Last week I explored the economic foundations of Europe's global power by looking at the first and second industrializations throughout the long 19th c.
One of the effects of industrialization was the creation of distinct social classes based on property and wealth => we saw the consolidation of the middle class and the situation of the working-class
As you remember the latter was an exploited class, its income of a working-class family is mostly concentrated on nutrition and above all bread; then comes clothing and lodging; anything in addition is a luxury
Slide 1
That being said, workers will soon develop their own, independent means of self-protection and political struggle
And in so doing they actually proposed a new form of society, a society of equals not only in terms of the law, but in opportunities and wealth
Emblematic of these movements are of course communism and anarchism
Slide 2
Communism is mostly associated with its founder, Karl Marx, sometimes with his erstwhile co-writer, Friedrich Engels
It is seen as the ideological foundation of socialism, which claims social and economic equality for all
In fact however communism is only a later manifestation of socialist doctrines that were born in the early 19th c. in the wake of the French Revolution
Throughout the 19th c. a series of intellectuals will develop different trends of socialism to give a doctrinal coherence to the political and social struggles of the working class
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In the realm of socialist thought there is one central historical event where all these tendencies will meet => This is the Paris Commune when for three months (March-May 1871), workers will take the power in Paris and create the first communist state ever
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The Paris Commune is the result of two meeting processes:
One is the late phase of the French Empire of Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte, Napoleon III when socialist organizations are revived
1868: legalization of meetings, people meet in cafés, warehouses, etc. and begin to talk about politics and reform
Wave of strikes in 1870, which until then had been illegal
The second process is of course the Franco-Prussian War => dynastic succession in Spain and the Hohenzollern bid
Prussia and its southern allies roundly defeat France and in 4th Sept. 1870 you have an insurrection in Paris
A crowd storms the city hall/belediye, they proclaim the Republic and declare that they want to continue the fight against the Prussians
February 1871 Elections in France => The conservative provinces make up for an extremely conservative National Assembly that is going to determine the future constitution of France
March 1871 the Provisional government of France sends the troops to Montmartre to take the guns of the National Guards which had defended Paris during the siege of the Prussians
Slide 5
The troops are kicked out by the Parisian workers and then Paris is again besieged, this time by French troops
The Commune truly begins on 18 March 1871 and lasts until the end of May 1871
For the first time ordinary Parisians find themselves masters of their own lives
Wealthy people get out again
Inevitably Parisians need to get organized and they create various bodies and committees to run the city
The idea germs among besieged Parisians that Paris can become the laboratory of a new world, a more equal world
Slide 6
A large body of social legislation is passed
Abolition of the state army and replacing it with a National guard of working men, the people at arms
Separation of Church and state
All public offices are universally elective and can only be held for a short period of time
Establishment of a labor exchange => Where unemployed people can ask for and find work
Abolition of night baking considered unhealthy for bakers
Nurseries are created for working women
Women's unions are recognized become responsible to make the uniforms of the National Guard
A lay, secularized education system is planned
Womens' clubs proliferate
Slide 7
This is indeed a key event in women's history because women have the opportunity to publicly voice their claim for political rights and representation and to be listened
This will also explain why the reaction against them will be so brutal
Slide 8
Symbols are important during the Commune
Red becomes a ubiquitous colour during the Commune (Red was a forbidden colour until then and between 1849 and 1851 because it was believed to excite one group of people against another)
Crashing of Napoleon's statue on place Vendome
Importance of having your picture taken in front of the fallen column => for once the people, the ordinary folks, have won
The Communards are essentially working-class people, ordinary people, artisans, craftsmen, domestic servants but their defense of Paris reflects also an urban pride
Slide 9
The ways the conservatives perceive them is of course very different => for them, and especially the middle and upper-middle classes, the Communards are furies from hell, immoral and bloodthirsty drunks who dare to question the social order
Slide 10
It all ends on 21 May 1871, when the troops finally managed to pour into Paris through the Western Gate using the boulevards that were built by Haussman and Napoleon III especially to repress popular revolts
Troops and forces of order go first and foremost to the working-class neighborhoods to massacre the communards
First are the women because for bourgeois ideology a woman who would get involved into politics and public life ceased to be a respectable person
Total of about 15,000-25,000 people are killed
Slide 11
Symbolic war also in the sense that symbolic places were created on the spot to purge the sins of the Commune => Basilique de Sacré Coeur
Lessons learned for everybone:
The Left => The state is powerful and vicious, profoundly evil and repressive; The Commune will be a model of future revolutions
The Conservatives => The horror of communism, fear of a plebeian revolution
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Anarchism is another form of socialist reaction that will gain ground during the late 19th c. and is also linked to socialist thinking as it developed in the nineteenth century
There are various shades of anarchism, which I will mention in a little while, but basically it is important to remember that despite differences, anarchism is both a political philosophy and a mode of political action
As a political philosophy it advocates the abolition of the state
The state is merely seen as the repressive arm (law, police, army) of bourgeois society
This is their big difference with the Communists => The Communists wanted to capture the state and establish a dictatorship of the proletariat
Because they want to keep away from the state, they're not interested in reforming it and therefore are not interested in political participation
They viewed political participation as for propping up capitalism and its army, defending the interests of wealthy people.
