The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1931-03-18
By ALEXANDER TRAoHTENBERG.


By ALEXANDER TRACHTENBERG.
MARCH 10, 1881, marks the Sixtieth anniversary
NA of the establishment of the Paris Commune
the first attempt at proletarian dictatorship.
Again and again the story has been told: how
Napoleon III (the Little) attempted to bolster
up the decaying regime of the Second Empire
by declaring war on Prussia in July. 1871; how
he met his debacle at Sedan and exposed Paris
to the Prussian troops; how bourgeois repub-
Lie was proclaimed in September and so-called
Government of National Defense organized; how
this government betrayed the besieged city and
how the Partisan masses rose, arning themselves
for its defense; how they proclaimed the Com
mune on March Is, when the government at
tempted to disarm their National Guard and
how they took the government of the city into
their own hands; how the traitorous Theirs Gov
eminent withdrew to Versailles and there plotted
with the Prussans the overthrow of the Com
mune; and how the Partisan workers held the
Commune for seventy-two days. defending it to
the last drop of blood when the Versailles troops
had entered the city and slaughtered tens of
thousands of the men and women who had dared
seize the government of the capital and run it
for the benefit of the exploited and disinherted.
Wherever workers will gather to hear once
more the story of this heroic struggle-a story
letarian lore-they will honor the memory of the
martyrs of 1871. But they will also remember
those martyrs of the class struggle of today who
have either been slaughtered or still smart in
the dungeons of capitalist and colonial countries
for daring to rise against their oppressoT@as
the Partisan workers did sixty years ago.
The Battlefront Is Far Flung
The Paris Commune lasted only 70 days but
it had great many victims More than
100000 men and women were killed or exiled
to the colonies when the bourgeoisie triunphed
Today the revolutionary battlefront is spread
over a greater territory. 1t encircles almost the
entire globe. Fierce class struggles are being
fought in all capitalist and colonial countries;
and tens of thousands of workers and peasants
are killed or imprisoned The total number of
victims of fasoism, the white terror and police
brutality during the past years runs into many
hundreds Of thousands. Workers everywhere are
rising to the defense of these victims of capitalist
class justice, and the anniversary of the Com
mune calls especial attention to this important
class duty of the workers
In commemorative the Paris Commune of 1871
the workers everywhere will bear in mind the
constant war danger that threatens the Soviet
Commune of today; and they will organize for
its defense. The Paris Commune suffered in
part because it isolated from other industrial
cellters and from the village districts, and be-
cause the International labor movement was
then still too weak to be of material assistance
to it. That is not true today. The Soviet Union
has become an integral part of the revolutionary
labor movement in all capitalist countries, and
of the national liberia ton movements in the
colonies. The working masses will leap to its
defense and fight for it because they recognize
that it is part of their own struggle against
capitalism mad imperialism
But the workers will NOT only draw inspiration
from The heroic deeds of the Communards, who
were ready to storm the heavens" MARK They
will not only recall their martyrdom to build
defense organizations and arouse the entire
working class to struggle for the liberation of
all class war prisoners in capitalist countries,
but they will also revew-the story of the Com
mune in the light of its achievements as we'll as
of the errors and shortcomings for which the
Paris workers paid so dearly.
The absence of disciplined. welI-knit reyolu-
tionary leadership both prior to and after the
establishment of the Commune spelled disaster
at the outset. There was no unified and tIlco-
rctically sound working class political party to
put itself at the head OF this elemental rising