The Communard (archetype)
Govern ourselves
The council made flesh.
Reformist Council CommunistOne of 729 ideologies · enter the Council Communist hall →- Role
- Council delegate (archetype)
- From
- Archetype
- Region
- Paris
- Social band
- Reformist
- Placement
- −90 · −74 · +52
§ Where The Communard (archetype) stands
3 axesThe Communard stands for production and the city held in common. The Commune's decree of 16 April 1871 handed workshops abandoned by their owners to workers' cooperatives, it cancelled rent owed for the siege months and it banned night work in bakeries. Its restraint showed too: it left the Bank of France untouched, a caution Marx and Engels later criticised.
Government by recallable delegates is the archetype's core. The Commune abolished conscription and the standing army in favour of the citizens' National Guard, merged legislative and executive work in elected commissions and capped officials' pay. Under siege, however, its majority created a Committee of Public Safety on 1 May 1871 over the protests of a libertarian minority, showing the pull of emergency centralism.
The Communard's society is secular, egalitarian and internationalist. The Commune separated church and state on 2 April 1871, began removing religious instruction from schools and admitted foreigners such as Frankel to office, while the Union des femmes organised working women. Women still had no vote, and its anticlericalism ended in the shooting of hostages, real limits to its emancipatory record.
How close are you to The Communard (archetype)?
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§ The story
ArchetypeThe Communard is the archetype of the elected delegate of the Paris Commune, the revolutionary government that ran Paris from 18 March to 28 May 1871 after France's defeat in the Franco-Prussian War. Chosen by universal male suffrage, with officials' salaries capped at 6,000 francs a year, the Commune's council included the bookbinder Eugène Varlin, the Hungarian-born jeweller Leo Frankel and the painter Gustave Courbet, while the teacher Louise Michel became the most famous of the women who fought for it.
The Communard recurs because the Commune became the founding myth of revolutionary self-government. Marx's The Civil War in France (1871) hailed it as the first government of the working class, Lenin built The State and Revolution (1917) around it, and council communists saw in it the ancestor of the soviets and workers' councils of 1905 and 1918. Its end in the Bloody Week of 21–28 May 1871, when government troops killed thousands of Parisians, many by summary execution, and Communards shot hostages including the Archbishop of Paris, made it a martyrdom as well as a model.
Notable for
- 01The Paris Commune
- 02Recallable delegates
- 03Self-government from below
Key works & moments
- March 1871Parisians block the army's seizure of National Guard cannon at Montmartre; the government withdraws to Versailles.
- March 1871Paris elects the Commune council, which is proclaimed at the Hôtel de Ville on 28 March.
- April 1871The Commune separates church and state and hands abandoned workshops to workers' cooperatives.
- May 1871In the Bloody Week, government troops retake Paris, killing thousands of Communards.
- 1871Marx publishes The Civil War in France, making the Commune a model for socialists.
- 1917Lenin's The State and Revolution holds up the Commune as the template for workers' power.
§ Minds closest to The Communard (archetype)
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§ Common questions
4 answersWhat is the Communard's political ideology?
The Communard stands for council communism in its founding example, the Paris Commune of 1871: on the 99ideologies three-axis compass, a Reformist Council Communist. Economically the archetype sits near the socialist pole (−90), seeking production run in common by workers' associations. On governance it is strongly libertarian (−74), replacing the state with recallable delegates and a citizen militia. Socially it is clearly progressive (+52), secular, egalitarian and internationalist, though still closed to women's suffrage.
Is the Communard left-wing or right-wing?
Left-wing. The Commune was a revolutionary workers' government that put abandoned workshops in cooperative hands, separated church and state and replaced the army with an armed citizenry, and it has been claimed ever since by socialists, communists and anarchists alike. Within the left it sits on the libertarian side: the archetype stands for self-government by recallable delegates, not for a party-state, even though the besieged Commune itself drifted towards emergency centralism.
Was the Paris Commune communist?
Not in the modern sense. Commune is simply the French word for a municipality, and most of its leaders were radical republicans, Blanquist revolutionaries or followers of Proudhon; only a minority belonged to the First International, and very few were Marxists. Its economic measures were modest, and it left the Bank of France alone. But Marx's The Civil War in France (1871) presented it as the first workers' government, Engels called it the dictatorship of the proletariat in 1891, and communists and anarchists have claimed it ever since.
Which minds are closest to The Communard (archetype)?
On the 99ideologies three-axis compass, the minds closest to The Communard (archetype) are Cornelius Castoriadis (99% alike), Anton Pannekoek (98% alike) and Otto Rühle (97% alike). The furthest is Adam Sutler (0% alike).