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The Paris Commune: everything you wanted to know
00:56:14
David A Shafer discusses the extraordinary eight weeks in 1871 when Paris embarked on a radical – and ultimately doomed – experiment in municipal self-governance
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- [00:00]
David A. Schaeffer
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Podcast Host
Welcome to the History Extra Podcast. Fascinating historical conversations from the makers of BBC History magazine. In the spring of 1871, the citizens of Europe's second largest city rose up and proclaimed the Paris Commune. For eight extraordinary weeks, the French capital defied the national government that had been forced to decamp to Versailles and adopted a series of progressive policies ranging from the abolition of nightwork in bakeries to the toppling of contested monuments. But what exactly was the Commune?
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Interviewer
How?
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Podcast Host
How did this revolutionary government function? And why was it crushed with such vigour? Historian David A. Schaeffer speaks to Danny Bird to answer listener questions on this extraordinary moment in French history.
- [02:13]
Interviewer
Before we get into the events of the spring of 1871, can you take us back a bit? What were the deeper forces and tensions building in France, especially in Paris, that laid the groundwork for the Commune?
- [02:25]
David A. Schaeffer
So, dating back, I mean, it depends on how far back we want to go, there had been a revolutionary tradition which in some respects laid the groundwork for the Commune. The whole idea that the French Revolution had been an incomplete project, that it was the filial duty of 19th century Republicans and revolutionaries to finish that job. So that was. That was part of it. In addition to that, there was of course, the industrialization of France, which was changing work and causing all sorts of tensions in terms of deskilling of labor and whatnot. Other things that had happened in between were revolutions. Before the Commune, there was the Revolution of Eight, 1830, which definitively overthrew the Bourbon dynasty. There was the 1848, February 1848 Revolution, which brought on the Second Republic and you know, led to a lot of disappointments for people who were on the barricades then, and disappointments in terms of what it led to, which was first the presidency and then the empire of Louis Bonaparte, you know, after that you have of course, haussmanization of Paris, which completely transformed the geography of Paris, you know, bringing what was then bonnie, you know, into the, you know, changing 12 arrondissements to 20 arrondissements that we have today, amongst other things, pushing out workers who couldn't afford rents in Paris to the industrial suburbs, you know, what would then be industrial suburbs, which today are places like Belleville, for example. So these are some of the tensions, of course, you know, I'd be remiss if I didn't say that the second empire and you know, the second empire goes for about 18 years and, and we can talk about its bifurcation. You know, the first half of it was fairly successful, the second half of it not so successful. You know, foreign policy missteps, financial crises, the Credit Mobilier crisis, amongst other things, inconsistent policies by Louis Bonaparte as he first courted right wing elements, Catholic elements in France, and then when he had a falling out with the Pope, with Pius ix, I think it was when he had a falling out with him in the late 1850s, then trying court workers, but doing so in a very kind of ham fisted way that was never going to lead to any kind of lasting relationship. The growth of a republican movement again in France in the 1860s as some of the more repressive laws of the 1850s were relaxed. And then of course, the Franco Prussian War and the disaster that that was.
- [04:50]
Interviewer
In terms of that immediate context, the Franco Prussian War. Could you go a little bit into what happened to Paris as a city itself during that conflict and the weeks leading up the spring of 1871?
- [05:00]
David A. Schaeffer
Louis Bonaparte was taken prisoner at Sedan by the Prussians in 2nd of September. By the time the news got back to Paris on 4 September, a crowd had gone to the Hotel de Ville, the usual place where political regimes change, and they very peacefully declared that France is now a republic. So this is kind of the start of the Third Republic. The Third Republic was going to be in the hands of a provisional government called the Government of National Defense, whose mandate, obviously it's nominal mandate, his national defense, you know, winning the war that was being terribly lost over the past six weeks. However, you know, again, it was one misstep after Another, and the war was going exceptionally bad. The Prussian army was advancing closer and closer to Paris and ultimately besieged Paris. So I think what you're talking about Here is the 133 day siege of Paris that began, which made life exceptionally difficult. So, for example, you know, there's the infamous stories about what people ate during the siege of Paris and there's the caricatures of, you know, markets that sold rats, cats, dogs and mice, you know, at varying prices. There was the stories about the killing of exotic animals at the Jardin de Acclimatation, the zoo in Paris, and how these exotic meats were then being sold at some of the fine dining restaurants that had opened during the Second Empire. In particular, you know, there's menus of like elephant meat and zebra and things along that line. So things like that. But, but as well, that winter of 1870, ironically and maybe coincidentally was also the coldest winter at that point in the 19th century. So you had that on top of it. So you have a city that's besieged, a city that's hungry, a city where the making of bread is being supplemented with straw and things along that line to give it a bit of heft. You've got people who are going to the Bois de Boulogne and Bois de Vincennes and they're cutting down trees for fuel, but because it was damp, all it did was smoke. So you've got an air pollution problem. By the way, also in Paris during that winter, you've just got an extremely difficult situation. Situation. You've also got inconsistencies in terms of who's running Paris, who's running the show. The Government of National Defense is there, but on the other hand, they've also got, they've appointed different mayors for each arrondissement, but working side by side with mayors and not working in conjunction with the mayors, but just an alternate form of authority was something called the central committee of 20 arrondissements. And these were activists basically who were in charge of doing things like basically, you know, keeping life going in the orange bones, distributing blankets and food and medical care, things along that line. And so that was fine while they were doing that, but then increasingly they became critical of the Government of National Defense and they were beginning to set themselves up as an alternative government to that. So this is adding to the confusion. And of course it all ends in January when the government capitulates to the terms that were offered by the Prussians, which was basically giving up the Alsace and Lorraine, you know, contested territory, giving up that paint, a huge war indemnity to the Germans and as well, allowing a triumphant march along the Champs Elysees by the Prussian army.
