VI.4. FRATERNITY THAT WORKED

MENU: 6.4. Fraternity that worked

BY MOBILIZING THE POOR AND SURMOUNTING EXTRAORDINARY HANDICAPS, COMMUNARDS LEAVE AN EXAMPLE TO PONDER 

They had flaws and made mistakes, but defeat came from the 100,000 p.o.w.s that Bismarck released.

The Barricade at rue Blanche Defended by Women, unsigned, no date / zoom

          -- Musée Carnavalet, not exhibited.

In brief

• Parias take charge of their lives

• Leaders we wish we had

• Victories of La Commune

• Rooted

• "Friends of the Paris Commune"

*     *     *

Next,

6.4.1.

Parias take charge of their lives

VI.4.1. PARIAS TAKE CHARGE OF THEIR LIVES

PEOPLE WHO USUALLY STAY ON THE SIDELINES 

MOBILIZE FOR LA COMMUNE 

 Les Mystères de Paris by Eugène Sue, 1844

Those tipplers don't organize. For former peasants the city seems

incomprehensible.

• They feel powerless, dependent and inferior. 

• Palliatives are sociability and living in the present, especially at the tavern.

•  A sense of honor can replace the lack of material goods, and demanding reparation for slights satisfy the ego.

-- The Culture of Poverty by Jeffrey Kaplow, in "The Names of Kings," 1972: 

Eighteenth-century factors that stay relevant.

• Memories of peasant revolts lead to participating in short-term revolts, not long-term organization.

• But:

• Notorious barflies fight on the barricades: "There's hardly time for a drink at the bar."

-- Vallès

• Women of modest origin join in. Here an underclass woman contests a middle-class orator. Another exhorts a baby-holding mom:

Une séance du Club des femmes dans l'église Saint-Germain-l'Auxerois by F. Lix  (" Le Monde illustré," May 20, 1871), zoom 

--  Musée Carnavalet, not exhibited. 

 

• When Belleville's last barricade falls Jules Vallès flees, but no one dares hide him. He comes upon "a canteen lady, in full uniform, a superb creature of 25 with an hourglass figure in her bodice of dark blue. 'I have 15 wounded. You will pass as their doctor.'" She makes him an omelet, wraps white apron around him, gives him her cart and he escapes.

For more of that story, please click.

Excellent series of Guard photos

 

• A father enrolls the last of his sons: "I offer him wholeheartedly to the republican fatherland [...] place him in the battalion of your choice and you will make me extremely happy." 

-- Lissagary, citing a letter of a guard of the 13th district,
whose four older sons are fighting already: Appendice IV
Other sources show similar statements.

An irrefutable sign of engagement: Though half the police leave for Versailles and streets are less lighted, there is very little crime.*

-- As remarked by the Reverend William Gibson of the Methodist Mission

and as other American witness confirm (though most oppose the Commune),

 Paris Babylon and the Story of the Paris Commune by Rupert Christiansen, 1994

* To be sure, there would be fewer pickpockets when many of the wealthy leave after the siege. But one would expect burglaries and violent crime to increase, and the opposite happens. 

Twenty years later, workers learn to strike back through discipline, camaraderie and confronting the boss, that is, with industrialization.

But the disinherited of La Commune
organized spontaneously a generation before

tangible conditions favored it.

*     *     * 

Next,

6.4.2. 

Leaders we wish we had 

VI.4.2. LEADERS WE WISH WE HAD

THE GUARDS' CENTRAL COMMITTEE* VOLUNTARILY CEDED POWER

*Their Central Committee filled the vacuum when the government fled on March 18.

It said "Our mission is over" and explain what a deputy should be:

"CITIZENS,

Our mission is over; we will hand over your City Hall to your newly elected representatives.

Helped by your patience and support, we have correctly finished the difficult work taken up in your name. Thank you; solidarity is a vain word no longer: The Republic is assured.  

If our counsel can influence your decisions, let your most zealous servants express what they await from today's vote. 

CITIZENS,

Do not forget that the men who will serve you best are those you choose among yourselves, living your life, suffering from the same difficulties.

Be as aware of the ambitious as of the parvenus; both will think only of their own interest and will always think themselves indispensable.  

