If someone finds a freely available online copy of the book, please let me know.
Introduction
The fact that "feminism"—or rather "feminine humanism," of which feminism is merely the nineteenth century avatar—is thought today to be outmoded is a means of conjuring away the problems it posited, problems that are still very far from being solved. To confirm this one need only look at the composition of the committees that run political parties, ministerial councils, and meetings of the United Nations. Despite declarations concerning the political and social equality of men and women, this equality more often than not remains illusory. But that the principle has been accepted is already a considerable achievement; a century ago, it would have seemed foolish and outrageous.
This was written in the 1960s, and it could've been written yesterday. There are still far too many problems that arise out of patriarchy that have not been dealt with and are things that people refuse to deal with because they refuse to acknowledge that patriarchy continues and (to some extent) benefits them.
We don't even need to look at the illegitimate power that is the United Nations or any State government; we can look at the way our own organisations, groups, and collectives are structured and the way work gets done within them. How often are cis men granted a pass for their behaviours, giving them excuse after excuse? To do less than others, to receive more. I've seen this in disability groups where disabled women receive less care than similarly disabled men; one of my friends who worked in the sector recently told me that studies in Norway showed that, even in their "welfare state," disabled women received and average of 17 hours less of care than similarly disabled men. That is ludicrous.
These problems haven't been solved, and they most certainly won't be if we continue to look the other way.
The history of women, considered as a branch of social history, is generally held to be insignificant. For "serious" historians, it deserves to be taken no more seriously than any other "lady's work." An historian of the Commune has recently written: "There will inevitably be feminine demonstrations, and they will be enacted by the petty bourgeoisie. They may be the rowdiest of all, but the essential point does not lie in that; it lies in the fact that the working women of the Commune shattered the illusion according to which the emancipation of their sex was to occur as a side effect of the class struggle." Now this emancipation is by no means an illusion. The women who today have access to intellectual professions (university professors, doctors, engineers), in the capitalist countries as well as in the socialist ones; who earn a living without a protector, either lover or husband; who are directly engaged in society—these women are infinitely more "free" than their grandmothers would have dared to dream. The liberation of woman, then, is not necessarily fused with that of the proletariat. The two do not move at the same rate. The fact that Marxist historians and bourgeois historians are in accordance on this issue proves merely that the former are as bogged down in masculine prejudice as their colleagues, although for them it is more a question of political tactics.
There's something to the class reductionism that is often used by reactionaries (those across the spectrum from "left" to right). For generations, we saw that feminism was inherently believed to be part of a bourgeois issue (and in some ways, that's easy to see both in the construction of history as focusing primarily on bourgeois people as a whole and the fact that sometimes movements can prioritise bourgeois people and their views, even if it's not intentional).
However, there's this desire of many to constantly conflate "identity politics" with bourgeois goals and pretend the proletariat would never support it. We see this in so movements, where workers are constantly put at odds against them:
- Feminism and patriarchy
- Gender identity and sexual orientation ("bourgeois queers")
- Immigrant issues
- Disability issues
There is this attempt to segregate workers away from those causes, even when those causes benefit workers. And I think part of that has a lot to do with the workerism of many leftist political movements but also a large chunk of the fact that our organisations are still organised in ways where hegemonic power still attempts to maintain power within them.
It's why organisations can't withstand abuse allegations against their Leading Characters; it's why they crumble because people leave them for something safer or nothing at all (disillusioned with the political movement).
Other people have traditionally believed that the problem no longer exists. Women hold no interest for them except in the amatory relations—that is, they matter only as objects. Bedroom histories will always be best-sellers. Mme de Pompadour and Mme du Barry still draw attention to themselves to the tastes of the day. Mm de Staël is more interesting for her lovers than for the struggle she waged against Napoleon. Flora Tristan and Pauline Roland interest no one.
This is still so true. There is so much interest in the bedroom histories of many women, even if it is as a means to attempt to discredit them or to contradict their virtues.
Chapter 1: Women During the Second Empire
This banding together for solidarity had two goals, political education and propaganda for the International, which were what separated the cooperatives of working class origin from similar efforts established by the charitable segment of the bourgeoisie. The former societies were only stopgaps which were moving toward social revolution; charity was an end in itself.
Things we've known for so long and still refuse to acknowledge, though now I wonder how much of that is due to the fact that charities are also jobs and industry.
It was not just working women who had complaints to make of an order that excluded women from society. A century ago, a woman could scarcely exist socially without a protector, either husband or lover. The education she received was mediocre or nonexistent. The Law of 1850 had indeed ordered the creation of a girls' school for every commune with a concentrated population of more than 800. But the law lay dead on the books. Out of 48,496 public schools, 18,732 schools were for boys, 11,836 schools were for girls, and the others were coeducational. It is true that the private schools re-established the balance to some extent. But, generally, one child in five never went to any school, because he was in rags and was dying of hunger. Those men and women who taught in elementary schools constituted a decently-dressed proletariat. More than 4,000 schoolmistresses earned less than 400 francs annually. Almost 2,000 earned 100 to 200 francs. We have seen that the minimum budget of a Parisian working woman was fixed at about 500 francs.
The 500 francs comes from a calculation earlier in the book, explaining the rough costs of everything else that's needed at the time. This is for a full year.