- [08:19]
Interviewer
And just for the benefit of those listeners who may not be familiar with the municipal makeup of Paris, could you briefly explain what the arrondissements are?
- [08:27]
David A. Schaeffer
So the arrondissements are the geopolitical divisions of Paris that exist to this day. There are 20 of them. There are some, the outpost lying ones, which are typically the double numbered ones, but not all of the double numbered ones. Those are the ones that were most recently incorporated into Paris. Now, some of the places you might be familiar with, the 20th arrondissement, where, if you've been to Paris and you've been to Bouchument or Belleville or the Pellechaise cemetery, which features very prominently in the Paris Commune, are all in the 20 arrondissements on the 14th arrondissement, right at the periphery. So basically, wherever you're talking about where the peripherique is, those were the ones that were recently incorporated into Paris. Those had been not part of the Paris municipality before a Haussmanization brought them into Paris.
- [09:17]
Interviewer
How did the Paris Commune come into being? What sparked that dramatic turning point in March 1871?
- [09:24]
David A. Schaeffer
So, I mean, there's long term factors that I identified previously. But then let's talk about the short term ones. Tensions were building between Paris and the national government. Part of it was the capitulation and the mistrust of the Government of National Defense. But then second of all, after the surrender to the Prussians, there was the calling of elections. Now you might say, well, that sounds like a good thing to have elections called because it represents democracy. But the problem is that this was a country that had just gone through a regime change just a few months prior with the fall of the empire that had been in power for 18 years. And now you're calling for elections. Now, during the Empire, there had been elections of sorts to the Chamber of Deputies, but a lot of restrictions on the political process. But mostly there were plebiscites. You know, relative to Louis Bonaparte, do you support him? This. Yes. No, that kind of thing. And he was winning by like, outrageously, you know, high numbers, because I think people were pretty much afraid to vote against him. Plus, you know, a large portion of the voting populace was in exile during that empire. So you didn't have a populace that was necessarily familiar with democracy that had really been kept abreast of issues. Plus, Paris suffered uniquely more than other cities in France did during the Franco Prussian War. I mean, the attention was really focused on Paris from September until the capitulation. In January. And so Parisians felt that the country had to be prepared for the exercise of democracy. They had to know what was at stake. So in any event, though, that led to, you know, some outrages about calling for elections too prematurely, that maybe we should wait a little bit to do so. That was one thing. The other thing that was bone of contention were the cannons that the city of Paris had paid for with public subscriptions to fight against the Prussians. And these were located in strategic places. Some of the ones that you'd be familiar with today would be Montmartre. Then that's the one that's the most famous. But also even at Place de Vosges there were cannons. And midway through March, as relations were breaking down, and there were other moves that were made by the national government that aggravated the situation. You know, during the siege of Paris, there was no economy. And so consequently, workers were allowed to take their tools to the Mont de Piete, which is the pawn shop, and they would not be sold. And then after the war was over, when the economy was back, they could reclaim them. But it gave them a little bit of money at least. The governments declared that all items left at the Montepiete during the siege could be sold immediately without compensation to that. That was one thing. Amongst others, the pay of the National Guard was suspended immediately. And this is what you in an economy that doesn't exist, basically this is what they depended on. So these were aggravating factors between Paris and the national government. The national government decided that they wanted to remove the cannons from Paris. They had no problem doing that at Place de Vosges. But on the morning of the 18th of March, they tried to do it at Montmartre. And the reason why that was more of a flashpoint is that Montmartre was again one of the newly incorporated arrondissements. The 18th century was just newly incorporated. It was a very working class area, artisanal and working class. And people woke up in the morning and they see the troops that were sent from the national army trying to take their cannons, they blocked it. And basically that's what happened on the 18th of March they were able to repel that. And on the 19th of March, Paris declared itself a government and that there would be elections one week later on 26 March to elect a Paris Commune.
- [13:09]
Interviewer
Now, once the Commune was officially declared, how did it function on a day to day basis? What did this experiment in radical self governance look like in practice?
