The Paris Commune 1871

When one studies the history of the Paris Commune of 1871 one can learn something new even though from the perspective of revolutionary strategy the Communards made virtually every mistake in the book. Nevertheless, one can still learn lessons from those experiences and measure mistakes of the Communards against the experience acquired by later revolutionary struggles and above all by later revolutions, not only the successful Russian Revolution of October 1917 but the failed German, Hungarian, Bulgarian, Chinese and Spanish revolutions in the aftermath of World War I. More contemporaneously we also have the experiences of the partial victories of the later Chinese, Cuban and Vietnamese revolutions in the post-World War II period. Notwithstanding the contradictory nature of the later revolutions cited above, and as if to show that history is not always totally a history of horrors against the fate of the masses, militants today proudly honor the Paris Commune as a beacon of the socialist revolution. It is just for that reason that Karl Marx fought tooth and nail in the First International to defend it against the rage of capitalist Europe and faint-hearted elements in the European labor movement. It is truly one of the revolutionary peaks. The Commune however also presented in embryo the first post-1848 Revolution instance of the crisis of revolutionary leadership of the international labor movement. That is, the need for a revolutionary party to lead the working class to victory. Placing the problems facing the Commune in this context made me realize that this crisis of revolutionary leadership really has a much longer lineage that I had previously recognized. I had previously placed its start at the collapse of the Socialist International at the beginning of World War I when most European socialist parties took a defensist position toward their own governments by voting for war credits. Unfortunately, the leadership question is still to be resolved. Many working class tendencies, Anarchist, Anarcho-Syndicalist, Left Social Democratic, Communist and Left Communist justifiably pay homage to the defenders of the Paris Commune and claim its traditions. Why does an organization of short duration and subject to savage reprisals still command our attention? The Commune shows us the heroism of the working masses, their capacity to unite for action, their capacity to sacrifice themselves in the name of a future, more just, organization of society. Every working class tendency can honor those qualities, particularly when in some cases they are far removed from any active need to do more than pay homage to the memory of the fallen Communards. Nevertheless, to truly honor the Communards it is necessary to understand that along with its positive qualities at the same time the Commune shows us the many times frustrating incapacity of the masses to act in their objective interests, their indecision in the leadership of the movemen