Brian Becker A barricade during The Paris Commune, 1871. Anyone who aspires to be a real communist or to understand the theory of modern communism must study Lenin’s pamphlet The State and Revolution. Lenin was able to nearly finish this monumental contribution to Marxism and revolution while on the run, living underground and hiding from…
Category: Paris Commune
Black Reconstruction and the Paris Commune: Two Momentous Revolutions
By Jeff Sorel Black History Month brings back to life long-buried struggles of African-American people for liberation and justice. One of the most stirring such struggles took place a century-and-a-half ago during Reconstruction, when a revolutionary upsurge in the 1870s led to formerly enslaved people winning political power throughout the U.S. South. A contemporaneous revolutionary…
The Survival of the Paris Commune
The Commune of 1871 was never truly vanquished—its political imaginary lived on and is today being liberated and revived in a new cycle of struggles. By Kristin Ross ROAR: The Paris Commune has been studied and debated for almost a century and a half. How does your book add to our understanding of this world-historical…
Louise Michel and the Paris Commune of 1871
By Workers World March 17, 2016 Paris, March 18, 1871. The National Guard, the workers’ militia that was defending Paris from the besieging Prussian Army, rang the alarm at dawn. But it wasn’t the Prussians who were attacking. It was France’s regular army, following orders from the capitalist-monarchist Parliament sitting in the Parisian suburb of…
