Prosper-Olivier Lissagaray - History of the Paris Commune

Prosper-Olivier Lissagaray was a participant in the revolutionary Paris Commune of 1871. He is popularly supposed to have been "the last man on the barricades" and while not a leading figure in the revolution, he was very much at its heart as a fighter. Escaping France he went into exile in London where he began work on his History of the Paris Commune, drawing on contemporary reports, personal experiences and the recollections of exiles. Working with Karl Marx the book was translated into English by Marx's daughter Eleanor, with whom Lissagaray became engaged. 

The book then is remarkable in the sense that it is an eyewitness account of a revolution, and has close links to two of the worlds' great revolutionaries. But what of the book itself? The book begins with the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 which gave birth to the Commune, but events are probably hard to follow for the reader who knows little of that period of French history. Writing in the aftermath of the Commune, when details were fresh, but political battles were being waged over the interpretation of events, Lissagaray gives a vast amount of detail about figures from the French left. Those unaccustomed to this might find it easier to read an introductory account first before delving into Lissagaray.

But readers should delve into this book. Despite the difficulties with detail, its a fascinating and impassioned account of revolution. Lissagaray is enthusiastic about the people who made the revolution and critical of those elected to lead it, whom he says spent too much time talking and not enough deciding. Clearly there were mistakes made during the Commune's brief lifetime and Lissagaray is open about them. But he always begins from the revolution itself, "for the tenth time since 1789 the workmen put France upon the right track". Lissagaray also devotes two chapters to the short-lived Communes outside of Paris, that are rarely discussed in books about 1871. These lasted barely a few days, their short lifetimes being in part due to the lack of industrial development and hence sizeable proletariat outside Paris, the weaknesses of the left and the failure of the Commune to make it clear to the wider country what it was doing. 

These failures know doubt helped condemn the Commune, though not as much as the failure by the revolution to immediately take on the military force of the old government at Versailles. As Lissagaray says the French bourgeoisie "seeing this Paris capable of engendering a new world, her heart swelled with the best blood of France, had but one thought - to bleed Paris." And bleed it they did. 

The brutal assault on Paris which Lissagaray played a role in resisting was followed by the most violent and bestial repression. Lissagaray quotes official figures that suggest that 17,000 people were summarily executed in the "bloody week" following the storming of the city. Thousands more died, were deported, tortured and imprisoned in the most sickening of conditions. Much of the final part of Lissagaray's book is an account of these tragedies and the violence of the French government. No doubt this is in part a contribution to the political debates taking place, but also an political act to drum up support for the exiles and prisoners. 

The ruling class wanted to drown Paris in blood to teach the workers' a lesson. Never again should they threaten the rightful place of the bourgeois class. But despite the massacre, and contrary to the hopes of capitalists everywhere, the Paris Commune remains an inspirational moment in working class history, from which we even the greatest revolutionaries could learn. Despite some accessibility issues, Lissagaray's book is a superb history that all radicals should read.

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