Author: Core of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism Studies (Brazil)

Publication date: March 13, 2018.

Link of the original in Portuguese: https://anovademocracia.com.br/materias-impressas/marx-e-a-comuna-assaltar-os-ceus/

200 years of Carlos Marx

The proclamation of the commune: in 1871, the proletariat made his first assault on the heavens.
"What is the commune, this sphinx that torments bourgeois spirits?" (Carlos Marx).

Today, on the occasion of the 147 -year anniversary of the Heroic Commune of Paris, and as part of the world campaign of celebration of the 200 years of the birth of Great Carlos Marx, we publish this article. In it we highlight the meaning and importance of this great historical event and the need to study, in the light of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, this imperishable document of the International Communist Movement, Civil War in France of the great Carlos Marx.

On March 18, 1871, the commune of Paris, the first attempt by the proletariat of assaulting the heavens, gave rise to the First Workers Republic of History. Ten days after popular insurrection, the new revolutionary government declared the independence of the commune in relation to the old bourgeois power in Versailles.

It was the heroism of the community members who, holding for 71 days, in Paris, the power in the hands of the proletarian masses, made humanity known a new form of state: the dictatorship of the proletariat.

Despite the glorious fight that Parisian workers undertook with weapons in the hands in the defense of proletarian power, facing the most brutal and bloodthirsty counterrevolution, they were defeated by the military forces at the service of the bourgeoisie, of the landowners, of the Bag speculators and all kinds of thieves gathered in Versailles, who surrounded Paris and bombarded it without mercy, with the support of Prussian troops.

The end of the Paris commune in May 1871, far from simply meaning a defeat for the working class, was a historical fact of great importance, which marked forever the struggle of the international proletariat. The Paris commune is the first great event of the process of the world proletarian revolution and therefore, around the position that is taken over it and its correct balance, Marxism and revisionism separate.

It corresponded to Marx, armed with the scientific ideology of the proletariat, dialectical historical materialism, extract the teachings and true historical meaning of that great event, exposed in its famous Civil War in France . Work written at the request of the General Council as a call to the members of the International Labor Association (AIT).

In the Introduction Published in 1891, for the occasion of the 20 years of the commune of Paris, Engels states that after two decades and based on new information obtained it was necessary to "complete a bit" the exhibition made in Civil War in France . Next to that important Introduction , Engels also adds the two manifestos of the General Council of the International Association of Workers -Ait, on the Franco -Prussian War. The three documents cited, available in virtually all editions, must be studied as part of the civil war in France.

A commune enthusiast

Some months before the revolution in Paris, in the fall of 1870, Marx had warned the French proletariat that it should not rise prematurely, anticipating that it would fail for not having a communist party that directs it. However, when the uprising occurred, Marx, taking firm class position, supported her unconditionally and greeted the proletariat that he had dared to "assault the skies."

“When the Paris commune took in their own hands the direction of the revolution; When, for the first time in history, simple workers dared to violate the government privilege of their "natural superiors" (...) the old world twisted in convulsions of rage before the show of the red flag, symbol of the Republic of Labor , waving on the Hôtel de Ville. " [1]

Through letters and verbal instructions that transmitted to the members of the AIT, Marx and Engels they tried to guide the community members, giving them valuable advice. However, its indications did not always arrive in Paris, because the city was subject to an intense enemy fence.

In addition to that, the members of the commune were divided by a major Proudhon. Engels points out that it corresponds to the Proudhonians [3] the main responsibility for the economic measures of the commune, as long as Blanquistas corresponds to the main responsibility for political measures.

“And, in both cases, the irony of history wanted - as generally happens when power falls into the hands of doctrinals - that both did the opposite of what the doctrine of their respective school prescribed. (…) Therefore, the commune was the tomb of the Proudhonian School of Socialism. (…) This school has disappeared today from the French workers; In them, currently, Marx's theory predominates without discussion. ” [4]

In Civil War in France Marx clearly defined the role of these opportunistic elements in the labor movement, demonstrating that the revolutionary labor movement in its contradictory development and as a direct result of its action, accumulates what Engels will call as "colossal garbage pile" that needs to be swept .

