Paris Commune

More information
Recommended
:> History of the Paris Commune - Lissagaray
:> History of the Paris Commune - Jellineck
:> The Civil War in France – Marx
:> Theses on the Paris Commune – S.I.

Additional
:> The Paris Commune – Kropotkin
:> The Paris Commune and the Idea of the State – Bakunin
:> Unruly Women of Paris – G. Gullickson

An excerpt from

in Polemics, Verso, 2006. To read the full essay in pdf click here.

Jules Montels was born in France at Gignac in the Herault department, on 25th March 1843. As a young boy he experienced the uprising in 1851 against the coup of Louis Napoleon, which was followed by savage repression. These left bitter memories for him.

Born at Bastia in Corsica on 28th November 1845, Bastelica was from an early age, extremely curious. He was an autodidact par excellence, like so many other workers found in the revolutionary movement. An anarchist even before the term had been properly applied, he started his working life as a shop assistant and then as a typesetter.

“Authority, in whatever hands it is placed, is always pernicious to the advancement of humanity” Pindy, writing in La Revue Blanche.

Jean Louis Pindy was born on June 3rd at Brest in western France. A carpenter-joiner, he became a member of the Brest section of the First International in 1867.

Victorine Brocher-Rouchy
Born Paris, France 1838. Died Lausanne, Switzerland 1921

Victorine Malenfant was born in Paris in 1838, into a family with a long revolutionary tradition. Her father was a republican shoemaker and freemason.

Louise Michel was born on 29th May 1830. She was raised by her mother and paternal grandparents. Her love and understanding of everything downtrodden, human and animal alike, developed from her empathy with her childhood world. Her compassion and sensitivity to suffering grew, as she grew. This, along with her instinct to rebel against social inequalities, led her along the revolutionary path.

The Paris Commune is often said to be the first example of working people taking power. For this reason it is a highly significant event, even though it is ignored in the French history curriculum.

A short history of the Paris Commune, weak on details of the revolution and working class organisation but with good information about the makeup of the elected Communards and details of the fighting and repression at the end of the Commune

The Paris Commune of 1871
undercurrent #6

Recently, the Sussex University library dedicated part of its space for a small exhibition on the Paris Commune. At first this came with some surprise: how was it that, in the midst of the boredom of academic life and the total lack of interest in any issues of importance, the library was willing to commemorate one of the most crucial proletarian revolutions of the nineteenth century? Yet, our surprise quickly vanished when we gave this exhibition a closer look. Not only is the exhibition of a purely academic nature (looking at historical events as spectacles and thus a-historically), but it is also taking the Commune out of context, describing it by using some of the most common illusions found in the bourgeois world. This article comes as a response to the exhibition.