Paris Commune Revolution

Great political revolution in which the Paris proletariat overthrew the rule of the bourgeoisie and established the dictatorship of the proletariat. The Paris Commune was the first embryonic form of the dictatorship of the proletariat to be established in the world.

In September 1870, after the Second French Empire suffered a crushing defeat in the war against Prussia, a revolution broke out in Paris, overthrowing the Second Empire and founding the Third French Republic. The French bourgeois government adopted a series of measures of national defection and capitulation and opposition to the proletariat. Faced with the traitorous acts of the reactionary bourgeois government, the people of Paris organized the National Guard of nearly 300,000 men, the bulk of which consisted of working men.

In the early hours of March 18, 1871, Thiers opened the civil war by sending Vinoy, at the head of a multitude of police men, and some regiments of the line, upon a nocturnal expedition against Montmartre, there to seize, by surprise, the artillery of the National Guard. On the dawn of March 18, Paris arose to the thunder-burst of “Vive la Commune!”.The workers and other toilers of Paris, led by the National Guard, staged an armed uprising and occupied the municipal offices of Paris, and the reactionary government of Thiers fled to Versailles. After the victory of the uprising, the people of Paris held the election of the members of the Commune on March 26, and the Paris Commune was proclaimed on the 28th.

The Paris Commune, in its struggle to destroy the bourgeois state machinery and create a proletarian power, brought into play the spirit of revolutionary initiative and established a new type of state power based on the principles of proletarian democracy: the Commune was a thoroughly expansive political form that laid the foundation of really democratic institutions. The Commune was formed of the municipal councillors, chosen by universal suffrage in the various wards of Paris, responsible and revocable at short terms. From the members of the Commune downwards, the public service had to be done at workman’s wage. It abolished the bourgeois standing army and police and replace them with popular armaments such as the national militia. The unity of the nation was to be organized by Communal Constitution. 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. Proletarian internationalism was introduced. The Paris Commune adopted a series of economic policies in line with the interests of the workers and toiling masses, the most significant of which were: taking over the factories of fugitive capitalists and surrendering them to associations of workers and resume production; direct participation of workers in the management of enterprises, abolition of the nightwork of journeymen bakers, the prohibition, under penalty, to reduce wages by levying upon their workpeople fines; Establishment of a labor and employment registry; the disestablishment and disendowment of all churches as proprietary bodies; promulgation of decrees in favor of the working people on debt, pawning, rents, housing, etc., and announcement of the return of land to the peasants and exemption of the peasants from the burdens of the war.

Due to the absence of the leadership of the proletarian party, due to the influence of Proudhonism and Blanquism, and due to the serious errors committed by the Commune itself, such as the failure to confiscate the Bank of France, the failure to establish the worker-peasant alliance, and the failure to pursue the enemy and resolutely suppress the counter-revolution in a timely manner, on May 28, the reactionary army of Versailles, with the help of Prussian troops, captured Paris and the fighters of the Commune retreated to the at the Pere Lachaise cemetery in the last place and fought until they all died heroically. “The ‘Wall of the Federals’ [aka Wall of the Communards] at the Pere Lachaise cemetery, where the final mass murder was consummated, is still standing today, a mute but eloquent testimony to the savagery of which the ruling class is capable as soon as the working class dares to come out for its rights”.

The Paris Commune Revolution is a glorious chapter in the history of the international communist movement and has epoch-making historical significance. The Paris Commune was the first proletarian organization of power in world history. Marx and Engels spoke highly of the Paris Commune. Engels hailed the Paris Commune as “the dictatorship of the proletariat”; Marx said: “Its true secret was this: It was essentially a working-class government, the product of the struggle of the producing against the appropriating class, the political form at last discovered under which to work out the economical emancipation of labor.” Although the Paris Commune Revolution failed, the principle of the Commune is eternal, which is: “The working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made state machinery and wield it for its own purposes.” The proletariat must smash the bourgeois state machinery by revolutionary force and introduce the dictatorship of the proletariat.