Watch out also for those who like to talk and are incapable of action; they will sacrifice everything to an oratorical effect or a smart phrase. — Avoid as well those whom fortune has favored too much, for he who possesses a fortune is rarely ready to view the worker as a brother.

Finally, seek men who are sincere, men of the People, resolute, active, who go straight and whose honesty is recognized. — Favor those who are not looking for your vote; genuine merit is modest, and it is up to the voters to choose their men, not to them to present themselves. 

"We are sure that if you heed these observations you will finally inaugurate genuine popular representation, you will find representatives who will never think themselves your masters."   

-- The National Guard Central Committee, City Hall, March 25 1871  

# # #

Though many who sign run for office,

they are so averse to personal interest

 that one can hardly read their names. 

*     *     *

Next,

6.4.3.

Victories of La Commune

VI.4.3. VICTORIES OF LA COMMUNE

YOUNG MEN WTH NO ADMINISTRATIVE TRAINING KEEP THE CONTINENT'S LARGEST CITY* AFLOAT 

*A million and a half inhabitants 

With minimal resources they manage a city that has not recovered from the draconian siege to which the Prussians add their own,* and is almost immediately at war.

*They let in some goods to pressure Versailles, but the siege is still a handicap.

Fight between the Fédérés and Regular Troops West of Paris by Michel Charles Fichot, 1871, zoom

Three-quarters of the functionaries leave for Versailles with archives, equipment and funds. Their replacements are journalists, craftspeople or blue-collar workers, who are often under 30 and have no plan or governing experience. 

La Presse pendant la Commune / Les Amis de la Commune

Activity is informal but intense. The men in the foreground have not gone home to sleep.

The Commune at City Hall - The Throne Room

 -- Journal universel

"We had to manage war, revolution, the administration of a besieged town and reply to citizens' multiple solicitations, all at the same time. Corrupt businessmen and profiteers had no trouble slipping into the lines."

-- Le Banquet des affamés [famished] by Didier Daeninckx, 2012

A novel that follows the sources.

# # #

Thiers's "satanic battle plan:" Without functionaries Paris

will have no light or water, sewers will overflow, garbage fill the streets, the dead be unburied: Chaos and epidemics will bring collapse. 

-- Jules Andrieu (below)

 Yet,

 

• While the American press calls the Communards a “wild, reckless, irresponsible, murderous mobocracy” a pastor says, "I have never seen the streets so well swept since the siege as they were this morning."

 -- American press cited by Heather Cox Richardson, blog of Sept 1 2024.

  Observation, the Reverend William Gibson cited in Paris Babylon by Rupert Christiansen, 1994

'

• Theaters, restaurants, cafés, museums, schools, the university, scientific research, transportation, go on as usual. 

• The main change: People from blue-collar suburbs come to wealthy neighborhoods...

The elegant street light, balcony and portal (to the right) show a fashionable street.

    Illustrated London News, print sold on eBay

 "The Poultry-Seller at Palais-Royal, under the Commune"

He wears the guards' uniform

• Three musical performances are given simultaneously to succor widows and orphans (on May 11). In the background, the sound of cannons.   

Illustrated London News / Gallica, no longer available  

# # #

Among the officials who make the city function: 

• The Head of Administrative Personnel, Jules Andrieu

-- Notes to Serve for a History of the Commune, 1871, re-ed. 2016 (in French)

Jules Andrieu

Having given night classes to workers brings his appointment. Though he comes from the bottom of the hierarchy his former superiors agree to serve under him, so that public services continue. 

He works 16-17 hours a day, sleeps on a couch and leaves City Hall for personal reasons only four times in 50 days. 

Like the men sleeping through the din in the image at above and Louise Michel saying,"I almost never slept, when I did it was anywhere, or when there was nothing better to do. Many others did the same."

• The Head of the Postal Services, Albert Theisz, and his auxiliaries 

-- Services Publiques sous la Commune,

ed. Les Amis de la Commune (in French).

Albert Theisz

Versailles blocks communication with Paris to hurt its recovery and keep provincials and soldiers from knowing its realities. Officials remove the plates for printing stamps, to stop communication within the city.

This engraver on bronze, member of the First International, mobilizes auxiliaries to deposit mail in points outside the city. They know they will be arrested if caught.