[5]

Internationalist character

The commune, consequently, with its proletarian class character, demarcated from the beginning its internationalist character, as the "Flag of the commune is the flag of the World Republic" " [6]. In the middle of the Prussian fence, “He appointed a German labor minister (…) He honored the heroic children of Poland, placing them at the head of the defenders of Paris (...) and, to clearly mark the new historical era that consciously inaugurated, the commune, in the eyes of the Prussian winners, on the one Bonapartist Army sent by Bonapartist Generals of another, cast that gigantic symbol of the warrior glory that was the column of Vendôme. ”

Marx thus synthesized the internationalist duty fulfilled in the commune: “ The commune granted to all foreigners the honor of dying for an immortal cause .” [7]

Revolutionary heroism

In a letter to Kugelmann, even when the fighting developed in Paris, Marx highlighted the role of heroism and the unwavering will of the community members, "What a historical initiative, what the ability to sacrifice these Parisians have!" [8], stating that they reflected "The greatness of his cause" [9] And that, thanks to them, the moral of the class was high:

“The Bourgeois Canals of Versailles (…) raised the alternative to the Parisians: accept the challenge or surrender without fighting. The demoralization of the working class in the latter case It would have been a much greater misfortune than the perishability of any number of ‘leaders’ ” . [10]

With that Marx taught us that we cannot allow class moral , no matter how many leaders fall and that a high price has to be paid. That precious lesson helps us to crush the new revisionism and its sinister policy of peace agreements and capitulation , teaching that to "assault the skies" and make the revolution it is necessary to be willing to pay the fee , that only "who is not afraid to be cut into a thousand pieces, challenges the emperor."

Continuing, Marx established the great historical role of the commune for the world revolution. He affirmed that, for having "assaulted the heavens" boldly and heroically, the commune had entered a "new phase" to the world revolution, that is, with it the proletariat begins its process of struggle for power, entering the stage of strategic defensive [11], affirms that “Thanks to the commune of Paris, the fight of the working class against the class of the capitalists and against the State that represents the interests of it has entered a new phase . Whatever immediate outcome this time, a new starting point has been conquered that is important for the history of the whole world. ” [12]

Revolutionary violence

The commune affirmed the need for the revolutionary violence y showed the force of the civil war, establishing practical verification of the Marxist principle according to which "Power is born from the rifle" and? "Without a popular army, the people will have nothing" [13]. The "ghost that crossed Europe" had become a real threat.

English and SU Introduction , taking the experience of the revolutionary struggle of the French proletariat, said that “The disarmament of the workers was the first commandment of the bourgeois who were at the head of the State. Hence, after each revolution won by the workers, a new struggle that ended their defeat was carried out. ”

Marx demonstrated that the Court -Red Center of Thiers to conjure and defeat the revolution was to try to promote the disarmament of the masses, “Paris armed was the only serious obstacle that stood on the path of the counterrevolutionary conspiracy. That's why we had to disarm it. " [14], reaffirming the principle of revolutionary violence said: "Paris armed was the armed revolution."

Lenin highlighted its importance to affirm the civil war as a way to take power, stating that “ The Russian proletariat had to resort to the same method of struggle that the commune of Paris had been the first to use: the civil war (...) The French proletariat demonstrated it for the first time in the commune and the Russian proletariat gave him a brilliant confirmation ” [15]

The dictatorship of the proletariat

In his great theoretical synthesis of the experience of the commune of Paris, Civil War in France Carlos Marx considered that the main merit of the community members was that they had tried, for the first time in history to create a proletarian state. All previous revolutions had not gone beyond simple reorganizations between the ruling classes.

They limited themselves to changing a form of exploitation for another and, instead of demolishing the old state machine, they were restricted to make it go from hand to another. However, the working class, Marx said, could not simply take possession of the existing state machine and put it into operation for its own objectives.

In his letter to Kugelmann of April 12, 1871, Carlos Marx highlighted what the commune of Paris had contributed again to the principles of the revolutionary struggle: “If you look at the last chapter of my Brumario eighteen, you will see that I expose as the next attempt of the French Revolution not to make the the bureaucratic-military machine to others, as it was happening so far, but demolish it, and this is precisely the previous condition of any true popular revolution in the continent. "

The commune not only demonstrated in practice the fairness of the very important thesis made by Marx in his work Luis Bonaparte's eighteenth which affirms the need to previously destroy the old state machine, the old power, but raised the need to build a new power in its place, raising a new type political organization, called to replace such a machine.

Engels says, in his Introduction , what “l He had to recognize from the first moment that the working class, when he came to power, could not continue to rule with the old state machine; That, not to lose its newly conquered domination, the working class had, on the one hand, to sweep all the old repressive machine used until then against it. ”

Engels categorically synthesized the experience of the commune as the most advanced expression of the dictatorship of the proletariat until then:

"Lately, the words" dictatorship of the proletariat "have plunged into Holy Horror the social democratic philistine. Well, gentlemen, do you want to know what face this dictatorship presents? Look at the Paris commune: there is the dictatorship of the proletariat! ”

Marx and Engels considered that conclusion as important that they introduced it as the only essential modification in the programmatic document of the proletariat, the Manifesto of the Communist Party , through the preface of 1872.

