ed into the lives of the adult male population. While France had some military advantages over the German states (for example, it had a larger standing army and its Chassepot rifle had a greater range than the German ‘needle gun’), the balance of material forces indicate that the German states were much better prepared for waging total war. Their railroad network, for example, was vastly superior to that of the French for supporting mobilization and the supply of troops. In addition, German reserves were much better trained and armed than their French counterparts, who also suffered in comparison by their almost exclusively local deployment.
With total war came the potential for war to serve as a stimulus for revolution. To be clear, Lause does not argue that the humiliating defeat of Napoleon III, which led to his abdication and the creation of the Third Republic, was the cause of the revolt in Paris. Lause provides a useful outline of the intensifying class antagonisms characterizing France and the German states during the mid- to late-nineteenth century. It was out of these conflicts, exacerbated by the Third Republic’s explicitly anti-working-class leadership (which among other things ended the moratorium on rental and debt payments enacted during the war, shut down working-class newspapers, and arrested socialist activists), that the Paris Commune as well as shorter-lived rebellions in Marsailles, Lyon, and other cities emerged. France’s defeat ignited these class antagonisms, calling into question the legitimacy of existing forms of class rule and providing space for the creation of more radical alternatives; such a state of affairs could not have existed prior to the emergence of total war. The role of war as a stimulus for revolution was to take on much greater significance in the total wars of the twentieth century – first with the 1917 revolution in Russia and the failed 1918 revolution in Germany, and then the national liberation revolutions occurring during (e.g., Yugoslavia, Albania) or immediately after (e.g., Vietnam, Korea) the Second World War. The Paris Commune thus served as a bellwether for what was to come.
The Paris Commune is significant for the lessons it provides for understanding the role war plays during a revolutionary period. Lause is highly critical of the Commune’s failure to address military matters with the seriousness they required. Growing disquiet among the National Guard, spurred on by the Third Republic’s cancellation of pay for the Guard, led to the creation by insurgent battalions of an elected Central Committee which proclaimed its support for a ‘democratic and social republic’ and issued the call for elections for a new city government. While the National Guard was the backbone of the Commune, the “grandfatherly puffery of ‘Jacobinism’” (202) prevented the Commune’s leadership from appreciating what was necessary to construct a strong military defense of Paris. It was deeply suspicious of efforts to establish some centralized chain of communication and command and thus withheld the necessary authority from the Commune’s military leaders. As a result, neither the construction of barricades nor the deployment of fighters and weaponry could be done in a strategic manner. While the Communards fought fiercely and heroically, they did so primarily within their own neighborhoods. Despite the best efforts of those responsible for the defense of Paris, many of whom had prior military experience, the fragmented nature of the Commune’s defense made it all but inevitable that it would fall to the French army. The bloody suppression of the Paris Commune demonstrates the necessity for the Left to take military matters seriously well before the revolutionary moment occurs - improvisation or wishful thinking will be fatal.
An important part of Lause’s narrative is the role of internationalism in mediating the relationship between war and revolution. Among the principal military leaders of the Commune were Gustave Cluseret, who had fought in the French Legion as part of Garibaldi’s liberation forces in Italy and served as a brigadier general in the Union Army during the US Civil War was the Commune’s first Delegate of War, and Jaroslaw Dombrowski, a former Russian officer who was active in the Polish republican movement served as field commander of the Commune’s troops. The Commune’s defenders included Polish, Italian, Belgians, German, and other foreign fighters, many of whom had military experience fighting in mid-nineteenth century European revolutions and insurrections, and Lause argues that the defense of Paris “would arguably never have been as strong as it was” (218) without them. In this regard, the Paris Commune was the living inspiration for the socialist rallying cry of L’Internationale. Internationalism, however, cuts both ways. The German victory over France was marked by the emergence of a powerful, unified Germany and the imposition of harsh reparations (the loss of Alsace and Lorraine and the payment of war indemnities) on the French which, as Lause notes, provided fuel for a fire that would explode in 1914. At the same time, however, German Chancellor Otto van Bismarck was concerned that the example of the Commune could make its way to Germany, where the working class was more fully developed and better organized than it was in France. Bismarck provided the Third Republic with invaluable assistance in its suppression of the Commune by repatriating French prisoners of war and lifting its siege of Paris so that the French army, having been decisively defeated on the battlefield, could redeem itself in the defense of capital and in so doing protect Germany as well as France from the threat of revolution. The example of the Paris Commune illustrates that conflicts between nation-states are clearly no match for the unity of class interests when those interests are threatened. This is a powerful lesson for the Left: a necessary condition for revolution is that the internationalism of the Left must overcome the internationalism of capital.
The recent wave of global social movements suggests, Lause writes, that the “specter of the Commune” (255) has returned. This makes it all the more important to acknowledge that “time has not cheapened those lessons learned at such a high price in 1870-1” (255). Failure by the Left to address war adequately risks “mystification of the revolutionary process” (xi). It cannot afford to wait until after a war has broken out to begin the work necessary to take advantage of opportunities to advance revolutionary struggles. Nor can it postpone developing an appreciation for military matters until the revolutionary ‘moment’ arrives, for by then it will be too late to counter effectively the longstanding and well-developed coercive power of the state that will be unleashed with devastating effect to maintain the power of capital. Lause’s book reaffirms the significance of the Paris Commune in the history of revolution, but it also provides a warning for the future of revolution.
Daniel Egan
Department of Sociology
University of Massachusetts Lowell
Lowell, Massachusetts
