A Social History of the Ideas of the Paris Commune

Abstract

Review of the book Commun-Commune: penser la Commune de Paris (1871), published on the 150th anniversary of the Paris Commune. The author of the publication aims to reconstruct the entire spectrum of political ideas circulating in “Free Paris” in the spring of 1871. The analysis is carried out from the perspective of the political practices and participants of events. The content of the studied ideas is considered only through the methods of their use and the consequences which influenced history. In the review this is interpreted as a manifestation of thinking close to the theoretical concept of the “social history of ideas”. Another important aspect of the reviewed book is the reflections on the politics of memory and legends, i.e. a mythologized approach to the past understood as a source of cognitive errors that hinder the proper understanding of events.