>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.
Maybe not imitate exactly, but certain elements of it ("instant" recall of delegates, short terms of office) I would like to see put into practice.
>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.
If you don't mind, could you point out to me where exactly Marx states this? Are you thinking of something like this from the Manifesto?:
"The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degree, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralize all instruments of production in the hands of the state, i.e., of the proletariat organized as the ruling class; and to increase the total productive forces as rapidly as possible. "
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch02.htm
Or are you thinking of something else?
>>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.
Granted. Do you know of more "objective sources (BTW, anyone else, feel free to mention websites, articles, etc., please)? And I have managed to skim that one reference you gave at: http://www.struggle.ws/anarchism/writers/anarcho/commune.html However, I have to look askance at this writer's sources; they're surely as "biased" as Marx' since all the sources listed are anarchist contemporaries of Marx. The single source mentioned in the WSM talk is the Stewart Edwards book (which he edited, so I have no idea if it contains simply primary sources, which may or may not be as biased as ours, or original scholarship). Do you know of any other ones?
>>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.
Since "petty bourgeois" is a fairly elastic term, what do you mean by it here? Individual producers/artisans, who made and sold their own goods or "small businessmen" who employed proles? ("Proletariat" is elastic too, but not, I think, so much as PB.)
>. . . but many workshops were not expropriated. Only some of the ones that
>had been closed by their owners were.
Really? Where did you get this fact? Is it the same place where you got those numbers on the make-up of the Communard's executive council?
>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.
Is below what you're thinking of when you talk about the Commune "dictating to the rest of the population"? The Commune telling everyone how to organize?
"In a rough sketch of national organization, which the Commune had no time to develop, it states clearly that the Commune was to be the political form of even the smallest country hamlet, and that in the rural districts the standing army was to be replaced by a national militia, with an extremely short term of service. The rural communities of every district were to administer their common affairs by an assembly of delegates in the central town, and these district assemblies were again to send deputies to the National Delegation in Paris, each delegate to be at any time revocable and bound by the mandat imperatif (formal instructions) of his constituents. The few but important functions which would still remain for a central government were not to be suppressed, as has been intentionally misstated, but were to be discharged by Communal and thereafter responsible agents. "
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1871/civil-war-france/ch05.htm
>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.
I'm familiar with the Committee from the (bourgeois) French Revolution, but I haven't heard of this new one from the Commune. Where did you find that one?
And where did you find these statements of Marx': that the Commune "was in no sense socialist, nor could it be" and "was merely the rising of a town under exceptional circumstances."
Todd
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