Each time we look at the history of the Commune we see it in a new light. This is due to the experiences acquired in later revolutionary struggles and especially during the later revolutions, not only the Russian Revolution, but also the German and Hungarian Revolutions. The Franco-German War was a bloody explosion, the omen of an immense world-wide slaughter. The Commune was a flash of lightning, the omen of a world-wide proletarian revolution.
The Commune shows us the heroism of the working masses, their capacity to unite in a single block, their willingness to sacrifice themselves for the sake of the future, but, at the same time, it shows us the inability of the masses to choose their road, their indecision in guiding the movement, their fatal inclination to check the movement after the first successes, thus allowing the enemy to revive itself and re-establish its position.
The Commune came too late. It had every possibility to take power on the 4th September, and this would have enabled the Parisian proletariat to put itself in one fell swoop at the head of the entire country's working class in its struggle against the forces of the past, against Bismarck as well as against Thiers. But power fell into the hands of the democratic 'talkers', the deputies of Paris. The Parisian proletariat had neither a party nor were they bound by previous struggles to any leadership. The petty-bourgeois patriots who considered themselves socialists and sought the support of the workers, had, in fact, no confidence in them. They shook the proletariat's faith in itself, they were continually looking for famous lawyers, journalists, deputies to put in charge of the movement, yet whose only qualification for this consisted of ten vaguely revolutionary phrases.
The reason why Jules Favre, Picard, Garnier-Pages and co. took power in Paris on the 4th September is the same as that which allowed Paul-Boncour, A. Varenne, Renaudel and several others to become for a period the leaders of the party of the proletariat.
The Renaudels, the Boncours and even the Longuets and the Pressemanes by their sympathies, their intellectual habits and conduct are far nearer to Jules Favre and Jules Ferry than to the revolutionary proletariat. Their socialist terminology is only a historical mask which allows them to thrust themselves upon the masses. And it is because Favre, Simon, Picard and others have used and abused the democratic liberal terminology that their sons and grandsons have been forced to resort to socialist terminology. But these sons and grandsons have remained loyal to their fathers and continue their work. And when it becomes necessary to decide not the question of the composition of a ministerial clique but the more important question of knowing which class is to take power in France, Renaudel, Varenne, Longuet and their like will be on the side of Millerand - the accomplice of Gallifet and executioner of the Commune ... When the reactionary 'talkers' of the salons and parliament find themselves face to face in life with the Revolution, they never recognise it.
The workers' party - the true one - is not a machine for parliamentary manoeuvres, it is the accumulated and organised experience of the proletariat. It is only with the help of the party which leans on the whole of its past history, which theoretically foresees the roads of development, in all its stages and extracts the formula for necessary action, that the proletariat can free itself from the necessity of continually remaking its history: its hesitations, its lack of decision, its errors.
The Parisian proletariat did not have such a party. The bourgeois socialists who swarmed the Commune, raised their eyes to the sky, waited for a miracle or a prophecy - they hesitated - and meanwhile the masses had to grope, they were lost because of the indecision of some or the fantasy of others.
The result was that the Revolution broke out in the middle of them, too late. Paris was encircled. Six months passed before the proletariat had time to remember the lessons of the past revolutions, of the past fights, of the repeated betrayals of the democracy, and took [illegible]
These six months were an irreparable loss. In September, 1870, there had been a centralised party for revolutionary action leading the French proletariat, the whole history of France, and with it the whole history of humanity would have taken a new course.
If on the 18th March the power was in the hands of the Parisian proletariat, it was not because they took it consciously - but because their enemies had left Paris. The enemy was losing ground, the workers were scornful and hated them, the petty-bourgeoisie did not trust them any longer, and the upper bourgeoisie believed that they wouldn't be able to defend them any more. The soldiers were hostile to the officers. The government fled from Paris to concentrate its forces elsewhere. And it was only then that the proletariat became master of the situation.
But they only understood this the following day. The Revolution came upon them without being expected.
The first success was a new source of passivity. The enemy had fled to Versailles. Wasn't that a victory? At that time the governmental clique could have been smashed practically without bloodshed. In Paris all the ministers - with Thiers being the first - could have been imprisoned. No one would have raised his hands to defend them. It was not done. There was no centralised party organisation with an over-all view of the situation to make these decisions.
The remainder of the infantry did not want to march back on Versailles. The thread which tied the soldiers to the officers was very thin indeed. And if there had been in Paris an active party centre it would have sent into the retreating armies - since there was a possibility of retreat - some hundreds or at least some tens of devoted workers with the following instructions: Stir up the discontent of the soldiers against the officers and make good use of the first favourable psychological moment by freeing the soldiers from the officers and bringing them back to Paris to be united with the people. This could easily have been done according to the very confession of the partisans of Thiers. But no one thought about it. There was nobody to think about it. Besides, when such important events are taking place, such decisions can be taken only by a revolutionary party which is expecting a revolution, which is prepared for it, which doesn't lose its head, by a party which is used to having an over-all view and is not afraid of acting.