- [13:19]
David A. Schaeffer
Not very good, actually. It was a very divided group. The Commune brought together some pretty elements that should have been able to cooperate at the moment, given what was at stake, but that really couldn't agree. So you had what are called the Jacobins, the Neo Jacobins. The Neo Jacobins were people who had this strong attachment to the legacy of the French Revolution. And they kind of fashioned themselves to be like Robespierre and Don, people like that, that they're almost a reincarnation of that in some respects. Some of them were what we call the demo of the Second Republic, the democratic socialists of the Second Republic. And the Second Republic, you know, from 1848 to 1851 had pretty much been discredited by a lot of revolutionaries in France. Had been discredited because it hadn't accomplished that much at the overall scheme of things. And after the revolution in February 1848, by June 1848, they were killing workers who were trying to steer the revolution back on course, the way they saw it. So they started to wonder whether these kind of liberal republicans were really just another side of an authoritarian coin. So you had that, but then you also had members of people who had been activists in the International association of Workers. You had anarchists or self styled anarchists. You also had followers of Auguste Blanqui. Auguste Blanqui is considered to be the professional revolutionary of the 19th century. He surfaces basically in almost every revolution or attempted revolution that occurs between, say, I don't know, 1830 to 1871. And so the point is that none of them really, they couldn't really agree. And the other weird thing about that is the Blanquis also had their revolutionary tradition that they look to. The revolutionary tradition they looked to were not the Jacobin, they were looking to the Hebertis. Jacques Hebert, who was a journalist in the French Revolution who edited a newspaper called Le Perle du Chien, which was known for its, you know, scatological references, amongst other things and vulgarities, claiming that it spoke for the common people, which proposed some of the most radical measures. And in 1794, Hebert and some of his followers were executed by a revolutionary tribunal because they were seen as potential counter revolutionaries or who were derailing the unity required of the French Revolution. So you have these disparate elements on the Commune and they're in some respects kind of reliving the historical battles of 80 years before, 90 years before. And you know, it seems a little bit preposterous in retrospect that they were doing the kind of play acting that some of them were doing and the references that they continuously made. But in another way, it was understandable, because history has a way of legitimizing, you know, movements that appear to be completely new and frightening because of their novelty. So if it doesn't appear as novel because it seems to be grounded in a history, then maybe it has a bit more credibility. But the other thing just finally, is nearly immediately the Commune was at war with the national government, with Versailles, and so no matter what kind of declarations they made, they really couldn't put them into practice. They didn't have the means to do so until the civil war was over.
- [16:37]
Interviewer
And just to be clear, the national government had decamped to Versailles, outside of Paris, and that's where it remained throughout the duration of the Commune. Siknath from X on the subject of revolutionary government, would like to know what kind of radical policies did the Commune enact during its lifetime?
- [16:55]
David A. Schaeffer
So amongst the radical policies was the declaration of free public compulsory education. Now, some of what the Commune declared was going to be appropriated by the Third Republic in the early 20th century. So secularism, for example, the secular state that religion would have no public purpose, dates, what, to 1905, I think it was the Loire. Jules Ferry created the public education system in the 1880s, a free, compulsory public education system. That was an idea of the Commune ending work at night bakeries. I know that sounds like a weird kind of thing, but work in bakeries used to take place over overnight, and it was, you know, exploitative work for the people who worked in the bakeries. They had to work all night, basically. And so that that came to an end, they also declared something like, similar to a minimum wage would be paid. I mean, none of this could be enacted. But these were amongst the things. Probably the one thing that they were able to carry out that's become kind of notorious was kind of reappropriating the national history by destroying certain aspects of French history that they felt would create bad impressions and would define France in a way that they didn't want to see France defined. It's very, very similar to what's happened in America and other countries as well, I think in the uk, definitely in France, about taking down certain monuments to individuals that are considered to be less. Less acceptable. So amongst the things that they did was there was an expiatory chapel that was built basically for the nation to create, beg forgiveness for the execution of Louis xvi. It was put up during the French Restoration, after the fall of Napoleon Bonaparte, you know, between 1815 and 1830. And they had that torn down, the expiatory chapel. There was the famous burning of the guillotine at Place Voltaire, Very symbolically at Place Voltaire, since Voltaire had been an opponent of capital punishment. And they burned the guillotine there. And the Commune also declared the abolition of capital punishment as well. The most famous one, though, was the toppling of the Vendome Column. Yes, if you've been to Paris, you will see the Vendome Column is right there on Rue de la Paix. It is there, but the thing is, is that it was torn down because it was perceived as a monument to imperialism, to oppression, to militarism. And it was ordered torn down by the Arts Commission, which was led by the Impressionist artist Gustave Courbet. And so Gustave Courbet was the head of the Arts Commission. He was the one who signed the order to tear down the Vendome Column. It was demolished and by most accounts, a pretty solemn ceremony, because on the one hand, they realized they were tearing down a part of the history that so many French people had participated in the wars that these were celebrating or at least commemorating, but they were tearing that down to create a sense of a new type of history, one that isn't based on militaristic, oppressive policies. When the Commune was defeated, Courbet was personally charged with having to pay for the reconstruction of the Vendome Column. He was living in exile in Switzerland. I think he was living under a death sentence that had been read against him in absentia. And he happened to die, like, just days before the first annuity had to be paid. So at least his ancestors did. So, yeah, that pretty much is it. I mean, the Commune didn't really accomplish a lot. Some of the policies, like I say, were pretty radical for their time. I think it was more the promise that the Commune held forth that was going to be the most important. The other thing is, oh, worker cooperatives as well. That there would be. That there would be democracy in the workplace as well, that there wouldn't be a hierarchy that determined workers lives at work.
- [20:50]
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- [21:22]
David A. Schaeffer
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- [22:09]
David A. Schaeffer
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- [22:22]
Interviewer
Women played a vital and visible role in the Commune as well. Could you talk a little bit about their involvement? And of course, we should also highlight Louise Michel. How does she become so synonymous with the Commune?
