155th Anniversary of the Paris Commune

155th Anniversary of the Paris Commune

The Paris Commune was a radical, socialist, and revolutionary government that ruled Paris from 18 March to 28 May 1871. Formed after France’s defeat in the Franco-Prussian War, it was a revolt against the national government, characterized by worker-controlled cooperatives, social reforms, and secularism before being violently suppressed.

Following the collapse of Napoleon III’s empire and a humiliating siege by Prussia, Parisians felt betrayed by the conservative National Assembly, sparking an insurrection in Montmartre over control of cannons. On 18 March 1871, the national government attempted to seize the cannons of the National Guard, which was a citizen militia, at Montmartre. Parisian crowds resisted, and the regular army troops eventually fraternised with the citizens rather than firing on them.

The Commune became a 72-day experiment in self-governance, composed of socialists, anarchists, and radical republicans. The Commune implemented progressive policies, including the separation of church and state, abolition of child night shifts, free education, and the right for workers to take over factories.

Women played a crucial role in the administration and defence of the Commune, though they were not allowed to vote. From 21–28 May 1871, the French army (based in Versailles) retook the city, resulting in an estimated 20,000 deaths, which became known as the “Bloody Week” (Semaine Sanglante). The Paris Commune was regarded by Karl Marx as the first example of the “dictatorship of the proletariat” and is celebrated as the first example of a working-class “worker’s state”. 

During its brief existence, the Commune enacted a series of progressive and radical decrees, many of which were far ahead of their time, such as “Secularism”: Strict separation of church and state, with the removal of religious teaching from schools; “Worker Rights”: Abolition of night work for bakers, a moratorium on rent payments, and the takeover of abandoned factories by worker cooperatives; “Popular Governance”: Officials and representatives were elected by universal (male) suffrage and could be recalled at any time and they were also paid no more than a skilled worker’s wage to prevent a separate ruling class from forming; and “Women’s Rights”: Though denied the right to vote, women became central to the movement, fighting on the barricades and advocating for equal wages and legalised divorce.

The Paris Commune remains a powerful symbol in political history. It served as a major inspiration for the 1917 Russian Revolution, with Vladimir Lenin reportedly dancing in the snow when the Soviet government outlasted the 72 days of the Commune. Jean Désiré Gustave Courbet, a French painter who led the “Realism” movement in 19th-century French art scene, was imprisoned for six months in 1871 for his involvement with the Paris Commune and lived in exile in Switzerland from 1873 until his death four years later.

Courbet defined the Paris Commune in the following manner: “Here I am, because of the People of Paris (Paris Commune), up to my neck in politics. President of the Federation of Artists, member of the Commune Committee… Now my head is starting to spin. But in spite of all this worry and trying to understand unfamiliar things, I am really happy.”

Cyril Lionel Robert James, a Trinidadian historian, journalist, a Marxist writer and activist, who sometimes wrote under the pen-name ‘J. R. Johnson’, whose works were influential in various theoretical, social, and historiographical contexts as an influential voice in post-colonial literature, labelled the Paris Commune as “first and foremost a democracy. The government was a body elected by universal suffrage.”

“VIVE LA COMMUNE!”
“NO MORE EXPLOITERS, NO MORE MASTERS. WORK AND WELL-BEING FOR ALL!”

Castro Khwela
Good morning fellow Compatriots!🙏🏾✊🏾👊🏾