A SOCIALIST REVOLUTION? 111 the Commune's Contested Historiography

;ox:J, ~')~~'- fu A SOCIALIST REVOLUTION? 111 The Commune's Contested Historiography Socialism, nationalism, republicanism ~ On 30 May 1871, two days after the end of La semaine sanglant» ('the Bloody Week' which culminated in the repression of the C0Il1111Une). Karl Marx read his report on the Commune before the General Council Chapter 4: A Socialist Revolution? of the International Association of Workingmen. Printed in a pamphlet entitled 'The Civil War in France,' Marx situated the Commune within a Manichean world clClass confl[ct in' ,:"hich tFle bouq~eois' state -;;:-ndeaY- ored to perpet~i~- its~i£:.af;;::the-faIL Qf Nap()l~Qn IIl's empire, first, through the-Governm~nt of National Defense, and then, tbe Govern- ment at Ve;_saifl~~:In opposition stood Paris, the historic ground zero ol While interpretations of the Commune have not been as contentious as revolutionary change and the fount from whose source would spring a those surrounding the French Revolution, it has been the subject of new social and political order. For Marx, class conflict in France culmi- interpretive debates. In the absence of a precisely identifiable philos- nated in the production of the Commune, 'the produce of the struggle ophy to guide and unite its members, and not existing long enough to of the producing against the appropriating class. '2 As Marx viewed the define itself, the Commune left behind a rather ambiguous and mal- Commune's progression and repression from his London home, the leable record. Post-hoc clarifications by exiled Communards and their Commune's anticipation of a socialist order was not so much evidenced adversaries left a distorted record that both facilitated the application of by its legislative accomplishments (though he did enumerate several of historical models to the Commune's interpretation while obfuscating these), than by its symbolism as a harbinger of proletariat poliucal the reality of its ten-week existence. activism and democratic things to come.f Furthermore, insofar as Marx Reconstructing the past as its contemporaries knew it at the time it accented the belligerence and violent hostility of the bourgeois govern- occurred is always fraught with pitfalls. Resolving the Commune's seem- ment towards Paris, his account says more about bourgeois defensive- ingly oppositional ideologies and bringing order to its influences has ness than working-class consciousness. presented historians with particular difficulties. While socialist republi- Through his participation in the International Association of cans laid its foundations, the Commune was not preordained, but Workingmen, founded seven years prior to the advent of the Commune resulted from the confluence of several independent factors. As such, and dedicated to the construction of a transnational working-class circumstances forced the Communards into casting off their ideological response to questions posed by industrialization, Marx had become moorings as they improvised Paris's governance and grappled with the acquainted with several future Communards. Given his expectation that residual problems from the war; this, however, does not imply a heuristic the historical dialectic, by which history moves through successive stages approach to governance. Invariably different approaches emerged, but of class conflict to its culmination in a society devoid of class, was on the the tendency of some historians to characterize the Commune as riven verge of entering the decisive conflict between the proletariat and the with philosophical differences has given too much credence to historical bourgeoisie, it is hardly surprising that Marx viewed the Commune as red herrings that were of no significance to the Communards or its sup- the actualization of modern society's fissure along a class divide. porters.' Scholarly attempts at redefining collective identities, high- Notwithstanding that Marx later modified his assessment of the lighting Communard moderation and, in some instances, according ornmune's socialism, both the Commune's subsequent defenders and special attention to the contentious debates over the formation of the detractors viewed it through a prism tinted by proletarian class con- Committee of Public Safety have occluded a clear view of the remark- ,.sc-i-ousness." A rash of histories o'f the Com~ducecl by partic~ able degree of unity on the Commune around revolutionary republican pants in, and witnesses to, the events further situated the Commune socialism articulated in the final years of the Second Empire. within the matrix of class conflict, Highly partisan, personal, and often 110 I _ L ~ ~ __ '"Ill 112 THE PARlS COMMUNE A SOCIALIST REVOLUTION? 