Celebrating the Paris Commune of 1871 by Mobilizing Masses for Communism Today — Part II
March 8 is International Working Women’s Day. We honor the women and men who, 150 years ago, established workers’ power for the first time. The Paris Commune fought to end sexism and all exploitation. We learn from their inspiring achievements and shortcomings, and those of later revolutions, that only communist revolution will accomplish the goals that the communards and other revolutionaries fought for so courageously.
“Citizenesses, the present social order bears within itself the seeds of poverty and of the death of all liberty and justice,” urged posters throughout Paris in 1871. “At this hour, when danger is imminent and the enemy is at the gates of Paris, the entire population must unite to defend the Commune, which stands for the annihilation of all privilege and all inequality.”
The Commune lasted only 72 days before falling to the French capitalists’ troops. Although drowned in blood, its vision and achievements shine as a beacon for the masses the world over.
Political clubs lay the basis for workers’ power.
Political organizing for the Commune, based on ideas in the Communist Manifesto, had begun a decade before. Many women and men, including socialists, joined mass political clubs in the poorer neighborhoods. They debated plans to “establish a commune based on cooperation of all energies and intelligences.”
Their work came to fruition during the Franco-Prussian War, amidst the crisis caused by the four-month German siege of Paris.
Women took on-the-ground leadership in all aspects of the Commune. They organized the production and distribution of food, shelter and healthcare through clubs that met daily.
When the Commune formed on March 18, all women who were prepared to fight for it were invited to the first meeting of the Women’s Union. Laundry workers, garment workers, and many others attended.
The Union quickly became one of the Commune’s most important organizations. Socialist women were key in organizing other women of Paris to become communards.
They aimed to “replace the rule of capital with the rule of labour, for the emancipation of the working class by the working class.” They sought to set up education that would combine mental and manual labor—for life.
Women were key in stopping the government soldiers from taking the cannons on March 18. They bravely defended the Commune on the barricades through its final battle.
While fighting the capitalism’s sexism and its exploitation of all workers, they had to struggle against sexism in the Commune itself. One leader, the anarchist Proudhon, tried to keep women from working outside their homes or participating in the Commune’s political life. He claimed that women are inferior to men.
Women communards proved otherwise.
Benoit Malon, a communard and founder of the French branch of the International, recognized that the Paris Commune reflected women’s entry “into political life because of the dissemination of socialist ideas. Women have felt that their aid is indispensable to the revolution. Women and the [male] proletariat can only hope to achieve their respective emancipation by uniting.”
To Emancipate Labor from Capitalism—Communist Revolution!
The communards fought for equal pay for equal work for men and women while, contradictorily, demanding an end to exploitation. The fundamental basis of exploitation is exactly working for a wage: wage slavery.
Not understanding this, most placed these reforms ahead of marching on Versailles to destroy the seat of the French capitalist government.
Destroying the capitalist state and its system of wage slavery, and building communist workers’ power, is the only way to end sexism, racism and inequality. To emancipate labor from capital.
Communards left the Bank of France intact, rather than destroying it. They needed to organize communist production and distribution completely based on human needs, without money at all.
Communist collective production, based on commitment, would eliminate private property, the market, production for profit and the buying and selling workers’ labor power.
Unfortunately, the most advanced communards fought for socialism. Socialism keeps money, wages and production for buying and selling. It creates a new ruling class to profit from workers’ labor power. It is state capitalism.
This is a bitter lesson we have learned from the reversal of the heroic 20th century Russian and Chinese revolutions, themselves inspired by the Paris Commune.
What we need instead, to realize the Communards’ goals, is to fight for communism, nothing less. Communist relations will replace money.
We need to build one mass International Communist Workers’ Party worldwide. When workers take power anywhere, we must mobilize to spread it until the whole world is communist!
Workers, soldiers and youth, women and men of all “races” need to actively struggle to liberate our class from capitalism’s sexist, racist wage slavery.
We all need to take leadership in developing the ideas and practice of building communist collectives now. These will become the basis for communist workers’ power.
Save the Date:
International Zoom Forum on the Lessons of the Paris Commune 150 Years Later
March 20, 2021
Contact Comrades in Your Area for Local Time and Zoom Link
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