The liberal professions were virtually closed to girls of the bourgeoisie. When Julie Daubié sat for her baccalaureate, despite the opposition of the rector of Lyon, and passed that examination, the Minister of Public Education refused in his turn to give her her diploma, for fear of "forever holding up his ministry to ridicule." This incident marks the starting-point of a revolution, and one forgets today that this revolution is the outcome of a patient, daily, and colorless struggle.
It's also interesting to me that, even if this is a "bourgeois issue," a lot of people will not see it for what it is. There has been and remains a constant strain of people who insist that women are inferior and refuse to acknowledge that so many women have had to fight for their placement in any form of society.
Chapter 3: The Siege of Paris
After September 4, when the theaters were closed, even more people were attracted to the Clubs. These Clubs, in which all opinions met and clashed, were of various leanings. Women brought their children along; there, at least, they were out of the cold, but they also attended because of political conviction, and did not hesitate to intervene in the proceedings.
Once again, it is more than clear that if we do not make space for families, especially those with children, we will never prefigure shit. Not entirely sure how it is that these movements have focused so excessively on those with grown or no children, but it is exhausting and absurd.
Women also participated in street demonstrations. On September 18 they took the initiative in demonstrating in sympathy with Strasbourg, which had been besieged for more than a month. "The idea came to some among us—the majority—to get weapons and set forth to help Strasbourg defend herself, and to die with her." Louis Michel and André Léo led a little group that set out for the Hôtel de Ville crying "To Strasbourg!" Women—many schoolteachers, young people, and especially students—joined them along the way.
I long for more radical schoolteachers. We've desperately needed them to wake up for as long as they've existed.
Chapter 4: The 18th of March
Any political system which demands the consensus of the masses and at the same time serves as the expression of the masses, must appeal to popular sentiment and organize a following. Religions, like political movements, need collective demonstrations. Women, who are more emotional than men, are doubtless even more susceptible to this communal appeal.
Not fond of this highlighted sentiment here, but it continues:
But the women also had good reasons for backing the new power. To be sure, the goals of the Commune, set forth in a Declaration to the French People, took no account of women's existence. The men of the Commune did not foresee for a single instant that women might have civic rights, any more than did their "great forebearers" of 1789 and 1793, or the 1848 revolutionaries. But certain measures, like the remission of rent payments or the discontinuation of the sale of articles depositied at the Mont-de-Piété, affected women greatly. A 600-franc pension was to be granted to the wife, legal or not, of any member of the National Guard who had been killed defending the people's rights, after an inquiry that would establish her rights and needs. Each of her children, legitimate or not, could collect a 365-franc pension until he was eighteen. At the expense of the Commune, orphans would receive the education necessary "to make their own way in society."
Mont-de-Piété was a sort of pawn broker.
This was an implicit recognition of the structure of the working-class family, as it really existed, outside the context of religious and bourgeois laws: the recognition of unions libres; of the right of children, legitimate or natural, to subsistence, and the disappearance of the old macula bastardiae of Roman Law, Church, and Civil Code. In this, the Commune, which was handling the Banque de France with kid gloves and did not venture to make any inroads into private property, undoubtedly took one of the most revolutionary steps of its ephemeral reign. That this measure outrated the bourgeoisie, that it was received with jubilation by the members of the Commune—both of these are indications of its significance.
There is one thing here that is infuriating, as there often is a lot of mentions against prostitutes and prostitution. I have a feeling that, even with these movements towards this, a lot of (legally unmarried) women would've still been marked as prostitutes in order to not pay them.
Because this is what happens when you put criteria on something, the people who handle it find ways to not do it. Haven't seen mention of that, but it's worth pointing out that there's a lot of anti-sex work sentiment in the Commune.
Chapter 6: The Clubs
On May 20, citoyenne Valentin urged women to "guard the gates of Paris, while the men go to battle. Then she demanded that the clothing left in the religious communities be sold or distributed "to dress poor children," and that "the flowers upon the altars be given to schoolchildren as prizes, to decorate the garrets of the poor." The proposition was unanimously adopted. Perhaps I am wrong in lingering over this detail, unworthy of a "serious" historian. But I find it admirable that in the midst of fighting, in the midst of poverty, in the feverish atmosphere of the Clubs, a woman should think of giving flowers to children. This seems to me quite indicative of a deep sensibility which which rarely appears in revolutionary movements, which, because the must confront the most urgent situations, have to be schematic.
I also really love these kinds of details. Sometimes everything is written about with such machine precision, as if everything just went as is without... life.
Chapter 7: Opinion and Action
There is no doubt that the women in the Clubs had only very vague ideas concerning socialism. But what they did know, what they did feel in a confused and visceral fashion, was that they had worked all their lives for ridiculous wages, and that, if nothing were to change, their children would be like them: poverty-stricken and exploited. To a young man who was expounding the goals of the Commune, an old working woman in a blue apron, with a square kerchief on her head, got up and answered:
Before I put the quote in that follows, I think it's worth pointing out the weird structure here that women had a "vague idea," but I wonder if this is something that is almost sarcastic in tone about the ways in which women are often talked about? Or perhaps it's a comparison between the "I've read a lot of books" socialist men of the bourgeois and the "I lived the life" socialist women who were fed up. Anyway, the passage quotes one of the ladies of the Commune:
"He tells us that the Commune is going to do something so that the people aren't dying of hunger as they work. Well, that's fine; it's not a bit too soon! Because here I've been a washerwoman for forty years, I've been working every blessed day of the week, without ever having anything to put in my mouth or to pay the rent. Food is so expensive! And so why is it that some can rest from one New Year's Day to the next, while we are always at work? Is that fair? It seems to me that if I were the government, I'd manage things so that working people could be given their turn to rest. If the people had vacations like the rich do, citoyens, they wouldn't complain so much.
