General Lecomte News Today

P. Guillaume and Martin Grainger, a pseudonym of Maurice Brinton, in Solidarity pamphlet #35, write on the Paris commune of 1871.

Why was the Commune important? For just 72 days – from 18 March to 28 May 1871 – a revolutionary government ran Paris, and espoused a great number of radical causes: decent conditions for workers; free universal education; separation of Church and state; the abolition of child labour; equality between men and women; citizenship for foreigners. Although it was soon put down with remarkable ferocity, the Paris Commune inspired socialist movements around the world. Karl Marx described it as th...

Paris Workers’ Revolution and Thiers’ Reactionary Massacres Armed Paris was the only serious obstacle in the way of the counterrevolutionary conspiracy. Paris was, therefore, to be disarmed. On this point the Bordeaux Assembly was sincerity itself. If the roaring rant of its Rurals had not been audible enough, the surrender of Paris by Thiers to the tender mercies of the triumvirate of Vinoy the Decembriseur, Valentin the Bonapartist gendarme, and Aurelle de Paladines the Jesuit general,...