The Paris Proletariat and Its Fighting Methods

HITHERTO we have always spoken of the “Parisians.” Naturally not the whole population of Paris is to be included under this head, for there were many classes in sharp contrast to one another. By the “Parisians” the great mass of the population in the capital was to be understood, viz., the small bourgeoisie and the proletariat.

Under the latter we must not think of the modern proletarian, who is the outcome of gross industry. Certainly there were some manufacturers in Paris; but the largest section of their workmen was either engaged in service of the most varied kind as labourers and porters, or it formed a body of artisans’ apprentices, who hoped one day themselves to became independent artisans. Besides these, there were countless small labourers as home workers, as well as middle-men of all kinds, who lived in bitterest poverty and the most wretched insecurity.

This poverty and insecurity made the social position proletarian; whereas by their class position, i.e., according to the sources of their income, they were small bourgeois, whose ideal was a comfortable bourgeois existence. Nothing is more misleading than the confusion between position according to income and position according to class. This confusion was made by Lassalle, and is being made to-day by those of our Russian comrades, who believe that the poor peasant has other class interests than the rich peasant, and has the same class interest as the wage-earning proletariat of the towns. This is just as false as the conclusion of those who believe that the small capitalists have other class interests than the large capitalists, and that their opposition to the capital of finance goes together with the class opposition of the proletariat to capital. The small capitalists wish to become big capitalists, the small peasantry also wish to increase their property – this, and not a Socialist society is their object. The former just as much as the latter wish to increase their income at the expense of the workmen, the small peasants through lows wages and long working hours, the small capitalists through high prices for food.

The poor elements in Paris, therefore, at the time of the great revolution were, according to their class position, small bourgeois, in spite of the proletarian conditions of their existence.

These conditions gave them no objects which were different from those of the better-placed small bourgeois, although they gave them means for the growing struggle which were less sympathetic to the more prosperous small bourgeois.

The starving man cannot wait. He is in despair, and, therefore, does not stop to consider his choice of means. For him little attaches to life; he has nothing to lose save his bonds, and he, therefore, risks everything during the time of an upheaval, which shall prepare for new conditions of things, and in which he hopes to gain the world.

Thus it was the proletariat, the great mass of the population of Paris, which formed the great driving power in the Revolution. Their desperate inconsiderateness made them masters of Paris, made Paris the ruler of France, and let France triumph over Europe.

Their fighting means lay in armed insurrection. Their risings were not unprepared; nor did they spring themselves from out of the prevailing conditions. They were much much more organized Still they did nevertheless arise from the spontaneous pressure of the masses, not of their leaders; and it was only through the masses that these risings were often irresistible in their force. An upheaval, which has to be fomented by the leaders, instead of these latter being forced from below, is a sign that the necessary driving force is wanting, and that the whole movement is doomed to failure. During the whole time of the growth of the Revolution, it was the masses who were the driving force, the leaders the driven. While this lasted things moved forward. When the contrary happened, and the leaders found it necessary to incite the masses to fight, the Revolution was already in decline.

But if an upheaval can reckon on success only when it is spontaneous, and not initiated by the leaders, this is not to say that it has the best chance of winning when it is not organised. The Paris insurrections of the Great Revolution had their foundations in the organisation of the masses.

Even in the first signs of disturbance, in the storming of the Bastille, there were already nuclei for organisation. Later they received closer and more permanent foundation.

In the Revolution each community claimed for itself the greater independence. The Constitutional Assembly by the law of December 22, 1789, established the conditions which, in consequence of the sudden loss of power on the part of the State, had everywhere come into being. The communities acquired a high level of self-administration, viz., the control of the whole of the local police and the command of the citizen guard, as well as of the National Guard, which was being formed in the towns.

But at the same time the bourgeoisie strove to keep the lower classes from sharing in their measure of power. The National Assembly made the fine distinction between active and passive citizens. Active were those who paid a direct tax on at least three days’ wages. They alone had the vote for the local council and for the National Assembly. From them alone the National Guard was recruited. These bodies afterwards developed into representative associations of the moneyed classes.

But in Paris the “passive” citizens organised also, as well as their friends from the ranks of the active citizens, along with the official local representative council. They armed themselves in their own way.

For the purposes of voting Paris was divided into 60 districts, which had to select the candidates. After these had been named, the districts disappeared. But they nevertheless remained, and became organised an their own initiative as permanent institutions of the municipal administration. They would not suffer repression, and at the time when before July 14 (the storming of the Bastille) all Paris was in a state of upheaval, they began to arm the people, and to act as independent authorities. After the conquest of the Bastille the districts had already become acknowledged institutions of the municipal administration. In order to come to some understanding, a central bureau was opened, where special delegates could come together, and have mutual exchange of thought. In this way there arose the first attempt at a Commune – the result of a movement upwards by means of a uniting of the district organisations, which in revolutionary fashion had come about through the initiative given by the people. While the National Assembly was gradually undermining the power of the King, the districts and then the sections gradually enlarged their sphere of activity among the people. They established the connection between Paris and the provinces, and prepared the ground for the revolutionary Commune of August 10. (Kropotkin, The French Revolution, 1, pp.174-179. In accordance with his anarchistic standpoint, Kropotkin has given special importance to the history of the Commune in the Revolution. Apart from special works, his books afford the best study of this history. As a consequence, he treats the Parliamentary activity at the time far less satisfactorily.)