Funny how the more things change, the more things seems to stay the same.
At Sainte-Élizabeth-du-Temple, they demanded that women having a specified number of children receive a pension. This proposition seemed grotesque to the reactionary onlooker who reported it; but is it not the origin of family allowances? The Clubs depicted by the adversaries of the Commune as lairs of bandits, drunkards, and prostitutes, were demanding measures whose morality was entirely puritanical. The Vigilance Committee of the republican citoyennes of the 18th arrondissement voted for a motion which would tend to make the prostitution that had been increasing for some time disappear from the streets. The motion was signed by the president, Sophie Poirier, the secretary, Anna Jaclard, and two assistants, Mmes Barois and Tesson. Four hundred signatures followed. The Clube de l'École de Médecine demanded "that all women of suspect morality plying their shameful trade on the public thoroughfares" be immediately arrested, and likewise "the drunkards who have forgotten their self-respect"; that the cafés be closed at 11 o'clock at night; that "stag parties" be forbidden. This document was unanimously approved.
Whew, it's always a good reminder that sometimes we can disagree with history. Or recognise that you understand where certain beliefs come from even if you find them appalling. Particularly, I feel this way about the perspectives about sex workers, which are positively atrocious. Despite the anti-clerical nature of their goals, despite the denunciation of the Church, they still managed to hold onto some of their harsher views.
Also, it's funny to see that it was a "reactionary" sentiment to dislike the family allowance. I can see that as being true (since so many conservatives in places like the US operate under the idea of "taking responsibility for your actions" and punishing already-born children who live in poverty), but it's also a horrifying way to distribute money rather than on a "per person" basis.
Family allowances are most often used to encourage the growth of certain populations, particularly these days. They're also withheld from those of "undesirable" demographics (either in full or in part).
The ideal Commune would have been Savonarola's Florence.
Put this here because holy what the fuck, Savonarola is one of the most confusing people I've ever come across.
What was to become of these prostitutes who could no longer ply their trade? Some of them turned up at the Hôtel de Ville asking to be allowed to care for the injured. They were refused this honor, for, Louise Michel noted, the men of the Commune wanted pure hands tending the Federals. But for Louise Michel, these women, the victims of poverty and of society, had a right to their place in the new world which was being born, and which ought to reject any moral condemnation. "Who, then, would have more of a right than they, the saddest victims of the old world, to give their life for the new one?" Therefore she directed them to a committee of women (the 18th arrondissement Vigilance Committee? the Union des Femmes?) "whose spirits were generous enough to let these women be welcomed." "We shall never bring shame down upon the Commune," these prostitutes said. Many, indeed, died courageously on the barricades during the Bloody Week in May, as did that "Henriette-Tout-le-Monde" whose story has been told by Maurice Dommanget.
Love the highlighting of the irony that the men who likely visited the prostitutes and allowed them to "ply their trade" in health didn't want their "impure" hands touching them in sickness and injury? Forever the ironies persist.
Under the pressure of public opinion and of the Clubs, General Cluseret decided that every man from nineteen to forty years of age be obliged to serve in the National Guard: a useless measure, since it provided only a very weak contingent of men who were really eager to fight (the partisans of the Commune had long ago been at the ramparts and the forts). A clumsy measure, too, since it gave the Commune the appearance of being dictatorial (which it scarcely was), inquisitorial, and intolerable—and all the while ineffective.
Chapter 8: Education
As early as March 26, the Society for New Education named delegates who were to present a project for educational reform to the Commune.
This included three men and three women: Menier, Rama, and Rheims; Henriette Garoste, Louise Laffitte, and Maria Verdure (daughter of schoolteacher Augustin Verdure, also a member of the Commune).
Brought a draft reminiscent of Pauline Roland (1849): Association des Instituteurs et Professeurs Socialistes.
It was necessary for a republic to "make young people ready for self-government through a republican education." This problem took precedence over all others; without its solution, serious and lasting social reforms could never be envisaged. Therefore, all the educational establishments maintained by the Commune, the départemenets, and the State had to be opened to all children, regardless of their faith. In the name of freedom of conscience and of justice, religious or dogmatic instruction had to be abolished in State establishments: "Let neither prayers, nor dogmas, nor anything that is reserved for the individual conscience be either taught or practiced there." Questions that were within the domain of religion, therefore, had to be removed from examinations. Teaching methods should always be "experimental and scientific," based upon "the observation of facts"; therefore, teaching organizations could exist only as private or non-State establishments. In short, schooling had to be considered as a public service; it had to be free, complete (with the exception of competition for professional specialties), and obligatory, whatever the social position of the parent. In response to the delegates of the Society of New Education, the Commune answered that it was in complete agreement with their plan, and that it considered this first step an "incentive to set out on a path that it had decided to take."
So much of this is... a half-half for me, so it's interesting to look back on it. Within the context, I understand why it is that they thought that schools should be the things we kept, reformed, and opened to everyone. When you realise that a lot of the people who were doing these structures were of the "intellectual classes," it's even more clear because they often see the benefit of doing things the way they did them. It's common. It was also that schools in the 1870s, even though they were made compulsory, were very... questionable. Many in rural areas were primarily operated by the Church, they were mostly not secular... and so on. So there was a mixture of seeing the positives of the school and wanting to keep it.
