12 THE WORKERS COUNCIL APRIL 1, 1921.
The Commune: Half a Century of Struggle: 1871 1921 is before they consummated the Capitalist transformation. We should still be in the Stone Age if Communist Russia Hodge always had his way. Mr. Hyndian, steadily intellectual as a historian at long range, Communist Russia, the Russia of the common (being human) prejudiced as a current politician. people, marks a new epoch in the word history.
During the war he was what he still is, a vehemently It marks a basic change in the structure of human patriotic Majority Socialist. But he denounces the society. Up to this time society lived under the rule German Majority Socialists fiercely for voting the of the few, under the rule of the class which posGerman war credits and not coming out as pro sessed the wealth of the country. The methods Britons and Pacifists. Yet he has no words scathing were different at different periods in the world enough for Lenin because he refused to vote the war history, but the results were the same: riches and credits, and for. the Bolshevists for surrender power for the few, a bare existence and endless ing at Brest Litovsk when they were hopelessly beat toil for the many. The slaves, the serfs, or the en, instead of bleeding to death as England auxi wage workers of today, who compose the masses liaries. This is neither Socialism nor the philosophy of the people, have ever been the hewers of wood of history; it is naive John Bullism.
There are and the carriers of water, the beasts of burden on moments when he seems to be revolted by the insti whose backs sported and fattened kings and nobles, tution of compulsory labor by the Soviet Govern landlords and capitalists. They who possessed ment. For my part cannot understand why wealth had the power. And they passed laws to anyone who has the most elementary comprehension protect that power, to make the possession of wealth of Socialism can doubt that compulsory labor and social institution. Private property was enthroned the treatment of parasitic idleness as the sin against and every striving of mankind was subjected to the Holy Ghost must be fundamental in Socialist the rule of property. Thence grew the exploitation law and religion. If Lenin has abolished idleness of man by man for private profit, and all abuses in Russia, whilst we, up to our eyes in debt, are resulting therefrom; fear of loss of property, care not only tolerating it, but heaping luxury upon lux of possession, dread of the future, fear of loss of ury upon it in the midst of starvation, then am employment, envy and greed. Human society was much more inclined to cry Bravo, Lenin! and ruled by property grabbers; masters, kings, capital.
More fools we! than to share Mr. Hyndman ap ists, providing toil, disease, war for the masses of parent horror.
We commend the foregoing to mankind. That is the rule of capitalism, and cannot Samuel Gompers when next he tries to divert at be otherwise.
tention from the horrors of compulsory unemploy But under communism, profit is abolished, and ment here by crying out against compulsory employ with it the exploitation of man by man; private ment in Russia.
property is no longer a factor in the life of man; property becomes universal, all natural and created President Wilson was singularly ill served by wealth belong to society, to every member of the his agents in Russia, says an editorial in the community, as secure a birth right as air and sunAmerican. They thought and he thought that the light. Everybody measured work provides a comCzar overthrow meant simply a new government mon fund of things to satisfy material needs, today, by aristocrats, lawyers, financiers and ex Czarist tomorrow and in years to come. There can be no officers. The Root Commission entirely misgauged fear of losing one job, of seeing one children the purpose of the Russian people. Ambassador starve, of the poorhouse in old age. As sure as the Francis was hopelessly at sea. Every one of Wil sun will rise on the morrow, man is secure of his son chosen advisers adopted a purely capitalistic bread, his shelter and clothing. Man is freed from view of Russia, failing, entirely to see the economic animal cares, free to develop his human qualities, significance of the revolution. In the great metro his intelligence, his brain and heart.
polis of New York the American is the only cap, Russia points the way. Russia is now one huge italist daily guilty of occasional lapses into editorial corporation, every man, woman and child an equal sanity. The above quotation is taken from an editor shareholder. The state is administered as a busiial describing the amazing lavishness of the Wilson ness; the benefit of the stockholders being the object Administration in paying out 60, 000, 000 of the of the corporation. The individual contributes his American people money to the bogus Russian labor, whatever it may be: manual, mental, artistic.
Ambassador, Bakhmetieff, over a period of three This labor is applied to available materials: the years after his government had been cast into the soil of the farm, the natural resources, the mines, ashcan. Long after this prodigality had become an and mills and factories. The finished product is international scandal, and was provoking derisive distributed through the agencies of the corporation, comments in the press in other countries, our own in the shape of food and clothes and shelter, of capitalist papers breathed not a whisper about it. education and amusement, of protection to life and Bakhmetieff and his wastrel crew squandered most limb, of literature and art, of inventions and imof the money on high living here, but some of it provements; to every member of the corporation, went to the House of Morgan to pay the interest which means every man, woman and child of the on Miliukov Russan bonds, most of which had te nation.
