The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1929-03-16
bY KARL MARX

cc,pts from Mar~'s pamphlet "The
CiViJ War IN France" qOritten as an
address of the General Council of
the International Workingmen's As
sociatiom-the First International.
They sum up Mar1'S estimate of the
Paris Communicable first appear
ance az history of the phenomenon
aOhich Mara described as the dicta-
torship of the proletaridt.)
On the dawn of the 18th of March,
Paris arose on the thunderburst of
"Vive la Commune~ What is the
Commune, that sphinx so tantalizing
to the bourgeois mind?
"The proletarians of Paris" said
the Central Committee in its mani
festo of the 18th of March, amidst
the failures and treasons of the rul-
ing classes, have understood that the
hour has struck for them to save the
situation by taking into their own
hands the direction of public affairs.
They have understood that it is
their imperious duty and their alb
solute right to render themselves
masters of their own destinies, by
Selling upon the governmental pow
En-" But the working class cannot
simply lay hold of the ready-made
State machinery, and WELD it for its
own purposes.
The direct antithesis to the En-
pire was the Commune. The cry of
"Social Republic" with which the
revolution of February was ushered
in by the Paris proletariat, did but
express a vague aspiration after a
Republic that was not only to super
sede the monarchial form of class
rule, but class-rule itself. The Com
mune was the positive form of that
Republic.
Paris, the central seat of the old
governmental power, and, at the
same time, the social stronghold of
the French working class, had risen
in arms against the attempt of
Theirs and the Rurals to restore and
perpetuate that old governmental
power bequeathed to them by the
Empire. Paris could resist only be-
cause, in consequence of the siege,
it had got rid of the army, and re-
placed it by National Guard, the
bulk of which consisted of working
men. This fact was now to be trans
formed into an institution. The first
degree of the Commune, therefore,
was the suppression of the standing
army, and the substitution for it OF
the armed people.
The Commune was formed of the
municipal councillors, chosen by uni
versal suffrage in various wards OF
the town, responsible and revocable
at short terms. The majority of its
members were naturally working
men, or acknowledged representa-
tives of the working class. The
Commune was to be working, not
a parliamentary body, executive and
legislative at the same time. Instead
of continuing to be the agent of the
Central Government, the police was
at once stripped of it's political at
tributes, and turned into the respon-
sible and at all times revocable
agent of the Commune. So were the
officials of all other branches of the
Administration. From the members
of the Commune downwards the
public service had to be done at
qoorkmen's auages. The vested inter-
ests and the representation allow
ances of the high dignitaries OF the
State disappeared along with the
high dignitaries themselves. Public
functions ceased to be the private
property of the tools of the Central
Government. Not only municipal ad-
ministration, but the whole initiative
hitherto exercised by the State was
laid into the hands of the Com
mune.
Having once got rid Of the stand
ing army and the police, the physi-
cal force elements of the old Gov
eminent, the Commune was anxious
to break the spiritual force OF re-
preston, the "parson-power," by the
disestablishment and disendowment