- [22:33]
David A. Schaeffer
So women did in large numbers join and support the Paris community. I wouldn't say it was anything close to unanimous or even, we don't know if it's a majority of women, but I think women saw in the general principles articulated by the Commune, non exploitation, equality. They saw the promise that many felt the French Revolution failed to deliver on. And that hadn't been, and there is at that point, a very small burgeoning feminist movement that is occurring. I mean, we've had things that have happened, more important things. For example, in America, with seneca Falls in 1848, there was the election in 1848 of George sand to the French National Assembly. She turned it down, however, or not her election persuading her to run for election to the national assembly, which she refused to do because she said, even though she probably would have been elected since she was such a well known author. But she said, if I can't even vote for myself, why would I run? Because women didn't have the franchise, of course. So the potential for women to be enfranchised, they were not during the Paris Commune. I think that that was the adhesion. Of course, women paid quite dearly for their support of the Paris Commune. Louise Michel was a teacher, she was an institutrice. She was somebody who was very tied in with members of the Paris Commune. She was the girlfriend, I believe, of if I'm not saying she was, you know, she was somebody who was not a member of the community. She couldn't be elected as a woman, but she was certainly involved and they did have a women's committee of the Paris Commune as well, in which women were not only just, you know, providing blankets and doing kind of, you know, familiar domestic type like things in support of the Commune, but also were being armed to fight on behalf of the Paris Commune. So Louise Michel, also, for her activity during the Commune, gets sent to New Caledonia, along with so many other communadors sent there. And while she is there, she continues to write. She supports the Kanak, the indigenous population of New Caledonia, in their revolt against the French Imperial administration in the 1870s. The Communards, who were in exile, by the way, are divided on that. Some support the Kanak and some actually fight on behalf of the French government, but she very much supports that. And then when she comes back with the amnesty of 1880, when she comes back to Paris, she becomes a very much in demand lecturer, talking about the ideals of the Commune. And maybe there's something a bit retrospective about it that didn't comport with what was happening at the time. But she does represent the Commune as a period of idealism that is yet to be realized.
- [25:16]
Interviewer
Thought it was quite interesting. I don't know if you watched the opening ceremony to the Paris Olympics last year, but her face was actually involved in the ceremony at one point. And obviously she has some residents still within Paris to this day. Remusnt10 from Instagram would like to know how the Commune impacted the rest of France whilst it was in existence. Was it inspiring similar revolts in other cities? For example, across the country, after the.
- [25:41]
David A. Schaeffer
Fall of the Empire, there were communes declared in Marseille and Lyon that didn't last too long, that lasted like a very short period of time. Part of it was that the government was determined to negotiate with them so that there wasn't this separatist movement occurring all over the place. But when the Paris Commune was declared, it was the objective of Paris to create communes in other cities. And so communes again developed in Marseille, Lyon, Narbonne, Bordeaux, Saint Etienne. Again, none of them lasted, lasted for a very long time. They were easily repressed. And that was one of the sticking points, was, you know, Paris was pretty much isolated and alone. And the fact that these other communes didn't last meant that they weren't going to be able to develop these kinds of communications. And this, this, by the way, it's a good question, because what it did was it led to another interpretation of the Commune. Interpretations of what the Commune was actually about have divided historians for quite a long time, and there are some who would say that you Know, it was a socialist revolution. You know, I would probably subscrib to that based on the totality of French history up to that time, dating back to the Revolution, and more radical elements, you know, after the French Revolution, who looked back on it in terms of what it really was, should have been all about the development of France in the 19th century as well. There are others who would say that it was a patriotic response to the capitulation and that the sense that you couldn't trust this national government which so willingly surrendered to the Prussians. There's also the one that. That says it was a revolution for municipal rights, for a decentralized republic, that centralization had been the norm in France for generations and generations and generations, you know, dating back, one could say as far back as Henri IV, the end of the 16th century. But France had been a pretty heavily centralized state under monarchies, under a republic, during the French Revolution, under an empire. And so this was a different model, let's say, of republicanism. There was a guy named Greenberg who wrote a book on that around the time of the centenary of the Commune, that basically said, no, it was not about socialism at all. It was really about a revolution for municipal rights. I think that kind of misses the point, though. I think socialism was enveloped in this movement for municipal rights.
- [28:00]
Interviewer
Before we go any further, we should discuss who exactly the SIA were. Could you tell me a little bit about them and who headed that group up and also how they perceived the Paris Commune, what was being said about it outside of the city whilst it was in existence?
