Page:The Commonweal (IA 0544678.0001.001.umich.edu).pdf/19



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people has its days of revolution. These it justly holds as festivals, celebrating them as so many acts of vengeance wherein it has chastised its oppressors, as halting-places along the path that leads to freedom. Amongst them those stand out with unrivalled splendour, whose effect, not limited to the country that produced them, opens to all mankind the portals to a better future. Thus it was that at the end of the 18th century all Europe hailed with acclamation the fall of the Bastille and of the ancien régime.

Thus it is that the 18th of March is a date glorious beyond all others because it belongs not to France only, but to the International Proletariat. In no country is there to-day a proletarian, conscious of his rights, who does not know that the battle fought by the people of Paris in 1871, against the new masters of capital and power, was but the first act of the universal drama in which he too plays his part, the drama that will not end until every chain, social and political, has been broken by the popular strength.

Despite the bloodshed in Hune, 1848, this insurrection, like that of Lyons, like the Chartist risings, was only a prelude, a first and as yet ineffectual appeal to to force on the part of the slaves of capital, who, unable to live by working, preferred to die fighting.

In 1871 it was again, as always, the same cause for revolt, the same suffering and misery, that put arms into the hands of the people. But this people, maddened by hunger and fury, seeing themselves immediately after a foreign war betrayed and sold through hatred of the Revolution, struggled no longer to merely escape death, but also for enfranchisement. Better than ever before they had understood that their tyrants, by means of the political power and the whole forces of the nation which were at their disposal, held at once the instruments of government, and a guarantee for their privileges. Better than ever before they saw they must begin by dispossessing them of these, and that the people, armed with the same sovereign power, would encounter no obstacles, no opposition.

For two months the Commune, the victory of the people, lasted. THe fighting, the struggle for existence and power was everything, the rest only an accident. Of what value were words, of what value ephemeral reforms, when it was a question of conquering or dying? They people of Paris, rising to the height of the task they had undertaken, knew how to fight and die. For two months the red flag of the victorious proletariat waved over the town of the Revolution, till at last in May it fell with its defenders, downed in a sea of blood. The reactionary coalition triumphed by means of bloody massacres. Furious at seeing its empire menaced, Capital could not feed fat enough its lust for revenge, and endless proscriptions followed upon the massacres.

But Paris crushed grew only greater in the eyes of the oppressed people. Each one felt himself struck. To the French proletariat's cry of distress and death the proletariat of all other countries replied with one of vengeance and hope. Everywhere the militant Socialism of the Revolution sprang into being. Everywhere, on the very morrow of the defeat, even in France, as she came back to life again, the struggle recommenced. It is growing now, hastening its march towards a goal greater than any men have yet sought. For this is no longer a struggle by one class to replace another class, but a struggle for the abolition of all privileges, for the deliverance of all, for a society of the people based upon liberty, happiness and equality, for the community of property, for a people without god or master.

And it is for this, because it has led the way, shown the means, taught the method of organisation and combat, foretold success, that the Commune is everywhere fêted, glorified, in the hope of speedy revenge and definite triumph.

At last its true meaning is becoming understood. The nonsense of federalists, the lucubrations, interested or foolish, of hypocritical or ignorant interpreters can no longer hide the truth. The Commune of Paris—everyone knows it to-day—was not a separatist effort of egotistical isolation. It was on the contrary, as in 1793, the effort of revolutionary Paris to rally all the forces of Revolution within the nation, to take the direction of the country by all its people, in order to its enfranchisement.

The Commune—that is to say, the Revolution triumphant—meant the Socialist proletariat master of power and consequently of its destinies.

The defeat is but momentary, and for the delay the triumph will be but so much the greater, the more assured. For it is not in Paris and France alone, but in all Europe, and even America, that the Socialistic idea is agitating the masses of the workers. Each day and in all lands the assault upon the old society becomes more general and more impassioned. Soon the breach will be made by which the proletariat, irresistible, will pass to victory.

In marching towards this new world of equality, of justice, and of science, towards the radiant future, let us not forget that even more than the resistance of the enemy, the divisions, the want of organisation of our forces, are the principal obstacle to our action. On this day, when appealing to all proletarians, to all the soldiers of the Revolution and of Socialism, we celebrate the revolutionary struggles and the Commune of 1871, let us pledge ourselves by the memory of those who then fell for the cause of the people that the coming struggle shall find us ready, united and resolute. ED. VAILLANT, [Member of the Paris Municipal Council; Ex-Member of the Commune.]

two monsters at last confront each other at the gates of India. It may be in a few weeks' time that the representative embodiments of the great reactionary forces of the age—military autocracy and commercial plutocracy—are involved in a life-and-death struggle. To Socialists the spectacle of Russian military despotism and of British commercial greed mutually strangling one another cannot be unwelcome, provided the issue be the permanent disablement of one or both of them. A mere useless effusion of blood would of course be deprecated on all hands; and any campaign resulting in a patched-up peace must be viewed in this light by Socialists. Better that present probabilities should be realised—that the menaces of the bear should have the effect once more of driving the lion slinking off with his tail between his legs—than that a few months' carnage should result in the status quo ante, or little more. But we repeat that should a rupture in Afghanistan mean the beginning of the end of the high contending powers implicated, then the wish of every revolutionist should be, “Let it come!”

And that it should mean this, it must be remembered, is quite within the range of possibility. That neither “power” will bear a heavy strain on its resources is generally admitted. It can scarcely be doubted but that the Czar's forces once engaged with England, and unable to repress internal risings, the revolutionary party in Russia will have a word, and may be a weighty one, to say on the situation. The revolutionary movement at home will be aided by the disaffected populations of Turkestan, who have not forgotten Geok Tepé, and who may, likely enough light the flame of rebellion throughout Central Asia. As regards the disintegration of the “Empire upon which the sun never sets,” the elements are many and rife. The whole military strength of Britain locked up on the Indian frontier would offer unparalleled opportunities for all “nations and kindreds and tongues and peoples,” now the prey of British office-mongers, stock-jobbers, and cheap goods