Canadian Dimension Magazine, May/June 2006 Issue

In May of 1871 some 25,000 workers — men, women, children — were slaughtered in the streets of Paris, France by the forces of “law and order” and big capitalist interests. Thirty thousand more were to be jailed, deported and executed in the coming months. Their crime? Proclaiming the world’s first working class-led government known as the Paris Commune.

It was the first time in history that workers had actually seized government and administered, that the working class actually became the recognized leading force of society.

In September, 1870, the corrupt empire of emperor-dictator Louis Bonaparte had imploded in the course of a disastrous war with Prussia. The Prussian army was at the gates of Paris and laid siege to it. The Third Republic was proclaimed, but capitalist interests collaborated with the Prussian army, tried to dispel calls for democratic change and continued the starvation of the Parisian workers. In March, 1871, Parisian workers rallied, fraternized with the National Guard and the Commune was proclaimed. The conservative big capitalist interests fled to Versailles to prepare an assault upon the revolutionary capital.

The Commune was vilified by every regime across Europe and defended by revolutionaries. In later years Frederick Engels would characterize it as a real example of the “dictatorship of the proletariat” — a “dictatorship” that proclaimed universal suffrage, dismantled the bureaucracy, made government into a real working administration by abolishing the division between legislative and executive functions, abolished the standing army and military officialdom, democratized all functions, made all officials to be chosen by election, insisted representatives could be recalled immediately, paid elected officials a salary based on workers’ wages, regulated work hours, worked to end profiteering and fed the people. To this day, no so-called democratic government has come close to achieving what the Paris Commune had accomplished in reality.

As the workers were being murdered, executed in batches in the streets by the troops of the Versaillais, Eugene Pottier, an elected member of the Commune, member of the Federation of Artists and the International Workingmen’s Association, penned the words to what would become a working-class cry of defiance, the most dangerous song in the world: “L’Internationale” (The International).

Years ago a folk music artist told me, “Ah, yes … ‘The International.’ The song every folksinger knows and most are afraid to sing.”

It’s the song (lyrics on following page) that brings jitters to conservative elements. I sang it once at a function at the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers union hall in Detroit. Two hundred people stood to sing the chorus with me. Next day the union executive hauled in staff members and disciplined them for singing along. A few years later I and other labour singers were urged to refrain from singing it at the Labor Arts Exchange conference at the AFL-CIO centre in Maryland. We were told it made the conservative AFLers too nervous and the annual conference could lose its funding. In previous years we made it a traditional end to our open-air concert and actually saw the labour bureaucrats pack up chairs and scurry away as if merely listening to the song would infect them with the red scourge of communism, socialism, anarchism. Frankly, there was something pleasing in watching these highly paid officials of labour running for cover from a group of union musicians and rank-and-file workers who made about a tenth their earnings. Amazing that one song can cause so much consternation and fear.

On May 1 — International Workers Day — many of us will be singing the anthem of working-class liberation.

THE INTERNATIONAL

Words by Eugene Pottier Music by Pierre Degeyter

Arise ye prisoners of starvation
Arise ye wretched of the earth
For justice thunders condemnation
A better world’s in birth!
No more tradition’s chains shall bind us
Arise, ye slaves, no more in thrall
The earth shall rise on new foundations.
We have been naught, we shall be all.

Chorus:

‘Tis the final conflict
Let each stand in his place
The International shall be the human race.
We want no condescending saviours
To rule us from their judgment hall.
We workers ask not for their favours
Let us consult for all!
To make the thief disgorge his booty
To free the spirit from its cell.
We must ourselves decide our duty
We shall decide and do it well.

The law oppresses us and tricks us.
The wage-slave system drains our blood.
The rich are free from obligations.
The laws the poor delude.
Too long we’ve languished in subjection,
Equality has other laws.
“No rights,” says she, “without their duties,
No claims on equals without cause.”
Behold them seated in their glory,
The kings of mine and rail and soil!
What have you read in all their story,
But how they plundered toil?
Fruits of the workers’ toil are buried
In strongholds of the idle few;
In working for their restitution
The workers only claim their due.

We workers from all fields united
Join hand in hand with all who work.
The Earth belongs to us, the workers.
No room here for the shirk.
Too many on our flesh have fattened,
But if the noisome bird of prey
Shall vanish from the sky one morning
The blessed sunlight then will stay.

This article was posted on Thursday, May 4th, 2006 and is filed under Canadian Dimension Magazine, Culture, General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.