Claude Lecomte News Today

Introduction The Paris Commune of 1871 only lasted from March 18 to May 28, just 72 days, yet it is one of the most celebrated events in socialist history. It is a legend. Yet, what was it? What is it for us today? A model for socialists? A heroic failure? Negation of the state? Or the first workers’ government? Karl Marx wrote the most famous contemporary account, yet he failed to take up some of the Commune’s serious problems. Why? In Part I of this essay, below, I look at the events of t...

The Paris Commune’s Bloody Week In May 1871, a short-lived Parisian revolution in social relations was brutally suppressed. What is the legacy of the Paris Commune, 150 years on? Destruction of the Vendôme Colonne during the Paris Commune, by André-Adolphe-Eugène Disdéri, 1871. In hiding and soon to be sentenced to death in absentia, Eugène Pottier completed a poem In June 1871 that still serves as the rallying cry for the Left worldwide: L’Internationale. Its themes of so...

Genderquake: socialist women and the Paris Commune Women in our history Monday 8 March 2021, by Judy Cox On 11 April 1871, three weeks into the life of the Paris Commune, a poster appeared on the walls of France’s capital: Citizenesses, we know that the present social order bears within itself the seeds of poverty and of the death of all liberty and justice… At this hour, when danger is imminent and the enemy is at the gates of Paris, the entire population must unite to defend the Commun...