Page:Peter Alexeivitch Kropotkin - The Commune of Paris (1896).djvu/10

10 about it was to consolidate the Commune by means of the Social Revolution.

The same thing happened with regard to the principle of Government. By proclaiming the free Commune, the people of Paris proclaimed an essential Anarchist principle, which was the breakdown of the State, but as the idea of Anarchism had then but faintly dawned upon men's minds, it was checked half way, and in the midst of the Commune the ancient principle of authority cropped up and the people gave themselves a Council of the Commune, on the model of municipal Councils elsewhere.

And yet, if we admit that a Central Government to regulate the relations of Communes between themselves is quite needless, why should we admit its necessity to regulate the mutual relations of the groups which make up each Commune? And if we leave the business of coming to a common understanding with regard to enterprises which concern several cities at once to the free initiative of the Communes concerned, why refuse this same free initiative to the groups composing a single Commune? There is no more reason for a government inside the Commune than for a government outside.

But in 1871, the people of Paris, who have overthrown so many Governments, were only making their first attempt to revolt against the governmental system itself; consequently they hit themselves be carried away by the fetish worship of governments and set up one of their own.

The result is a matter of history. Paris sent her devoted sons to the Town Hall. There, shelved in the midst of files of old papers, obliged to rule where their instincts prompted them to be and do amongst the people, obliged to discuss where it was needful to act, and to compromise where no compromise was the best policy; and, finally, losing the inspiration which only comes from continual contact with the masses, they saw themselves reduced to impotence. Being paralysed by their separation from the people—the revolutionary centre of light and heat—they themselves paralysed the popular initiative.

The Commune of Paris, the child of a period of transition, born beneath the Prussian guns, was doomed to perish. Put by its eminently popular character it began a new series of revolutions, by its ideas it was the forerunner of the Social Revolution. Its lesson has