Kmflett's Blog

E P Thompson on the 1871 Paris Commune

Its 155 years since the Paris Commune which ran from 18 March 1871 until 28 May 1871 saw a workers Government in Paris, the first anywhere in the world. It was bloodily suppressed and remains controversial even today.

There is a fascinating reference to it in E P Thompson’s 1963 Making of the English Working Class, still the classic history of the early working class in England from the 1790s to the 1830s.

It seems odd that Thompson would reference the Commune, 40 years or so outside of the time frame of the book.

Thompson wrote:

In the autumn of 1831 and in the ‘days of May’ (1832) Britain was within an ace of revolution which, once commenced, might well (if we consider the simultaneous advance in cooperative and trade union theory) have prefigured in is rapid radicalisation, the revolutions of 1848 and the Paris Commune.

Thompson is referring to the upheaval in the period immediately before the 1832 Great Reform Act, but the wider point is around how far working class consciousness and ideas had developed in England at this point. His view focuses on it being potentially as capable of a workers Government as the Commune was.

It is certainly an interesting and little known comparison