However, while I agree that there needs to be cross-generational learning, this is something that needs to be reconsidered as a one-way direction: adult to child. Also, if children are perpetually placed into one institution... how are they learning? That's still indoctrination, even if the ideas are better. How do they explore their own needs?
Perhaps it's also because the relationship to schools is starting to change, particularly now that we're recognising how they homogenise us rather than support the range of people in them.
For her part, Louise Michel sent the Commune a summary of an educational method that she had been thinking about for a long time. It was necessary to teach as many elementary ideas as possible with "the fewest, simplest, and most comprehensible words possible." She attached great importance to the moral training of her pupils. Their conscience ought to be developed to the point that "no reward or punishment can exist apart from the feeling of having done one's duty, or having acted badly." As for the religious problem, that should be left to the will of the parents. With her friends in the Montmartre Vigilance Committee—Sophie Poirier, Marie Cartier (née Lemonnier), and Mme Dauguet—Louise Michel demanded secular professional schools and orphanages to replace "the schools and orphanages for ignoramuses."
See, here's part of the context for why they'd want to reform what exists over replace.
Anyway, a lot of these reforms took place and were part of France after the fact. Which is interesting, considering the ways in which the ideas were took up to placate many people.
Chapter 9: A Great Journalist
The goals of the Commune, the coherent thought which quickened the best of the Communards, are both expressed by André Léo's excellent articles. And one might wonder through what injustice of History a woman whose novels are above average, and who played an important role in the Commune, has nowhere found her rightful place. Benoît Malon—who, one must admit, became her husband—paid her this tribute: "This woman, whose name is among those of the greatest writers of our time, and whom Rossel, who knew what he was talking about, called citoyen André Léo, was equally devoted to the cause of the people and to serving it with her writings, her speeches, and her total support." Yet literary historians who set third-rate writers up in the eyes of posterity never even mention her name, and the historians of the Commune scarcely notice her. No doubt there are several reasons for this. The first is that André Léo was a woman, and women need much more talent than do men in order to be recognized. Second, André Léo was implicated in the Commune, and literary historians generally tend to be very traditionalistic. Third, however devoted André Léo may have been to the Commune—a devotion that she retained all her life—she did not figure among its extremists, and did not hesitate to criticize the mistakes and violence of the Commune's supporters. Tending toward Bakunin rather than Marx, she thus cannot be ranked among the prophets and saints of the First International. In the eyes of orthodox Marxists, André Léo is an "individual," someone smacking of anarchism, and vaguely disturbing. In the eyes of anarchistic revolutionaries, she is much too reasonable. In the eyes of the bourgeoisie, she is a revolutionary. In short, there is no category for her; she is among those people who could not be annexed by a single cause.
This is so incredibly unsurprising, considering how many people outside of hegemonic demographics get erased from history because people will overlook them for... so many reasons.
In the newspaper La Sociale, André Léo thus became the zealous but lucid promoter of the Commune. As early as the 9th of April, she recorded the isolation of Paris, the mutual lack of understanding between the capital and the provinces. "Both are in the wrong, and for Paris, the more intelligent, the fault is perhaps greater." Thus it was necessary for Paris to enlighten the countryside and the provinces, and explain that they all had the same oppressors. It was right for Paris not to imitate the violence its enemies had done to thought and liberty, not to transgress the principles that were the very bases of its demands. In this, André Léo implicitly poses the eternal question of means and ends. How can just policies be enacted by unjust means, when the end is always contained in the means put forth to achieve it, the means which determine it? "We must support our faith in a worthy manner; we must show in all its brilliance the idea we have the honor of representing; we must not let it be obscured by error or vituperation, must not disturb the conscience of those who see ideas only through men." Therefore, one should not proclaim a Commune and then act as if it were the Constituent Assembly.
This section is quite long, but there is so much here about André Léo and her philosophy. She seems like an interesting person, though I find it interesting that she'd pose Paris (the city) as "the intelligent" when she later (next) will talk about how city and rural people need to understand each other. But it's unsurprising because of how common this is, rather than moving the thoughts between the two and building cohesive philosophies between the two.
As a Commune, Paris should accept the assembly, elected by the provinces. Fighting against the assembly, Paris was no longer the Commune, but the Revolution. Thus it was right to make a frank avowal of the social idea, the revolutionary idea, that one represented. "Now it no longer has anything to contrive. If it does not yield to the lesser, it will not yield to the greater." It was, then a fight to the death between Revolution and Monarchy, between poor and privileged, between worker and parasite, between people and exploiters. The peasant, too, was among the exploited; but his condition was hidden from him by his antiquated ideas. Thus he had to be shown where his interest lay. Granted, it would be preferable to appeal to his intelligence. But whose fault was it? Who had abolished freedom of the press? Who had refused the people education, "without which universal suffrage is nothing but a trap in which democracy is caught, and perishes"? The responsibility devolved upon the men of lies and treason who had wanted merciless, bloody battle. Next came a manifesto, drafted almost entirely by André Léo, addressed to rural workers. It was necessary to end the antagonism between workers and peasants, between the city and the country (a problem against which all the twentieth-century revolutions would stumble).
