The Paris Commune revolution was the greatest social revolution of the 19th century, the first great initiative of the proletariat in the world to establish political power. However, the vigorous revolution of the Paris Commune was bloodily suppressed by the ruling class in just 72 days. Why did it fail so quickly? Mao Zedong pointed out that one of the main reasons for the failure of the Commune was the lack of a unified centralized and disciplined party to command...... As a result, there are differences of opinion within the country, and forces are scattered, which gives the enemy an opportunity to take advantage of. From the Central Committee of the National Guard to the Committee of the Commune and its National Salvation Committee, the political, organizational, and disciplinary deficiencies were painful lessons for the success and failure of the revolution in the Paris Commune.
The Central Committee of the National Guard competed for power, exceeded its authority, and created confusion in political leadership and military guidance. On March 28, 1871, after the official establishment of the Paris Commune, the Central Committee of the National Guard fulfilled its historical mission of the provisional revolutionary regime and transferred power to the Council of the Communes, the highest organ of power of the Paris Commune. However, only one day later, the Central Committee of the National Guard demanded that the Commune Committee recognize that "the Commune is the organ of political and civil power in Paris, and that the Central Committee of the National Guard is the organ of military power and enjoys full autonomy". On 31 March, the Central Committee of the National Guard appointed Kruzelie as a military representative without authorization. On 1 April, the Central Committee of the National Guard requested the Commune Committee the authority to appoint a chief of staff and to be responsible for quartermasters. On 2 April, the Central Committee of the National Guard ignored the decision of the Commune Committee to send troops to Versailles on its own, suffering a crushing defeat due to the lack of unity of command. On 16 April, Valland and several other members were by-elected to work as members of the Paris Commune, and the Central Committee of the National Guard became even more necessitated. However, Moreau, Balu and others openly convened a congress of the National Guard, strengthened the political role of the Central Committee of the National Guard, and established 11 committees, as if they were going to become a military regime to compete with the Commune Committee. At the beginning of May, the military situation in Paris was becoming increasingly severe, and the Central Committee of the National Guard not only transferred troops in violation of the Commune system and military order, but also intensified its plans to subvert the Commune regime. On 8 May, the Central Committee of the National Guard introduced special uniforms and special stamps. On 9 May, a public demand for a military dictatorship was openly called. On 23 May, the Central Committee of the National Guard announced the "dissolution of the National Assembly and the Commune", which shook the confidence and determination of the Paris Commune and the people.
In leading the armed uprising and the creation of the Paris Commune, the Central Committee of the National Guard made great contributions. However, after the establishment of the Paris Commune, the Central Committee of the National Guard broke its political promises, ignored the rules of discipline, and competed with the Commune Committee for political leadership and military command, which seriously affected the authority and centralized and unified leadership of the Commune, seriously undermined the military operations and military struggles of the Commune, and then accelerated the defeat of the Commune.
The commune committees equalized and divided powers, and the disciplinary chaos of discussion but not decision and decision was frequent. Following the establishment of the Paris Commune Committee, on 29 March it was decided to divide it into 10 committees for the purpose of conducting business and discussing draft decrees. Among them, each committee is roughly composed of 5-8 members. Structurally, the Paris Commune Committee did not practice the democratic centralism of the Central Committee of the Communist League, nor did it adopt the General Committee-Branch-Branch system of the First International.
The Paris Commune Committee lacked the right centralization on a democratic basis to produce an authoritative core of leadership. At the level of the Commune Council, it was initially proposed to elect a presidium consisting of a president and two vice-presidents, with a proposal for a one-week term. However, the term of office of the first President is only five days, and from 5 April onwards, the President is elected on an interim basis at each meeting, and his duties are limited to presiding over meetings. During the 72 days of the Commune's existence, 28 members were chaired by the meeting, sometimes two a day. The Council of the Commune was in fact leaderless. At the level of the 10 committees equivalent to government departments, the status and role of the Executive Committee should have been more prominent, "responsible for the execution of all the decrees of the Commune and all the resolutions of other committees", but the members of the Executive Committee did not have more prestige and higher power than the other members of the Commune, and the committees were equal to each other, independent of each other, and even ignored the decisions of the Executive Committee. On 20 April, the Commune had to reorganize its Executive Committee by electing one representative from each of the nine committees to form a new Executive Committee. Communication between the various committees has been strengthened, but the problem of equal decentralization has not been effectively resolved, and it is still difficult for the commune to get out of the dilemma of "Kowloon to control the water".