Lenin emphasizes that in words: "Break the state bureaucratic-military machine", "The fundamental teaching of Marxism is enclosed in terms of the tasks of the proletariat with respect to the State during the revolution." [16] The commune established, the need to previously destroy the old state, to build a new one, which serves its own purposes, the dictatorship of the proletariat.

Marx shows us that “The centralized state power, with its omnipresent organs: the permanent army, the police, the bureaucracy, the clergy and the magistracy - organs created according to a plan of systematic and hierarchical division of the work -, it comes from the times of the monarchy absolute and served the nascent bourgeois society as a powerful weapon in their struggles against feudalism. (…) On the other hand, its political character changed simultaneously with the economic changes operated in society. To the step that the progress of the modern industry developed, widened and deepened class antagonism between capital and work, (...) of organized public force for social enslavement, class of class despotism. After each revolution, which marks a step forward in the class struggle, the purely repressive character of the State's power is accused with increasingly prominent features. ”

When analyzing the development of the class struggle in France, especially since 1830, Marx developed the foundations of Marxist understanding of the State. Marx demonstrated that the bourgeois state as a result of its own class nature and the growing class antagonism in society, develops through a growing process of reacting, which manifests itself in the tendency to the absolutism of the Executive on the Legislative Power, as an expression of the bankruptcy of bourgeois parliamentarism (soul of bourgeois democracy):

“Before the threatening uprising of the proletariat, they served from state power, without mercy and with ostentation, as of a national war machine of capital against work. But this uninterrupted crusade against the producing masses forced them, Not only to cover the executive branch of increasing faculties of repression, but, at the same time, to strip its own parliamentary bulwark - the National Assembly -, of all its means of defense against the Executive Power, one by one, until it, In the person of Luis Bonaparte, he hit them. ”

Marx points to us that the second empire was the "The only possible form of government, at a time when the bourgeoisie had already lost the power to govern the nation and the working class had not yet acquired it" , and what, therefore, the only form of opposition consistent with the second empire - as a degenerate and superior form of bourgeois democracy - was to sweep with the class domination itself and its old bureaucratic machinery, “e n time to decide once every three or six years which members of the ruling class had to "represent" the people in Parliament " , therefore "The direct antithesis of the empire was the commune." So, “l The commune was not to be a parliamentary body, but a corporation of work, executive and legislative at the same time. ” [17]

Lenin said the commune was a brilliant example of how the proletariat “ He knows how to fulfill democratic tasks, that the bourgeoisie only knew how to proclaim. " [18] When analyzing the social and economic measures adopted by Parisian workers in The civil war in France, Marx highlighted the idea that, however shy these measures would have been, his main trend was the expropriation of the expropriators:

“The commune was formed by the municipal directors elected by universal suffrage in the various districts of the city. They were responsible and revocable at all times. Most of its members were, of course, workers or recognized representatives of the working class. The commune was not to be a parliamentary agency, but a work corporation, executive and legislative at the same time. Instead of continuing to be an instrument of the central government, the police were immediately stripped of their political attributes and turned into an instrument of the commune, responsible before it and revocable at all times. The same was done with the officials of the other branches of the administration. From the members of the commune down, all public servants had to accrue workers' salaries. The interests created and the representation expenses of the high dignitaries of the State disappeared with the high dignitaries themselves. ”

Marx stood out as the commune, despite its short duration, could take important measures: it took measures to “destroy the spiritual force of repression”, the “power of the parents”, decreeing the separation of the Church and the State and the expropriation of all churches as possessor corporations. All teaching institutions were open to the people and at the same time emancipated of all church interference. Judicial officials had to lose "that fake independence" and as well as other public officials should be elective, responsible and revocable officials. However, the commune, due to its short duration and the limitations of its direction, could not develop the way that this new form of state and government should cover, a task that could only be fulfilled with the great socialist revolution of October in Russia.

As a result of the experience of the Paris commune the scientific doctrine of the proletariat was enriched with the lesson that the state machine must be destroyed, with all its appendages and, instead, a new one erected, the dictatorship of the proletariat. And he put in the foreground the theoretical issue that it is not enough to take power, but that it is about destroying all the old bureaucratic-military machinery, erecting a new state organization corresponding to the new power and, above all, maintaining it and consolidating it.

