Page:The Conquest of Bread (1906).djvu/20

xiv uprising of the Paris Commune—and again the free development of Socialism was rendered impossible in France. But while Germany accepted now from the hands of its German teachers, Marx and Engels, the Socialism of the French "forty-eighters"—the Socialism of Considérant and Louis Blanc, and the Collectivism of Pecqueur,—France made a further step forward.

In March, 1871, Paris had proclaimed that henceforward it would not wait for the retardatory portions of France, and intended to start within its Commune its own social development.

The movement was too short-lived to give any positive result. It remained communalist only. But the working-classes of the old International saw at once its historical significance. They understood that the free commune would be henceforth the medium in which the ideas of modern Socialism may come to realization. The free agro-industrial communes, of which so much was spoken in 1848, need not be small phalansteries, or small communities of 2000 persons. They must be vast agglomerations, like Paris, or, still better, small territories. These communes would federate, even irrespectively of national frontiers (like the Cinque Ports, or the Hansa); and large labour associations might come into existence for the inter-communal service of the railways, the docks, and so on. Such were the ideas which began vaguely to circulate after 1871 amongst the thinking working-men, especially in the Latin countries. In some such organization, the details of which life itself would settle, the labour circles