- [28:18]
David A. Schaeffer
The government at Versailles, the Versailles was being headed by a guy named Adolph Thiers. Adolphe had been a prime minister under Louis Philippe back in the 1840s for a relatively short period of time. So he had that background, and he was somewhat of a. He was somewhat of a political chameleon in many respects, that he could easily change with regimes. His interpretation of the Commune, which would be that it was radicals in France, number one. Number two, they were trying to create something perhaps decentralized, to take power away from the central government and restore it to municipalities. So he was also surrounded by people who had been republicans as well. Some of them had been members of the government of National Defense. And the majority at Velsai, though, of the assembly of the Chamber of Deputies, were actually monarchists who had been elected in February, if they'd been able to join forces. You had supporters of the liberal Orleans monarchy, and you had supporters of the more conservative, extreme Bourbon monarchy and their respective pretenders to the French throne. The idea was that once there was stability in France, they would choose a candidate, and that candidate would end the republic. And when times were more stable and more propitious to do so, and that would be the end of it all being the end of the republic, and there'd be a monarchical restoration. But the point is that these were individuals who had no time for republics, republicanism, democracy, socialism, all of the things that they saw emanating out of Paris, and that's pretty much the way they defined it. Part of it also was to gain support. They had to define the Paris Commune and not allow the Paris community to define itself. So what that meant was defining it as a departure from French history, defining it as a denier of French history, as disrespectful of the sacrifices that others had made. The fathers and the grandfathers and the great grandfathers who fought in French wars dating back to Napoleon, dating back to the French Revolution, even seeing it as something that was disruptive of the social order. You've got women who are very active in it, and women shouldn't be involved in politics. Women should be in the foyer looking after the children and cooking meals. And they're seeing this with the Paris Commune also separating Paris from the rest of the country, because Paris was typically seen throughout the 19th century and to a certain extent today, as a city that was bent, always historically, on dictating to the rest of the country. This dates back to the French Revolution, if not before, but certainly during the French Revolution. There was this sense that what was happening at Paris was dictating national affairs, that it's not so much a national revolution as a Parisian revolution that radiates out of Paris and impacts everybody else. And so you have that idea that whoever controls Paris controls the nation and that it shouldn't be that way.
- [31:26]
Interviewer
And is it true that a lot of the rhetoric and imagery that was being essentially pumped to the French troops outside of the city painted the Commune as some kind of foreign conspiracy, some sort of contamination which had to be fumigated, essentially. I think that's part of the language that was used, isn't it?
- [31:43]
David A. Schaeffer
Yeah, yeah. So what they did was they, you know, some of the members of the Commune were from other countries. There was Frankel, who was Hungarian, for example. There was General, I think. Was it Chris, who had been a general, in fact, for the Union armies during the American Civil War. He'd come over to fight. And so there was an international aspect of it also, because a lot of the members of the community or Not a lot, but some of them, of the elected members, think there were 11 of them had been delegates to the International association of Workers annual meetings. So there was that. And as a result, they had been associated with workers from other countries. Karl Marx didn't have a huge impact on France at this time. He wrote about the Commune, but he didn't have a huge impact. But who did have a bigger impact was Bakunin from Russia. The anarchist had more of an impact. And Bakunin, in fact, came to Lyon and tried to kind of stir things up. So there was this, you know, a foreign element, but not just a foreign element, but even an indigenous French element that they considered to be foreign because they didn't subscribe to what the Versailles believed were the French values, the French culture.
- [32:56]
Interviewer
You've alluded to there, of course, the civil war in France by Karl Marx. And I know that Friedrich Engels, his collaborator, lifelong collaborator, also portrayed the Commune as a glimpse of the dictatorship of the proletariat, which is obviously very integral to Marxist thought. If you could go a bit more into what those thinkers essentially thought about the Commune during its existence, but subsequently, and perhaps also to touch upon the tension within the socialist and anarchist movements that arose after the Commune.
- [33:25]
David A. Schaeffer
I believe that the Commune represented the end of the French revolutionary tradition, and it represented the end of the revolutionary tradition as it was known throughout the 19th century. And by that I mean, and I'm going to steal from my doctoral advisor, the late Douglas Johnson at ucl, the idea that power was for the taking in the streets of France, which was kind of a, you know, it was a conventional belief of revolutionaries that all you needed was a revolutionary moment, some committed revolutionaries, some materials to build barricades, and, et voila, you might have a revolution that overturns the government. But I think that the total decimation of the Commune put an end to that for most socialists, that they had to work within the system, be persuasive, be elected, but that you were never going to have revolutions like you had in the 19th century. The anarchists, on the other hand, were different. The anarchists still believed that you. That violence was the means for doing so. And so you do have a pretty vibrant anarchist movement in the 1890s and 1900s, up until almost the First World War. And they directly look back to the legacy of the Commune and the legacy of the revolutionary tradition, that a revolution can't be distinct from violence. You can't have a peaceful revolution. So if you're a believer in revolution, violence is an integral aspect to it you can't have a peaceful revolution because those who have the most to lose will not give it up willingly. You referenced the dictatorship of the proletariat. Marx and Engels kind of got the Commune wrong, to be quite honest with you. They were not in France number one. So that's one thing that doesn't disqualify them from being commentators on the Commune entirely. But it might have led to a misunderstanding of what it actually was. Was it a dictatorship of the proletariat? I think that they were referencing that it would be a step in the dictatorship of the proletariat according to their Marxist dialectic, and that you need this kind of a step. But I don't believe that they felt that FR was a propitious place, nor in a propitious period for leading to that dictatorship of the proletariat. France was not as industrially developed as the uk, perhaps even as Germany and the United States. So consequently that was a precondition for dictatorship of the proletariat and more or less the end of history, because you have the end of class conflict. They also believed that it was a harbinger of things to come and only a matter of time before the example of the Commune was realized by perhaps more industrialized a country that had a more sharp cleavage between the bourgeoisie and a working class rather than artisanal class, which France still largely had. You know, a huge artisanal class. And let's face it as well, the French working class hadn't really adopted the idea that they are a wage earning proletariat. But what they aspired to was to be independent artisans. To return back to that, this is why people like Pierre Joseph Proud Proudhon were so influential with Communard. Now they strayed from a lot of what Proudhon said, but the majority on the Commune were not followers of Marx.
