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There is talk about the Paris Commune as an example of units from the national guard siding with insurgeants. But do you actually realize that the Paris Commune is a case in point ? The two months long rebellion was put down BY THE FRENCH ARMY. They easily surrounded Paris and methodically destroyed any resistance, neighbourhood by neighbourhood. The soldiers involved were nearly all conscripts, 18 to 22 year-olds, who had barely finished basic military training. The massacre of rebels lasted five days, and had to be postponed simply because executing 35 000 people by firing squad put too much of a strain on resources. Groups of thirty rebels were lined up, shot, another group was lined up, shot, another group was lined up, shot, and after a series of twenty such executions by firing squad, the rifles became too hot to handle. And then they malfunctioned, the hammer consistently failing to hit the base of the cartridge.This meant that executions of communards could not proceed at the adequate pace. The idea was, in the words of Thiers and the bourgeoisie, "to shoot all radicals or suspected radicals from working class areas so as to cleanse Paris from its infection". Initial plans were to execute 125 000 people, but had to be abandoned because of logistical problems (too costly in terms of guns, and the risk of disease arising from too many unburied corpses lying on the streets). So the "conseils de guerre" sentenced communards to deportation to Guyana and New Caledonia instead, where it was hoped hard labour and the climate would kill them. Again, this massacre was carried out be ordinary conscripts, which explains the opposition of the early CGT to conscription. As WWI grew closer, the CGT warned that conscripts "are nothing more than cannon fodder and should desert at the earliest opportunity rather than getting slaughtered or slaughtering innocent German workers who happen to be also conscripted by the bourgeoisie of their country". The radical element of the CGT was arrested at the outbreak of WWI, and the CGT itself completely disorganized as nationalist sentiment meant that "class consciousness" was seen as treason by the masses. The same thing happened with the IWW in America. So conscription was seen as a great evil by early 20th century revolutionists. This mindset changed somewhat in the 1920s due to the influence of the Bolshevik revolution in Russia, but remained strong in many organizations. Conscription was seen as the bourgeoisie getting its hands on the entire youth of the working classes and compelling it to fight for its own ends. ________________________________________________ Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
