Fascism/Antifascism (8)
| THE PARIS COMMUNE |
| One comparison (among others) demands attention and compels us to criticize the usual Marxist view, which happens to be that of Marx himself. After the Paris Commune, Marx drew his famous lesson: "the working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made State machinery, and wield it for its own purposes." [20] But Marx failed to establish clearly the distinction between the insurrectional movement dating from March 18, 1871, and its later transformation, finalized by the election of the "Commune" on March 26. The formula "Paris Commune" includes both and conceals the evolution. The initial movement was certainly revolutionary, in spite of its confusion, and extended the social struggles of the Empire. But this movement was willing next to give itself a political structure and a capitalist social content. In effect the elected Commune changed only the exterior forms of bourgeois democracy. If the bureaucracy and the permanent army had become characteristic features of the capitalist State, they still did not constitute its essence. Marx observed that: |
| "The Commune made that catchword of bourgeois revolutions, cheap government, a reality, destroying the two greatest sources of expenditure: the permanent army and the State bureaucracy." [21] |
| As is well known, the elected Commune was largely dominated by bourgeois republicans. The communists, cautious and few in number, had formerly been obliged to express themselves in the republican press, so weak was their own organization, and did not carry much weight in the life of the elected Commune. As for the program of the Commune--this is the decisive criterion--we know it prefigured uniquely that of the Third Republic. Even without any Machiavellianism on the part of the bourgeoisie, the war of Paris against Versailles (very badly executed, and not by chance) served to drain the revolutionary content and direct the initial movement towards purely military activity. It is curious to note that Marx defined the governmental form of the Commune above all by its mode of operation, rather than what it effectively did. It was indeed "the true representation of all the healthy elements of French society, and therefore the true national government"--but a capitalist government, and not at all a "workers' government." [22] We shall not be able to study here why Marx adopted such a contradictory position (at least in public, for the First International, because he showed himself more critical in private). [23] In any case, the mechanism for stifling the revolutionary movement resembled that of 1936. As in 1871, the Spanish Republic used as cannon fodder the Spanish and foreign radical elements (naturally those most inclined to destroy fascism) without fighting seriously itself, without using all the resources at its disposal. In the absence of a class analysis of this power (as in the example of 1871), these facts appear as "errors," indeed "treasons," but never in their own logic. |
| [20] Marx & Engels, Writings on the Paris Commune, Monthly Review, New York (1971), p. 7O. |
| [21] Ibid., pp. 75-76. |
| [22] Ibid., p. 80. |
| [23] Saul K. Padover, ed., The Letters of Karl Marx, Prentice-Hall (1979), pp 333-335. |