Karl Marx oration 2021 March 14 2pm Lydia Samarbakhsh Head of the International Department French Communist Party Chair of the Communist Party of Britain Liz Payne Karl Marx oration 2021 Lydia Samarbakhsh head of the International Department of the French Communist Party promotes awareness of the nature and meaning of the capitalist system, however we experience it across the world. In France, this 150th anniversary takes place a little less than three years after a movement that is also unprecedented and still continuing, that of the “yellow vests” which, although many did not realise it, took over the communard slogan of “Power to the people”. This also was repressed very violently on the orders of President Macron and his Minister of the Interior. For the French ruling classes – far more likely to be moved by the defacement of a public monument than by the eyes and arms torn off by the grenades and flashballs thrown at the demonstrators by the police – there is no question of commemorating and let alone celebrating the Commune. Thus one of our most famous historians, Pierre Nora, answered without hesitation on national radio the question “Should we commemorate the bicentenary of Napoleon and of the Paris Commune?. His answer was Yes Napoleon but not the Commune”. For this court intellectual on a promotional tour for a book of “memories”, the Commune has “lost its subversive charge”. Napoleon, on the other hand, “has a historic dimension. He brought revolution to the countries he conquered. He is the founding father of the revolutionary institutions that modernised Europe.” s The flag of the 143rd I would first like to send you greetings from the national And the Commune. No historical dimension? No Battalion of the National leadership of the French Communist Party and its members, positive consequence. Let us note the nuance - not Guard of the 1871 Paris and to thank very warmly the Communist Party of Britain heir to the institutions or to the revolutionary scope of Commune. and Robert Griffiths, its secretary general, as well as Alex 1789 or 1793? ? Gordon and the Marx Memorial Library for this initiative and Hence, the ideological battle is still raging on this the invitation extended to me to speak on behalf of the PCF. 150th anniversary. It focuses on the historical front, on Cover image This is an important meeting for all of us because if the knowledge of facts, their interpretation, and on the Barricade, the Paris the ideas and the works of Marx have found in recent representation(s) of the Commune in terms how it is Commune, May, 1871 years a new vigour in the intellectual field, and commemorated. André Devambez particularly in the universities, they remain a source of The commemoration of the Paris Commune is inspiration and analysis of ever-growing importance for therefore a political battle. The Commune retains its the women and men of our time whose aims go “propulsive force” as my comrade Patrick Le Hyaric, beyond simply understanding the nature of director of Humanite wrote. “In spite of everything, it exploitation, domination and alienation of the existing decided basic issues immediately, issues which the capitalist order. Republicans would take a long time to implement and This anniversary of the death of Karl Marx then not fully”. corresponds in this year 2021 to an important As Jean Jaures put it, the Commune, was “in its anniversary in the history of the international workers essence, the first great battle of labor against capital”. movement, the 150th anniversary of the Paris Today this battle composes the fields of acute Commune. It also takes place in a global context of confrontation between the forces of capital and the pandemic and health, economic, social and political forces of labor in all its aspects – whether this is about crisis of unprecedented scale, a crisis which also social issues, modes and means of production or the issue of power and democracy, whether it is about the its emancipation.” place and the essential role of women in society and in From the moment of this statement, it became the revolutionary movement – and the emancipatory imperative for the ruling classes to superimpose the potential of feminist struggles to overcome the idea that violence, brutality, blood are the work of the capitalist order – whether it is about the demand for Communards – and also of all the forces of labor who internationalism, secularism, human fraternity and dare to challenge the established order, to seek to peace. abolish it and attempt to build a new social order, to Karl Marx saw the Commune come into existence, clear new democratic paths. And on the contrary that fight for its survival and then be crushed in blood. Karl this bloodshed is not on the side of those who seek, Marx drew lessons from it – as did many socialist and by all means, to hinder this historic movement in order anarchist revolutionaries of