Somewhere on Avenue d’Italie.

What can be said about the Commune?

Why is it still so relevant today? Are there lessons to be learnt from it? It will not be repeated in exactly the same way—people have changed, as have the times and circumstances—but the spirit of criticism, freedom and the demand for social justice that it has bequeathed to us is not fading into oblivion.

In France and abroad, the social struggles and revolutions of the late 19th and 20th centuries have evoked the Commune of 1871: Karl Marx, in The Civil War in France, denounces Thiers’s perfidy and betrayal and extols the people’s resistance: “Working-class Paris, with its Commune, will be celebrated forever as the glorious forerunner of a new society. The memory of its martyrs is cherished in the great heart of the working class. History has already nailed its exterminators to an eternal pillory, and all the prayers of their priests will not succeed in freeing them from it.”

For Lenin and the Bolsheviks, the Paris Commune was a fundamental political reference point.

“It is an unprecedented event, and the memory of the fighters of the Commune is revered not only by French workers, but by the proletariat of the whole world… It is in this sense that the Commune is immortal!”

In Belgium, in 1886, in Liège, during the major workers’ movements, the demonstration marking the 15th anniversary of the Commune was severely suppressed by the police.

In Spain, in 1909, in Barcelona, protest through direct action grew, and urban uprisings fuelled a memory of struggle; the barricades and street fighting evoked the Paris Commune. Closer to our own time, in 1936–1937, again in Barcelona, the revolutionary neighbourhood committees enabled working-class communities to exercise a new power over their daily lives. New practices of solidarity and social organisation were implemented: food requisitioning and soup kitchens enabled the organisation of supplies. The women fighters of Rojava, who are fighting against Daesh (in the north-eastern tip of Syria), draw inspiration from certain aspects of the Commune.

Even in recent news, it often appears as a reference point in social struggles when labour rights, access to healthcare and public services are under attack, as well as restrictions on the freedom to demonstrate.

In France, very recently, the Yellow Vests movement, or ‘Nuit debout’, called for citizens’ initiative referendums on all matters, the possible recall of elected representatives, a constituent assembly and numerous social measures such as increases in wages and pensions, and tax reform – proof, if any were needed, that the aspirations of the Communards have reached us today.

The final conclusion from Jean Baptiste Clément

What better than to quote the words of Jean Baptiste Clément, who wrote in ‘Le Cri du Peuple’ on 24 April 1871, a month before the Bloody Week, a text that is both prescient and full of promise for the future.

“Suppose the people are defeated, suppose the Bonapartists and the Royalists enter Paris wading through pools of blood and trampling over corpses.

What will remain of the Commune? Decrees on the walls, posters to be torn down, say those who cannot see beyond the ends of their noses.

Ah! You are mistaken! Even if these decrees were not fully enforced, even if you were to tear down all the posters, even if you were to whitewash every wall, you will not succeed in erasing from our minds the principles they have affirmed; you will not prevent the people from having felt the difference between the governments of Versailles and the members of the Commune; you will not prevent the people from having seen there the salvation of the workers and the future of the world.”