The National Assembly tried to put an end to the District Councils. Through the law of May 27, 1790, the division of the constituencies in Paris was altered. But the “passive” citizens ignored the veto. The sections were now the central point of revolutionary activity. Soon there was no communal or State question which was not taken over by these sections, and in the settling of which they were not actively concerned. The result of this was that the general assembly of these sections became a permanent institution. It was only through the permanency of their nature that intensive activity could be developed.

On August 10, 1792, the sections entirely superseded communal representation, which had already become totally effete, and they formed something new, the revolutionary Commune, to which each section sent three commissioners. Thenceforward, it was this Paris Commune which, supported by these sections, determined the course of the revolution.

The subsequent works on history have failed to give the sections their due. Their work was performed by the nameless many. The great names of the Revolution shone more in the Club of the Jacobins than in the sections. But what the Club achieved owed its success to the sections, and often it was the Club which was the part that hesitated and hung back. Only the proletariat, which had nothing to lose, was able to rush without hesitation boldly into the unknown.

Through the Commune the proletariat of Paris arrived at a dominating position in revolutionary France. But this position was a divided one, like the position of Paris in the country, and like that of the proletariat of that time in general society.

Small bourgeois according to their class-consciousness, they adopted the point of view of private property as against the means of production. They could not get rid of private property, they needed it in order to go on producing and live. Yet their attitude as poor wretches was one of hostility to the property of the rich, whose prosperity angered them, and whose wealth arose from their misery. It was this very recklessness towards the great feudal and capitalist property which gave them that energy in fighting the counter-revolution, and which, thanks to the pre-eminent position of Paris, made them pioneers of the Revolution, in which the great bulk of the nation took such active interest. In their powerful struggles against feudalism and the monarchy in France, and against the whole monarchical system of Europe, the. revolutionary proletariat of Paris had behind it the whole strength of the nation, the most powerful nation in the world. As a result they were able to defy the men in power all the world over; indeed, the power of these men came into their hands. It was during that time that the powerful revolutionary self-consciousness of the Paris workman came into being. Through it he became the, much admired type of the whole fighting international proletariat up to the days of the second Paris Commune, and even up to the closing decades of the last century.

Yet this very class represented the worst consumers of Paris, for they imperatively demanded cheap foodstuffs, and never more than in the days of the great revolution, which, in the literal sense of the word, could be called a famine revolt. In consequence the poor of Paris were drawn into increasing conflict with the peasants, the middlemen, the moneyed people, with those elements in fact which, by reason of their private property, came off best in regard to the means of production, since the abolition of private property was impossible owing to the system of retail dealing then prevalent, nor was any such abolition attempted or even proposed. When in regard to this antithesis the proletarians tried to show their power in Paris, and the power of Paris over the provinces, they were made to realise that they could not for long as a minority maintain themselves against the majority. So they went to pieces in spite of their former triumphs.

The proletarians went into the Revolution expecting to banish all misery by getting rid of the misery of feudalism, in the same way as the bourgeoisie had promised and meant. They now seized political freedom and power, and still it was only the bourgeois and the peasant who arrived at any measure of prosperity. Poverty in the large towns was not diminished; on the contrary, the real pinch of poverty first began to make itself really felt.

Starvation and a rise in prices are the outstanding features of the whole time of revolution. They are generally explained as being due to the fact that a number of bad harvests followed in succession. To me, however, it seems that the starvation during the Revolution was not due to this alone, but was a direct consequence of the Revolution itself.

Production among the peasants was at that time, to a high degree, self-sufficing. The peasant had scarcely any need of the industrial products of the town, except for articles of luxury. He produced not only his own food-stuffs, but also the raw materials for textile industry which he himself manufactured. He also constructed his own simple furniture and many of his household tools, whatever else he needed in the industrial line was furnished him by village workmen. The fact that, in spite of this, he did sell his produces in the town was due not to his own industrial needs, but to the taxes with which the State had burdened him. He could not pay these if he did not bring to market his corn, cattle, wine, or whatever else he produced at home.

Besides all this, he had to pay his feudal lord in kind, as well as to perform a certain amount of forced labour on his lord’s estate. Of the land products, which these feudal lords thus amassed, only a small portion was used for home consumption; the greater part they sold, in order to get money for a life of pleasure in the town.

Taxes and feudal obligations therefore provided the monies, on the one hand, which flowed into Paris and there reached circulation; they also provided, an the other hand, the produce which was sold for bare cash to provision Paris.