The separation and even separation of the economy and politics is the most concentrated manifestation and the most serious consequence of the issue of equal rights and decentralization. In the Paris Commune, the Proudhonists were in the majority in the Finance Council, in the Labour and Exchange Committee, and in the Blanquists in the Military Council, in the Judicial Council, in the Council for Peace. As Engels put it, the Proudhonists were first and foremost responsible for the economic decrees of the Commune, and the Blanquists were responsible for their actions and missteps in politics. When different bills were submitted to the Commune Committee for decision, there were many cases in which they were not decided, which were not decided, which were not carried out, and which were hindered in the course of action. In the view of the Proudhonists, proceeding from a petty-bourgeois standpoint, advocating reformism and anarchism, opposing political struggle and the revolutionary dictatorship, and obstructing the Commune's decrees on the disposal of enemy property and fugitives, the decrees banning the reactionary press, and the prisoners of hostages, etc., led to the abortion or nullification of the decrees, and "even the gendarmerie agents caught in Paris pretending to be the National Guard and the policemen who found Molotov cocktails were spared", which seriously shook the stability and political authority of the revolutionary regime. In the view of the Blanquies, they were socialists only out of class instinct, and they had neither a theory of socialism, nor a definite practical proposal for the transformation of society, still less could they rise to the level of politics to handle economic affairs correctly, and they made mistakes again and again in dealing with the question of the Banque de France. According to statistics, the Commune withdrew only 16 million francs from the 3 billion francs of assets deposited in the Banque de France, from which the reactionary government of Thiers received 257 million francs. On 12 May, the Magistrate's Council besieged the Banque de France on the pretext of searching a secret arsenal, but again failed due to Beret's obstruction. Engels noted: "The Commune neglected much of what we now see as necessary at the time. The most puzzling thing is, of course, that the Commune regarded the Banque de France as sacred, and stood deferentially outside its gates. This is also a serious political mistake. ”
Disputes over the powers and responsibilities of the National Salvation Committee have intensified internal divisions through sectarianism. In order to solve the problem of loose organization and difficult implementation of government decrees, at the meeting of the Commune on April 28, Mio, a member of the Commune, proposed the formation of a National Salvation Committee, which would be accountable only to the Commune and would have the broadest powers over all other committees. The differences between the Blanquists and the Proudhonites on whether or not to establish a National Salvation Commission became more and more serious. The Blanquists, together with the neo-Jacobins and others, formed a majority and favored the centralization and unification of the Commune in response to a more severe military situation. The Proudhonites saw this as a violation of the democratic principles of the Commune and became a minority with an opposing position.
On 1 May, the Commune organized elections for the National Salvation Committee, and the Proudhonites refused to vote. In the end, the 37 members of the Commune voted to elect 5 members of the National Salvation Committee, of whom 3 were Blanquies and 2 were neo-Jacobins, all of whom belonged to the majority. On 3 May, the National Salvation Committee (NRC) issued military directives directly over the Military Council and military representatives, resulting in the loss of positions. Over the mandate and actions of the National Salvation Committee, the majority and the minority faction engaged in a heated debate for three consecutive days, and the minority faction demanded that the National Salvation Committee be abolished. On 9 May, the Fort Issy northwest of Paris was captured and the Commune re-elected the National Salvation Committee. This was supposed to be a valuable opportunity to bridge the division, but the majority members negotiated separately between recess and won the election, and the second National Salvation Committee was still composed of three Blanquists and two neo-Jacobins. On 12 May, when a by-election was needed for the second National Salvation Committee, the majority voted again to elect a majority member, ignoring the prestige and competence of the minority candidate, Walland. Since then, the majority has further excluded minorities from organizations such as the Security Council and the Military Council. The original intention of the establishment of the National Salvation Committee was to strengthen centralization and unity, but it was turned into a tool by the majority to exclude dissidents and arbitrarily exercise power, which made the divisions and divisions within the commune even more acute.
The sectarian approach of the majority provoked strong opposition from the minority. On 15 May, 22 members of the minority issued a public statement saying that they would no longer attend the Commune because they had "relinquished their power by transferring power to an authoritarian body called the National Salvation Committee." The minority statement brought to light the internal divisions, undermined the prestige of the Paris Commune, provoked chaos in the ranks of the revolution, and created an irreparable political crisis. On 20 May, the Paris branch of the International Workingmen's Association called for every effort to preserve the unity of the Commune, and the citizens of Paris held a meeting of their constituencies to call on the members of their districts to return to the Commune. At the appeal of the revolutionary groups and the masses, on May 21, the minority returned to the Commune to attend the meeting, and the majority elected the minority as the chairman of the conference. However, time is running out for them at this point. In the ensuing "May Bloody Week", the Commune members fought bloodily and resisted, but in the end on May 28 they were defeated by the French bourgeois reactionary government in collusion with the Prussian army, leaving a painful lesson for the international communist movement.
(Author: Wu Xiaochao; Source: Kunlun Ce Network, originally published in the 8th edition of the Study Times on July 5, 2024)