Revolutionaries

Let’s start by distinguishing between political and social revolutions. Social revolutions involve a fundamental transformation of the institutions and values of society. Political revolutions involve the direct overthrow and reorganization of government structures. Both types of revolutions are necessary and should happen together.

Social revolutions change the fabric of social relationships, making these types of revolutions inherently more profound and transformative. Political revolutions may merely just replace one ruling elite with another, all without abolishing the underlying structures or systems of power. The commune is how we achieve both at the same time.

We’re told that the commune is just something that hippies did in the 1970s while they were on drugs at farms somewhere trying to avoid a harmful reality. Even people today on the Left believe the same thing. But the commune used to embody the means to achieve a political and social revolution at the same time. That was its purpose, not hide away and cosplay.

By contrast, this Euro Commie Jewish guy named Karl Marx wrote about a “proletarian commune” or “workers commune.” He described it while writing about resistance to a dictator during the fall of the second French republic. It fell to Napoleon’s buffoonish nephew Louis, who was helped by a dirtbag colonizer named Alexis de Tocqueville.

Marx used the phrase “proletarian commune” to describe a network of socialist clubs in France that were both “constituent assemblies and military detachments of revolt.” The clubs represented a fusion of the social and political, seeking to replace capitalism and the republic with the assemblies themselves.

The commune’s role was to achieve a political revolution, starting with its coordination of generals strikes. Given the volatile economic situation, the goal was to pop what was a massive credit bubble in the French economy at the time, forcing its gears to a halt.

Back then these socialist clubs also had a party in Congress. Power within the party shifted during the republic’s decline. The most revolutionary sections of the working class eventually replaced the middle class leadership that had dominated from the start of the republic just a few short years prior. Middle classes seized that power in a devastating betrayal.

Marx called this political party the “party of the Red Republic.” The party was going to lead the effort to commune-ize political, economic, and social systems. The socialist clubs themselves fostered democratic relationships and decision-making that prioritized cooperation, mutual aid, and, of course, insurrection.

More broadly, the socialist clubs as constituent assemblies were going to replace the congress, the executive branch, and all the government bureaucracy. As for the political party and the Red Republic itself, they would exist only so long as is necessary.

The commune and its assemblies were to also become the democratic decision-making structure for the economy. Corporations themselves were to become commune-ized. This meant they were to led by worker assemblies, not bosses, and ownership was dissolved into the commune of communes.

This is the type of revolution we believe in, that we’re pursuing. Countless other groups see themselves as some type of superior middle class folks out to civilize the savage poor and working classes. Unlike them, we still believe in the original Marxist idea that poor and working classes will emancipate ourselves.