This is a continuation even until today. Being a former rural person living in the city, the way that people talk about us is... appalling. There is an excessive belief that we're unable to see our own oppressions, and there is a refusal to listen to us as if we know what's best for us. There's also an assumption that we're all the same. And you can see that, to an extent, here.
Continuing the long paragraph:
"Brother, you have been deceived. Our interest are the same. What I am asking for, you want too; the freedom that I demand is your own..." What did it matter whether the oppressor was called landowner or industry? Everywhere, the producers of wealth lacked the necessities of life. Everywhere, they lacked "liberty, leisure, the life of the mind, and the life of the heart." For centuries it had been said that property was the fruit of labor. This was a lie. That house, that land, on which the peasant worked all his life, did not belong to him; or if they did belong to him, they were burdened with debts, and he or his children would have to sell them. "The rich are lazy; the workers are poor and will remain poor." Against this injustice Paris had risen and wanted to change its laws. "Paris wants the peasant's son to be as well educated as the son of the man who is rich, and rich for no reason, for human knowledge is the common good of all men." Paris no longer wanted a king or highly-paid offices. These economies would make it possible to establish homes for the elderly. Paris wanted those responsible for the war to pay the 5 billion francs owed to Prussia. Paris wanted justice to be free, and to be done by judges chosen by the people. Finally, Paris wanted "the peasant to have his land, the worker to have his tool; work to be available for everybody."
It's interesting that so many people are still not recognising how, though the workerist feeling worked here in the context of the Commune (though was still a problem)... That we keep doing it. You'd think we'd have realised that workerism is a problem. I point this out because, while it works here, it should never be the end goal.
Finishing the paragraph:
It was said that the Parisians were socialists, "dividers." But who said that? The thieves who cried "Stop, thief!" to put people on the wrong track. The real "dividers" were "those who do nothing but get fat from the work of others." The cause that Paris was defending and the cause of the worker were thus the same. The generals who that day were attacking Paris were those who had betrayed France: the deputies appointed by the provinces wanted to restore Henri V. "If Paris falls, the yoke of poverty will remain on your neck, and will pass on to your children."
And it did.
Unlike most of the men of the Commune, who so often went astray into vain discussions, devoting themselves to details and neglecting what was essential, André Léo never lost sight of the two objectives that, if the Commune were to triumph, were the most urgent: the indispensable support of the provinces, and the armed struggle against Versailles. In a very fine article, she extolled the soldiers of the Commune, those sixty thousand men who, for more than three weeks, had held their own against a hardened army of old soldiers, policemen, and gendarmes. Who were they, then these dead men whose names and professions were listed every day? A shoemaker, a stonecutter, a carpenter, a blacksmith.
Lmao, this feels like every anarchist collective or labour union meeting I've been at in my life, I swear.
Chapter 10: Ambulance Nurses, Canteen Workers, Soldiers
Insofar as it was a revolutionary power, the Commune would have done better to take over the Banque de France than to carry out measures on a secondary level, which disorganized the hospital services and contributed to futile and inextricable disorder. But the men of the Commune did not discern the hierarchies of urgency. Their debates, like their decisions, were often marked by revolutionary childishness.
Literally still feels relevant in how so many places are organised, I swear.
But, in this struggle to the death, Versailles had no more mercy for nurses than it did prisoners: both were shot. Lieutenant Butin, sent with truce flags to gather up the injured at the Vanves fort, was greeted with rifle fire by the Versailles soldiers despite his white flag and the flag of the Geneva Convention; he had to return in haste to the lines of Federals. An ambulance nurse who was about to lift up a wounded man was raped and killed by five Versailles men. The Commune seized upon the affair, and considered applying the decree concerning hostages which had been voted in on April 5, after the massacre of Flourens, Duval, and prisoners taken by Versailles. This decree aroused the indignation of all right-minded people, but was merely a response to the murders committed by order of Thiers. Moreover, the debate revealed that the men of the Commune were much more respectful of their enemies' lives than were their adversaries.
One of the things I didn't realise was that the Geneva Conventions were much older than I'd thought they were, but it's entirely unsurprising that the State decided to murder people and ignore them. The Geneva Conventions, as we've seen even in my lifetime, appear to never apply to people within your own country... So what is the point of either them or the State?
The decree concerning hostages was not actually applied in reprisal for the murder of the ambulance nurse. It would take the mass murders of Federals by the Versailles army, during the Bloody Week in May, for the exasperated crowds to abandon themselves to violence against the hostages.
Just a reminder.
Everywhere along the outposts, André Léo noticed a dual attitude toward the ambulance nurses. The officers and surgeons were clearly hostile to them; the troops were in favor of them. Similarly, in 1849, Jeanne Deroin, offering her (illegal) candidacy, had encountered only sarcasm in the bourgeois districts, whereas those who heard her in Faubourg Saint-Antoine greeted her sympathetically.
This is also why I get so tired of people talking about how people in the working class are more bigoted. They have their problems, but they are often more sympathetic.
The book quotes the following (from La Sociale, May 6):
Alongside of that bourgeois, authoritarian mentality, so narrow and so petty, which unfortunately exists in so many of our commanders, there blazes in our citoyen soldiers the keen, exalted, profound sentiment of the new life. It is they who believe in the great forces that save the world; they acclaim these, they do not outlaw them. They know what the right of all is contained in their right. Whereas most of the commanders are still only military men, the soldiers are real citizens...