113 hastily produced, these accounts of the Commune are somewhat suspect account, the Commune was orchestrated by an assortment of sociopaths as accurate reflections of events; but they do provide a portal into con- - habitual criminals, alcoholics, the mentally deranged, the demimonde temporary ideological perspectives on the Commune. For example, - whose temporary exercise of sovereignty over Paris culminated, pre- within six months of the Commune's repression, Benoit Malon, a dictability, in an orgy of disorder, characterized by death and destruction. member of the Commune, characterized it as the 'third defeat of the In 1930, Edward S. Mason, a political economist at Harvard, wrote of French proletariat,' positioning .it alongside the Lyonnais canuts (silk the Commune, 'its impetus and raison d'etre are to be found in causes workers) revolt in 1831 and the June 1848 uprising of Parisian workers which lie outside the domain of socialism. The war with Germany, the in a seamless continuum of revolutions whose motivations and violent events of the siege, disgust with a strongly centralized and incompeten l repression underscored the irreconcilibilty of class interests." Prosper government, were of more decisive significance.' In effect, while he Lissagaray produced perhaps the best known account of the Commune acknowledged that there were socialists amongst both the elected by one of its participants.? Originally written in 1876 while Lissagaray Communards and its rank and file supporters, Mason challenged the was in exile in Belgium, it has been nearly continuously available in an conclusion that the revolution that produced the Commune was either English edition since Karl Marx's daughter, Eleanor, translated it ten proletarian or socialist. Focusing, instead, on a more temporally limited years later. Lissagaray's account, while frequently erroneous, is an issue - the pervasive sense of betrayal at Paris - Mason distinguished the extremely well-detailed, dramatic narrative of events in which the culmi- Commune's contemporary importance from the significance it achieved nating message of the Commune is the irreconcilability of class interests. posteriorly, referring to it as a 'legend ... of more importance in the In the twentieth century, evaluations of the Commune continued to molding of history than the historical reality itself.,9 turn on its relationship to social-class dynamics and the lessons for revo- Challenges to the socialist model of the Commune have continued lutions it foretold. Few bothered to examine the historical record. wit~e~;:;ithe Gommuri-e-ihrough--the prism- of repub- Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky, the architects of the Bolshevik ! .!i.<;~rijsm,_~ra~~r=th?:~·~cJ!t~SS_tJ:llggInL1e.971, Louis Greenberg advanced Revolution of 1917, both expressed admiration for the Commune, but what he called, a liberal interpretation of the Commune, so named viewed its defeat as offering a cautionary tale on the fate that awaits revo- because it attributes predominantly political motivations to the commu- lutionaries who pursue a moderate course in the hope of building a rev- nalist movement, namely the defense of political liberties and decentral- olutionary consensus across social classes. Despite this criticism of its ization of political authority. For Greenberg, the greatest casualty of the practice, the Soviet state included the Commune in its revolutionary Commune was 'the liberal dream of a self-governing France' that suc- pantheon, thus solidifying an inextricable, though erroneous, associa- cumbed to the centralizing, dictatorial tendencies of a Jacobin tion between the self-styled communist state and the Commune. majoriry.l'' To what extent can we bifurcate the Communards' advocacy Furthermore, in the wake of the Bolshevik revolution, some historians of decentralization from their advocacy of socialism? Was the Commune saw in the Commune 'the first concrete example of the workers' seizure simply a movement for municipal liberty? In viewing decentralization in of power,' and thus a harbinger of events that unfolded in 1917.7 purely political terms, Greenberg's approach to the Commune ignores The right-wing view of the Commune was no less prone to conceiving Communard rhetoric that defined decentralized government as the of it in terms of class conflict. Beginning with the publication of his four- purest, least diluted expression of democracy and the counterpoint to volume screed against the Commune, Maxime du Camp established the France's historically repressive centralized regimes. tone for anti-Communard versions of events.f Influenced by France's Whereas the Commune's historiography was once largely a series of defeat at the hands of Prussia and threatened by the prospect for social, celebratory paeans to the origins of revolutionary proletarian conscious- political, and cultural upheaval

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