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.
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