IV.3.2. FRATERNITY THAT WORKED

MENU: 4.3.2. Fraternity that worked

IN 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 at any of the times I was there.

In brief

• Parias take charge of their lives

• La Commune succeeds

• La Commune now 

• "Friends of the Paris Commune"

• Guards cede power and describe the kind of delegate to elect

*     *     *

Next,

Parias take charge of their lives

PARIAS TAKE CHARGE OF THEIR LIVES

PEOPLE WHO USUALLY STAY ON THE SIDELINES 

MOBILIZE FOR LA COMMUNE 

 The Mysteries of Paris by Eugène Sue, 1844

Those tipplers don't organize. As 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:

A Meeting at the Women's Club at the church of Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois by Frédéric Lix  (" Le Monde illustré," May 20, 1871), zoom /  Musée Carnavalet, not  exhibited at the time of my visits. 

• 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 wraps a makes him an omelet, 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 in the absence of the wealthy who leave after the siege. But that does not explain the absence of burglaries (on the contrary) or of violent crime.

. 

Efficient working-class defense

 comes with discipline, camaraderie

and confrontation with the boss,

that is, with industrialization.  

But the poor of La Commune
organize spontaneously a generation before 
tangible conditions encourage them to.

*     *     * 

Next,
The victories of La Commune

THE VICTORIES OF LA COMMUNE

DEDICATED OFFICIALS KEEP THE CONTINENT'S LARGEST CITY AFLOAT* WHILE ALMOST IMMEDIATELY FIGHTING A WAR

*A million and a half inhabitants 

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

Top functionaries leave for Versailles with archives, equipment and funds, leaving Paris to men with no plan or governing experience:

The Commune at City Hall - The Throne Room

 -- Journal universel

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

The elected are journalists, craftspeople or blue-collar workers,

who are often under 30:

The Press during the Commune (in French) / Les Amis de la Commune

Yet with minimal funds they manage a city that has not recovered from the draconian siege, to which Versailles adds a second,* and that is almost immediately at war.

* The Prussians let goods through to pressure Versailles, but it is still a handicap.

"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."

-- The Banquet of the 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 its collapse. 

-- Jules Andrieu (below)

 Yet,

 

• "I have never seen the streets so well swept since the siege as they were this morning. 

 -- The Reverend William Gibson cited in Paris Babylon by Rupert Christiansian, 1994

Though he probably agreed with the American press, that The Communards were a “wild, reckless, irresponsible, murderous mobocracy.” 

-- Cited by Heather Cox Richardson, blog of Sept 1 2024

'

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

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

Illustrated London News (illustration sold on eBay)

             Print sold on the web

 "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.   

  The elegant street lights, balcony and portal show a fashionable street. 

# # #

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

He is appointed for giving night classes to workers. Though he comes from the bottom of the hierarchy his former superiors agree to serve under him, to let 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 

-- Public services under the 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. As well, officials remove the plates for printing stamps, to stop communication within the city.

This engraver on bronze, a 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) 

• Points of comparaison: 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 they can be shot as deserters (officially they are part of the army): the most prominent will be.

-- Tombs

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

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

-- Tombs  

# # #

Left to itself, the society 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 would 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. 

  The Infamous Assassination of Jean-Baptiste Millière, " Friends of the Commune" (in French)

 

Figures like these

contradict the capitalist assertion
that greed is part of human nature.

*     *     *
Next,
The Commune now

LA COMMUNE NOW

LA COMMUNE STAYS ROOTED IN THE CULTURE OF MODERN FRANCE

The song "Cherrytime," which all French people know, evokes the Communards' brief hope and one of its last lines, the 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 a few years 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, which 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 and was put to music:
(In 2017) 
.

The Cry of the People by Jacques Tardi (Castermann, 4 vols. 2001-04), after the novel by Jean Vautrin (in French).

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 

The libertarian Left chose March 18, the day the Commune broke out, to launch its presidential campaign (La France insoumise, "Unbowed France," in 2017).

# # #

Commemorating the 150th anniversary

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

In the 20th

In the 13th

A City Hall remembrance in the 13th (at place Jeanne d'Arc, where local Communards may have fought their last battle).

• At the Sacré Coeur

My Paris Commune

An evocation of the carnage that its builders approved.

# # #

Permanent testimonies:

• 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

By the popular vote

through the participatory budget of 2019

(Parisians' vote for urban projects).

*    *    *

Next,

"Friends of the Commune of Paris"