For 72 days, 150 years ago now, the city of Paris experienced one of the most relevant attempts to create a social system based on the equality of citizens without distinction of religious beliefs, origin, gender or social origin.
The Paris Commune was a democratic and self-organized movement, without messianic leaders or saviors. An attempt at radical social change, of course not exempt from limitations and chiaroscuro, but endowed with such a desire for justice and equity that it has remained in the collective imagination as a benchmark for all in-depth social change projects.
The Paris Commune (because in other French cities the attempt was quickly repressed) was established as a direct, communal democracy, cooperative in nature, in which resources and social affairs (education, justice, health…) were managed and controlled by the citizens. A new social contract and the abolition of monopolies and privileges were proposed. Among many other aspects, education was promoted, especially for girls, nurseries were created for workers’ children, and justice was democratized. At the level of art, the federation of artists was created, creative freedom or access to museums was promoted for the entire population
The relevance of the experience of the Commune has been immense. Suffice it to say that Marx wrote his famous expression “assault on the heavens” in relation to the Paris Commune and considered it the precedent of the proletarian revolution that he advocated. Generation after generation, there has been no radical social change that has not invoked the Paris Commune as a reference. Victor Hugo, who had already portrayed in Les Miserables the terrible injustices of the society of his time, was a tireless defender of the amnesty of the communards
As is known, the experience of the Paris Commune was full of difficulties, finding the city permanently harassed by the troops of Napoleon III quartered in Versailles. And it was able to maintain itself due to the determined defense of the brave people of Paris, until it was finally annihilated.
It is surprising that in Spain such an important anniversary has gone almost unnoticed. I already wrote in a recent article about the remoteness with which we live what happens in Morocco, in the imaginary there in the south. But now we can see that it seems that there is not much inclination to direct the gaze towards the north either. The peninsula, the bull’s skin, sometimes seems more like an island than a peninsula, absorbed in contemplating itself or digging into its conflicts and wounds.
150 years after the Paris Commune, after that spring of hope in 1871, we live today in a world with growing social inequalities, a society in which children already live worse than their own parents have lived. In this context, there is no doubt that it is important to look outside, towards other referents. And also look back, towards history
Here, meanwhile, the big press, the big television networks, have dedicated themselves to distorting and manipulating the polemic of the steak to the point. To a standstill, we could say