From Paris with Revolution: Contrasting views of the Paris Commune from Kautsky, Lenin and Trotsky
By: Lev Orenberg
Tags: Socialism, Paris, Revolution, Ussr, Russia

In the midst of the Franco-Prussian war in which the French were defeated on the battlefield by the Prussian military machine, their emperor, Louis Napoleon, the nephew of that famous Napoleon Bonaparte was captured. Following his defeat and capture the Prussian army went freely occupying French soil. In the midst of this war, military defeat, governmental collapse and ongoing social upheaval, an uprising by the Parisians against the German invaders and the right-wing Republican government under Thiers began. This seizure of power by the working class of Paris with the aid of revolutionaries of various stripes, from Neo-Jacobins to Proudhonists to Blanquists, would serve as, the great instructional event and inspiration for all future revolutionaries as to how a socialist society could be achieved and run. For the leaders of the socialist movement during the next great period of revolution, the late 1910’s beginning with the Russian revolutions, the lessons of the Commune were not merely academic but reflected on real-life political decisions that would affect the lives of millions. Of the many great theorists, leaders and revolutionaries of the early twentieth century, Kautsky, leader of the German Social Democratic Party, in his writings on the Paris Commune represented the tendencies of revisionist and reformist Marxism and was arrayed against the committed revolutionary personalities of Vladimir Lenin, head of the Bolsheviks and Leon Trotsky, head of the Red Army who represented revolutionary socialism.

In advance of any discussion on the lessons of the Paris Commune, it is important to understand what the Paris Commune, in its formation and execution of government, signified and actually was. Kautsky says of the formation of the Paris Commune, “at the time of the suspension of the Commune, nobody was more surprised than the revolutionaries themselves, and to a very large number of them this conflict was anything but desirable.” ( Kautsky, “Terrorism and Communism” page 56) Kautsky clearly asserts that the uprising was not planned by any individual or party, but spontaneously emerged out of the conditions of war and class conflict. Lenin agrees with this analysis of the spontaneous origin of the Commune, saying that “a decisive battle was forced upon the workers and they accepted it.”(Lenin, “State and Revolution” page 33) Trotsky also follows in Lenin’s understanding on the spontaneity of the uprising saying, “The worker, bound hand and foot by the mechanism of capitalist society, has suddenly burst out of its midst, and is learning to put the aims of the community higher than his own domestic happiness and than life itself.”(Trotsky, “Terrorism and Communism” page 65) Despite the universal agreement that the Commune was the result of a spontaneous uprising, the character and meaning of the Commune were interpreted vastly differently by Kautsky as opposed to Lenin and Trotsky. Kautsky makes his view of the character of the Commune thusly, “People have said that the Commune was a Government of the working classes. That is a great mistake. The working classes took part in the struggle, in the administration and their breath alone made the movement great; but they were very little engaged in actual government. The election of March 26th gave the workers only 25 votes as against 70 which went to the revolutionaries.”(Kautsky, “Terrorism and Communism” page 84) (quoting Lissagaray) Kautsky makes it clear that he doesn’t necessarily see the revolutionaries as workers, but rather a separate class, while still seeing the Commune as a working-class experiment as they were the Commune’s driving force. Lenin’s view is most simply expressed as, “The Commune is the form “at last discovered” by the proletarian revolution under which the economic liberation of labor can proceed.”(Lenin “State and Revolution” page 50) For Lenin the Commune wasn’t just a spontaneous political project emerging out of workers’ anger, it was the proletarian political mechanism for struggle against the bourgeoisie and tool of socialist construction. Trotsky expresses similar thoughts to those of Lenin, “The Paris Commune of 1871 was the first, as yet weak, historic attempt of the working class to impose supremacy. We cherish the memory of the Commune in site of the extremely limited character of its experience, the immaturity of its participants, the confusion of its programme, the lack of unity amongst its leaders, the indecision of their plans, the hopeless panic of its executive organs and the terrifying defeat fatally precipitated by all these. We cherish in the Commune in the words of Lavrov, “the first though still pale, dawn of the proletarian republic.”(Trotsky “Terrorism and Communism” page 69) Trotsky in his analysis of the Commune, makes sure to add its many failures with his praise of The Commune’s historic importance as the first major historical attempt at proletarian class rule.