It's so ridiculous how we could update this for today. It's absurd.
Rossel—the student at the École Polytechnique who became the Commune's Minister of War, and who was without doubt one of the strangest and most attractive figures of the Revolution—expressed his regrets at the situation André Léo pointed out to him, and asked her to tell him "through the public press" (a consistent revolutionary, Rossel was a foe of secrecy) how to set it right. "The noble and frank tone of your recent proclamations," answered André Léo, "made me sense a man who was incapable of common bias. You know better than I what you can do to make use of the devotion of republican women, for that is inherent in your power..." Women were running up against masculine prejudices and they surgeons' esprit de corps at a time when, on the contrary, it was necessary to move toward "that responsible brotherhood of men and women, that unity of feelings and ideas, which alone can form, in honor, equality, and peace, the Commune of the future."
Absolutely adore the whole thing about "answer me through the press," but the constant reminder that cis men fail to recognise the power of everyone else? Sigh.
The Republic could be established only upon such a recognition of equality. André Léo submitted to Rossel an idea of Dr Jaclard, the head of the 17th Legion (as we have seen, his wife Anna played an important role in the organization of the ambulance stations). Doctors without antifeminine prejudices, and the three or four young women who had passed their examinations at the École de Médecine, were to be placed in charge of several ambulance stations. "These women had the courage to force the doors of science; they will certainly not fail to serve Humanity and the Revolution." But, by contrast to Rossel, General Dombrowski displayed an eminently reactionary attitude toward women. André Léo sharply reminded him that without the participation of women, the 18th of March would have ended in failure: "You would never have been General of the Commune, citoyen Dombrowski."
I find it charming to try to knock someone down a few pegs. But it's also something that's necessary to recognise. If you don't support everyone, you support no one; you will always fail.
She asked the general to do a little reasoning. Could the Revolution have been accomplished without women? That had been the mistake of the First Revolution: women had been excluded from freedom and equality; then, returning to Catholicism, they had strengthened the forces of reaction. The republicans were full of inconsistencies: they did not want women to be under priestly thumbs, but they were upset when women were free-thinkers and wanted to act like free, equal human beings. The republicans had dethroned the Emperor and God, but only to put themselves in the place of both. The republicans needed subjects—or, at least, subjected women. They did not want to admit, then as before, that woman was responsible to herself. "She should remain neutral and passive, under the guidance of man. She will have done nothing but change her confessor." But God possessed on enormous advantage over man: he remained unknown, which enabled him to be ideal.
It's an interesting framing that I hadn't actually thought of. Perhaps it's something to keep in mind as I continue looking into this time.
Religion condemned reason and knowledge. The Revolution, on the other hand, postulated that reason and liberty be exercised in the search for Truth and Justice. "The Revolution is the liberty and the responsibility of every human being, limited only by the rights of all, without privilege of race or of sex." Therefore women could not but be concerned; yet people talked about the freeing of man, but not of woman. Women were rejected and discouraged when they wanted to serve the Revolution. It is in this sense that their rejection was a reactionary step. A history of the period since 1789 could be written under the title "A History of the Inconsistencies of the Revolutionary Party." But this attitude of many Commune officers toward women corresponds to an age-old feeling that is too deep and too widespread for it to be easily changed, despite various interventions. Thus the Club de la Révolution Sociale in its turn asked the 17th arrondissement municipal authorities to intervene on behalf of ambulance nurses with the surgeons and battalion commanders.
Written in the 1960s, felt in the 2020s, about the 1870s. For fuck's sake.
Content warning on the next few for war crimes (including sexual assault and murder) against women.
On April 3, at the time of a sortie when Flourens and General Duval were murdered by Versailles soldiers, the geographer Élisée Reclus, taken prisoner, gives us the following account of a canteen worker. "The poor woman was in the row in front of mine, alongside of her husband. She was not at all pretty, nor was she young: rather, a poor, middle-aged proletarian, small, marching with difficulty. Insults rained down upon her, all from officers prancing on horseback along the road." A very young hussar officer said. "You know what we're going to do with her? We're going to screw her with a red-hot iron." A vast, horrified silence fell among the soldiers.
Absolutely disgusting.
Often these women were heroic. Even the most ardent antifeminists have rarely denied that women have courage. At Neuilly, a canteen worker with a head wound had the wound dressed and then returned to combat. Another, chased by a gendarme, suddenly turned around and killed him point-blank. Her comrades and the crowd cheered her when she came back within the Paris walls. On the Châtillon Plain, a canteen worker was the last to retreat, with a group of National Guards, and turned around every minute to fire her gun again. In the 137th Battalion, a young canteen worker—almost a child—never stopped firing the cannon despite the shells, coming from Châtillon, which were falling all around her. When the Federals had succeeded in evacuating the Vanves fort, by means of the catacombs and quarries under the region, the newspapers noted that "it was women who, in this situation, showed the most calmness, presence of mind, and courage. The ambulance nurses wanted to carry off the wounded. The canteen workers were distributing stimulants, and keeping watch over the torches."
I genuinely enjoy seeing these kinds of descriptions, which are so entirely lacking in most histories.