- [36:34]
Interviewer
A bit of counterfactual history here. Now, agrobiodiverse from X would like to know what would have happened had the Prussians not laid siege to Paris in the months before the Commune. Do you think there still would have been a Commune?
- [36:47]
David A. Schaeffer
There would have been a revolution at some point. 1848 again was an opportunity. I think that many a burgeoning socialist movement in the 1830s and 1840s felt was basically an unforced error, that they dethroned Louis Philippe, they declared a republic. They had a couple of representatives, Louis Blanc and Albert, who is a manual worker on the provisional government. But nothing was really done that was very effective and was going to be long term. And then when workers rose up in June, they were slaughtered. So this was something that was. That presaged again the election several months later of Louis Bonaparte and his regime. But the point is that a revolutionary republican movement was kind of laying dormant for quite a while until there was a liberalization of policy, and that was bound to again, resurrect reflections on fairly recent French history since the Revolution, at least, and a movement. So I think that even had the Prussians not besieged Paris, I don't think that it was the hardships during the siege of Paris that led to necessarily the Commune, because if I took that position, what I would basically be saying is that the Commune was largely a nationalist revolt, that it was a nationalist revolt by individuals in Paris who felt disregarded, disrespected and abandoned by their government. And so consequently, that the siege, during the sacrifices, until the government betrayed them by giving into terms that they could have given into months before without any kind of hardship. So that's where I would say that I think that's something like. I don't know if it would have been in the form of the Paris Commune, but there would have been another revolution at some point in France that would have tried to define the Third Republic.
- [38:39]
Interviewer
Ultimately, the Commune was crushed of extraordinary violence. Can you take us through those final days? What actually happened during that bloody climax?
- [38:47]
David A. Schaeffer
So that's the bloody week, which starts really on the 22nd of May and then ends on the 28th of May. What happens is that the Commune is not militarily prepared to fight against the national government. They've got National Guardsmen who are fighting, who are decommissioned from the Franco Prussian War, who are in Paris, who are fighting on behalf of the Commune. But really, it wasn't going to be very hard for the troops sent from their side of the National national army to breach the gates of Paris. And so they immediately get in through the Portisi, which is in the west of Paris, in a very bourgeois part. They get in that way initially and then it's just a matter of time before, pretty much they're getting in on all sides. There was panic in Paris when that happened. Interestingly enough, it was the British ambassador, I can't remember what his name was, but the American ambassador was going to Washburn. And they both woke up on the morning of the 22nd, I believe they woke up in the morning and they saw the tricolor flying rather than the red flag of the Paris Commune. And they were kind of puzzled, like, well, I wonder what happened? Well, they were going to find out what happened, like in very short order, because the troops came in and began slaughtering and the Commune fought. People fought in guerrilla warfare, you know, very voraciously for that week. But by the end of that week, you know, the Commune had no chance. During that week, what did happen was, in addition to people being slaughtered on the streets, there was the burning of Paris. There's questions as to who it was that burned Paris. This brings me women. After the Commune was over, there was the, what I would call the myth of Le Petre Luz. We don't have, you know, anything direct to imply that this was a concerted effort by women to burn Paris, but it fit into a narrative, a narrative that when women enter the public space and in politics, they're a force of mischief. And I don't mean mischief like in a very benign kind of way. I mean mischief in a really serious way. And that dates back to the French Revolution. It dates back to when Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette were brought From Versailles in October 1789 back to Paris and what happened there. But in any event, though, it was more in caricatures, and you mentioned that earlier about the type of imagery that was produced and the caricatures that were produced after the Commune would usually have a very haggard looking woman and she's. Her arms are stained with the ash and whatnot, she's carrying a torch or she's carrying something that's combustible. And so the idea was that when women get involved, they just wanted to burn the whole place down. So it was said that the Communard themselves, at least the women, were the ones who were responsible for burning the city of Paris rather than relinquishing it to the Versailles. But the other thing we can say is that there were so many projectiles being sent into Paris that it's very, very possible that those were things that were setting fires as well. We just don't know. But the city was in flames and some of the great monuments of Paris were burnt down, and we lost a lot of historical documents in the process. Amongst the things that were burnt and you could never be recovered again, probably the most famous was the Tuileries palace at the Tuileries Gardens was burnt down and could never be reconstructed. But we don't know how many people were actually killed. I mean, the. Generally, the more agreed upon total that a historian, a French historian named Jacques Rougery did, based on all sorts of demographic factors, was probably in excess of 30,000 people laying dead on the streets of Paris at the end of that week, and that's not including people who were executed in trials after the commune, but 30,000 were executed. That has since been challenged by Robert Toombs. I don't know if that's really the point, though, is putting a total on the number of those killed. The point is it was the ferocity. It was the way in which troops who were of the same social class, of many of the people they were killing in the streets of Paris so readily defended a French state that people of their same social class were fighting to change. Change. And what that said about the consensus and. And social class dynamics of France at that time, because it was probably unlike any set of days that the French had ever experienced in any previous revolution. In my book, I talk about brutalization theory with regard to the Paris Commune. We can say that the brutality of France's imperial forces in Mexico and Algeria dehumanized those fighting against French hegemony in those places. In Algeria, for example, some of the Algerians very readily became complicit with the French and very agreeable with the French, but others did not. And they were dehumanized, as, you know, incapable of understanding. They were orientalized, basically as incapable of understanding and incapable of rising to the standards of French will and succumbing to that. And so they were, were brutally murdered and treated terribly and again dehumanized. Their humanity was completely lost. Now, you could transfer that to the Paris Commune, because you have individuals fighting against the French state similar to what rebels in Mexico and rebels in Algeria were doing fighting against the excesses of the French in terms of controlling their countries. And so it was an easy transition to make. Yes, they were killing their own country people, but these are people who they felt could not rise to that level of understanding of the supremacy of France and struggling to create something entirely different beyond 1871.
