REGIME AND THE. PARIS COMMUNE
'. By Fernand Charlier _
Almost a hundred years have gone by since. the French workers. “immortalized the. word. "Commune." Socialist revolutions have emerged victorious. Much workers blood has been shed. And the words "Communard" and "Communist" are among the most popular words of the broadest layers of the proletariat across the entire world.
_. For some time, the Chinese leaders have been citing the example.of the Paris Commune in their polemics with the Soviet Communist party leadership. They have rebuked them in numerous instances for failing to observe the rules regarding payment of functionaries and cadres applied by the Commune of 1871 and counterposed these rules to the high salaries and emoluments of privileged Soviet Bureaucrats. (1)
These repeated references to the Paris Commune (which imposed strict rules for salaries and whose brief experience enabled Marx in The Civil War in France, and later. Lenin in State and Revolution to draw the first lessons on how to fight the danger of bureaucratism) have aroused great hopes in many circles. When the Chinese Communist party declared in its resolution on the "cultural revolution" last August that it was necessary to "institute a system of general elections, like that of the Paris Commune, for electing members to the cultural revolutionary groups and.committees and delegates to the cultural revolutionary congresses" (point 9 of the Central Committee resolution), the editors of Monthly Review, for example, concluded from this that "It seems clear that the committees and congresses of the Cultural Revolution have the potential to become organs of popular pressure and control like the original soviets of 1905 and 1917." (MR editorial of January 1967.)
_.. Are the Chinese leaders to be taken at their word? Has Mao Tse-tung taken the lead in the struggle against the bureaucracy? Or are the equalitarian proclamations of the Chinese leaders and their references to the Commune simply demagogy?
_ I do not presume to offer a definitive answer to these questions, but I think that an analysis of the most recent documents can shed some light on this matter. (2)
Up to now, the August 1966 declaration has not been followed by the introduction of the Paris Commune's system of elections. However, the new phase of the "cultural revolution," beginning in late December and early January of this year with the extension of the "cultural revolution" into the plants, has been marked by the creation of new organizations which the Chinese press has repeatedly compared to the experience of the Communards.
Beginning with Shanghai, the promoters of the "proletarian cultural revolution" ran up against massive resistance and had to establish new centers and new committees which, in their own words, "seized power from the former ruling bodies." These new organizational forms have become the object of an abundant literature in the official Chinese press. The press is advising these bodies to follow the example of the Paris Commune and has drawn its lessons once again for them. What are these lessons?
The: first. lesson cited in a Red Flag editorial on the recent experiences in Shanghai and. the Shansi province (in northern n China) is “the necéssity to smash the state machine of the bourgeoisie completely. "(4).
The former city and provincial leading bodies are thus equated with the bourgeois state. Another article in the same journal adds this second lesson: "We must bear in mind that the Paris Commune was too restrained in the use of its authority."(4)
1. Especially the articles "On the Pseudo-Communism of Khrushchev and its Historical Lessons for the World" (ninth article in reply to the CPSU, July 13, 1964) and "The Great Revelations of the Paris Commune" by Cheng Che-se (Rea Flag, 1966, No. 4). 2. These questions have been examined from the standpoint of the events in the "cultural revolution" and the facts in an article "The Upheaval in China -- An Analysis. of the Contending Forces," by George Novack and Joseph Hansen, published as a supplement to The Militant of January 23, 1967, in reply to Monthly Review.
3. "On the Struggle of the Proletarian Revolutionaries to Take Power," Red Flag editorial, 1967, No. 3. 4, "On Discipline and the Revolutionary Authority of the Proletariat," an article by "Commentator" in the same issue of Red Flag.
It is true that the Commune erred in this respect. Instead of wiping out its enemies, it tried first to exert a moral influence on them; the Parisian proletariat, Lenin said, "Did not see.the full importance of the purely military actions of the civil war and, instead of crowning its victory in Paris with a resolute offensive against Versailles, it temporized and gave the Versailles government time to regroup its sinister forces and to prepare the way for the bloody week in May. "(5)
In this way, the former local leaders are equated with ‘the domestic counterrevolutionaries and the Versailles forces. However, if anyone can be compared to the. Versailles reactionaries, it is Chiang Kai-shek. To compare members of the Chinese .Communist party to the Versailles group, even if they are guilty of serious bureaucratic deviations, is not exactly an application of the Commune's lessons in the direction: of greater democracy. To the contrary, what characterized the Paris Commune was the coexistence of all the revolutionary tendencies of the time. Although there were no workers parties in the modern sense, with a centralized leadership, regular members, and congresses in the Paris of 1871; there was a large number of groups and tendencies which were all represented in the leading bodies of the Paris Commune -- the Central Committee of the National: Guard . and the Commune itself -- members of the First International , followers of Proudhon, Balcunin ; Blanqui, the Jacobins, etc. .
One of the causes of. the Communards' mistakes was the lack of a Marxist party
during the life of the Commune --- Marx's followers were in a: minority in the French section of the First International. During the Stalin period, the CP's, reinterpreting history in their:-own image, saw the absence of a monolithic party as the principal weakness of the Communards.
