The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1924-09-27

1t is not the purpose of this article
to give a history of this glorious eff
fort of the Paris workers to establish
proletarian rule. Sufficient to say
that on the Central Committee of the
Commune sat IL members of the Inter-
national For detailed incident of the
struggle in which 100000 Paris work
ers "disappeared"-as Postgate puts it,
and 10000 are acknowledged to have
been massacred by the Versaillese,
refer the reader to THE Civil War in
France" written by Marx and issued
by the First International while
Theirs human bloodhounds were still
dumping cadavers into the Seine.
The members of the International
fought beside the other Paris workers
day after day, only once did the mem
bers on the Central Committee resign
as a protest against action Of the
majority. They were ordered back
by the General Council and like good
revolutionists they obeyed Interna-
tional discipline. On May s21st the
Versaillese entered by a spy's betrayal.
A week of barricade fighting followed.
The promise Of May 18th was kept.
1t had said: Paris has treated with
death. Behind her forts are her
walls; behind her walls are her bar
ricades; behind her barricades are
her houses which will have to be
wrenched from her one by one" And
when the fighting was over the Yer
saillese under Theirs and Gallifet
began the most CORY and sickening
butchery of the century.
Marx says that in order to find
comparison for the conduct of Theirs
I'VE must go back to the times of
Sulla and the two Triumvirates of
7 Rome There is but this difference,
that the Romans had no machine
guns for the dispatch, in the lump,
OF the prescribed, and that they had
not the law in thier hands nor on
their lips the cry of civilization
| Between the CHASTITY wound of the
crushed Commune and the unceasing
intrigues of Bakunin the International
was bleeding to death. The Unions
had been first to succumb to perse-
cutlon and then the political sections,
the organs of combat, were wiped out
by the terrific reaction following the
Commune. Though many sections were
left In Europe, especially in England,
and nearly thirty in America, the
whole energy of the movement was
taken up in fractional fighting. Baku-
MN rallied against the dictatorship"
OF Marx and Engels; they, in turn,
would not surrender one inch to
anarchist theory.
Anarchy, says Marx, sis the great
charger of Bakunin. All socialists
! mold anarchy to mean this: the aim of
the proletarian movement. the aboIi-
ton of classes, once attained. the
power of the state which serves tn
keep the great majority of producers
beneath the yoke of a small exploit-
ing minority, will disappear and 90
vernmenta1 functions become mere
administrative functions. The Allan
&c speaking of Bakuninists) reverses
TINS. 1t proclaims anarchy in the
ranks OF the proletariat as the most
lntaillble means of defeating the
powerful concentration of social and
pohtlcal forces in the hands of the
exporters. On this pretext it REQUIRES
the International at the moment when
Inc ola world seeks to crush II 10
replace lts organization (Bakunin had
demanded abolition of powers of the
ueneral CounciD with anarchy. The
International police asks no more"
buC capitalism again triumnhant
ana still ascendant was creating no
4
tlonal interests even among the soc.
ialsts. The anarchists were sowing
the seeds Of decentralization which
were to furnish the poison for the
Second International and its collanse
forty years later. Marxians. embitter.
ca Dy Bakunin, controlled the Hague
congress meeting on September p
dSf2 1t voted to move the General
council to New York. Marx was I'M. snf-
Iering severely and dangerously from
oVerwork. Engels continued to fight
the anarchists. Bakunin failed to build
rival International. On the 18th of
Suiy 1910, the First International held
The outlook was black and the meet.
ing accepted facts and declared the
General Council abolished. Bakunin.
II seems, had won. But Leninism was
TO come. And that, of course, is
another story.