‘… the state begins to wither away…’: Notes on the Interpretation of the Paris Commune by Bakunin, Marx, Engels and Lenin

Abstract

Bakunin (1871): ‘Revolutionary socialism has just attempted its first demonstration, both splendid and practical, in the Paris Commune …. I am above all a supporter of it because it was a bold and outspoken negation of the state.’Marx (1871): ‘The Commune—that is the reabsorption of the state power by society as its own living forces instead of as forces controlling and subduing it, by the popular masses themselves, forming their own force instead of the organized form of their suppression.’Engels (1891): ‘Dictatorship of the Proletariat … Do you want to know what this dictatorship looks like? Look at the Paris Commune. That was the Dictatorship of the Proletariat.’Lenin (1919): ‘Only the Soviet organization of the State can really effect the immediate break‐up and total destruction of the old, i.e. bourgeois, bureaucratic and judicial machinery which has been … the greatest obstacle to the practical implementation of democracy for the workers and working people generally. The Paris Commune took the first epoch‐making step along this path. The Soviet system has taken the second.’