But the French proletariat did not have any party of action.
The Central Committee of the National Guard is, in fact, a soviet of the armed workers' delegates and of the petty-bourgeoisie. Such a soviet which is directly elected by the masses who have taken the revolutionary road, is an excellent body for action. But, at the same time and precisely because of its direct and elementary link with the masses who are in the state where the revolution found them, it reflects not only all the strong but also all the weak features of the masses, and moreover it reflects these weak features before it does the strong ones. It shows a spirit of indecision, of expectation, and the tendency to be inactive after the first few successes.
The Central Committee of the National Guard was lacking leadership. It was necessary to have an organisation embodying the political experience of the proletariat and intervening at all levels, not only in the Central Committee but also in the legions, in the batallions, in the deepest layers of the French proletariat. By means of these soviets of delegates - in this case it was the organs of the National Guard - the party would have been able to be in contact with the masses, to judge their mood; its leading centre would have been able to put out a slogan every day - a slogan which would have penetrated the masses through the party militants, thus uniting their thought and their will.
No sooner had the government retreated to Versailles than the National Guard freed itself of its responsibility, at the time when this responsibility was immense. The Central Committee pictured setting up 'legal' elections at the Commune. It entered into negotiations with the mayors of Paris to cover itself, on the right, with 'legality'.
If, at the same time, a violent attack against Versailles had been prepared, these negociations with the mayors would have been a fully justified military trick, adapted to its aims. But, in reality, these negociations were only intended to be an escape from any sort of struggle. The petty-bourgeois radicals and the socialist idealists, who were respecting legality, and the people who were embodying part of the 'legal' state, the deputies and the mayors, etc., all of them at the bottom of their hearts were hoping that Thiers would stop respectfully before the revolutionary Paris, as soon as Paris was covered by the 'legal' Commune.
The passivity and indecision were in this case supported by the sacred principle of federation and autonomy. Paris, you see, is only one commune among other communes. Paris does not want to impose anything on to anyone. It does not struggle for dictatorship, but for 'dictatorship by example'.
On the whole, it was only an attempt to replace the proletarian revolution which was developing by a petty-bourgeois reform - the communal autonomy. The real revolutionary task consisted of ensuring the power of the proletariat throughout the country. Paris had to be used as a base, as a prop, as a place of arms. And to realise this aim it was necessary, without losing any time, to triumph over Versailles and send agitators, organisers, armed forces all over France. It was necessary to contact sympathisers, to consolidate those who were hesitating and break the opposition of the enemy. Instead of this offensive and aggressive policy - the only one to save the situation - the leaders in Paris tried to shut themselves up in their communal autonomy: they would not attack the others if these others did not attack them; each town had its sacred right to self-government. This idealist chat - a kind of mundane anarchism - was in fact covering cowardness in front of revolutionary action which would have had to have been carried out to the end. Otherwise, it shouldn't have been started ...
The hostility towards the centralist organisation - a heritage of the petty-bourgeois localism and autonomism - is without doubt the weak point of one fraction of the French proletariat. The autonomy of the sections, of the wards, of the towns, is for some revolutionaries the most important guarantee of true progress and individual independence. But that was a great error for which the French proletariat has had to pay dearly.
Under the form of a 'struggle against despotic centralism' and against the 'stifling' discipline, a fight for the conservation of the various groups and sub-groups of the working class is carried out, a fight for their petty interests, with their petty leaders and their local oracles. The entire working class, while conserving its cultural originality and its political nuances, can act with method and firmness, without lagging behind events and each time striking a mortal blow at the weakest part of its enemies, provided that at its head, above the wards, the sections, the groups, there is a centralised apparatus bound by an iron discipline. The tendency towards particularism, in whatever form is assumes, is a heritage of the dead past. The sooner French communism - both socialist communism and syndicalist communist - gets rid of it, the better it will be for the proletarian revolution.
The party does not create revolution at its will, it does not choose the moment when it takes power, but it intervenes actively in the events, penetrates all the time the mood of the revolutionary masses and evaluates the strength of the enemy's resistance, and determines the most favourable moment for decisive action. This is the most difficult aspect of its task. The party does not have a ready-made decision valid for all cases. One needs a correct theory, a close link with the masses, understanding of the situation, a revolutionary judgement, a quick decision ability. The more deeply a revolutionary party penetrates into all fields of the proletarian struggle, the more it is unified by the unity of the aim and that of the discipline, and the quicker and better it can succeed in achieving its tasks.