This is something they share with hardcore trade unionists, syndicalists
Religion is seen as a means to keep the working-class quiet and subdued
This they share with the communists
As a mode of action it advocates immediate, direct action which often means violent action including bombings etc.
Slide 14
Theoretically, anarchism developed essentially in France and in Russia:
In Russia the two most influential anarchist thinkers are, interestingly enough, nobles
Peter Kropotkin, The Conquest of Bread, 1892
Mikhail Bakunin, God and the State, 1882
Both thinkers were influenced by the French anarchist thinker, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, What is Property? 1840
Property is theft!
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I said that anarchism was also a mode of political action, violence as political action => It was Kropotkin who popularized the phrase "propaganda by the deed" => a single spark, a single assassination, a single bomb to start revolution rolling.
For Michael Bakunin destruction was "a creative passion that would bring about the end of the State, capitalism, and private property." "The modern state," Bakunin wrote, "with all its terrible means of action given to them by modern centralization, was becoming an immense, crushing, threatening reality," as those slaughtered communards saw up close in May of 1871.
Slide 18
In fact anarchism sort of prefigured political terrorism
This developed essentially in France, Russia and Spain => a lot of bombing attacks and assassinations
Slide 19
But there was another element that was central in the development of anarchism => This was the full bloom of consumerism + capitalism in late 19th c. Europe
Increase of the wealth gap => Very rich people living close to, and at the expense of, increasingly poorer people
Slide 20
In contrast, the poor workers lived along the narrow grey streets of the plebeian neighborhoods of eastern Paris, where cholera had killed as late as 1884.
Slide 21
The rebuilding of Paris by Haussmann in the fifties and sixties had chased thousands of ordinary people, by higher rents, to the exterior neighborhoods of northern Paris, northeastern Paris, and to the working class suburbs.
Slide 22
Also, after the Commune, Police and soldiers were everywhere, and there were indeed many more of them.
Slide 23
A wave of anarchist bombings swept the capital between 1892 and 1894.
The favorite weapon of anarchists was dynamite => Dynamite interestingly was invented by Alfred Nobel in 1868
Why dynamite though?
Dynamite was considered to level the playing field => Weapons of the weak
Slide 24
But as a mentioned before there were significant differences between anarchists including in how they carried out their attacks
Some were group decisions and focused on attacking symbols of the state => politicians, police officers or army personnel
Other were somewhat outcast, loner individuals who made no difference between civilians and officials
Case of Emile Henry for instance
Were the anarchists terrorists? When you think of the word terrorism, the word terrorism was originally applied to actions taken by the State to terrorize. "The Terror" was terrorizing opponents in the French Revolution.
And it's often forgotten that the vast majority of victims of terror are victims of State terrorism. And the anarchists hated the State because they'd seen up close what State terrorism did in the wake of the Commune, the massacre of the innocents, of these women
During the 1890s the anarchist attacks killed a maximum of sixty people wounding more than two hundred. State terrorism, killed 260 times that number