lecture 2, "the paris commune and its legacy"
john merriman

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hung over Europe for 20, 30 years following it -- "in my view," the massacre that followed the commune anticipated the 20th century, where you became guilty for simply who you were (you were guilty if you were left in paris)

it was the largest massacre until the armenian genocide (in europe, only?)

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what was it?

has to be placed in two contexts

(1) in the context of the regime of napoleon the third -- which lasted from 1852-1870 (when he was rounded up by the Prussians). in the late 1860s, there was a revival of republican, socialist, and anarchist organizations -- in 1868, the emperor legalizes public meetings, and you had these in cafes and large warehouses. people were agitating for democratization, etc. -- so, a wave of political mobilzation.

in 1870s, there was a wave of strikes, which had previously been illegal--unions would in fact be illegal until 1881.

(2) the franco-prussian war, napoleon the third gets suckered into a war without any allies at all, against otto von bismarck (the prussian chancellor). it involves the candidacy of a royal family member for the candidacy of france, which would have left the empire surrounded by the prussians. napoleon protests vigorously, and his ambassador abuses bismarck's envoy(!). bismarck reveals to the european world that napoleon had earlier tried to make a deal, intolerable to the british.

so, in sum, they go to war, in the summer of 1870 against prussia, expecting to win. he was, though, "blown out"

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on september 4th, 1870, a crowd storms down town hall, and want to prolong resistance against the prussian army, which is routing the french. napoleon the third is very sick anyway, soon to die, he is captured in the battle of sedan and sent packing to britain.

there are those who want to keep fighting--one of the demands of prussia (german empire will be proclaimed in late january, in versailles) is that there be a huge indemnity that the french will have to pay. and that alsace and loren, the eastern, german-speaking provinces, would be annexed by germany (and these were two of the most prosperous, industrialized provinces of france)

so, in sum, people in paris find themselves surrounded. there is a wall around the city, keeping out the german troops. elsewhere, resistance is sparse--in metz, in october, a general capitulates to bismarck.

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to be sure, there were lots of crowds in paris who were shouting for war, which was surprising, in a sense. but the siege goes on, and on.

paris changes appearences--military dress, uniforms become increasingly visible.

there is the problem of food, how to feed all these people. you have enough for only a month, or so (you are fine in terms of drink, b/c of wine cellars). they use balloons! a symbol of liberty, but presumably this is not exactly sufficient. (there were 65 baloon flights, carrying about 20,000 pounds. pigeons are used to fly messages out, germans bring in falcons to munch the pigeons!)

there were some massacres, in the north-east, but nothing like paris would see in 1914, or 1939-1940.

the national guard from the outskirts took refuge, so a bit like a medieval siege.

you have 2,000,000 people, in total (a smattering of foreigners). the population begins to eat animals--dogs, rats and cats. canine butchers replace horse butchers, animals in the zoo were eaten, etc.

bismark had projected that the siege would end, eventually -- but paris creates a committee of sobriety, and encourages people to eat healthy!? these are the fancy folk.

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it ceased being funny, of course. hunger sets in, even if it was nothing like the siege of leningrad, where 1,000,000 died -- but there were people dying, etc. and venereal disease was rampant, as was drukenness, mental illnessess.

attempts to break out do not work. (there is a contest to see "how we get out"? two suggestions: (1) prostitutes are a resource for paris, they should be used to seduce and poision prussian soldiers. (2) take the orchestras of paris and teach them to play german music--one day they would march out and play this music, with a huge trojan horse behind it!)

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as things are going downhill, people start to say we must fight, but we need to unite to imagine a new world. in january 1871, a red sign is put up (red was illegal between 1849 and 1851, because it was believed to excite people!), saying "make way for the commune."

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france capitulates at the end of january 1871 -- the prussian cavalry trot down the champs d'elysses symbolically clean up the stones, etc., and france is all set to lose the war. france has a provisional government, much of the provinces return a monarchist assembly. the landlords come back to paris, and tell the people to pay back money with interest (pay back the indemnity).

and so people are incredibly angry.

theirs, expecting paris to rise, possbily, sends troops to mon matre(sp.?), because the national guard of paris has still got its guns. these troops go to disarm the national guard, but the guard is alerted--they take two commanders from the troops, and they shoot them.

thiers is now ready to "get these bastards."

and now, paris is surrounded again, but by troops of the provisional government.