Historical lessons for the proletariat

At the moment when the Paris commune was still fighting Marx knew how to see its historical importance, exposing its fundamental errors and taking conclusions of sum transcendence for the theory and revolutionary tactics of the proletariat.

Above all, the commune confirms the conclusion that throughout the historical experience of the struggles of the proletariat and the popular masses, for the triumph or defeat of the proletarian revolution, the decisive factor has been the Communist Party and the condition that in He prevails a correct or wrong ideological-political line.

Carlos Marx showed us that it was, especially in the absence of the Single Revolutionary Party of the proletariat and its absolute direction, as well as in the lack of understanding of the necessary revolutionary class dictatorship, in all lands, on the bourgeoisie and other classes Explorators collapsed from power, which were the main causes of their defeat.

During his correspondence exchange with Kugelmann, on April 12, 1871, Marx pointed to the fatal errors of the community members: 1) The offensive against Versailles should have been immediately undertaken, as soon as the enemy was panic and had not had time to concentrate Your strength. That opportunity was escaped; 2) The Central Committee resigned very quickly to its powers to give rise to the commune.

Marx pointed out, a decisive error of the central committee, precisely in "His aversion to accept the civil war (...) not to march immediately about Versailles" , which meant decisively developing the revolutionary civil war and bringing the revolution to the whole country. Instead of crowning his victory in Paris, developing a resolved offensive on Versailles the commune took time, giving time for Versailles to prepare gathering forces for the bloody offensive of May.

Engels said that the days of June 1848, when after the defeat of the proletariat the bourgeoisie had promoted an odious bloodbath against hel 1871, which led to the shooting of more than 30,000 people. That terrible bloodbath made the proletariat, which until then had only known the bourgeoisie as a revolutionary force, knew her for the first time in her reactionary hatred as part of the counterrevolution.

“The unprecedented fact that after the most tremendous war of modern times, the winning army and the defeated to fraternize in the common massacre of the proletariat, does not represent, as Bismarck believes, the definitive crushing of the new society that advances, but the complete collapse of bourgeois society. " [19]

Lenin, synthesizing Marx, told us two fundamental errors in the balance of the commune. The first of them, of a political nature, is that the proletariat stopped "in the middle of the road", not initiating the "expropriation of the expropriators", did not appropriate institutions such as the Bank of France, which was incredibly not touched. The second of an ideological nature: the magnanimity of the proletariat before the enemy and indulgence before their criminal actions.

While Versailles promoted white terror against the commune, with the murder of members of the unarmed national guard, shooting of war prisoners and unarmed civil, the central committee hesitated to respond measured by measure, in opposing the Red terror al White terror : “ This indulgence of the central committee, this magnanimity of the armed workers that contrasted so openly with the habits of the ‘party of order '.

Only on April 7, when the commune published decree ordering reprisals and declaring that “ It was his duty ‘to protect Paris against Canibalescas exploits of the bandits of Versailles, demanding an eye for an eye and tooth per tooth ’” , that the executions of prisoners ceased temporarily. However, when Versailles found that the decree was just one "Innocuous threat" , and “Life was respected even to its spy gendarmes stopped in Paris with the cost of national guards, and even the city sergeants Taked with incendiary pumps, then the mass executions of prisoners resumed and continued without interruption until the end. ” [20]

With these valuable Marx teachings we gave us a lesson of great importance and transcendence for the international proletariat: Not being magnanimous With the class enemy, not be indulgent with the counterrevolution.

Definitive statement of Marxism in the labor movement

The civil war in France, Very important political document of the International, armed the international proletariat with the experience of the commune and was a brilliant demonstration of the ideological victory of Marxism over all the variants of pre-Marxist socialism. “At the end of the first period (1848-1871), period of storms and revolutions, go dead Socialism before Marx. " [21] That great synthesis of the commune's experience was particularly important in the fight against the ideologues of the little bourgeoisie who denied the need for the dictatorship of the proletariat.

In this regard, Lenin said in The state and the revolution : “Marx saw in that masous revolutionary movement, although he did not achieve his objectives, a historical experience of great importance, a certain step forward of the world proletarian revolution, a more important practical step than hundreds of programs and raciocinios. Analyze this experience, get tactical teachings out of it, review her theory in her: Here's how Marx conceived her mission. " [22]

At the London Conference of 1871, referring to the commune of Paris, Marx and Engels demonstrated which Funes would be to renounce the political struggle and made the need to form a revolutionary worker party that would be the leading force of the proletariat in their struggle for the socialism. As a result of the conference, it approved a resolution on the political struggle of the working class, highlighting that the proletariat could not act as a class against the collective power of the possessing classes if it does not organize its own political party, necessary to ensure the triumph of The social revolution and reach its goal: the suppression of classes.