Chapter 11: Bloody Week
A remark is called for here. A large proportion of these women were born in the provinces. As for the men, the proportion was less, but still quite considerable: the Parisian insurrection of 1871 was carried out by provincials. There are doubtless several explanations for this paradox. These men and women who had broken ties with their villages and come to Paris, had given proof in their private lives of a will to renewal, a spirit of adventure, which also were what impelled them to join the ranks of the Social Revolution. Doubtless, too, they were less integrated into traditional urban life. Those who are settled always compose the bulk of conservatives; peasants are adequate proof of this. These hypotheses are certainly worthy of further research.
I feel this so much, though I wonder how many other migrants feel this way.
At this point we definitely must bring up the question of the fires for which eyewitnesses and bourgeois historians have scribed full responsibility to the Communards. These fires actually had several causes: first, the incendiary shells and the kerosene bombs which the Army of Versailles had been using since the beginning of April. Many houses in Paris and the suburbs were burned thus, during the Second Siege of Paris, by the shells of the friends of order and property. These were, no doubt, "good" fires—regrettable, certainly, but normal facts of war. Some of the fires during the last week of May were also attributable to Bonapartist agents, who were trying thus to eliminate any traces that were compromising for the personnel of the Empire. In fact, it is strange to note that the Communards, those "dividers" did not attack the houses of the rich; that the Communards, those anticlericals, did not burn down the churches; but that what disappeared in flames were buildings like the Court of Accounts, the Council of State, or the Ministry of Finance—buildings that contained the archives of the Empire's administration. Perhaps, too, certain people hoped to receive large indemnities.
Some things that often get neglected in the discussion about tactics, particularly when it comes to the State stopping things that will hurt it.
But, having made these reservations, it is certain that the Federals bore a great part of the responsibility for the Paris fires. "Fever of the besieged," "the madness of despair," "revolutionary vandalism"—easily, but a little too hastily, said. Actually, the Versailles troops fired from the shelter of the houses until the insurgents had exhausted their last ammunition; then they advanced on the double and shot down the defenders. It was to counter this tactic that the Federals set fire to the buildings near the barricades; thus they flushed the Versailles soldiers out into the open. Marx vindicated the Commune, which "used fire strictly as a means of defense, to keep the Versailles troops from the avenues which Haussmann had opened out expressly for artillery fire." For the Federals, it was a question of "covering their defeat, just as the Versailles troops opened their advance by shells which destroyed at least as many buildings as did the Commune." Moreover, the Federals resorted to incendiarism only when Versailles began its mass execution of prisoners—which was what invested the struggle with its final and inexpiable character.
Also something else to consider. We often don't give nuance to anyone "destroying their home," but these kinds of events are worth remembering.
Chapter 12: Were There Any Pétroleuses?
But the Paris fires, during the course of an armed struggle, present another problem. They were lit during the fighting, and lit by fighters. There is no reason to think that the women who were helping to build and defend the barricades did not also have a hand in these fires. In the statutes of the Union des Femmes pour la Défense de Paris et les Soins aux Blessés, we read the following brief sentence: "Article 14: The money left over from the administrative costs will be used ... for buying kerosene and weapons for the citoyennes who will fight at the barricades; should the occasion arise, weapons will be distributed according to the drawing of lots." It is difficult to concede, along with certain historians motivated by I know not what sort of hypocritical daintiness, that the word "kerosene" coupled with the word "weapons" has, here, only a domestic meaning—harmless kerosene to light the family lamps. It is more likely that kerosene had already been regarded as the ultimate means of defending the Commune.
Perpetual erasure and obfuscation because people refuse to acknowledge what was directly stated.
As for Anne-Marie Menand, called Jeanne-Marie (could it be Rimbaud's?), she was known in the area around La Madeleine as "the woman with the yellow dog." She was a poor creature, an easy target for Maxime du Camp's persecution: "I have never seen such ugliness. Dark-skinned, with staring eyes, dull and dirty hair, her face pocked and freckled, thin lips and a silly laugh, she had some wild quality about her, which reminded one of the panic of nocturnal birds suddenly put into the daylight..." We know the process: physical defects (including freckles) indicate a corresponding moral ugliness, and become a sign of predestination to evil. In the same way, but conversely, people like Vuillaume and Vallès never saw anything but beautiful, young, joyful, healthy girls among the Commune fighters—which is equally absurd.
Still something that happens, too. Why is so much of this so old but so recent?
Chapter 13: The Execution of Hostages
During the course of this dreadful bloodshed, the Federals executed, for their part, 84 hostages. But the execution of the Archbishop of Paris, the execution of Jesuits, of Dominicans, and of the Comte de Beaufort, who was considered to be a traitor—these weight more heavily in history than the thousands of nameless murders perpetrated by the soldiers of order: bootmakers, stonecutters, masons, day laborers, or seamstresses—small fry, neglected by history. Mme de Lamalle's head on the end of a stick weighed much more in the traditional balance of history than the sacrifice of thousands of unknown people. Right-thinking people were indignant at the former, but considered the latter insignificant. The masses form the vile matter of history. A hundred thousand infantrymen are not worth the death of a general.
Always, and we continue to talk about it in this way. It's so fucking ridiculous how much we pretend the deaths of the wealthy, the powerful... are worth more than anyone else.
Women were mixed up in these executions. Maxime du Camp, once more, accused them of having driven and excited the men, of having sometimes delivered the first blows. One of the men active in the Commune, Da Costa, expressed the same opinion. Thus, by means of a sort of latent antifeminism, the enemies and the supporters of the Commune shifted the responsibility for the summary executions onto women. But in this matter too, the fact seems to be that they had only walk-on roles; they were neither better nor worse than the men around them, neither more pitiable nor more ferocious.