They distribute all the city mail by April 4 and find a plate to print stamps. 

       # # #

Salaries

•  5400 francs a year for deputies, 6000 for Delegates (Ministers). 

• Specialized workers, about 1000 a year.

• Theisz's predecessor, 71,000. (Thiesz himself refuses the Delegate's extra pay.)

-- Public Services

# # #

Most employees stick to their jobs although they know the risk.

-- Lissagary 

• The vast majority of postal employees stay in Paris (800 out of 1000), knowing they will be fired if Versailles wins. 

                     -- Public Services

•  Firemen also remain, though as they are officially part of the army, they can be shot as deserters: That is the fate of the most prominent.  

Guards are thought undisciplined because they want to go home
"to embrace their children, caress their wives, before plunging into the unknown of battle."

-- Vallès

Yet they usually do their duty in spite of the unique absence of sanctions: At worst, they aren't paid.  

# # #

Left to itself, La Commune could have succeeded because:

• Its ambitions were local. It wanted a federation of communes, not a centralized State.

• Industrialization was too new for rooted unions or political parties to smother grass-roots energy.

• It inspired heroism.  

"Long live humanity!"

cried the journalist Jean-Baptiste Millière,
when he was forced to kneel before being shot:
Later revolutionaries say that call inspired them. 

-- An account of his death: Lissagary, Appendix XXI

Engraving after the work of Henri de Montaut, who received the Legion of  Honneur two months later. 

  -- L'Assassinat infâme de Jean-Baptiste Millière, " Les Amis de la Commune" 

 

Such figures contradict capitalists' assertion

that greed is part of human nature.

*     *     *
Next,
 6.4.4. 

Rooted

VI.4.4. ROOTED

THE SONG "CHERRYTIME" THAT ALL FRENCH PEOPLE KNOW EVOKES THE COMMUNARDS' BRIEF HOPE...

and one of its last lines its blood-soaked end.  

But how short is the season of cherries  
When people, dreaming two by two, 
 gather earrings...  

Le Temps des Cerises ("Cherry Time") by Jean-Baptiste Clément and Philip Dumas, 1990

Cherries of love with dresses

That fall under the leaves like drops of blood

But how short is the season of cherries

When dreamers gather earrings 

Traditional recording by Yves Montand, 1960's
A recent recording by Noir Désir, 2008

Communard Jean-Baptiste Clément wrote the melancholy song about lost love before La Commune. After it he added the line about drops of blood and dedicated the song to "Louise," an ambulance driver met on the last barricade that she refused to leave. He would always reject royalties.

The sound of that barricade's explosion carried as far as Versailles. When Communards imprisoned there heard it, they knew that La Commune was over.

-- Louise Michel

A graphic novel tells its story. It was put to music:
.

     Le Cri du peuple by Jacques Tardi (Castermann, 4 vols. 2001-04), after the novel by Jean Vautrin

La Commune represents the hope of an egalitarian and just democracy and is a major landmark for the left:

Communist Ball, July 13, place de la Commune 
For that site, please read on

           Cergy-Pontoise insoumise

An important leftist party (La France insoumise, "Unbowed France") chose March 18, the day the Commune broke out, to launch its presidential campaign in 2017.

# # #

Commemorating the 150th anniversary

• On walls where La Commune was strongest and that still lean left:

In the 20th

In the 13th

• At the church of the Sacré Coeur 

   Ma Commune de Paris

An evocation of the carnage that that the church's builders approved.

# # #

More testimonies:

• The theater "La Commune:" The name suggests productions that are innovative and thoughtful.

  Zoom

In Aubervilliers, a working-class suburb in the north. Founded in 1965, the first permanent theater in an outskirt announces the evolution these pages describe. 

• Annual commemorations since 1883, at the wall where the last combattants were shot.

The Mur des Fédérés, in the Père Lachaise cemetery

• A fresco with figures that are six feet tall near the site of the last barricade...

By QMRK, 2021 / Irina Zwerger

...chosen by popular vote* in 2019

*The participatory budget, Parisians' vote to finance urban projects.

*    *    *

Next,

6.4.5. 

"Friends of the Paris Commune"