mained in the banker hands. Hence the silence. To be sure this ideal of a human brotherhood is The editorial writer in the American evidently an not yet realized in Russia. No sane person would ticipates a saner policy fro mTweedledee Harding expect so tremendous a change to be consummated than from Tweedledum Wilson. Why so, we wonder? in three years, in the face of universal aggression, The Morgan firm still holds the bonds. Continued on Page 4)
Half a century has passed since the days of the mutilating the national unity and dissecting the Paris Commune, one of the most stupendous trag national territorial unit of the conquered French.
edies in the struggle of labor to attain the heights But German militarism, in calling forth and feedof existence. That first uprising of the modern ing the French spirit of Revanche. in striving conproletariat has since been followed by the great tinually to surpass the armaments of the neighborvictorious revolution of one of the greatest peoples ing countries, in making itself the pivot of the of our planet. But while the uprising of March militarism of the Great Powers of Europe and hence 1871 was a desperate attempt on the part of the of the militarism of the world, became at the same working class of a single city to establish its dic time the greatest hindrance to the national movetatorship over a nation of peasants, today we are ment of Eastern Europe, which could liberate itself confronted by the united efforts of all the toilers from this suppressing force only through a violent of city and country alike to bring about the real explosion. Thus the collapse of France brought ization of socialism, after they had seized the organs forth the downfall of Germany, and now the proof power and authority from the bourgeois state. phecy of Marx Civil War is fulfilled: History The present upheaval is of such incomparably great will mete out its revenge not according to the ter.
er dimensions, its aims are so immeasurably wider, ritory in so many square miles wrested from France and the stakes are so enormous, that in view of but in accordance with the greatness of the crime these struggles we are witnessing it is almost dif of reviving the old policy of conquest in the latter ficult to appreciate sufficiently the heroes of the half of the 19th Century.
Commune and their desperate fight and to view The Paris Commune stands out in contrast to their struggles in the proper perspective.
the coincident founding of the German Empire.
And yet the defenders of the Commune too had This German war of expansion coming at the close their important post in the battle of human progress. of the period of mediaeval unification shook to the They too contributed to the building of the new very foundations the oldest and most strongly joined future, in fact it was they who first opened the national state of the continnent. The shock temdoors through which the social revolution of our porarily loosened the cornerstones of those foundaday must pass if it is to attain its goal. Hence the tions and amid the turmoil of such a tremendous Commune should appear to us as a teacher and impact the working class succeeded by a daring counsellor, as a prophet and mentor, for although charge in seizing the reins of government for the the Commune pointed out new roads, it committed first time in history. But the rule of the workers old errors. The Commune appears to us as a pioneer, was destined to be of short duration. It was choked and yet it sometimes slipped into the pitfalls and in the blood of a massacre unequalled in the annals errors of antiquated methods and forgotten times. of civil war. Those of the socialist workers of the The Commune was, in the words of its historian, French capital who survived were imprisoned and Lissagaray, a barricade which was not given time to deported. To destroy socialism in the heart of the turn into a government. Karl Marx in his little empire, to exterminate it root and branch, to prebook Civil War in France erected a monument vent a recurrence of socialistic activity in any part to the Communards, a monument as enduring as the of the land, after the fall of the Commune, this was memory of the heroes of that great proletarian re the object of the policy of the counter revolution.
volt. In his brief and simple review of the historical While the German Empire, resplendent in its armafacts the founder of scientific socialism created an ments, seemed built to outlast the ages, the Commune analysis of unparalleled depth and sureness, which was looked upon by its contemporaries as a miserthe present time more than ever should become able insignificant episode, as a caprice the common possession of all those who understand history, worthy only of ridicule and scorn. And yet, the importance of learning from the struggles of how differently has it turned out! Unlike the epithe past the things that should guide us in the work sode of the German Empire and Bismark policy of the future.
of blood and iron, that bore in its core the canker To Marx at that time the Franco German war of its own destruction, the Commune carried withand the revolt of the Commune appeared as events in itself the living seeds of the future. This is the of the first magnitude in determining the political lesson of History, says Marx Civil War. With developments of the immediate future. The estab nations it is as with individuals. To take from them lishment of a united Germany in the center of the power of aggression it is necessary to deprive Europe necessarily made itself felt throughout the them of all means of defense. They must not only entire world. Just what its effects would be and be seized by the gullet, they must be actually killed.
what reactions it would call forth depended on the The Commune, in tearing apart for the first fundamental and permanent acts which would ac time the scaffolding of the national state from withcompany the entry of this new state into the political in, attacked its foundation, its very existence. It tore system of the world. The Peace of Frankfurt in down in order to create a new type of state, a new the year 1871 formed the turning point, for it dis social order. It disarmed and destroyed the original regarder the principle of the formation of states state, the form of the bourgeois nation so that the according to nationality as no treaty had disre people, liberated, may find room to live and that garded it in the last hundred years. It ended the Humanity may be enthroned among the free peoples period of national unification in Central Europe by of the world.