Page:Ernest Belfort Bax - A Short History of the Paris Commune (1895).djvu/5



The Commune of Paris is the one event which Socialists throughout the world have agreed with single accord to celebrate. Every 18th of March witnesses thousands of gatherings throughout the civilised world to commemorate the (alas! only temporary) victory of organised Socialist aspiration over the forces of property and privilege in 1871.

The Commune, it is said, did little of a distinctively Socialistic character; it made made many mistakes; it was infatuated with the idea of decentralisation. All this is true. What constitutes the importance of the Commune in history is not certainly the measures that it enacted, is not even its admirable conduct of the administration of a great metropolis under circumstances of extreme difficulty; it is the fact that the Commune is a landmark as being the first administration manned by the working classes, having for its more or less conscious aim the reorganisation of Social conditions—the transformation of a Civilised Society into a Socialist Society. It is this question of aim as symbolised by the red flag, which is the central one. For, however nebulous may have been the views of some of