The Death of socialism? - Marxism contra Stalinism PDF Print E-mail
Tuesday, 30 November 1999 00:00

Key Points:

1) Provide a brief descriptive overview of the Paris Commune.

2) Highlight the significance of the

Key Points:

1) Provide a brief descriptive overview of the Paris Commune.

2) Highlight the significance of the Paris Commune in reviving participatory forms of democracy.

3) Identify and consider the impact that the Paris Commune had on Marx’s conception of socialism.

4) Briefly describe how this conception would be subsequently developed by the key figures in classical Marxism (Lenin, Trotsky, Luxemburg, Gramsci).

Introduction:

  • Models of direct participatory and indirect representative forms of democracy are central to contemporary debates about the nature, problems and prospects of democracy.

  • Encourage open-minded critical evaluation of strengths and weaknesses of representative and participatory models.

  • Need to understand, not just ideas, but historical emergence.

1) The Paris Commune of 1871: Descriptive overview

  • changing composition of social forces involved in revolutionary upheaval: bourgeois to proletarian revolution.

- 1789-93, 1830, 1848 vs. 1871 & 1968

  • revolution of 1848 created the Second Republic

  • Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte (1808-1873) elected president, takes power in coup d’etat 1851, assumes title ‘Emperor Napoleon III’ in 1852.

  • rules as dictator for 18 years – Second Empire

  • becomes increasingly unpopular, plays the ‘war card’ against Prussia 1870.

  • defeat of the French Army in the war with Prussia, collapse of Napoleon III’s ‘Second Empire’.

  • new Republic declared on 4 September 1870 - Government of National Defence.

  • growing popular unrest due to hardship and food shortages, general economic crisis, and half-hearted prosecution of the war by the National Government led by Adolphe Thiers.

  • Thiers ruthless & right-wing:

- ‘the vile multitude’;

- “businessmen were going around repeating constantly that financial operations would never be started up again until all those wretches were finished off and their cannons taken away. An end had to be put to all that, and then one could get back to business.” (Edwards, p.25).

  • importance of the Paris National Guard – ‘the revolution armed’ (Marx).

  • victory of conservative catholic monarchists in February elections to the National Assembly further alienated the Parisian masses from the National Government.

  • National Government’s attempt to capture the National Guard’s guns sparks revolution on 18 March 1871.

  • army refuses to fire on crowd, is easily defeated

  • Central Committee of National Guard assumes power, pressures Mayors to hold municipal election on Sunday March 26 (227,000 votes cast).

  • Paris Commune has 81 members:

- average age 38, role of youth in revolution

- around 35 members manual working class, rest predominantly middle class.

- about 40 had experience in French labour movement.

  • “The results showed an overwhelming swing to the Left, only about fifteen to twenty moderate republicans being elected, and they soon resigned. The most solidly working-class arrondissements were the most strongly working-class.” (Edwards, 26)

  • social measures:

Leo Frankel (Commission of Labour and Exchange): “the Revolution of 18 March was accomplished solely by the working-class. If we do nothing to assist this class, we who believe in social equality, I can see no reason for the Commune’s existence.” (Edwards, p.35).

– rent and bills.

– workers’ co-operatives (43 by 14 May)

– provide education for all (secular rather than religious)

– education for women

– child-care facilities for working-class women

– The Times on 29 March describes the revolution as “the predominance of the Proletariat over the wealthy-classes, of the working man over the master, of Labour over Capital.”

  • ‘festival of the oppressed’.

  • defeat of the Commune:

– popular revolts in most major cities but only in Paris was a popular government established.

– National Government’s army, with tacit support of Prussian army, begins assault on May 1, May 21 troops enter city, retakes city May 28 after genocide of Communards.

  • the Paris Commune lasted 72 days from March 18 to May 28, 1871.

  • significance?

  • “the biggest urban insurrection of the nineteenth century, an anticipation of the revolutions that were to follow.” Edwards, p.9

  • first working class revolution in history.

  • decisive impact on Marx and Engels’ ideas concerning the political form of working class self-emancipation.

  • Profound impact on the subsequent develop of socialist (and anarchist) thought and political programmes.

2) Marx’s interpretation: “The political form of working class self-emancipation”

  • The Commune was “a thoroughly expansive political form, while all previous forms of government had been emphatically repressive. Its true secret was this. It was essentially a working-class government, the produce of the struggle of the producing against the appropriating class, the political form at last discovered under which to work out the economic emancipation of labour (Marx, 1968: 290).

Impact on Marx’s Thinking?

  • The Communist Manifesto presents vague notion of socialist democracy.

– “the first step in the revolution by the working-class is to raise the proletariat to the position of ruling class, to win the battle of democracy”.

  • Marx writes The Civil War in France for the First International, published in June 1871.

– develops much fuller and more systematic conceptualisation of socialist democracy

  • The establishment of the Commune showed that ‘the working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made state machinery, and wield it for its own purposes’ (p.285).

  • Paris Commune established a number of principles which became central to the classical Marxist vision of socialism.

i) overthrow of the bourgeois parliament and supporting institutions.

ii) establishment of radically democratic (directly participatory) form of government.

iii) these assemblies held accountable to their constituencies by:

(a) the right of recall (delegates to these assemblies were ‘to be at anytime revocable and bound by the ... formal instructions’ of their constituents (p.288)); and

(b) frequent elections.

– This meant that ‘instead of deciding once in three or six years which member of the ruling class was to misrepresent the people in Parliament, universal suffrage was to serve the people ... (p.289)’.

iv) standing army and other ‘repressive organs of the old governmental power were to be amputated’ and replaced by a popular militia (ibid).

v) For Marx the Commune demonstrated that the overthrow of private property:

- centrally involved the exercise of effective control over the means of production by the associated producers through democratic assemblies.

- relations of production definitive of Marxian socialism centrally involved democratic working class control of the means of production which were to become ‘mere instruments of free and associated labour’ (pp.290-291).

3) Subsequent development of Marxist conceptions of socialist democracy: From municipal assembly to workers’ councils.

  • adoption of the substance of Marx’s analysis of socialist democracy – but...

  • nature & dynamics of revolutionary upheavals (Russia 1905 & 1917; Germany 1918-23; Italy 1919).

  • workers councils & radically democratic workers’ state composed of workplace, district, and regional assemblies with a multi-party national assembly.

  • role of the party