Contrary to the machinations that the anarchists made to undermine the discipline of the international and to turn the General Council into a simple informative body, the conference made it clear in several resolutions that the General Council was, more than ever, the ideological center , the General Staff of the International Proletariat.

He took Marx's teachings on the commune of Paris that the Russian proletariat, under the direction of the Bolshevik Party and Lenin's Headquarters, triumphed with the great socialist revolution of October 1917, building the Soviet power, as a true continuator of the commune . The Soviets were the superior form of organization, through which the dictatorship of the proletariat was irrigated, based on the labor-champion alliance, joining the most backward and scattered working and exploited masses, with which the uninterrupted passage was secured of the democratic-bourgeois revolution towards the socialist revolution.

When the masses, guided by President Mao Tsetung and under the direction of the Communist Party they took power in China, was the experience of the commune as is synthesized by Marx and developed by Lenin, in the form of the Soviets, which served as a basis for the structuring of the new society in the People's Republic of China. In this regard, President Mao said in November 1958:

“What is the nature of the popular commune? This is the base unit of the Chinese social structure that brings together workers, peasants, soldiers, intellectuals and merchants. Currently constitutes the basic administrative organization. As for the militia, it is destined to face abroad, especially imperialism. The popular commune is the best form of organization for the realization of the two steps: the passage of today's socialism to the general system of the property of the entire people, and the passage of the general system of property of the entire people to communism. After these steps, the popular commune will constitute the basic structure of communist society. ” [23]

And, later, during the great proletarian cultural revolution (GRCP), the greatest and high milestone of the world proletarian revolution, were the three revolutionary committees in one, the new bodies of power that were constituted as the continuators of the commune.

Originated from the tenacious struggle promoted and directed by President Mao Tsetung against capitalist restoration, the three revolutionary committees in one, were an essential instrument of the GRCP, through which millions of masses took in their hands the affairs of the State, the political, military, cultural problems, related to production, etc., and collapsed the representatives of the bourgeoisie that had been embedded in the party, in the popular liberation army and in the state, preventing for 10 years the capitalist restoration in China.

As Lenin said: “The cause of the commune is the cause of the social revolution, it is the cause of the complete political and economic emancipation of the workers, it is the cause of the world proletariat. And in this sense it is immortal. " [24] That is why, at the end of this article, we reaffirm Marx's prophetic words at the end Civil War in France :

“The Paris de los Obreros, with his commune, will be eternally exalted as a glorious herald of a new society. His martyrs have their sanctuary in the great heart of the working class. ”

Notes and references:

1. Marx, the Civil War in France, 1871.

2. Engels, Introduction . The civil war in France, 1891.

3. Blanquistas: followers of the current of the French socialist movement directed by Louis-Auguste Blanqui (1805-1881), representative of utopian communism. Blanquistas denied class struggle and assured that "humanity would be released from wage slavery thanks to the conspiracy of a small minority of intellectuals," as it was well characterized by Lenin. They replaced the activity of the revolutionary party with that of a secret conspiratory group, they did not take into account the specific situation for the victory of the insurrection and despised the links with the masses.

4. Proudhonistas: name given to the followers of the small-bourgeois ideologist Pierre Joseph Proudhon. They did not understand the historical role and meaning of the proletariat, denied the class struggle, the proletarian revolution, the dictatorship of the proletariat and, as anarchists, also denied the need of the State. The determined struggle of Carlos Marx and Federico Engels and their supporters against Proudhonism ended with the complete victory of Marxism in the International I.

5. Marx, the civil war in France, 1871.

6. Engels, Introduction . The civil war in France, 1891.

7. Marx, the Civil War in France, 1871. Ours.

8. Marx, Carta and Ludwig Birdmann, 12 The Abil The 1871.

9. Marx, the civil war in France, 1871.

10. Marx, letter to Ludwig Kugelmann, April 17, 1871. Ours.

12. Marx, Letter to Ludwig Kugelmann, April 17, 1871. Ours.

13. Mao Tsetung. The Red Book. Red Seara Editions, 2016.

14. Marx, the civil war in France, 1871.

15. Lenin, teachings of the commune, 1908.

16. Lenin, the State and the Revolution, 1917. Ours.

17. Marx, the Civil War in France, 1871. Ours.