Paris Commune

“ The population resolutely declined to believe in the possibility of the city being taken and at every reverse, threatening demonstrations against the impotent Provisional Government were made. Twice a revolution was on the point of being accomplished—on the 31st of October, 1870, and on the 22nd of January, 1871. Of course, resistance to the foreign enemy was what was uppermost in all minds and the demands of the Parisian masses for the establishment of a Commune were largely based on reminiscences of the wonders effected in this connection by the first Paris Commune in 1792–3. ”

“ And what was the city of Paris like during the Commune? Quiet, peaceful, and what is more, almost wholly free from crime. The last fact is admitted by friends and foes alike. Middle-class Englishmen with no sympathy for the Commune have been reluctant witnesses to the safety and good order maintained throughout the whole city during the two months that the Revolution was master. ”

“ The government of Paris was reorganized, and a mayor, chosen from among the members of the National Assembly, was put at the head of the new commune, as the municipal government was called. The other cities of France also began with one accord, after the dismissal of Necker and the fall of the Bastile, to promote the Revolution by displacing or supplementing their old royal or aristocratic governments by committees of their citizens. These improvised communes, or city governments, established national guards, as Paris had done, and thus maintained order. ”

“ These measures taken in the name of the majority of the citizens of Paris, according to the powers conferred upon it, the new Commune of Paris organized and established itself in permanence in the City Hall, ready to conduct itself in line with the Revolution; while the people loaded their muskets and cannon and prepared to march on the palace of the Tuileries. ”

“ If the Commune was thus the true representative of all the healthy elements of French society, and therefore the truly national Government, it was, at the same time, a workingmen's Government, as the bold champion of the emancipation of labor, emphatically international. Within sight of the Prussian army, that had annexed to Germany two French provinces, the Commune annexed to France the working people all over the world. ”

“ Well-to-do looking trunks with brass ornaments, black wooden boxes, hairy trunks, leathern hat-boxes, and cardboard bonnet-boxes, portmanteaux and carpet bags are piled up on vehicles of every description, of which more than ten thousand block up the roads leading to the railway stations. Everybody is wild to get away; it is whispered about that the Commune, the horrid Commune, is about to issue a decree forbidding the Parisians to quit Paris. So all prudent individuals are making off, with their bank-notes and shares in their pocket-books. ”

“ The fifty mayors who, each year, shall have most contributed to unencumber their commune and assure that is has resources available, shall be summoned to Paris at the expense of the State, and presented in solemn session to the three consults. ”

“ There were a few honest middle-class men to be found who, though caring nothing for the Commune, and with no sympathy for its aims, yet refused to join in the great class-conspiracy of vilification, and who, at all events up to their lights, spoke the truth as to what they had seen and heard in Paris under the red flag, who bore witness to the noble disinterestedness of the defenders of the Cause, and to the foulness of their persecutors. ”

“ At Paris the Minister of Justice thanks them, the Commune congratulates them, and the sections feast them and embrace them.31127—Can anybody doubt that they were ready to begin again? Can a step be taken in or out of Paris without being subject to their oppression or encountering their despotism? Should one leave the city, sentinels of their species are posted at the barriers and on the section committees in continuous session. ”

“ Thus a vast number of poor people were relieved from a crushing liability which they were utterly unable to meet without ruin. This was all very proper as far as it went, but the Commune omitted to perform two important duties which the situation imperatively demanded, the first was to issue a clear and easily intelligible manifesto explaining its programme and plan of action. The second and if anything still more serious omission was not keeping in touch with the provinces, which immediately after the 18th of March had shown the most favourable signs of sympathetic action with Paris. ”

“ Oh! people of Paris!
XIX.
It is over. We have a “Municipal Council,” according to some; a “Commune,” according to others. Not quite legally elected, but sufficiently so. Eighty councillors, sixty of whom are quite unknown men. Who can have recommended them, or, rather, imposed them on the electors? Can there really be some occult power at work under cover of the ex-Central Committee? Is the Commune only a pretext, and are we at the début of a social and political revolution? ”

“ For Man is the master of Things."
[Pg 243]
The Paris Commune
The Paris Commune, like other spectacular events in human history, has become the clinging point for many legends, alike among its enemies and among its friends. Indeed, one must often question which was the real Commune, the legend or the fact,—what was actually lived, or the conception of it which has shaped itself in the world-mind during those forty odd years that have gone since the 18th of March, 1871. ”

“ The following passage on the Commune of Paris is noteworthy for its non-committal character, in keeping with the attempt to get rid of the Gironde, if possible, without an insurrection.
Vous devez contenir le conseil général de la commune de Paris dans les limites que l’unité et l’indivisibilité de la République exigent et que la loi lui prescrit. C’est à vous qu’il appartient seul de dominer toutes les ambitions politiques, de détruire toutes les usurpations législatives; c’est à vous de répondre à la France du dépôt de pouvoir qui vous a été religieusement confié. ”

“ In proportion as power snatched from the hands of the king by the Assembly disappeared, it passed into the commune of Paris. The municipality, that first element of nations which are forming themselves, is also the last asylum of authority when they are crumbling to pieces. ”

“ This done, the Municipal Council will be reinstated in its functions, as it is composed of good patriots. The directorate of the department, on its part, being with the Sections, will call upon the officers of the Commune to assemble at the City Hall to-morrow and meet with the Municipal Council to the end of consulting, if need be, on matters of general security. Thus, to-morrow, at daybreak, all the Sections will assemble, with their cannon; that is to say, all Paris will be afoot, armed, not to fight, but to demonstrate, calm and dignifiedly, garbed imposingly in its power and sovereignty. ”

