I try to bring relevant data from our past to you so that you can expand on the education you got at the hands of those that will kill you to control you.
This week I have been fortunate to have more keyboard time than has been normal for the last few months.
I hope you can tell the difference, dear reader.
The Paris Commune lived from March 18th, 1871 until the 'Bloody Week' following the 21st of May, 1871.
These few short weeks were the last the world would see of self governance until the Unknown Revolution of 1917 to 1921 in the Ukraine.
Those that rule by force then had until 1936 and the Spanish Civil War.
As you can see, those 'ruling elites' have had plenty of time to not tell you the full history of anarchism in the world.
They have led you to believe that anarchists are all weird and not in the mainstream, when the facts are that despite their best efforts we persist to this very day.
So, dear reader, take a few minutes to learn what has been kept from you, intentionally.
Pëtr Kropotkin
The Commune of Paris
I. The Place of the Commune in Socialist Evolution
On March 18, 1871, the people of Paris rose against a despised and detested government, and proclaimed the city independent free, belonging to itself.
This overthrow of the central power took place without the usual stage effects of revolution, without the firing of guns, without the shedding of blood upon barricades.
When the armed people came out into the streets, the rulers fled away, the troops evacuated the town, the civil functionaries hurriedly retreated to Versailles carrying everything they could with them.
The government evaporated like a pond of stagnant water in a spring breeze, and on the nineteenth the great city of Paris found herself free from the impurity which had defiled her, with the loss of scarcely a drop of her children’s blood.
Yet the change thus accomplished began a new era in that long series of revolutions whereby the peoples are marching from slavery to freedom.
Under the name “Commune of Paris” a new idea was born, to become the starting point for future revolutions.
As is always the case, this fruitful idea was not the product of some one individualas brain, of the conceptions of some philosopher; it was born of the collective spirit, it sprang from the heart of a whole community.
But at first it was vague, and many of those who acted upon and gave their lives for it did not look at it in the light in which we see it today; they did not realize the full extent of the revolution they inaugurated or the fertility of the new principle they tried to put in practice.
It was only after they had begun to apply it that its future bearing slowly dawned upon them; it was only afterward, when the new principle came to be thought out, that it grew definite and precise and was seen in all its clearness, in all its beauty, its justice and the importance of its results.
II. How the Commune Failed to Realize Its True Aim and Yet Set That Aim Before the World
Ten years already separate us from the day when the people of Paris overthrew the traitor government which raised itself to power at the downfall of the empire; how is it that the oppressed masses of the civilized world are still irresistibly drawn toward the movement of 1871?
Why is the idea represented by the Commune of Paris so attractive to the workers of every land, of every nationality?
The answer is easy.
The revolution of 1871 was above all a popular one.
It was made by the people themselves, it sprang spontaneously from the midst of the mass, and it was among the great masses of the people that it found its defenders, its heroes, its martyrs.
It is just because it was so thoroughly “low” that the middle class can never forgive it.
And at the same time its moving spirit was the idea of a social revolution; vague certainly, perhaps unconscious, but still the effort to obtain at last, after the struggle of many centuries, true freedom, true equality for all men.
It was the revolution of the lowest of the people marching forward to conquer their rights.
Attempts have been and are made to change the sense of this revolution, to represent it as a mere effort to regain the independence of Paris and thus to constitute a tiny state within France.
But nothing can be more untrue.
Paris did not seek to isolate herself from France, any more than to conquer it by force of arms; she did not care to shut herself within her walls like a nun in a convent; she was not inspired by the narrow spirit of the cloister.
If she claimed her independence, if she tried to hinder the interference of the central power in her affairs, it was because she saw in that independence a means of quietly elaborating the bases of future organization and bringing about within herself a social revolution; a revolution which would have completely transformed the whole system of production and exchange by basing them on justice; which would have completely modified human relations by, putting them on a footing of equality; which would have formed our social morality anew by founding it upon equality and solidarity.
Communal independence was then but a means for the people of Paris; the social revolution was their end.
III. The Teachings of the Commune in Modern Socialism
The public meetings organized on March 18 in almost every town where there is a socialist group are well worthy of careful attention, not merely because they are a demonstration of the army of labor, but also because they afford an opportunity for gauging the sentiments of the socialists of both worlds.
They are a better opportunity for “taking a poll” than could be given by any system of voting, an occasion when aspirations may be formulated uninfluenced by electoral party tactics.
The workers do not meet simply to praise the heroism of the Parisian proletariat or to call for vengeance for the May massacres, While refreshing themselves with the memory of the brave struggle in Paris, they have gone further and discussed what lessons for the coming revolution must be drawn from the Commune of 1871.
They ask what the mistakes of the commune were not for the sake of criticizing the men who made them but to bring out clearly how the prejudices about property and authority, which then reigned among workers’ organizations, hindered the bursting forth of the revolutionary idea and its subsequent developments into a beacon to light the world.
The lesson of 1871 has benefited the workers of every land, enabling them to break with their old prejudices and come to a clearer and simpler understanding as to what their revolution is to be.
The next rising of communes will not be merely a “communal” movement. Those who still think that independent, local self-governing bodies must be first established and that these must try to make economic reforms within their own localities are being carried along by the further development of the popular spirit, at least in France.
The communes of the next revolution will proclaim and establish their independence by direct socialist revolutionary action, abolishing private property.
When the revolutionary situation ripens, which may happen any day, and governments are swept away by the people, when the middle-class camp, which only exists by state protection, is thus thrown into disorder, the insurgent people will not wait until some new government decrees, in its marvelous wisdom, a few economic reforms.
As you can see, dear reader, there is more to anarchism than can comfortably be read from the bottom of a skateboard.
I have been very fortunate to have had the time to do much of the reading.
The old guard of the revolution took the time to see to it that their ideas made it into print.
Fortunately for us, that has not been totally suppressed by our rulers.
It is still currently available on the world wide web.