3. The Experience of the Paris Commune: Marx’s Analysis¶
Core Argument¶
Marx’s analysis of the Paris Commune of 1871 represents a pivotal development in revolutionary theory, transforming a tactical defeat into a strategic lesson of enduring importance. Despite having earlier warned against premature insurrection, Marx recognised the Commune as a historic experiment of enormous significance, from which he drew the principal conclusion that “the working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made state machinery and wield it for its own purposes.” Instead, the bureaucratic-military apparatus must be smashed (zerbrechen), not merely transferred from one set of hands to another. This correction was formally inserted into the 1872 preface of the Communist Manifesto and elaborated in Marx’s letter to Kugelmann of 12 April 1871. Originally, Marx restricted this precondition to the continent, excluding Britain and America due to their relative lack of militarism and bureaucracy; by 1917, however, both had become fully enmeshed in such institutions, rendering the precondition universal.
The Commune demonstrated what a “real people’s revolution” entailed, uniting workers and peasants against the same oppressive state machine. It replaced the smashed state with a fuller, proletarian democracy: the standing army was abolished, universal suffrage instituted, all officials made elective and revocable at any time, and their salaries reduced to workmen’s wages. This transformed bourgeois democracy into proletarian democracy, initiating the withering away of the state. Crucially, the Commune was a working, not a parliamentary, body—executive and legislative functions were fused, converting representative institutions from talking shops into working bodies. In bourgeois countries, real state business is conducted by departments and General Staffs behind the scenes, while parliament exists to fool the people. The Commune replaced this venal parliamentarism with directly accountable representatives who execute their own laws. Smashing the old bureaucratic machine and constructing a new one allowing the gradual abolition of all bureaucracy is not utopian; it is the Commune’s experience. The postal service exemplifies a state-capitalist monopoly that, once the bourgeoisie is overthrown, can be run by united workers hiring technicians and accountants for workmen’s wages. Marx explicitly stated the Commune was to organise national unity, not destroy it, opposing conscious proletarian centralism to bourgeois bureaucratic centralism. Bernstein’s claim that this resembles Proudhon’s federalism is monstrous; Marx agreed with Proudhon on smashing the state machine but disagreed on federalism, being a centralist. The Commune is thus the political form at last discovered for the economic emancipation of labour—the first attempt to smash the bourgeois state machine and replace it.