The Paris Commune was a radical socialist and revolutionary government that formed in Paris on this day in 1871, existing for just a few months before being defeated by the French National Army on May 21st that year.

A hotbed of working-class radicalism, the Paris Commune was a watershed moment in revolutionary left history. A few months after it was formed, the commune was attacked and defeated by the French National Army on May 21st, 1871, beginning the so-called "Bloody Week".

The government of the Paris Commune developed a set of policies that tended towards a progressive, secular, and highly democratic social democracy, although its existence was too brief to implement these ideas. Among these policies were the separation of church and state, abolition of child labor, abolishment of interest on some forms of debt, as well as the right of employees to take over and run an enterprise if it was deserted by its original owner.

The Paris Commune was analyzed by many communist thinkers, including Karl Marx, who called it a "dictatorship of the proletariat." Vladimir Lenin danced in the snow in celebration when the newly formed Bolshevik government lasted longer than the Paris Commune.

The uprising inspired similar revolutionary attempts around the world, including communes in Moscow (1905), Petrograd (1917), Shanghai (1927 and 1967), and Seattle (2020).

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  • AOCapitulator [they/them, she/her]
    ·
    3 years ago

    Vladimir Lenin danced in the snow in celebration when the newly formed Bolshevik government lasted longer than the Paris Commune.

    Had never heard this and thought it was a wonderful little historical annecdote, looked it up and found this article, and found this passage that I thought was great and wanted to share

    https://thetricontinental.org/newsletterissue/21-paris-commune/

    In 1918, on the seventy-third day of the October Revolution and the Soviet Republic, Vladimir Lenin left his office in the Smolny Institute (Petrograd) and danced in the snow. He celebrated the fact that the Soviet experiment had outlasted that of the Paris Commune. Five days later, Lenin addressed the Third All-Russia Congress of Soviets, where he said that their Commune had outlasted that of Paris 1871 because of the ‘more favourable circumstances’ in which the ‘Russian soldiers, workers, and peasants were able to create the Soviet Government’. They did not maintain the old Tsarist state with its oppressive habits; instead, they created a new ‘apparatus which informed the whole world of their methods of struggle’. These methods included drawing in the various key classes to the ‘long, more or less difficult transitional period’ that is required to forge a socialist society. Every defeat – of the Paris Commune in 1871 and, later, of the USSR – is a school for working people.

      • AOCapitulator [they/them, she/her]
        ·
        3 years ago

        History is made by the collective action of all the common people, easy to forget that lenin was just a dude who worked with lots of other folks to do their best, very important to remember :)

        • GalaxyBrain [they/them]
          ·
          3 years ago

          Something I love about reading up in leftist figures, there is just like a lot of nice little human things that pop in that are too silly to ever be propagandist. Like this with Lennin, or him losing his shit around kitties, or Castro just getting super hype on swimming. Stuff that's totally normal person shit and endearing but not stuff people looking to aggrandize themselves would have published. Just everyday cute stuff

          • LoudMuffin [he/him]
            ·
            3 years ago

            Castro seemed like a genuinely humble and awesome dude. I love the photos of him playing basketball. Or the ones of Sankara with his guitar.

            I also love when Maduro starts an interview with a Univision propagandist with "Soy un hombre obrero, sensillo".

            I am a worker, a simple man.