Yes, I know. The point is, the Paris Commune failed because it couldn’t protect itself. That was a lesson that future Marxist revolutionaries took to heart. They knew that the dictatorship of the proletariat was not going to be given to them freely, that it was something that would require brutally violent acts to achieve, and defend.
I’m not trying to defend all the crimes committed by Marxist-Leninists over the years. I’m not an ML and I don’t necessarily share their goals, but I think a lot of ML critics fail to fully recognize the context. Any Marxist who didn’t want to suffer the same fate as the Communards of Paris or Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, and the Spartacists of Germany in 1919, knew they would have to take drastic action.
Yes, I know. The point is, the Paris Commune failed because it couldn’t protect itself. That was a lesson that future Marxist revolutionaries took to heart. They knew that the dictatorship of the proletariat was not going to be given to them freely, that it was something that would require brutally violent acts to achieve, and defend.
I’m not trying to defend all the crimes committed by Marxist-Leninists over the years. I’m not an ML and I don’t necessarily share their goals, but I think a lot of ML critics fail to fully recognize the context. Any Marxist who didn’t want to suffer the same fate as the Communards of Paris or Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, and the Spartacists of Germany in 1919, knew they would have to take drastic action.