What Is the Parisian Commune?
“The Commune,” pure and simple, is not a bad sort of thing, nor, to Americans, at least, is it a new thing. You in New York have your commune in your own way. That is, you have local self-government. New York governs herself by officers elected by her own people, and so does every other city and county in the United States. But, above or with this, you have your State government and the Federal government. Now, if you can conceive of New York throwing off her obligations of obedience to the State and Federal governments, and setting up in perfect independence on her own hook; instigating Buffalo, Rochester, Troy, Poughkeepsie, and all the other cities to do the same; and still announcing that in some occult and mysterious way all these other cities and all the east of the State were to be subject to New York; and proclaiming, also, a new gospel in regard to the rights of labor as distinguished from the rights of property; if you can conceive of this, I say, you will begin to understand what this Parisian commune really means. It is, in fact, simply putting in practice the dogmas enunciated within the last few years at the successive congresses of the International Workingmen’s Association. . . . The fons et origo of the whole affair is tradesunionism. In the eyes of the members of the Internationale the workman is alone to be regarded, and he is a brother, be his nationality what it may. The French employer and the French consumer, in their eyes, is an alien and a stranger; the Swiss, English, Belgian, or even German workman, is a brother. The Internationale has sought to unite the workmen of every nation in a league against every one who is not a workman—a workman, that is, in their sense. They don’t want a Republic such as you have in America, or such as M. Thiers proposed to have here. They want a republic in which they shall be the masters and every one else their slaves. The Commune—a government which is a gigantic trades-union. It seems to be about to carry everything before it. Heaven help us!—Cor. N. Y. World.