the time. But Marx, more to preserve their privileges, and who for that end have than any of his contemporaries and comrades in killed and are ready to kill again. struggles, except Louise Michel, remains the most Of course, de Poncins’ tweet is used to justify, in the hated of revolutionaries by the bourgeois classes and light of bourgeois morality, the ferocious repression the bourgeois state itself, even today. The same is true against those who had dared “to storm the sky”. Of for the Paris Commune. course, this only serves to remind us that it will always Despite the 150 years that separate us from the be so and to underline the idea that revolutionaries, Commune, it represents the revolutionary episode the communists, of yesterday or today, are, in the light most feared by the French bourgeoisie and – like the of the dominant ideology. , destroyers, not builders. Russian Revolution of 1917 – the most slandered by This false characterisation by an ambitious diplomat the bourgeoisies around the world. And this is has the essential objective of masking the most because its power, its own state system, its class important fact. It was, as Marx noted, the pre-existing objectives, were determined by the people, by war wth Prussia: conscious thinking people, the popular “mass”. “Paris could not, however, be defended without The Commune was initiated by the democratic arming its working class, without organizing it into an decisions of the people of Paris on March 18, and it effective force and teaching it through the nature of inaugurated a new revolutionary era, one of the war itself. Armed Paris was the armed revolution. experiment, of positive transformation, of positive A victory for Paris over the Prussian aggressor would change, of scientific engagement. have been a victory for the French worker over the It marked the end of the ‘old governmental and French capitalist and his state parasites.” clerical world, of militarism, of officialdom, of The terrible repression by the Versaillese, of the old exploitation, of trading, of monopolies, of privileges, establishment, was of exceptional violence, and as to which the proletariat owes its serfdom, the inflicted on the Commune constituted a kind of relief homeland its misfortunes and disasters.” for the bourgeois classes. They made it last as long as These were the words of its Declaration to the necessary to be reassured that they had removed all French people of April 20, 1871. The bourgeoisie danger. They wanted to be vindicated by the blood of heard this declaration perfectly. The bourgeoisie their adversaries like a macabre trophy: 10,000 dead in answered and still answers with unvarnished class the Bloody Week of May, more than 4,500 deported hatred. It does not need or want to pretend. to New Caledonia, nearly three hundred condemned Thus the former French ambassador to the United to forced labour and a hundred condemned to death States opened the discussion on Twitter, two weeks and executed. And the flight of tens of thousands of ago: “The Paris Commune was an armed insurrection Communards into exile. against an Assembly which had just been elected by This relentless violence of bourgeois power remains universal suffrage. It burnt down the monuments of in reality poorly acknowledged by its representatives, the city in a spirit of destruction and did so under the even today. The bourgeoisie has to coat it with eye of the (German) enemy who drink champagne.” morality and with religion as well. The bourgeoisie built This is a far-fetched summary at the historical level. an imposing basilica overlooking Paris so that “the At the political level it has a specific goal that his Parisians” but especially the bourgeoisie could colleague, the current French Ambassador to Ukraine, remember “forever” the anguish that was theirs – but Étienne de Poncins, hastened to explain to those who also, perhaps? its inhuman enjoyment of its attempt to had not yet understood: exterminate any threat to its existence as a class. “The Commune is also a foreshadowing of Soviet Even today, the French State, the heirs of Thiers communist totalitarianism, its rule through terror and must put down their class adversaries in order to block the massacres it carried out. Politically, the Commune any alternative, to divide the forces of those who was the blueprint for Lenin for 1917.” labour. They still must justify the violence then Indeed, it is not wrong to see in it a unleashed against this historic popular movement, “foreshadowing”. But not of “totalitarianism”. Of this against “this Sphinx who torments so much the there is no basis in historical facts. It is, however, of its bourgeois understanding” to use Marx's words. This is most central achievement which Karl Marx put very the violence they will systematically unleash as soon as clearly in his The Civil War in France: their existence is called into question.