The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1934-03-17
By V. ]. JEROME

rian dictatorship. The first step
was the Paris Commune"
IN THESE words, addressed to the
4 workers of Europe and America in
January, 1919, Lenin summarized,
with the iron precision hammered
out by his great analytic powers, the
historic significance Of the first pro-
letarian revolution: its significance
as the first phase in the develop
ment of the proletarisn State and
as the point Of departure for every
working-class revolution in the i'm
perialist epoch the revolution
which can find its realization only
in Soviet power.
The fundamental lesson offered by
the experiences of the Paris Com
mune to the world proletariat is
the necessity for making central in
its program the objective of selling
and utterly destroying the bourgeois
State power, of setting up in its
place the dictatorship of the prole-
tariat MarIism-Leninism has en-
hlazened this teaching as a guide to
revolutionary action on the banner
Of the international proletariat. In
commenting on the Manifesto issued
by the Central Committee of the
National Guard on March 10, 1871
to the effect that the Partisan work.
ers had recognized it as their right
and duty to seize governmental
power, Marx declared in his Civil
War in France;
But the working class cannot
simply lay hold of the ready made
State machinery and WELD it for
its own purposes"
1t is necessary, as he put it in
his letter to Epgelmann april H.
IT'D, mot, as hitherto, to transfer
the bureaucratic-military machinery
from one hand to the other, but to
break it
This great universal lessen was
Wrung from the strength and the
weaknesses of the Commune, from
the high attachments and the fatal
errors, from the heroic advances
end the hating half measures, in
their tragic interplay during those
seventy immortal days.
The Revolution of the 18th OF
March was an event historically still
on the threshold of the epoch of
proletarian revolutions, the achieve
ment OF a working class that had
not yet emerged from immaturity.
BY 1871 the MARKHAM teachings had
not made significant advance among
the French masses.
The working class of France had
no salidified proletarian Party to
lead it; the Revolution was a spon-
taneous act. The First International.
although contributing theological
leadership and participating forces,
was represented in the Commune
largely by members of the Proud
honist wing. The Utopian teachings
of Blsnqui and, to a lesser extent,
of Proudhon still exerted a pre-
dominant influence among the Pa
ristan workers. Blanquism, although
favoring the seizure of power, did
not enviSage in its program a prole-
tartan base for the dictatorship, but
instead, conceived the mainstay to
be minority of organized profess
sional revolutionaries. Such a con-
ception, arising from the failure to
see the proletariat in its clear class
dellneation and to sense the revolu-
tionary might with which it was
charged led of course, to conspira-
. tive and sectarian tactics, to an
aVowed impatience with the day-to-
day economic struggles of the work
ers, and to costly adventurism and
putsehism las in the premature in
surreetions of October 81, 1870, and
January %, 1870.
On the other hand, Proudhonisn,
2 petty bourgeois anarcho- reformist
theory, seeking to substitute for
class struggle and instruction
small-owners' and artisans mutual
ism surrounded with the illusion of
diminishing State authority, ruled
out completely the necessity for
political conflict that is, for Wrest-
ing political power from the bour-
geoisse and for establishing the die
tatorship of the proletariat.
THESE influences inevitably re-
flected themselves in the errors
of the Commune. They showed
themselves in the unreadiness of the
Commune to destroy completely the
economic basis and the State an
paratuS of the bourgoisie. Thus, the
Commune failed to con1scate the
Bank Of France with its five bill
lion franes-9n omission indicative
that private property was still held
in respect. 1t failed to take over
the railways
In transferring the abandoned
workshops to the workers associa-
tions-an act of great historic sig
niflcance-it fixed indemnities for
the former proprietors, in the event
Of their return from Versailles
where they had fled. Remnants of
democratic illusions expressed them
selves with regard to the proclama-
ton of universal suffrage. In the
surveillance over spies and traitors
there was deplorable looseness.
Furthermore, not until it was too
late did the Commune make efforts
to win over the peasantry. This
colossal error led to the isolation of
Me Paris proletariat.
Finally, the fatal mistake of hay
ang allowed Theirs with his 10000
men to leave Paris, subjected the
Commune from the outset to the
position of the defensive, while the
enemy, with Versailles as the base.