History of the Commune of 1871

The Paris Commune lasted seventy-two days. In the spring of 1871, following France's catastrophic defeat in the Franco-Prussian War, working-class Parisians seized their city and attempted to run it themselves. They abolished the regular army, established worker cooperatives, and created a radically democratic government. It ended in blood. The French government recaptured Paris in "Bloody Week" and executed thousands of Communards in the streets. Lissagaray wrote this history as a participant, not an observer. His account, first published in 1876, remains the definitive contemporary record of what Marx called "the dictatorship of the proletariat in action.' It traces the uprising from its roots in the siege of Paris and the political crisis of 1870-71 through the Commune's social reforms to its violent suppression. This enlarged edition adds Engels' introduction, Marx's manifestos on the Franco-Prussian War, and the correspondence between Marx and Engels on the Commune. For anyone seeking to understand the origins of modern revolutionary movements, the limits of reform, or how quickly hope can curdle into massacre, this book remains indispensable.