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and so the commune begins (march 18, 1871). it will last until the 2nd of may, 1871. (lenin calls this the "festival of the oppressed")

so, for the first time, ordinary parisians find themselves masters of their own lives (the population of the city is swollen with political refugees). as in the french revolution, and 1848, clubs of women begin to form, demanding their rights.

all sorts of impressive social legislation is passed. (secular education system, nurseries for women workers, uniform contracts for female unions, ban night-baking).

this also explains, in part, the viciousness of the massacre of ordinary working women. they were seen as "uppity." many of the important communards are women.

you have the jacobins (republican socialists from the revolutionary tradition), you have the anarchists, you have moderat republicans (who simply desire more liberty vis-a-vis the centralized state), you have moderate socialists.

there are debates, meetings, arguments, etc., as the guns draw nearer.

there were communes in other cities, as well, with a variety of demands. paris keeps waiting for these armies of citizens to come and rescue it.

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within paris, you have poorer people invading the fancy areas, for the first time as independent citizens.

an artist calls for the tearing down of the statue of napoleon, as a symbol of centralized oppression.

for once they had won.

they had to defend paris, of course. cannons, they have. they build these huge barricades, a tradition that stretched back to the 16th century (of course, you can build barricades across smaller streets, but not really across big boulevards--and that was part of the rebuilding of paris in the 1850s and 1860s).

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who were the communards?

when revolutions are victorious, of course, everyone says "i was there!"

here, you have a body count, of more than 15,000 people. they were the ordinary parisians who couldn't get out, basically -- they were the poor socialists, anarchists, republicans, etc. their defence of paris reflects tensions between urban and conservative, rural france--the army that they were fighting was largely recruited from rural areas.

and so the commune is basically proletarian--people from the working quarters. artisans, craftsmen, domestic servants, etc. and they were trying to imagine a world in which they could rule.

prof argues it reflects the artisinal base of the french economy at that time.

the myth of the commune--for the conservatives, this was the "fury of hell", those who rose up to slay their social betters. for the republicans, this was a defense of the republic against the monarchy, restored (which is partly true, of course).

for marx, lenin--this was armageddon for the ruling class. though not marx's industrial working-class, of course, but a very different kind of working-class (semi-proletarianized, prof is arguing). this of course informs the "breaking of the chains" argument; testing the "dictatorship of the proletariat"

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the most important result, however, in prof's opinion, was the massacre itself.

the troops came in through the western gate--they use the boulevards that had been built by napoleon the third as a way of getting to the working-class areas (those areas that had always risen up). hausmann, of course, was the man who had plowed through working-class neighborhoods, that had once lain where those boulevards now are. he did it to bring more light, to bring more air, to free the flow for capital, and because you can't build barricades across the boulevards.

so the troops come pouring in, across boulevards that had been built in the 1850s and 1860s. and the damage was staggering.

and then the women were put on trial--there was a rumor that women had been burning down fancy houses. and so this rumor was part of the fear of "uppity women." and they squished them like grapes.

they shot them all.

in the end, there was a paris in which everybody had been guilty.

chimney sweepers were executed because they had charcoal on their cheeks; they would rip of your shirts, to see if you had any bruises from recoiling rifles; it wasn't a "neutral" massacre, they went to the radical areas, and that's where they went in and massacred the populations.

"why don't you get over this?" this was the ultimate lesson of the commune, which would hang over europe. it was a sign that the state was strong, and can be vicious. don't let anyone tell you that the victims of terrorism are equal, in number, to the victims of state terrorism. but this was the real lesson--the state was growing in power with napoleon, unification. the state could strike back with unparalleled savagery. and that's what happened at the commune.

minimum 15,000 died, probably closer to 25,000. (when they did the census in 1872, in paris, there were 10,000 less shoemakers than there had been before--an extraordinarily radical trade, don't forget). flames engulfed the bodies, they were gone, lost to history.

amnesty for the communards would come in 1879. but the massacre hung like a shadow over french and european politics, for years and years.