Clemenceau, the Man and His Time

by H. M. Hyndman

“It is extremely important that the serious lesson which the world may read in the history of the Revolution should not be weakened in its significance or interest by any ill-grounded contempt either for the acts of the Communal leaders or for the sincerity of their motives. We have seen that the army on which the Revolutionists relied, and by means of which they climbed to power, was not, as certain French statesmen pretended, and some English papers would have had us believe, a ‘mere handful of disorderly rebels,’ but a compact force, well drilled, well organised, and valiant when fighting for a cause that they really had at heart. It is equally false and unfair to regard the Communal Assembly as a crew of unintelligent and mischievous conspirators, guided by no definite or reasonable principle, and seeking only their own aggrandisement and the destruction of all the recognised laws of order. Yet it is certain that such an idea respecting the Commune is very generally entertained by ordinary English readers. It may be shown that the policy of this Government, though defaced by many gross abuses and errors, had much in it to deserve the consideration, and even to extort the admiration, of an intelligent and practical statesman. . . .

“Foreign writers have delighted to represent the purposes of the Commune as vague and unintelligible. Even in Paris and at Versailles writers and talkers affected at first to be ignorant of the real projects and principles entertained by the Revolutionists. But the Commune of 1871 has itself destroyed all possibility of mistake upon the subject. It has put to itself and answered the question in the most explicit terms. The Journal Officiel (of Paris) contained, on April 20th, a document worthy of the most careful perusal. It appears in the form of a declaration to the French people, and explains fully enough the main principles and the chief objects which animated the men of the Commune. Without bestowing on this address the ecstatic eulogies to which certain Utopian philosophers have deemed it entitled, we may credit it as being a straightforward, manly, and not altogether unpractical exposé of the ideas of modern Communists.

“. . . ‘It is the duty of the Commune to confirm and determine the aspirations and wishes of the people of Paris; to explain, in its true character, the movement of March 18th—a movement which has been up to this time misunderstood, misconstrued, and calumniated by the politicians at Versailles. Once more Paris labours and suffers for the whole of France, for whom she is preparing, by her battles and her devoted sacrifices, an intellectual, moral, administrative, and economic regeneration, an era of glory and prosperity.

“‘What does she demand?

“‘The recognition and consolidation of the Republic as the only form of government compatible with the rights of the people and the regular and free development of society; the absolute independence of the Commune and its extension to every locality in France; the assurance by this means to each person of his rights in their integrity, to every Frenchman the full exercise of his faculties and capacities as a man, a citizen, and an artificer. The independence of the Commune will have but one limit—the equal right of independence to be enjoyed by the other Communes who shall adhere to the contract. It is the association of these Communes that must secure the unity of France.

“‘The inherent rights of the Commune are these: The right of voting the Communal budget of receipts and expenditure, of regulating and reforming the system of taxation, and of directing local services; the right to organise its own magistracy, the internal police and public education; to administer the property belonging to the Commune; the right of choosing by election or competition, with responsibility and a permanent right of control and revocation, the communal magistrates and officials of all sorts; the right of individual liberty under an absolute guarantee, liberty of conscience and liberty of labour; the right of permanent intervention by the citizens in communal affairs by means of the free manifestation of their ideas, and a free defence of their own interests, guarantees being given for such manifestations by the Commune, which is alone charged with the duty of guarding and securing the free and just right of meeting and of publicity; the right of organising the urban defences and the National Guard, which is to elect its own chiefs, and alone provide for the maintenance of order in the cities.

“‘Paris desires no more than this, with the condition, of course, that she shall find in the Grand Central Administration, composed of delegates from the Federal Communes, the practical recognition and realisation of the same principles. To insure, however, her own independence, and as a natural result of her own freedom of action, Paris reserves to herself the liberty of effecting as she may think fit, in her own sphere, those administrative and economic reforms which her population shall demand, of creating such institutions as are proper for developing and extending education, labour, commerce, and credit; of popularising the enjoyment of power and property in accordance with the necessities of the hour, the wish of all persons interested, and the data furnished by experience. Our enemies deceive themselves or deceive the country when they accuse Paris of desiring to impose its will or its supremacy upon the rest of the nation, and of aspiring to a Dictatorship which would amount to a veritable attack against the independence and sovereignty of other Communes. They deceive themselves or the country when they accuse Paris of seeking the destruction of French unity as established by the Revolution. The unity which has hitherto been imposed upon us by the Empire, the Monarchy, and the Parliamentary Government is nothing but a centralisation, despotic, unintelligent, arbitrary, and burdensome. Political unity as desired by Paris is a voluntary association of each local initiative, a free and spontaneous co-operation of all individual energies with one common object—the well-being, liberty, and security of all. The Communal Revolution initiated by the people on the 18th of March inaugurated a new political era, experimental, positive, and scientific. It was the end of the old official and clerical world, of military and bureaucratic régime, of jobbing in monopolies and privileges, to which the working class owed its state of servitude, and our country its misfortunes and disasters.’”

The two Englishmen, coming straight to my house from Paris, gave me a favourable account of the administration of municipal Paris, especially at the time when Cluseret held command.

Others who were there at the same time were similarly impressed. Paris ceased even to be the Corinth of Europe, since all prostitutes had been ordered out of the city. The leaders set an example of moderation in their style of living, which was the more remarkable as they had no authority but their own sense of propriety to limit their expenditure. How little they regarded themselves as relieved from the ordinary rules of the strictest bourgeois social order is apparent, also, from the fact that Jourde and Beslay, who were responsible for the finances of the Commune, actually borrowed £40,000 from the Rothschilds in order to carry on the ordinary business of the Municipality. Yet at the time not less than £60,000,000 in gold, apart from a huge store of silver, was lying at their mercy in the Bank of France; enough, as some cynically said, if judiciously used, to have bought up all M. Thiers’ Government and his army to boot. The fact that the Communists left these vast accumulations untouched proves conclusively that they were the least predatory, some might say the least effective, revolutionists who ever held subversive opinions. In all directions they showed the same spirit. Every department was managed as economically and capably as they could organise it. But always on the most approved bourgeois lines. Many of the reforms they introduced, notably those by Camélinat at the Mint, are still maintained.

How, then, did it come about that people of this character and capacity were regarded almost universally as desperate enemies of society, from the moment when they came to the front in their own city? It is the old story of the hatred of the materialist property-owner and profiteer for the idealist who is eager at once to realise the new period of public possession and co-operative well-being. The fact that such an indomitable anarchist-communist as the famous Blanqui, who spent the greater part of his life in prison, took an active part in the Commune and that others of like views were associated with the rising scared all the “respectable” classes, who regarded any attack upon the existing economic and social forms as a crime of the worst description. A tale current at the time puts the matter in a humorous shape. A number of communists, when arrested, were put in gaol with a still larger number of common malefactors. These latter greatly resented this intrusion, boycotted the political prisoners, and, it is said, would have gone so far as to attack their unwelcome companions but for the intervention of the warders. Asked why they exhibited such animosity towards men who had done them no harm, the ordinary criminals took quite a conservative, bourgeois view of their relations to the new-comers. “We,” they said, “have some of us taken things which belonged to other people; but we have never thought for a moment of abolishing the right of property in itself. Not having enough ourselves, we wanted more and laid hands upon what we could get. But these men would take everything and leave nothing for us.” So even the gaolbirds embraced the bourgeois ethic of individual ownership.