Paris Refuses to Disarm (1871)
Sat Mar 18, 1871
Image: A barricade in the Paris Commune, March 18th, 1871. [Wikipedia]
On this day in 1871, French soldiers refused orders from their superiors to disarm working class neighborhoods in Paris, arresting them and joining working class radicals in the revolution that would become the Paris Commune.
On the morning of March 18th, French soldiers members began attempting to remove cannons from working class neighborhoods in Paris, left there following the end of the Franco-Prussian War. As soldiers became surrounded by members of the National Guard, a popular Parisian militia with radical tendencies, the soldiers' superior officer, General Lecomte, ordered them to fire on the crowd.
This order was refused. Many soldiers mutinied, joining the National Guard. Some of the military officers were disarmed and escorted away, while others, including General Lecomte, were arrested. Lecomte himself was executed later that day. This incident marked the beginning of a working class revolution in Paris, one anticipated by the conservative national government of Adolphe Theirs.
On March 26th, elections were held to establish a Paris Commune council, consisting of 92 members, one for every 20,000 residents. Out of 485,000 registered voters, more than 230,000 voted. Participation was significantly higher in working class neighborhoods than bourgeois ones.
On March 27th, the Commune was formally declared. Prosper-Olivier Lissagaray, a participant of the Commune and author of "History of the Paris Commune of 1871", describes the celebration:
"The next day 200,000 'wretches' came to the Hôtel-de-Ville there to install their chosen representatives, the battalion drums beating, the banners surmounted by the Phrygian cap and with red fringe round the muskets; their ranks, swelled by soldiers of the line, artillerymen, and marines faithful to Paris, came down from all the streets to the Place de Greve like the thousand streams of a great river...
A member of the Committee announced the names of those elected. The drums beat a salute, the bands and two hundred thousand voices chimed in with the Marseillaise. [Gabriel] Ranvier, in an interval of silence, cried out, 'In the name of the People the Commune is proclaimed.'
A thousandfold echo answered, 'Vive la Commune!' Caps were flung up on the ends of bayonets, flags fluttered in the air. From the windows, on the roofs, thousands of hands waved handkerchiefs...The quick reports of the cannon, the bands, the drums, blended in one formidable vibration. All hearts leaped with joy, all eyes filled with tears."
The government of the Paris Commune developed a set of policies that tended towards a progressive, secular, and highly democratic social democracy, although its existence was too brief to implement them with much permanence. Among these policies were the separation of church and state, abolition of child labor, abolishment of interest on some forms of debt, as well as the right of employees to take over and run an enterprise if it was deserted by its original owner.
The national French Army suppressed the Commune at the end of May during La semaine sanglante ("The Bloody Week"), beginning on May 21st, 1871. Even after the Commune was defeated, the Army continued their campaign of slaughter.
In an 1886 account of the Paris Commune, The Socialist League wrote "Thus was extinguished the despair of Paris; but though the fighting was over, the killing went on merrily; for instance, in the prison of La Roquette alone nine hundred prisoners were slain in cold blood, and without any pretence of form of trial. The courts martial disposed of others. 'Have you taken arms, or served the Commune? Show your hands.' If the judge thought the man looked likely, 'classé' was the word; if anyone was spared, “ordinaire” was pronounced, and he was kept for Versailles. None were released — sex or age made no difference. Those who were 'classés' were shot at once; perhaps they were not the unluckiest."
A watershed moment in revolutionary working class history, the Paris Commune was analyzed by many communist thinkers, including Karl Marx, who identified it as a "dictatorship of the proletariat." Vladimir Lenin danced in the snow in celebration when the newly formed Bolshevik government lasted longer than the Paris Commune.
"It is time people understood the true meaning of this Revolution; and this can be summed up in a few words…It was the first attempt of the proletariat to govern itself. The workers of Paris expressed this when in their first manifesto they declared they 'understood it was their imperious duty and their absolute right to render themselves masters of their own destinies by seizing upon the governmental power.'"
- Eleanor Marx
