To achieve genuine human liberation.
> So what should the Communards should have
> achieved in those two months?
Complete abolition of rent & private property, formation of mass assemblies (and spokescouncils) to run the city, complete sexual equality.
> Given the situation they were in, it
> seems like they went pretty far in the time they had.
They did; of course the Spanish Revolution went far further in the first 2 weeks then the commune in 2 months. The commune was a definite improvement over the national Republic but I don't think it should be seen as some kind of model to imitate.
>> There are clear anarchist influences on the communes: the use of
>> recallable delegates, the transformation of France into a federation
>> >of Free Communes, the formation of worker cooperatives and arming the
>> people were all advocated by anarchists before Marx even became a
>> socialist. This is quite different from the state centralization
>> advocated previously by Marx in the Communist Manifesto & elsewhere.
>
>
> Yes, it is. But I'm not sure if Marx would have approved of, or even
> thought of, a "one size fits all" solution. He seems quite jubilant
> about Paris here:
>
> "Working men's Paris, with its Commune, will be forever celebrated as
> the glorious harbinger of a new society. Its martyrs are enshrined in
> the great heart of the working class. Its exterminators history has
> already nailed to that eternal pillory from which all the prayers of
> their priest will not avail to redeem them. "
>
> http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1871/civil-war-france/ch06.htm
>
> The impression I've made of what I've read of Marx's so far is that one
> uses what one can at the moment to achieve the ends of freedom from
> capital.
Marx's positions tended to very depending on the situation of the time period, as is the case with most everyone. After the commune Marx became quite enthusiastic over it (and tended to idealize it, IMO) and dropped a lot of his earlier statist beliefs. But a few years after it was over he was back to advocating centralization & state power.
> Since he and Marx, who must have drawn on first-hand sources, were the
> ones closest to the event, don't their observations hold even more
> weight than Lenin's?
Since they were not direct participants, not necessarily. Attempts to analyze events can sometimes be better when done long after that event since your'e no longer caught up in the heat of the moment.
> Is that where Lenin got his information on the
> character of the Commune?
Lenin claimed to be basing his theories about the commune on the basis of Marx & Engel's observations.
> And were the Communards engaging in economic relationships during the
> Commune that could legitimately be given that designation of "petty
> bourgeoise"?
Most were. The studies I've seen indicate that less then 20% of the population were proletarians in the marxist sense - the rest were what marxists call petty bourgeoise. Only four or five of those on the council were proletarians, "petty bourgeoise" had over 30 seats.
> Or did they have something different in mind? Marx seems
> to think they did:
<snip>
> "Another measure of this class was the surrender to associations of
> workmen, under reserve of compensation, of all closed workshops and
> factories, no matter whether the respective capitalists had absconded or
> preferred to strike work"
>
> http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1871/civil-war-france/ch05.htm
There were definately socialist elements as shown by the above expropriation of workshops but many workshops were not expropriated. Only some of the ones that had been closed by their owners were.
>> Strickly speaking the Commune didn't really have a full-fledged state
>> but did maintain a sort of semi-state within the commune while pushing
>> for the abolition of the national state. They maintained a
>> representative system and thus a hierarchical forms of control.
>
> By this do you mean that any representative system, especially those
> coupled with a hierarchical form, is one form a state?
Well, all representative systems (as distinguished from delegate systems) are hierarchical. The council attempted to act as a state because it was trying to be a centralized & hierarchical organization dictating to the rest of the population what to do. It wasn't a genuine state, though, because it never truly achieved a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence.
With decision making power placed in a elected minority that minority, as a result of their position, became isolated from the masses and thus began to impose their will on the majority. Ultimately they weren't completely under control of the masses. This can be seen by the creation of the "committee for public safety" to "defend" (by terror) the revolution against internal dissent (remember the role of this committee in the French Revolution). Fortunetly the committee never got around to terrorizing anyone since the Commune only lasted 2 months.
> From what I've
> been reading, they seemed to be trying to move away from such thing:
They were, but they didn't quite suceed.
>> I >would prefer to see their representative council thing replaced
>> >with >directly democratic mass assemblies. And, to the best of my
>> >knowledge, patriarchy continued to hold sway in Paris.
>
> Their representative councils were built from "the ground" up if I
> understand what is here (especially the last sentence):
They were supposed to be, but practise didn't always match theory. Marx is idealizing the commune a bit and ignoring some of it's flaws.
> I'm afraid I'll have to read and comment on your offerings at some other
> point. It's late here, and I have to cut some branches before the sun
> goes completely down (nothing worse than cutting branches while
> balancing on a ladder in the dark, eh?).
Sure. When you get a chance take a look at the articles I listed earlier, I think they'll explain where I'm coming from.
-- Joe R. Golowka JoeG at ieee.org Anarchist FAQ -- http://www.anarchyfaq.org
"The basic problem is quite simple. An elected representative is not tied in any substantial way to particular policies, whatever the preferences of the electorate. Influence on the politician is greatest at the time of election. Once elected, the representative is released from popular control but continues to be exposed to powerful pressure groups, especially corporations, state bureaucracies and political party power brokers." - Brian Martin