[illegible] flux and reflux. The taking of power can be attained only under powerful revolutionary pressure from the working masses. But in this act the preparation phase is absolutely unavoidable. And the better the party understands the conjuncture and the moment, the better the bases of the resistance will be prepared, the better the forces and the roles will be distributed, the more certain will be success and the victims will be fewer. The correlation of a carefully prepared action and of the mass movement is the strategical-political task for the seizure of power.
The comparison of March 18, 1871 with November 7th, 1917 is very instructive from this point of view. In Paris there was an absolute lack of initiative from the leading revolutionary circles. The proletariat, armed by the bourgeois government is, in fact, master of the town, possesses all material means for power - cannons and guns - but is not aware of it. The bourgeoisie attempts to take back its arms from the giant, it tries to steal the cannons from the proletariat. The attempt is a failure. The government flees in panic from Paris to Versailles. The field is open. But it is only the following day that the proletariat understands that it is master of Paris. The leaders are tail-ending the events - they register them only after they've happened, and do [illegible]. In [illegible] the events went in a different way. The party went firmly in a decisive manner to the seizure of power, with its men being everywhere, reinforcing each position, enlarging all fissures between the workers and the army on the one hand and the government on the other.
During August, September, October, there was a tremendous revolutionary movement. The Party thrived and increased enormously its support inside the working class and the army. Later on, the harmony between the preparation of the conspiracy and of the action of the masses is practically automatic. The Second Congress of the Soviets was fixed for Nov. 7th. All our previous agitation was meant to lead to the seizure of power by the Congress. Thus the seizure of power was decided upon for Nov. 7th. This fact was very well known and understood by the enemy. Kerensky and his advisers could not do anything to consolidate themselves at the decisive moment. For that, they had to have the most revolutionary part of the army leave the capital. On our side we profited by this attempt to turn into the source of a new clash which had a decisive importance. We openly accused Kerensky's government —our accusation was later proved by the discovery of an official document which planned the removal of one-third of the army (not out of military considerations but for counter-revolutionary purposes). This clash linked us even more tightly to the army and posed in front of the latter a very well-defined task: that of supporting the congress of the Soviets on the 7th November. And since the government were insisting on—even if in a mild way—the removal of the army, we created a revolutionary committee of war beside the Soviet of Petrograd, which already was in our hands, under the pretext of checking the military soundness of the government's projected course of action.
Thus we had a purely military organ at the head of the army of Petrograd, which in reality was a legal organ of armed insurrection. We allocated at the same time, to all the military units, to all military shops, etc, communist commissars. The clandestine military organisation was carrying out special technical tasks and was providing the war revolutionary committee with militants on which one could count for important military events. The main job of preparation, realisation and armed insurrection was carried out openly - but as though it were a matter of course. The bourgeoisie, with Kerensky at its head, did not realise what was happening.
As far as the strategy is concerned there were in our party many different opinions. One part of the central committee declared itself, as we all know, against the seizure of power thinking that the moment had not come to do so, that Petrograd was separated from the rest of the country the proletariat from the peasantry etc. Other comrades thought that we were not giving enough importance to the elements of the military plot. A member of the Central Committee demanded in October that the Alexandrine Theatre be encircled where the Democratic Conference was and demanded that the dictatorship of the CC of the Party be proclaimed. They were saying - by concentrating our agitation as well as the preparatory military work for the 2nd congress we displayed our plan to the adversary, we gave him the possibility of preparing himself and even the possibility of giving us a preventive blow. But there is no doubt that the attempt of a military plot and the encircling of the Alexandrine Theater would have been too alien a fact for the developments of the events, and that it would have been a puzzling event for the masses. Even at the Soviet of Petrograd, where our fraction (tendency) was in control, such an enterprise would not have appeared the logical development of the struggle but would have provoked great disarray (especially amongst the army where some regiment particularly the Cavalry were hesitating and had little confidence in the undertaking) it would have been much easier for Kerensky to smash a plot unexpected by the masses than to attack the army, which was consolidating itself more and more on its positions: the positions of defense of the future Soviet Congress. The majority of the CC rejected the project of encircling of the democratic conference and it was right. The conjuncture was very well judged. The armed insurrection, with hardly any bloodshed, triumphed precisely on the day which had been openly been fixed beforehand for the convening of the 2nd Soviet Congress.
This strategy, however, cannot become a general rule; it requires special conditions. No one believed in a war with Germany anymore, and even the least revolutionary soldiers did not want to leave Petrograd for the Front. And even if initially that was the only reason why the army was on the side of the workers, it became more and more convinced it was right when the various manouvring of Kerensky were discovered. But this mood of the army of Petrograd had a much deeper root in the situation of the peasantry and in the development of the imperialist war. If there had been a split in the army and if Kerensky had had the possibility of being supported by a few regiments our project would have been a failure. Purely military elements (the conspiration, and the great rapidity of the action) would have prevailed. We would have had to choose another time for the insurrection. In the same way the Commune had the possibility to get hold of the regiments, even the peasant one, because they had lost all confidence and all respect for the power and their commanders - did nothing of the kind. The fault did not lie in the relationship between the working class and the peasantry but in a failure of revolutionary strategy.
