Paris Commune 1871

Merseyside AWL - Long live the Paris Commune!

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Date: 
8 June, 2011 - 20:30 - 22:30
Description: 

In 1871, the workers and poor people of Paris organised to take power and create the world’s first workers’ government – the Paris Commune. The result was an explosion of democracy, freedom and human creativity unparalleled in history up to that point.
Although the Commune lasted less than three months and was drowned in blood by the French ruling class, its example has inspired workers in revolutionary struggle across the world ever since.

Between March 18, the day the Commune began, and 28 May, the day it fell, Working men and women of Paris instituted radical democracy, abolished the police and the army and workers took control of their work places.
63 years before women in France won the vote, during the 72-day reign of the Commune, women organised, argued, theorised and fought alongside men to defend and develop the revolution. Paule Mink, Louise Michel & Nathalie LeMel and many other women organised societies, published papers demanding equal rights, the abolition of marriage and the organisation of women workers both inside and outside the home.

Elaine Jones from Workers Liberty will talk about this pivitol moment in the history of the world workers movement and the role of women in the Commune. We will also discuss what the Commune teaches us about the kind of workers government we fight for.

facebook event here: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=143337145725886

directions: http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?hl=en&tab=wl

AWL event, 30 April: "The world's first Workers' Republic - the Paris Commune"

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Date: 
30 April, 2011 - 17:00 - 1 May, 2011 - 01:00
Location: 

Green Shoots community centre, Besson Street, London SE14 5AS

Description: 

"The cry of 'social republic', ushered in by the Paris proletariat, did but express an aspiration after a republic that was not only to supersede the monarchical form of class rule, but class rule itself. The Commune was the positive form of that republic." - Marx

The circus surrounding the Royal Wedding on the April bank holiday weekend will be unbearable. Don't just grind your teeth! As a contribution to protesting against this nonsense, and as part of a series of events to celebrate the 140th anniversary of the Paris Commune, we will be holding a dayschool about the lessons of the Commune - the first time in history the working class, inspired by the revolutionary republican tradition, created a government of its own.

Sessions will include:

* The Commune, democracy and the state
* Revolution without a revolutionary party?
* Women in the Commune: lessons in workers' revolution and women's emancipation

Followed by a revolutionary/republican social to replace the wedding as the social event of the season!

Facebook event here

Women in the Paris Commune

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Author: 
Jill Mountford

Women’s role in the Paris Commune was not limited to the morning of March 18 when a crowd of working class women put themselves between the cannons in possession of the National Guard (the citizen’s militia) and the troops of the National Assembly, led by Adolphe Thiers; the action which sparked the revolution.

Lessons of the Commune

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In 1884 Ernest Belfort Bax, one of the pioneer British Marxists, wrote a long series of articles on the Commune in Justice, the paper of the first British Marxist group, the Social Democratic Federation. In the last two issues of Solidarity we have published an abridged and adapted version of Bax’s narrative and also incorporated a few pages from a mid-1880s Socialist League pamphlet, written by Bax and William Morris. This is the final instalment.

The fall of the Commune

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In 1894 Ernest Belfort Bax, one of the pioneer British Marxists, wrote a long series of articles on the Commune in Justice, the paper of the first British Marxist group, the Social Democratic Federation. We have abridged and adapted Bax’s narrative account of the Commune and also incorporated a few pages from a mid-1880s Socialist League pamphlet, written by Bax and William Morris.