- [44:20]
Interviewer
What kind of influence did the Commune have on later leftist movements, both ideologically, politically, and perhaps even emotionally?
- [44:29]
David A. Schaeffer
For legalistic leftist movements, the Commune was something to distinguish themselves from. The Commune was maligned as a terrible period in French history. The Communards were largely to be blamed for everything that happened. They were called unpatriotic. They were said that they were fighting against the government while the enemy, the Prussians, were still on French soil. And imagine that, you know, individuals who could never imbibe any sense of nationalism and any sense of history. They were separatists, they were particularists looking after their own interests. So how does that affect the French left? They did have commemorations of the Commune, commemorations to pendeges for example. But in contrast to the commemoration of Pane de Chaise, you have the government, you know, devoting money and declaring, you know, the equivalent of eminent domain over the area. That would then produce Sacre Coeur Cathedral, which is where the Commune started, on that very spot where Sacre Coeur is. I mentioned Eugene Valin, who was a wage worker, he was a bookbinder, a member of the Commune, very idealistic young man who was very brutally murdered during the bloody week by the Versailles troops. Where he was killed is one of the chapels right on the spot of Sacre Que. Part of the reason for building that was to efface memories of the Commune. So you've got that competing with people who are going to Pelechaise and paying their respects at the Mu de Fidere, which is the wall where many Communards supporters were lined up and shot. At the end of it, and you can still go there, there's still a plaque that says Aux Commune, you know, to the Commune, you know, and dedication in memory of it. In Eastern European countries, and not just Eastern European countries, but communist countries in China and Vietnam, whatnot, in Asia, in Africa, there were always streets named after the Paris Commune, named after Communard. It was taught in the schools as an important part of history, which it wasn't in France. I taught in France at Universite do Rouen, used to teach a two week course for about 10 years on French history, ironically enough, in America, doing that. But I would ask the students, what do you know about the Paris Commune? We would hit that part and they would say, well, not very much, you know, it's just not taught here. But that was not the case in Eastern Europe. And I especially am very familiar with ex Yugoslavia, because I go to Bosnia quite a bit. I have people who are very close to me in Sajevo and during communism, before the war that tore apart Yugoslavia, every republic had streets named after the to commemorate the Paris Commune. And part of again, lesson plans in school. And even today in some of the republics, you know, they're all independent in some of them, in Bosnia in particular, they still haven't changed, change those names. They have in other parts, like in Croatia, I believe they've renamed those streets and monuments that they had to the Commune. But Bosnia, they still do have that. They might also in Serbia, I don't know. I'm sure this probably all changed in other parts of Eastern Europe, as they've repurposed and renamed things that conjured up the communist past.
- [47:35]
Interviewer
We've touched upon their Versailles Violence during the Bloody Week. But I feel like we should all say that address out of fairness, the fact that the Commune took hostages and killed them. I wondered if you could go a little bit into what the Communard did during that particular period of time.
- [47:53]
David A. Schaeffer
Yeah, it's very, very controversial. And I shouldn't neglect that there was violence on both sides. And I'm not trying to gloss over the burning of Paris and to say, oh, it was not the Communards who did it, it was the Versailles. I don't know who did it. I just. What I would say is that it's a little fast side to blame it on women, to say Les Petreluses. And it's a bit misogynistic. But the Communard as well, were very, very guilty. Yes, they did take hostages. They took the Archbishop of Paris, Darbois, for example, and others. That was probably the most notorious during the Bloody Week. What actually happened there, again, we don't know. The investigations were pretty much predetermined that the Communards were going to do this anyway. The Communard would say that, no, we did not. We were not intending to do this. That this is something is collateral damage and war. But that was something that would be used after the Commune in these textbooks and the narratives of the Commune, that they took hostages and with every intention of killing them. They were trying to efface Catholicism and religion and create an atheistic republic that didn't respect French traditions and so on and so forth. Yeah, the Communard, they did kill the hostile hostages. The Commune killed those that they felt were collaborating with the Versailles as well. There were people killed by the Commune. They were amongst the 12 to 30,000 that were dead on the streets of Paris in the bloody week.
