Anarchist Celebration of The Paris Commune

The Anarchist Library in collaberation with the campus French Club (Cafe
Muse), the Foreign Language Deptartment and Cultural Affairs invite you to
an evening celebration of the 1871 Paris Commune.

Cafe Muse has put together a slideshow with original artwork from and
inspired by the 1871 Paris Commune.

Barry Pateman PH. D. ( Emma Goldman Archivist, currator of Kate Sharpley
Library) will be the keynote speaker for the evening.

Free French snacks.

Wed. May 4th (Haymarket Aniversary)
7-9 PM
Upper Level Student Union, room 208, Phelan Campus, City College of San
Francisco


Hear what the critics have to say about the Paris Commune:

 " I am a supporter of the Paris Commune, which for all the bloodletting
it suffered at the hands of monarchical and clerical reaction, has
nonetheless grown more enduring and more powerful in the hearts and minds
of Europepis proletariat. I am its supporter, above all, because it was a
bold, clearly formulated negation of the State. "
-Mikhail Bakunin

"the political form, at last discovered, under which to work out the
economic emancipation of labour," and its use of delegates "at any time
revocable and bound by the mandat imperatif (formal instructions)."
- Karl Marx

"I do not wish to defend myself, I do not wish to be defended. I belong
completely to the social responsibility for all my actions. I accept it
completely and without reservations. I wished to oppose the invader from
Versailles with a barrier of flames. I had no accomplices in this action.
I acted on my own initiative.

I am told that I am an accomplice of the Commune. Certainly, yes, since
the Commune wanted more than anything else the social revolution, and
since the social revolution is the dearest of my desires . . . the
Commune, which by the way had nothing to do with murders and arson.

. . . since it seems that any heart which beats for freedom has the right
only to a lump of lead, I too claim my share. If you let me live, I shall
never stop crying for revenge and l shall avenge my brothers. I have
finished. If you are not cowards, kill me!"
-Louise Michel

Engels called it the first example of the "dictatorship of the proletariat."


"On March 18, 1871 , the people of Paris rose against a despised and
detested government, and proclaimed the city independent free, belonging
to itself.

This overthrow of the central power took place without the usual stage
effects of revolution, without the firing of guns, without the shedding of
blood upon barricades. When the armed people came out into the streets,
the rulers fled away, the troops evacuated the town, the civil
functionaries hurriedly retreated to Versailles carrying everything they
could with them. The government evaporated like a pond of stagnant water
in a spring breeze, and on the nineteenth the great city of Paris found
herself free from the impurity which had defiled her, with the loss of
scarcely a drop of her children's blood."
-Peter Kropotkin

MORE INFO AT anarchistlibrary.org