The leaders of the Chinese Communist party do not recognize democratic rights even within their own party: "The provisional organs of power which are leading the struggle for power have the right to exercise dictatorship against the class enemies. The handful in the party holding leadership posts. who persist obstinately on the road ‘to capitalisn must. be deprived of their democratic rignts."(6) |
The “opposition tendencies are class enemies and as such they have no democratic rights. How different from the Paris .Commune! Despite all the difficulties of encirclement, the Central Committee of. the National Guard decided to hold elections on the basis of universal suffrage only eight days after power fell into their hands. In fact, this was one of their mistakes. Out of legalism and fear of exceeding their mandate, the Central Committee, which was itself elected (four delegates for each ward), forced the election of :the members of - the Commune on March 6, 1871.
What does the experience of the "cultural: revolution" reveal ‘from this standpoint? After the, January events .in Shanghai, provisional bodies assumed: power in a number. of: regions. In the northeastern province of Helungkiang (capital Kharbin), a "Revolutionary Committee of Red Rebels". "seized party, political, financial, and cultural power" after the army intervened. At Tsingtao in the Shantung ‘province (south of Peking), a "Committee of Revolutionary Revolt" seized the same powers; in the province of Kueichou in the southeast, it was a "General Command of Revolutionary Revolt"; in the industrial city of Taiyuan in Shansi province in the north of China, the equivalent body was called the "Revolutionary Committee of the Municipality."
According to the stock formula, all these bodies exercise “all party, political, financial, and cultural powers," awaiting” general elections in accordance with the principle of the Paris Commune, as the manifesto of the Revolutionary Committee of the Munic-— ipality of Taiyuan proclaims. These are-not elected bodies. Their members are appointed or coopted,. as noted in an article previously cited: "The proletarian revolutionaries must set up provisional organs of power, by means of tests and consultations, and com- — posed of the leaders of units of the Peoples Liberation Army, local leaders, and leading revolutionary cadres of party and state bodies. "(7)
What we have before us, then, is not soviets; the "cultural revolution" is not an antibureaucratic political revolution and the Tatzebao (wall newspapers)-are not yet the means by which authentic workers control can be exercised. The Chinese leaders have not yet put the principles of the Paris Commune regarding elections into effect;.and it seems rather that the allusion refers primarily to. the form of the elections; i. e., universal |
5. Tenin, The Lessons of the Commune, 1908.
6. See note 4.
7. See note 4.
suffrage, and not. to the content.(8) How could it be otherwise,.in any.case, as long as political problems and competing alternatives remain the sole province of a very limited number (a few hundred or a few thousand) leaders, while the masses throughout China are offered nothing but clichés? . .
The campaign against "economism,"-for instance, has a positive effect when it serves to criticize the privileges of the bureaucracy in the Soviet Union and elsewhere, but is in itself.a form of bureaucratic interference when it is directed against the Chinese workers. In the same way, the references to the Paris Commune have a clearly positive effect when they set. the "naivete" of the Communards up as an example against the Soviet bureaucrats; and they take on the character of Stalinist amalgams when they lump together :oppositionists and enemies of the’ revolution, as well as Maoists and Communards. We for our part are of the opinion that all-workers tendencies in a workers state, including those accused of bureaucratism, must. be allowed to express themselves.
By claiming a monopoly on the truth, Mao s partisans show themselves as differént from the Communards ds night from day. : : :
If workers democracy and organs of power similar in 1 type to the Commune emerge in China, it will be through a furious struggle in which this outcome will unquestionably be facilitated by the current disintegration of the party and state authority as well as the leading group itself. However, it is still impossible to predict when this will occur and what forms it will take.
_ February 14, 1967.
8. Here is how the People's Daily of February 13 describes the "seizure of .power" in the province of Shansi: "...the establishment of the Shansi revolutionary rebel general headquarters...an embryo of the new organisational form of the organs of the dictatorship of the proletariat, is of tremendous significance. Members of headquarters were elected at a congress jointly sponsored by the revolutionary mass organisations, the local army units and the revolutionary leading cadres. All important issues of principle are to be deliberated and decided upon by the congress, and routine affairs are entrusted to the headquarters....AllL-members on the staff of the headquarters are subject to supervision and criticism by .the revolutionary masses, and can be recalled at any time if. they are found incompetent. wo .
The new organ thus emanates from a "congress" composed of. army men, cadres of the party who are partisans of the “cultural revolution" and Red Guards or other members of the "revolutionary mass organisations" -- thus it can scarcely be compared to an elected "soviet" congress. Two elements in the description of this body seem to have been borrowed from the Commune: the -institution of a nonparliamentary body empowered to serve in both a legislative and executive capacity; and. the subjection of delegates to recall at an time. But what content would recall have when the masses have no knowledge of political differences? The criterion is “incompetence , © how. is ‘that ‘to’ be judged?
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