The Revolution temporarily put an end to feudal obligation, as well as to taxes, as the State had no power to collect these. The peasants were therefore no longer in such necessity to sell as they were before. In the first place, they made use of their newly-gained freedom to eat to their fill, and to put an end to the starvation conditions, to which State and Feudalism had condemned them. What remained over of their produce they decided to sell, only at very high prices. Nothing henceforward forced them to sell cheaply. For that reason alone a rise in prices, and a contrast between Paris and the Provinces was bound to arise, and this contrast assumed an exaggerated farm. In 1793 the Convention had actually formed a revolutionary army of 10,000 men, whose duty it was to scour the villages and requisition food for Paris, in a similar way to that recently tried in Russia, and with equal failure. This is one of the features that makes the Russian Revolution of to-day assume great resemblance, even in external matters, to the great bourgeois Revolution of the 18th century.

The contrast was made even more drastic by the war, which led to France’s being “encircled,” and which hindered the lack of provision from being mitigated by any impart from without. It made the Parisians suffer still more from hunger, and loaded the country people with heavy war burdens, in the shape of universal conscription.

The Parisians had the strongest motives for desiring victory. They, as a revolutionary centre, would have been the first to feel defeat. Moreover in Paris national feeling was strongest developed. On the greatness and tile strength of the Empire directly depended the greatness and strength of Paris. The men of the “Mountain,” of the extreme left of the Convention coined the phrase – “the one indivisible Republic,” and the word “Patriot” soon had the significance of radical revolutionary.

Utterly different was the attitude of the peasants towards the war. Those on the frontier certainly wanted to be rid of a foreign invasion, and they of all others were most threatened with the return of feudal bondage through a foreign victory. They, therefore, felt as patriotic as the Parisians. That was especially true of the Alsatians. It was different for those who were far removed from the frontier, and thus were not threatened by foreign invasion. These peasants did not grasp the political import of the war. They only felt the burdens of war which, according to them, were imposed on them by the regicidal and godless Parisians. Such provinces as La Vendée, Normandy and Brittany, under certain circumstances, could go so far in their opposition to Paris as to proceed to an open revolt, whenever they could get the necessary leadership. This was provided from time to time by the anti-revolutionary aristocrats. But the revolutionary bourgeois also embodied in the Girondines, once attempted a similar revolt of the provinces against Paris, as we have already seen.

The financiers likewise came along with the peasants into conflict with the proletarians and the small bourgeois. Indeed, the opposition was even more pronounced, and had even more direct consequences. It was not an opposition between workmen and industrial capitalists, who at the time did not play a very large part. Even after the Revolution St. Simon reckoned these latter among the working classes. It was the opposition to moneyed and trade capital, to usurers, speculators, dealers and sellers. These men did not themselves cause the lack of provisions, but they exploited the calamity and increased the stress. We need not dwell on this. We ourselves have had terrible experience of this for the last five years.

During this time of misery, profiteering caused by high prices became grossly provocative. Along with this was to be classed the profiteering of the war contractors – since 1792 – as well as of those who speculated in land. The National Assembly had confiscated church possessions – perhaps a third of the French landed property.

In addition to this, the aristocratic emigrants, who had fled from France in order to fight the revolution from without, were likewise deprived of their property. Their land was also confiscated. Yet all this enormous property did not remain in the possession of the State, nor was it divided among the poor peasants, but sold up. This, in the first instance, was the result of the low state of finance, which gave the final blow that caused the Revolution. But the Revolution did not raise the state of finance; on the other hand, it was depreciated, because the peasants could no longer pay their taxes. Often those who made a profit out of the selling of confiscated land-property would buy new tracts of land at a low price, solely with the intention of parcelling them up and selling them in small sections at a high price.. The financial difficulties of the State were little helped by this means, but the speculators in property flourished exceedingly.

In her necessity there was no other means open to the State than the issue of revolutionary paper money. This soon began to grow to an enormous extent. Hence a new cause of high prices arose, as well as a cause for extraordinary fluctuation of exchange and prices, which state of affairs was again turned to their own advantage by the speculators and moneylenders.

Thus there grew up from among the ruins of the old feudal system of property a new capitalistic system, which grew, along with the general distress, in proportion as the proletariat rose to power. This strange situation showed clearly enough how little the mere possession of political power is able to affect the working of economic laws, so long as the necessary social conditions are lacking,. Nevertheless the proletariat of Paris was hungry.

They did not examine what, under the given economical conditions, was possible and what was inevitable. They were in power, and determined to make the most of it, in order to arrive at that Utopian state of equality and brotherhood and of general prosperity, which the intellectuals among the bourgeoisie had promised them. As they could not alter the process of production, they tried by the help of coercive means to change the results of this process – means of which our own days have given us more than enough viz., high prices, compulsory loans, which corresponded roughly to our war-credit and similar measures. All of these, however, were less capable of diminishing the distress than they are to-day, on account of the scattered production, the lack of statistics, and the paralysing of the central power in its relation to the districts, which existed at that time.

As time went on, the contradiction between the political strength of the proletariat and its economical situation became greater. And along with this the oppression caused by the war became worse. Hence the rulers among the proletariat in their despair turned more and more to outward methods, to bloody intimidation and terrorism.