AND AGAIN. Something else that happens, not even just to women. But marginalised people as a whole.
Chapter 14: The Major Trials
Certainly André Léo would not defend the "blindness" and "incompetence" of most of the men of the Commune, whom she never ceased to denounce. But "these mistakes became honorable by comparison with the orgy of infamy that followed them." She explained things and brought them back to focus. The law concerning hostages was administered by the mob only after May 23, when the Commune no longer existed and when Versailles had begun its mass slaughter. The fires had been caused by the Versailles shells, as much as by the need for defense. The Commune had killed sixty-four; the number of murdered Communards mounted to fifteen or twenty thousand (and here André Léo, always scrupulous, estimates far lower than the actual figure). Thus, it was the murderers who were making the accusations. On the one side were all the defenders of privilege; on the other were the democrats. But the latter remained divided, for, as André Léo explained, some preferred liberty, and others equality. Well, "there can be no equality without liberty, nor any liberty without equality." And it was that which separated the socialists from the liberal bourgeoisie. But André Léo noted—and it is even more true today—that the middle- and lower-income bourgeoisie suffered as much as the common people from the capitalist government. "The law of capital is aristocratic by nature," she went on. "It tends increasingly to concentrate power in the hands of a few; it inevitably creates an oligarchy, which is master of the nation's power... It pursues the interest of a few as against the interest of all... It is opposed to the new conception of justice... It holds in servitude, not only the poor, but the great majority of the bourgeoisie who live by their work and their ability"—and wo, perhaps even more than manual laborers, were dependent upon the whim of the capitalists. Therefore it was to the interest of the working class, and also a great portion of the bourgeoisie, to abolish the law of capital; and it was necessary to find a way to do so. The March 18th Revolution had been guided, not by the socialists, but by "bourgeois Jacobinism." André Léo wanted all factions of democracy to unite so as to establish a common program that would include all freedoms (press, assembly, etc), communal liberties, a single and graduated tax, the organization of a citizens' army, and a free, democratic and universal education. "As long as a child is poor... as long as he grows up with no ideal but the tavern, no future but the day-to-day work of a beast of burden, most members of humanity will be deprived of their rights... equality will be only a decoy, and war—the most horrible, the most desperate of all wars, be it unleashed or latent—will desolate the world and dishonor humanity."
She continues:
This explanation, this perspective on civil war, provoked violent interruptions; the president of the Congress for Peace forbade André Léo to go on with her speech. "I had come to this Congress [in Lausanne, Switzerland in September 1871] with one hope, and I left it with profound sadness," she concluded. The bourgeoisie, even the liberal bourgeoisie, could not permit itself to be reminded of the existence of the "class struggle."
Chapter 15: From Auberive to New Caledonia
Finally, and particularly, there were the people. Whereas many of the deported Communards shared the other whites' scorn of the natives, Louise Michel made friends with a Polynesian employee of the penitentiary administration, "who wanted to learn the things the whites know." She gave him lessons; in exchange, he taught her the rudiments of the Polynesian dialects. Then she plunged deep into the jungle to look for tribes still practicing cannibalism; she succeeded in gaining the confidence of one of these, and collected its legends and its music. She did not share Rousseau's theoretical admiration for the "noble savages," but neither did she take part in "civilized" scorn for them. She studied them as an ethnographer, and loved them because they were a part of humanity. When, in 1878, a native revolt broke out, some of the Communards joined the army of repression; but Louise Michel took the part of the Polynesians and secretly aided them. The insurrection was drowned in blood. As for the Arab deportees from Algeria, "they were simple and good, and of great justice," remarked Louise Michel.
So much going on here.
Names to follow up on later:
- Victorine Brochon (butcher co-operative in La Chapelle)
- Nathalie Lemel (book binder who started the food co-op La Marmite and was in the First International)
- Marguerite Tinayre (novelist- pen name: Jules Paty, elementary teacher, consumer co-op Société des équitables de Paris)
- Christine de Pisan
- Juliette Lamber (Mme Edmond Adam)
- Jenny d'Héricourt
- Maria Deraismes
- Paule Minck (Paulina Mekarska - Les Mouches et les Araignées)
- André Léo (Léonide Béra - novelist)
- Olympe Audouard (Le Paillon, La Revue Cosmopolite)
- Noémie Reclus
- Mme Jules Simon (Les Droit des Femmes)
- Adèle Esquiros (married to Alphonse Esquiros)
- Elizabeth Dmitrieff
- Sophie Poirier
- Marquant
- Béatrix Excaffon
- Adélaide Valentin
- Noémie Colleville
- Sophie Graix
- Joséphine Prat
- Céline and Aimée Delvainquier
- Anna Jaclard (Vassilievna Korvina Krukovskaya - bookbinder, married to Victor Jaclard; sister Sophie - Yuri Orbelov, married to Vladimir Kovalesky)
- Fornarina de Fonseca (Eléonora de Fonseca)
- Lodoyska Kawecka
- Mme Brossut
- Joséphine Dulimbert
- Elizabeth Deguy
- Sidonie Herbelin
- Blanche Lefebvre (dressmaker)
- Victorine Gorget (laundress)
- Marie Ségaud (Orlawsky, seamstress)
- Rosalie Bordas