For Trotsky, the great failure of the Commune was its lack of commitment to Proletarian class rule through violent struggle. “The effect of all these measures of intimidation was paralyzed by the helpless opportunism of the guiding elements in the Commune, by their striving to reconcile the bourgeoisie with the fait accompli by the help of pitiful phrases, by their vacillations between the fiction of democracy and the reality of dictatorship.” (Trotsky “Terrorism and Communism” page 76) That the Commune’s leadership’s unwillingness to embrace the Commune, as the average Communard fighting on the barricades did, as a mechanism of proletarian class control and thus avoiding the necessary tools of class war, that being suppression of counter-revolution, spelled its downfall. Lenin, in agreement with Trotsky, said, “Would the Paris Commune have lasted a single day had it not relied on the authority of the armed people against the bourgeoisie? Are we not, on the contrary, entitled to blame the Commune for not having made sufficient use of this authority?”(Lenin “State and Revolution” pages 52–53) Kautsky also sees in the Commune a lack of willingness to use military force, but places doubts about the Socialist nature of the uprising saying, “If the Parisans had kept to the heels of Thiers, they would have perhaps have succeeded in overcoming the government…Then it would have been possible to introduce a new Government, which, however, would not have been able to carry out a socialist programme. For that the conditions were not ripe enough.”(Kautsky “Terrorism and Communism” page 64) Kautsky doubts the possibility of a proletarian dictatorship being established and instead suggests that the Communards should have instead pushed for radical Republicanism and under that paradigm bargained for better conditions in order to educate the proletarians and develop the working-class movement.

The lesson Kautsky asks his readers to take from the Paris commune is explained best in Kautsky’s interpretation of Engel’s views on the Paris Commune, saying, “In other words it was organization, and not action, which appeared the more important to his volcanic temperament…He demanded that they should devote all their strength for the moment to the organization of the proletariat….This shows no very strong earnings towards insurrection.”(Kautsky “Terrorism and Communism” page 59) He warns strongly against revolutionaries trying to seize the moment and attempt to take political power for the proletariat, advising, “Instead of the actual condition of things being the driving force of the Revolution, they seek for that driving force mere will; whereas we say to the workmen, you have to go through twenty or fifty years of civil wars and struggles, not only to change conditions but also to change yourselves, and to make yourselves capable of political government.”(Kautsky “Terrorism and Communism” page 92) Kautsky argues that struggle, for the working class, cannot be won in a moment of spontaneous uprising, it must be developed. Especially in countries with largely agrarian populations, like France at the time of the Commune, the idea of a proletarian revolution is an impossibility and all that can be fought for is policies that develop the proletariat, but never advance it to political supremacy. ( Kautsky “Terrorism and Communism” page 96) Kautsky, in line with his anti-revolutionary ideas, and, in an attempt to slight the Bolsheviks under the guise of praise for the Commune, condemns the “terrorism” of the Commune as “the outcome of the ideas, not of the proletariat but of the militarists who do not attach much importance to human life.”( Kautsky “Terrorism and Communism” page 63) Kautsky would also add that in his condemnation of the Commune’s terrorism that, “Theirs did his best to incite the Commune to slaughter. He knew perfectly well that every hostage shot rendered a service, not to the Commune, but to himself, because it roused public opinion at large, which was still governed by bourgeois thought.”(Kautsky “Terrorism and Communism” page 115) For Kautsky, not only was the execution of hostages and other acts of terror the result of militarists coming from outside the Parisian proletariat, but that these acts performed by outside actors only weakened the Commune. Kautsky furthers this praise for the Commune and condemnation for the Bolsheviks on the subject of “democratic rights”, saying, “We see [in Engel’s reflection on the Paris Commune] that Marx and Engels under the title of the dictatorship, in no way understood the withholding of universal and equal suffrage or the suppression of democracy.”(Kautsky “Terrorism and Communism” page 74)

