--death!
Whichever way you turn, right, left, forward, back, up, down--death!
You are not merely outside the law, but outside mankind.
Neither age nor sex shall save you or yours.
You shall die, but first you shall taste the agony of your wife, your sister, your mother, your daughters, your sons, even in the cradle!
Before your eyes the wounded man shall be taken out of the ambulance and hacked with bayonets or beaten with rifle-butts.
He shall be dragged alive by his broken leg or bleeding arm and flung into the gutter as a groaning, suffering bundle of rubbish.
"Death! Death! Death!" [1]
[1] We take these lines from the Popular and Parliamentary History of the Paris Commune by Arthur Arnould, a work which we have pleasure in bringing to the attention of our readers.
[No english edition I could find, Ed.]
And then after this insane orgy over the piles of corpses, after this mass extermination, came the petty yet atrocious vengeance which is still going on--the cat-o'-nine-tails, the thumbscrews, the irons in the ship's hold, the whips and truncheons of the warders, insults, hunger, all the refinements of cruelty.
Will the people forget this hangman's work?
Overthrown, but not conquered, the Commune is reborn today.
It is no longer only a dream of the vanquished, caressing in their imagination the lovely mirage of hope; no! the 'Commune' is today becoming the visible and definite aim of the revolution rumbling beneath our feet.
The idea is sinking into the masses, it is giving them a rallying cry, and we firmly count on the present generation to bring about the social revolution within the commune, to put an end to the ignoble bourgeois exploitation, to rid the people of the tutelage of the state, and to inaugurate in the evolution of the human race a new era of liberty, equality, and solidarity.
This series of posts will insure that these free thinkers' works live on in living memory.
If only a few.
There is a reason these books are not taught in the modern skools.
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