The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1930-03-18
The Paris Commune Lives Again
By Fred Ellis


N0l-eTS Loyal TO Commune.
The workers alone remained loyal to the
Paris Commune to the last and it is the work
ers alone who are uprooting the last remnants
of capitalism in the Soviet Union and care
fully building their clashes society. 1t was
Karl Marx who wrote:
"Workingmen's Paris with it's Commune will
be forever celebrated as the glorious har-
binger of new society Its martyrs are en-
shrined in the great heart of the working class
Its eXtermlnators history has already nailed
to that eternal pillory from which all the
prayers of their priests will not avail to redeem
them"
Today the flames Of revolution spread over
the world. All races are modified for decisive
struggles. The yellow and brown workers and
peasants of China and India press forward to
more acute struggles against their .imperialist
oppressors; Black Africa is in rebellion in
Madagascar, along the Congo, in South Africa
In Black Haiti workers and peasants died
heroically before the guns of Yankee imper-
ialism, that also faces stubborn resistance in
Nicaragua, Colombia, and other Latin-Amer-
lean countries. Thus the colonial and semi
colonial resistance of the plundered peoples
everywhere is linked up with the ever fiercer
battles waged by labor jobless and hungry, in
the capitalist homelands of imperialism. The
revolutionary world front of labor moves for
ward ceaselessly in it's growing offensive
against the weakening capitalist social struc-
ture.
Capitalsm's Last Blows.
In its last extremities world imperialism
does not stop short of every violence against
the workers. Mass slaughters in China (more
than $4,000 revolutionaries murdered during
the first nine months of 1920; wholesale exile
of workers and peasants from Indonesia, the
LII. IL.
prosecutions and trials in India, Korea Indo-
China, Japan; fascist relationships wading
knee deep in workers blood in nearly every
European capitalist country; in the United
States nearly 5000 arrests in the two-year per-
iod, 1928-1929; nearly 1,50O arrests during the
months of January and February, 1880, with
new efforts being made by the so-called Hoover
prosperity" government to illegalize the Com
munss Party and the industrial unions
through the use of revived "war emergency
laws" while increasing numbers of workers
are being sent to prison for long terms of
years. These all signs of the growing
weakness, not of the strength of the waning
capitalist social order that seeks to breathe
life into its own decaying carcass through the
misery that it continues to nflict upon the
suffering masses.
World labor today profits by the exper-
fences Of the Paris Commune. Many factors
contributed to the downfall of the Commune.
The French worker and peasant masses did not
give it sufficient support. They were not united
in strong disciplined organization schooled
in proletarian revolutionary struggles. The
revolutionary unity of city and country, that
was also absent in the short-lived Hungarian
Soviet Republic, but which was fully realized
in the Bolshevik seizure of power IN Russia
was lacking in the Commune. In spite of the
vast efforts of Karl Marx, there was also
absent the practical solidarity of the interna-
tional masses. The Partisan fighters for work
ing class liberation were thus quite isolated.
This made easier the victory of the bourgeoise.
Build tho !Is;sv OF aiar.
Here are lessons for the American working
class On this 59th anniversary OF the rails
Commune the toiling masses in the United