The Jacobins in the Commune

At the election on March 26, ninety members of the Commune were elected. These included fifteen Government supporters, and six citizen radicals who were in opposition to the Government, but who nevertheless condemned the insurrection. A Soviet Republic would never have allowed such elements of the counter-revolutionaries to appear as candidates, let alone to be elected as members. The Commune, out of its respect for democracy, never hindered its civil opponents from election. If their activity in the Commune came to a sudden end, this was their own fault. The company in which they found themselves was not to their liking and they very soon took their departure.

Some, indeed, retired before the election candidates met together, and others, a few days after the Commune was established. These resignations, as well as certain mandates, made a re-election imperative, and this took place on April 16th. The great majority of the members of the Commune were on the side of the insurrection. Moreover, among the revolutionary members of the Commune, not all were Socialists. The majority consisted simply of revolutionaries. Most of them were guided by the principles laid down in 1793, and by the traditions of the Jacobins. Some had already shown their allegiance in 1848 to the “Mountain,” for instance, Delescluse and Pyat, and not a few were forced out of their private professional life as the result of their political struggle, and became conspirators and revolutionaries by profession. The older members among them lived according to the traditions of the past, and had no real interest for new developments and conceptions.

“The others, that is the younger ones, were to a large extent men who resorted to force without any sound foundation. They were often merely heroes in word, and were now playing with the insurrection just as, a few months before, they had played with wars – men who talked a great deal and contented themselves with mere talking. Their revolutionary ideas were confined to mere externalities. They were superficial, and even the very best of them were actuated by feeling rather than by reason.” This is the criticism of these men given by that great revolutionary, Dubreuilh, La Commune, p.332.)

Most of them understood nothing about Socialism, Not a few of them were directly against it, especially Delescluse. One could not call them bourgeois politicians in the sense that they at all represented the interests of the propertied classes. On the contrary they stood side by side with the lower classes and fought for them as much as the people of the “Mountain” of 1793 had done. But just like these latter, they could not escape from the questions of property and privilege belonging to the bourgeois classes, and for this reason they may be said to have formed a bourgeois element. This applies to the majority of the revolutionaries in the Commune. Only a few of them belonged to the working classes. Among them were to be found ordinary officials, apothecaries, investors, lawyers, and, above all, journalists. Different from the Jacobins were the Blanquists, seven in number, among them Blanqui himself, who, however, could not take his seat. It shows how little the Blanquists expected the insurrection of March 18th, for Blanqui, shortly before the outbreak, in order to recuperate his health, had left Paris. On March 17th he was arrested in Figeac (Department Lot). Blanqui agreed with the Jacobins on one point, namely, in their endeavour, by means of an insurrection on the part of the lower classes in Paris, to govern Paris; and through Paris, by means of a regime of force, the whole of France. But they went further than the Jacobins, since they recognised that this method of government would not suffice to liberate the exploited, unless that government could be used to create a new social order. In other words they were Socialists. Yet in their case it was always the political rather than the economic interest that weighed most with them. They did not study economic life, nor did they endeavour to gain any systematic economic knowledge. They betrayed this characteristic by frequently excusing ignorance, saying that they wished to be entirely untrammelled by dogma. They did not want to be “bewildered” by prejudices and “academic discussion.” When the proletariat came into power, they said, it would very soon know what it had to do. Their chief concern was to give the proletariat this power, and they regarded the insurrection, which was being prepared, as a means towards this end.

They were unfortunate, however, since the insurrections which they carefully prepared always came to grief, and the one that was successful found them unprepared. Moreover, the Blanquist teaching made no great claims on the intelligence, but contented itself with immediate action. Indeed, this teaching had enormous attraction for men of action. In spite of this fact, however, it found more acceptance among the intellectuals, especially students, than among the workmen.

The following is a tabulation of the elements which constituted the Blanquist Party at that time. On November 17th, 1866, a secret meeting of the Blanquist group was surprised by the police in a Paris café and the members were arrested. There were forty-one, and each one’s occupation was given. These included fourteen artisans, four shop assistants, thirteen students, six journalists, one lawyer, one foreman, one landowner, and one independent merchant. The number of students would have been far greater, only, on November 7th the holidays were not yet at an end, and so many students were absent from Paris.

This meeting throws a light upon Blanquism, not only on the manner of its constitution but also on its aims. In September, 1866, the International Congress met in Geneva, and the Blanquists were invited to attend. Blanqui refused, but two of the chosen delegates, namely, the lawyer Protot and the employee Humbert, nevertheless went. In consequence there was great excitement in the Blanquist camp, for, according to its traditions, the dictatorship belonged, not only to the proletariat, but also to the leader of their party. Both kinds of dictatorship were closely connected. For the first time since the existence of the Blanquist organisation an order from the head of the party had been disobeyed. Up to that time they had followed in blind obedience, and even later they adhered to this principle. A meeting was held on November 7th in order to bring Protot to judgment; but this meeting was dissolved before any conclusion was reached. A few were able to take to flight, among them Protot himself. The others, as we have said, were arrested. (Charles Da Costa, Les Blanquists, Paris 1912, pp.17-22).

Among the Blanquists of the Commune were found the lawyer Protot again, and also two of the members who were arrested on November 7th. They were the lawyer Tridon and the student Raoul Rigault. Among the others elected were Blanqui, a lawyer and a doctor (who had studied both faculties), Eudes, an apothecary, and Ferré, an accountant. In the whole Blanquist faction was found only one single working man, the coppersmith Chardon. Of the elected members of the International who were found in the Commune two had relations with the Blanquists, namely, a smith, Duval, and the student Vaillant. We see how much the intellectuals preponderated amongst them. Even within the Commune itself, the Jacobins, like the Blanquists, troubled little about economic questions. The war against Versailles, the policing of Paris, and the struggle against the Church – these were the questions to which they devoted their energies. This last struggle also, like the military struggle against Versailles and the police struggle against the Versailles associates in Paris, was carried out by means of force, and by an attack on persons and externalities.