Page:Peter Alexeivitch Kropotkin - The Commune of Paris (1896).djvu/8

8 rumbling beneath our feet. The idea is sinking deep into the masses, it is giving them a rallying cry. We count on the present generation to bring about the Social Revolution within the Commune, to put an end to the ignoble system of middle-class exploitation, to rid the people of the tutelage of the State, to inaugurate a new era of liberty, equality, solidarity in the evolution of the human race.

Twenty years already separate us from the day when the people of Paris overthrew the traitor government which raised itself to power at the downfall of the empire: whence comes it that the oppressed masses of the civilized world are still irresistably drawn towards the movement of 1871? Why is the idea represented by the Commune of Paris so attractive to the workers of every land, of every nationality?

The answer is easy. The Revolution of 1871 was above all a popular one. It was made by the people themselves, it sprang spontaneously from the midst of the mass, and it was amongst the great masses of the people that it found its defenders, its heroes, its martyrs. It is just because it was so thoroughly "low" that the middle-class can never forgive it. And at the same time its moving spirit was the idea of a Social Revolution; vague certainly, perhaps unconscious, but still the effort to obtain at last, after the struggle of many centuries, true freedom, true equality for all men. It was the Revolution of the lowest of the people marching forward to conquer their rights.

Attempts have been and are made to change the sense of this revolution, to represent it as a mere effort to regain the independence of Paris and thus to constitute a tiny state within France. But nothing can be more untrue. Paris did not seek to isolate herself from France, any more than to conquer it by force of arms; she did not care to shut herself within her walls, like a nun in a convent, she was not inspired by the narrow spirit of the cloister. If she claimed her independence, if she tried to hinder the interference of the central power in her affairs, it was because she saw in that independence a means of quietly elaborating the bases of future organization and