Lenin, through Marx, rejects Kautsky’s invalidation of the possibility of Social revolution due to the agrarian character of the nation saying, “When speaking of “a real people’s revolution,” Marx,..stated that the “breaking up of the state machinery is demanded by the interests of both the workers and peasants, that it unites them, that it takes place before them the common task of removing the “parasite” and replacing it by something new.”(Lenin “State and Revolution” pages 34–35 ) For Lenin, unity can be found between the peasants and urban workers in the destruction of the military-bureaucratic state machinery and the construction of a Proletarian dictatorship. Lenin also rejects Kautsky’s admiration for the Commune’s consideration of “democratic” and property rights of the counter-revolutionary classes within Paris during the uprising. (Kautsky “Terrorism and Communism” page 74) Lenin does not just demand a brief suppression of counter-revolutionaries, but that their suppression must go on until their class is completely defeated, saying, “Only in Communist society, when the resistance of the capitalists has been completely broken, when the capitalists have disappeared, when there are no classes, only then “the state ceases to exist” and “it becomes possible to speak of freedom.” (Lenin “State and Revolution” page 80) Beyond Lenin’s general call for repression against counter-revolutionaries, he also praises socialist construction in the Commune and demands in future socialist projects a centralized proletarian democracy, saying, “The venal and rotten parliamentarism of bourgeois society is [through the shattering of state machinery and institution of fuller democracy] replaced in the Commune by institutions in which freedom of opinion and discussion does not degenerate into deception, for the parliamentarians must themselves work, must themselves execute their own laws, must themselves verify their results in actual life, must themselves be directly responsible to the electorate.” (Lenin “State and Revolution” page 43) For Lenin, under proletarian democracy, as opposed to bourgeois democracy, the state is centralized and all previous representative bodies are transformed into working bodies in order for disagreement and discussion to be ordered in the interest of the working class rather than the propertied classes. This destruction of the old state apparatus and reconstruction on a proletarian and centralized basis, as seen in the Commune, is what allowed the proletariat to move towards the construction of a new society and the destruction of bureaucracy. Paired with the lessons of the Commune of revolutionary organization, agitation, suppression, and military aggression, the now advanced form of the Commune would serve as a more advanced tool of proletarian class power.

Trotsky follows Lenin first in his condemnation of Kautsky as well as demanding, in the wake of the Commune, further centralization and repression. Trotsky, on the subject of the “respect for democratic rights” in the Commune so praised by Kautsky, rebuffs him, saying, “In all districts of the country where the regime of “democracy” lived too long, it inevitably ended in an open coup d’etat of counter-revolution…..under the formal banner of “democracy,” there is being consolidated the supremacy of the landlords, the capitalists, and foreign militarists.”(Trotsky “Terrorism and Communism” page 86) For Trotsky, more important than a strict commitment to democracy for the whole of the population, including counter-revolutionary elements, was the provision of democracy for the proletariat under a centralized democratic state and the repression of counter-revolutionaries. Trotsky also rejects Kautsky’s separation of organization and action, citing the ability of the Bolsheviks to, in advance of the November revolution, organize and agitate the workers in order to seize control of the Soviets and government at large. Trotsky also specifies that this was a lesson learned from the unsuccessful Commune, saying,“The Communards did nothing of the kind [agitation and organization] Finally, we had behind us the heroic Commune of Paris, from the defeat of which we had drawn the deduction that revolutionaries must foresee events and prepare for them.”(Trotsky “Terrorism and Communism” page 73) That the failure of the revolutionaries to organize and agitate the workers for revolution spelled their downfall as there was no ready-made apparatus to take the offensive against counter-revolutionaries with, but that through the Bolshevik party, which organized and agitated the workers for revolution, the revolutionary socialists were able to take state power, repress the counter-revolutionary segments of the population and hold political power for the proletariat.

Kautsky saw in the Paris Commune a spontaneous uprising by workers, coopted by an uncoordinated group of revolutionaries, that in its insurrectionary form was doomed due to the agrarian character of the nation and the lack of organization of the proletariat. He drew from the Commune that the workers must be better organized and agitate for policies that advance the organization and education of the proletariat so that the actual conditions for revolution could be met. Kautsky was able to formulate his reformist view of Marxism generally, and of the Commune specifically, because he sat at the head of the largest Social Democratic Party in Europe. The SPD held key positions in government and in the trade union leadership. From that vantage point, reform really seemed possible, and thus Kautsky sought to perfect the formula for reform out of the social upheaval that was the Paris Commune. In opposition to Kautsky’s anti-revolutionary rhetoric and conclusions from the Commune Lenin and Trotsky see in the Commune an early flexing of proletarian power through the formation of the Commune, whose form would serve as the tool for working-class domination and the destruction of the bourgeois state apparatus. They saw in the Commune many great successes and drew from it the need for more revolutionary organization paired with agitation, more repression of counter-revolutionary forces, and further centralization of power into the hands of the proletariat. Lenin and Trotsky did much of their writing from political exile from Russia, an absolutist monarchy in which any, even liberal, criticism of the government was illegal. For them, there was no option but revolution, and their views reflect the need for revolution as the only mechanism of social change. The lessons learned by Lenin and Trotsky would serve as the foundation for the Bolshevik party and establishment of the next great working-class uprising in the Russian Revolution and its centralization into the next interaction of the Commune: The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.