Editing Paris Commune (section)

=== Marxism ===
Communists, left-wing socialists, anarchists, and others have seen the Commune as a model for, or a prefiguration of, a liberated society, with a political system based on [[participatory democracy]] from the [[grassroots]] up. [[Marx]] and [[Friedrich Engels|Engels]], [[Mikhail Bakunin]], and later [[Lenin]], tried to draw major theoretical lessons (in particular as regards the "[[dictatorship of the proletariat]]" and the "[[withering away of the state]]") from the limited experience of the Commune.

Marx, in ''[[The Civil War in France]]'' (1871), written during the Commune, praised the Commune's achievements, and described it as the prototype for a revolutionary government of the future, "the form at last discovered" for the emancipation of the proletariat. Marx wrote that, "Working men's Paris, with its Commune, will be forever celebrated as the glorious harbinger of a new society. Its martyrs are enshrined in the great heart of the working class. Its exterminators, history has already nailed to that eternal pillory from which all of the prayers of their priest will not avail to redeem them."<ref>Karl Marx, ''The Civil War in France'', English Edition of 1871</ref>

Later, however, in private, Marx expressed a different, more critical view of the Commune. In 1881, in a letter to a Dutch friend, Nieuwenhaus, he wrote: "The Commune was simply the rebellion of a city in exceptional circumstances, and furthermore, the majority of the Commune was in no way socialist, and could not have been. With a little bit of good sense, they might, however, have obtained a compromise with Versailles favourable to the mass of the people, which was in fact the only real possibility."{{sfn|Rougerie|2004|p=269}}

Engels echoed his partner, maintaining that the absence of a standing army, the self-policing of the "quarters", and other features meant that the Commune was no longer a "state" in the old, repressive sense of the term. It was a transitional form, moving towards the abolition of the state as such. He used the famous term later taken up by Lenin and the [[Bolsheviks]]: the Commune was, he said, the first "dictatorship of the proletariat", a state run by workers and in the interests of workers. But Marx and Engels also analyzed what they perceived to be the weaknesses or errors of the commune, including its inability to link up with the rest of the French people, its failure to completely re-organize state machinery, its Central Committee passing over power too soon to the representative assembly, its failure to immediately pursue the retreating bourgeois, and the failure to recognize the possibility that France and Prussia would unite against the commune.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Sison |first=Jose Maria |url=https://foreignlanguages.press/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/S20-Basic-Principles-of-ML-A-Primer.pdf |title=Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism: a Primer |publisher=Foreign Languages Press |year=2020 |edition=6th |location=Paris |pages=127 |access-date=3 October 2022 |archive-date=3 October 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221003193555/https://foreignlanguages.press/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/S20-Basic-Principles-of-ML-A-Primer.pdf |url-status=live }}</ref>

The other point of disagreement was the [[anti-authoritarian]] socialists' opposition to the Communist conception of conquest of power and of a temporary transitional state: the anarchists were in favour of general strike and immediate dismantlement of the state through the constitution of decentralised workers' councils, as those seen in the Commune.

Lenin, like Marx, considered the Commune a living example of the "dictatorship of the proletariat". But he criticised the Communards for not having done enough to secure their position, highlighting two errors in particular. The first was that the Communards "stopped half way ... led astray by dreams of ... establishing a higher [capitalist] justice in the country ... such institutions as the banks, for example, were not taken over". Secondly, he thought their "excessive magnanimity" had prevented them from "destroying" the [[class enemy]]. For Lenin, the Communards "underestimated the significance of direct military operations in civil war; and instead of launching a resolute offensive against Versailles that would have crowned its victory in Paris, it tarried and gave the Versailles government time to gather the dark forces and prepare for the blood-soaked week of May".<ref>{{Cite book |last=Lenin |first=Vladimir Ilyich |url=https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/cw/index.htm |title=Lenin Collected Works |publisher=[[Progress Publishers]] |year=2004 |volume=13 |location=Moscow |publication-date=1972 |pages=475–478 |translator-last=Isaacs |translator-first=Bernard |chapter=Lessons of the Commune |author-link=Vladimir Lenin |access-date=12 March 2018 |chapter-url=https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1908/mar/23.htm |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180312200100/https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1908/mar/23.htm |archive-date=12 March 2018 |url-status=live |via=[[Marxists Internet Archive]] and Lenin Internet Archive; originally published in ''Zagranichnaya Gazeta'' (''Foreign Gazette''), No. 2 |orig-year=Originally published 23 March 1908 from speech at Geneva}}</ref>

In 1926, [[Mao Zedong]] published ''The Importance of Commemorating the Paris Commune.''<ref name=":2">{{Cite book |last1=Cai |first1=Xiang |title=Revolution and its narratives : China's socialist literary and cultural imaginaries (1949–1966) |last2=蔡翔 |date=2016 |others=Rebecca E. Karl, Xueping Zhong, 钟雪萍 |isbn=978-0-8223-7461-9 |location=Durham |pages=423 |oclc=932368688}}</ref> Similarly to Lenin's analysis, Mao wrote that there were two reasons for the Commune's failure: (1) it lacked a united and disciplined party to lead it, and (2) it was too benevolent towards its enemies.<ref name=":2" />