“ After these elections, on the 19th, it was finally decided to issue a political programme. This programme which was supposed to be drawn up by a commission of five members was mainly the work of a journalist, Pierre Denis, assisted by Delescluze. The former, a writer in Jules Vallés Cri du Peuple, was fanatical on the question of federal autonomy, and this he managed to place in the forefront of the new declaration which demanded the recognition of the republic, and the autonomy of the township or commune (irrespective of its size) throughout France. ”

“ In the midst of all these troubles, in which every one is borne along, without any knowledge of where he is drifting—with the Central Committee making proclamations on one side, and the Versailles Government training troops on the other, a few men have arisen who have spoken some words of reason. These men may be certain from this moment that they are approved of by Paris, and will be obeyed By Paris—by the honest and intelligent Paris—by the Paris which is ready to favour that side which can prove that it has the most justice in it. ”

“ The deputies of the Seine and the maires of Paris have, by the flight of the Government to Versailles, become the legitimate chiefs. We have elected them, it is for them to lead us. To them belongs the duty of reconciling the Assembly with the city; and it appears to us that they have taken the last means of bringing about that conciliation, by disengaging all that is legitimate and practical in its claims from the exaggeration of the émeute. ”

“ They thus had a whole week in which to frame a mandate and select their mandatories. No doubt the resistance of the mayors and the occupation of the military posts kept away many of the revolutionary electors from their arrondissements, but there still remained enough citizens to conduct the work of selection.
Never had a mandate been more indispensable, for the question at issue was to give Paris a communal constitution acceptable to all France. Never did Paris stand in such need of enlightened and practical men, capable at once of negotiating and of combating. ”

“ To the People, Wearing A Tricolor Cockade. Henry Iv. Became a Catholic in Order to Enter “his Good City of Paris” Whilst Louis Xvi. Wore the Democratic Insignia In Order to Keep It. A Few Days Later the 172 Commissioners of Sections, Representing the Municipality of Paris, Established The Commune. The Hôtel de Ville Was the Seat of The First Committee Of Public Safety, And From the Green Chamber, Robespierre Governed The Convention and France Till his Fall on the 9th Thermidor. From 1800 to 1830 Fêtes Held The Place of Political Manifestations. ”

“ There are about 40,000 communes in France, and each commune has its mayor and its municipal councillors elected by universal suffrage for the{170} management of local affairs. Every peasant may become a municipal councillor and, if duly elected by the municipal council, a mayor. The municipal council meets periodically for the discussion of local affairs; so that its members accustom themselves to public speaking and the interchange of ideas. France has now about 10,000,000 electors, of whom two-thirds are peasants, but, as before explained, peasants in the possession of landed property. ”

“ Poor man! who never knew anything of our Paris, of her inexhaustible strength, her marvellous elasticity. The Central Committee received support from all sides. The committees of arrondissements furnished a personnel to the mairies; some of the small middle-class lent their experience, and the most important services were set to rights in no time by men of common sense and energy, which soon proved superior to routine. The employés who had remained at their posts in order to hand over the funds to Versailles were soon discovered and obliged to flee. ”

“ On the 15th, the previous day, the dispute between the "minority" and "majority" had reached a climax in the withdrawal of the former under cover of a manifesto anent the "Public Safety," which declared the Commune to have abdicated its functions into the hands of an irresponsible Committee. "As for us," it went on to say, "we, no less than the 'majority,' desire the accomplishment of political and social reconstruction ”

“ As already observed, the Commune had organised itself at starting into nine commissions or delegations. These consisted of a victualling department, a department of municipal services, of finance, of war, of public safety, of justice, of external affairs, of education, and of labour. The first, the provisioning department, did not offer any special difficulties until the end of April, when Thiers ordered the stoppage of all provision trains for Paris, and even after that it was possible to keep the town supplied through the neutral zone between the German and Versaillese armies. ”

“ Clemenceau, who was their spokesman, urged the Committee to abdicate its functions to the deputies and mayors, who would use their best offices to obtain satisfaction for Paris from the Assembly. Varlin, one of the Committee, explained that what was wanted was no mere municipality, but a quasi-autonomous Paris, with police and legislative power, united to the rest of France by the bond of federal union alone. Even good Socialists like Milliere and Malon doubted the expediency of the Committee's initiative. ”

“ The only thing that was not forgotten by this department as by the whole movement was the humanitarian idea and the so-called Christian (?) principle of doing good to those that revile you and persecute you. The Commune through this delegation supported the wives and families of the men who were fighting against it, saying "the Commune has bread for all misery and care for all orphans."
Allied with the Commission of police and public safety was that of Justice. The Commune ordered that every arrest should be at once notified to this department. ”

“ The great general lesson taught us by the failure of the Commune of 1871 is the supreme necessity of an organisation comprising a solid body of class-conscious proletarians and other Socialists well acquainted with each other, whose views are clearly defined, who know what they want, and who have, at all events, some notion of the course to pursue on an emergency. Had there been such a body of men in Paris in February and March, 1871, the subsequent course of events might have been very different. ”

“ He had been elected mayor of the ninth arrondissement of Paris in the autumn of 1870, and in March was sent by the same district to the Commune, from which he resigned when he found no reconciliation was possible between the mayors and the Commune. In July he became a member of the municipal council of Paris, and in 1873 was returned to the National Assembly for the department of the Rhone, and took his place on the extreme Left. A month after his election the governor of Paris demanded his prosecution for his share in the Commune. ”