Proletarians of all countries, unite!

The Principles of the Commune Are Immortal and Cannot Be Destroyed

Peru People’s Movement

March 2025¹

The Paris Commune of 1871, the first known experiment in the history of the implementation of the dictatorship of the proletariat, a revolutionary government of the working class formed by the proletarian revolution in Paris. It existed for 72 days, from March 18 to May 28, 1871.

In 1960, on the eve of the 90th anniversary of the birth of the great Lenin, the Communist Party of China, under the leadership of Chairman Mao, published LONG LIVE LENINISM!, a document of great historical importance in the struggle against Khrushchev’s revisionism, in which it reaffirms the historical significance of the Paris Commune, in the following terms:

April 22 of this year is the 90th anniversary of the birth of Lenin.

1871, the year after Lenin’s birth, saw the heroic uprising of the Paris Commune. The Paris Commune was a great, epoch-making revolution, the first dress rehearsal of worldwide significance in the proletariat’s attempt to overthrow the capitalist system. When the Commune was on the verge of defeat as a result of the counter-revolutionary attack from Versailles, Marx said:

If the Commune should be destroyed, the struggle would only be postponed. The principles of the Commune are eternal and indestructible; they will present themselves again and again until the working class is liberated.²

What is the most important principle of the Commune? According to Marx, it is that the working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made state machinery, and use it for its own purposes. In other words, the proletariat should use revolutionary means to seize state power, smash the military bureaucratic machine of the bourgeoisie and establish the dictatorship of the proletariat to replace the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. Anyone familiar with the history of the struggle of the proletariat knows that it is precisely this fundamental question which forms the dividing line between Marxists on the one hand and opportunists and revisionists on the other, and that after the death of Marx and Engels it was none other than Lenin who waged a thoroughly uncomomising struggle against the opportunists and revisionists in order to safeguard the principles of the Commune.

The cause in which the Paris Commune did not succeed finally triumphed 46 years later in the Great October Revolution under Lenin’s direct leadership. The experience of the Russian Soviets was a continuation and development of the experience of the Paris Commune. The principles of the Commune continually expounded by Marx and Engels and enriched by Lenin in the light of the new experience of the Russian revolution, first became a living reality on one-sixth of the earth. Marx was perfectly correct in saying that the principles of the Commune are eternal and indestructible.

The Restoration-Counter-Restoration Law, Incontrovertible Historical Course to Communism

Chairman Gonzalo, starting from the great truth established by Marx on the historical significance of the Commune, draws lessons and sees the course of how the class advances:

What we have to see is how the power of the dictatorship of the proletariat is being established and is advancing and these are undeniable advances: 1871, The Commune, short-lived, but a Commune, new power, dictatorship of the proletariat for the first time on earth; 1905, the Soviets; 1917, 1949, 1966. These are steps in the development of the power of the proletariat towards the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat, we can’t say definitive establishment. Why? Because it confirms with what have been established since Marx, reiterated by Lenin, by Chairman Mao, the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat is the beginning of extinction; if we do not think about that, we are not communists, that is why we cannot say definitive establishment, its establishment for a long historical stretch until the definitive leap to communism is made, then it will become extinct as Engels has masterfully established, that term is extraordinary, it becomes extinct, this word is irreplaceable, no other word can be used.

So, what we communists have to do is to draw lessons and rather to see the course of how the class is advancing towards its establishment, how the dictatorship of the proletariat is advancing towards its establishment, how the vanguard of the proletariat is advancing in leading the revolution all over the world, that’s what we have to think. A lot of jeremiad! You don’t see the restoration-counter-restoration law, that’s what it is, and you don’t see the steps taken and the advance of the class. What do these jeremiads express: historical pessimism! Where is the firmness of the class, where is the incontrovertible historical course to communism, who is going to stop it? nobody! That is extraordinary.³

Just as no class in the world was able to seize Power all at once, but only through a process of restorations and counter-restorations, when the proletariat takes power and establishes its dictatorship, the eagerness of the bourgeoisie for restoring capitalism and to recover its power grows and opens up a historical process of struggle by the proletariat to maintain and defend its dictatorship and to combat the conspiracy of capitalist restoration. This struggle between restoration and counter-restoration is an undeniable historical law, which is replayed under the dictatorship of the proletariat. In world history, when the feudal class advanced in China, it was delayed 250 years while it crushed the restoration of slavery; when the bourgeois class in the west struggled against feudalism to crush the attempts at restoration or the restorations of feudalism, it took 300 years to be definitively established in Power. And, addressing a revolution in which the proletariat is definitively established in Power, the acute struggle between restoration and counter-restoration will last approximately 200 years, starting from the Paris Commune in 1871. The experiences of capitalist restoration in the USSR and in China taught us great lessons, positive as well as negative; especially emphasizing the gigantic steps forward in the formation of the new State and how the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution is the solution to avert restoration.⁴

Long live the 154th anniversary of the Paris Commune!