Abstract
In 1871, the Paris Commune, a proto-socialist attempted to form a new regime on communalistic and collectivist principles, and was savagely repressed by governmental troops led by Adolphe Thiers. Communards, if divided between patriots advocating the continuation of a
revolutionary war against Prussia and several leaders of the First International, had a governmental program openly inspired by socialist ideals: the severance of Church and State, a free and laique (secular) public instruction, the owning of the means of production by the workers.
Yet the conservative crackdown has put an end to these schemes and beheaded the French socialist movement for years: "this terrible sight will lecture them" 1, Thiers has reportedly said. This landmark is a symbol of the downfall of amateurish forms of revolutionary purposes in aid of scientific socialism, and the marxist theories: to put it in a nutshell, the belief that the society is divided between capitalists that own the means of production, and workers who own nothing but their workforce; the class struggle between the two shall eventually lead to the overthrow of capitalism by the proletariat and the founding of a classless communist society. But more important than the ideological foundations of this theory is the means that shall be used in order to reach the objectives: an organized revolution, led by skilled socialists.