What will be the situation in relation to this point in the European countries today? It is not easy to predict anything on that. Yet, as events develop slowly and as the bourgeois government try their best to use the past experiences one can foresee that for the proletariat to attract the sympathies of the soldiers it will have to fight against a great resistance and a well organised one at that. A skillful attack at the proper moment will be then necessary - The duty of the party is to be ready for it. That is why it has to keep and develop its character of centralised organisation, which openly leads the revolutionary movement of the masses and is at the same time a clandestine apparatus for armed insurrection.
The question of the acceptability of the commanders was one of the reason for the clashes between the National Guard and Thiers. Paris refused to accept the commanders appointed by Thiers, Varlin, then claimed that all the commanders of the National Guard from top to bottom, should be elected by the national guards themselves. It is on this point that the CC of the National Guard found its support.
This question must be seen from 2 sides, political and military, which are linked but must be kept distinct. The political task consisted in getting rid of the counter-revolutionary elements from the National Guard. Total election was the sole means as the majority of the N.G. was composed of workers and revolutionary petit-bourgeois. Moreover, as the slogan 'acceptability of the commanders' had to be applied to the infantry too, Thiers at one go would have been deprived of the essential part of his army, namely the counter-revolutionary officers. To achieve this project, a party was needed which would have had men in all units of the army. In a few words, the acceptability question acted as a wedge to split the army along class line. This is how things went in Russia at the time of Kerensky, specially on the eve of October.
But removing from the army the old apparatus of command inevitably tends to weaken its organisational cohesion and to lower the combativity of the forces. Elected commanders most of the time are rather weak as regards the technico-military side and as regards the maintenance of order and discipline. Thus, at the moment when the counter-revolutionary leaders who were oppressing the army were removed, the question arises as to how to give the army a revolutionary leadership—which is able to achieve its mission. This question can in no way be solved by mere elections. If the revolutionary army is led by inexperienced men, the revolution will be beaten by the enemy who is guided in the choice of its commanders by centuries of experiences. The methods of shapeless democracy must be complemented and to some extent replaced by measures of selection from the top. The Revolution must create an organ of experienced organisers in whom one can have absolute confidence and who choose, nominate and educate the commanders. If democratic particularism and autonomy are extremely dangerous for the proletarian revolution in general, they are ten times more dangerous for the army. We saw this by the tragical example of the commune.
The Central Committee of the National Guard got its authority from its democratic election. At the time when the C.C. needed to develop its offensive to the maximum, deprived as it was of the leadership of a proletarian party, it lost its head, and hurried in transferring its powers to the representatives of the commune. Now, it was a big mistake at that time to play with elections. But once the elections had taken place and the Commune had been convened, one had to concentrate in the commune and create through it an organ with real power to reorganise the National Guard. But things went differently. Beside the elected Commune there remained the Central Committee; the character of eligibility of this Central Committee gave it a political authority, as a result of which it could emulate the Commune. But at the same time it deprived it of the necessary energy and firmness for the purely military questions which after the organisation of the Commune were the justification for its existence. Democratic methods are the only weapon in the hands of the proletariat and its party. The elections cannot be turned into a fetish, a remedy against all evils. One must combine the methods of elections with those of nomination. The power of the Commune came from the elected National Guard. But once it was created, the Commune should have reorganised the National Guard from top to bottom, should have given it safe leaders and established a rule of severe discipline. The Commune did not do this as it was itself without a powerful revolutionary leading centre. Thus it got smashed. One can flip through the whole history of the Commune and one will find one continual lesson: one needs a strong leading party. The French proletariat has made sacrifices for the Revolution. But more than any other also, it has been deceived. The bourgeoisie many times blinded it with all colours of republicanism, radicalism and socialism in order to fetter it in the capitalist chains. The bourgeoisie through its agents, its lawyers, its journalists, has brought a whole mass of democratic, parliamentary and autonomist formulas which are only obstacles for the proletariat.
The temperament of the French proletariat is a revolutionary lava. But this lava at the moment is covered by the ashes of scepticism. The result of many betrayals and much disenchantment. That is why the French revolutionary proletariat must be most severe towards its party and uncover relentlessly the gap between words and action. The French workers need an organisation for action, strong as steel, with leaders who can be controlled by the masses at each step of the revolutionary movement.
How long will we be given by history to get ready? We do not know. For years the French bourgeoisie ruled the Third Republic on the bones of the [illegible]. But this time, the action will be firmer, more concentrated. Thiers's heirs will have to pay fully their historical debt.
Zlatooste, 4th Feb, 1921.