- [49:17]
Interviewer
I wondered if you could go a little bit into what happened to the Communards who were taken out of Paris once Bloody Week had ended. Where were they taken initially? Because I understand a lot of them were taken to Versailles itself and kept in appalling conditions. And then, obviously, some of them, as you've already alluded to, two, were shipped off to places like New Caledonia.
- [49:36]
David A. Schaeffer
Yeah, exactly. So those who were captured, some of them were summarily executed, sometimes without trial. Others were put on trial and executed. Some were put in prison for different periods of time, but most were sent across to New Caledonia. Now, why were they sent to New Caledonia? Well, New Caledonia was. You know where it is. It's relatively close to New Zealand. I mean, I suppose, if you want to get a sense of the geography of its location. And they were sent there because it was kind of a. To quote the title of a book by Alice Bullard that was published 30 years ago or so, called Exile to Paradise. And the whole idea is you would exile them to New Caledonia. They would have to fend for themselves, they'd have to learn agriculture, they'd have to build their dwellings and things along that line. They would become self sufficient and in the process, you would be rehabilitating them. And then maybe, if the time is right, they can come back French to soil. But they were sent in again, as you said, to New Caledonia under appalling conditions. I think about 10% of them died en route to New Caledonia. They were put in the holds of ships that were really, really bad. It was a long, perilous journey, as you can imagine. You know, we're talking about prior to the building of the Panama Canal. You'd have to go, you know, around the Cape, basically, to get to New Caledonia. It must have been really, really awful. And then once there, they were kept in really difficult conditions. I wouldn't say it was quite the same thing that Alpha Dreyfus encountered, you know, on Devil's Island. It wasn't quite as bad as that, maybe. But the idea being basically that you can rehabilitate them by forcing them to learn things like these urban folk learning that, you know, they'll learn how to grow crops and they'll become more self sufficient. And then that instills different values in them than the ones that they have where, according to the conventional wisdom at the time, they were just like, looking for handouts all, all the time. Beyond that, they would also be able to distinguish being French from being the Kanak, and they would identify with being French more. That was another objective of it. And that worked in some cases, as I said, when the Kanak revolted for some. But for others, like Louise Michel, they saw the Kanak rebellion as an extension of what the Commune was rebelling against, an authoritarian, oppressive regime. But again, yeah, the Communard, who were very few, were let go.
- [51:51]
Interviewer
And is it true that the city was under martial law for a number of years and obviously took some time to be rebuilt?
- [51:57]
David A. Schaeffer
It took some time to be rebuilt. And, you know, I talk about this in my book, but this is kind of reflected the kind of aspirations of the bourgeoisie in some of the most famous art that we see. And we don't necessarily see the connection to the Commune, but Gustave Caillebotte, two of his very famous paintings, Paris Rainy Day, which is this Enormous tableau that's at the Art Institute of Chicago, which shows people on the street of Paris with umbrellas and the rain is coming down. And Caillebot, we know from his writings, was really appalled by the Commune. He felt that this beautiful Paris, you know, the, the capital of the 19th century, as it's called, was being destroyed during his lifetime, and being destroyed by elements that he felt were, you know, kind of unsavory elements because he bought into the narrative that was being presented. So rain, of course, is a metaphor for climate cleansing, for purification. And the late, great art historian Albert Boim at ucla, he wrote a book called Art in the Paris Commune. And in his book he writes, he. He really, you know, dissects that painting, Paris Street, Rainy Day, as basically being, you know, the whole idea that the bourgeoisie are now reoccupying and it's all bourgeois who are in the painting are reoccupying the public space that they'd been driven from. They had moved out of Paris, some during the siege of Paris by the Prussians, others when the Commune was declared and now it was a SAF bourgeois space again. And the rain that's coming down is cleansing it of the taint of the Commune. Another one that he did was Les Roboteur, which is the, the floor scrapers. I don't know if you're familiar with that one. But, you know, the, the, the perspective of the audience is looking down on these guys who aren't wearing shirts and they're, they're doing manual labor. They're. They're refinishing floors in a very bourgeois apartment. You can tell it's a bourgeois apartment by its appointments. And the audience for art, obviously, was going to be a bourgeois audience in the 19th century. And caillboat made a decision that, you know, when you're looking down at them, you are supervising their work. Again, the workers are not the ones in control, if they ever were during the Commune. I would also dispute that the Commune was a working class revolution entirely, but that they are, you know, you are supervising their work. They are doing what they should be doing, working for the bourgeoisie, not dictating to them. And you are standing over, over them, watching that. So you see that. And that art was, I think, by purpose was designed to show that Paris is coming back, it's rebuilding, it's losing the taint of the Commune. And even, like I said, the building of Sacre Coeur, the stark white cathedral, that'll be a contrast to the red of the Paris Commune, built on the very spot where the Commune started will try to efface the memories. And that was the objective was again to remove any memories of the Commune.
- [54:48]
Podcast Host
That was David A. Schaeffer, author of the Paris Commune French Politics, Culture, and Society at the Crossroads of the Revolutionary Tradition and Revolutionary Socialism and why not listen to our Everything youg Wanted to Know episode on the Franco Prussian War that was one of the key geopolitical events that preceded the Paris Commune, and it's available now. Wherever you get your podcasts.
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David A. Schaeffer
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