Delegates of the International Working Men’s Association (IWA/First International) met in Brussels, strengthening transnational working-class coordination and debating collectivist approaches that would influence French militants active in Paris in the following years.
At the IWA’s Basel Congress, delegates confronted mutualist vs. collectivist strategies, sharpening ideological and organizational currents that fed into French working-class politics on the eve of the Commune.
Napoleon III’s regime sought legitimacy through a plebiscite approving a more “liberal” imperial constitution—an outcome that did not resolve underlying class tensions, and was overtaken by war later in 1870.
Following Napoleon III’s surrender at Sedan (1870-09-02), Parisian crowds and republican deputies proclaimed the Republic and formed the Government of National Defense—opening a volatile period in which working-class and National Guard mobilization expanded.
Prussian/German forces began the Siege of Paris, intensifying hardship and politicization among Paris’s popular classes; the National Guard’s enlarged, largely working-class ranks became a central force in urban politics.
Paris held municipal elections (with mayors and deputies chosen across arrondissements) amid wartime crisis, a prelude to later conflicts over local autonomy, popular sovereignty, and the armed National Guard.
National Guards and radicals marched on the Hôtel de Ville to oppose the armistice and demand a more militant, popular government—an episode that split Parisian factions and foreshadowed the Commune.
Paris capitulated as the siege ended; the armistice’s humiliations and the politics of surrender deepened mistrust between republican Paris and the more conservative national political center.
Elections chose a new National Assembly tasked with making peace; rural-conservative and monarchist strength in the results heightened Parisian fears of a rollback of republican gains and of repression of popular politics.
The National Assembly appointed Adolphe Thiers “Chief of the Executive Power,” positioning Versailles as the national center of authority and setting up an escalating confrontation with the politicized, armed capital.
Government troops attempted to seize National Guard artillery at Montmartre; resistance, fraternization, and the killing of two generals helped collapse government authority in Paris and launched the Commune sequence.
The Central Committee of the National Guard organized municipal elections to constitute a new revolutionary authority, giving the Commune a representative mandate under extraordinary conditions.
After the elections, the new council formally adopted the name “Paris Commune” and proclaimed itself publicly—asserting Parisian autonomy and setting the stage for civil war with Versailles.
The Commune decreed substantial rent remission for arrears accumulated during the war months, reflecting a working-class and small-tenant social agenda in a city strained by siege and unemployment.
The Commune decreed separation of church and state and ended public funding for religious worship, a major symbolic and institutional break aligned with radical republican and socialist currents in Paris.
The Commune moved to inventory and transfer deserted workshops to workers’ cooperative associations (with compensation mechanisms discussed), an emblematic attempt to reshape production relations during the revolution.
The Commune abolished night work for bakers—one of its most concrete labor reforms—responding to long-standing worker demands and linking republican revolution to shop-floor conditions.
Versailles troops broke into Paris and began a brutal, block-by-block reconquest; mass arrests and executions accompanied the final military suppression of the Commune.
During the fighting, Communards executed hostages including Georges Darboy, Archbishop of Paris, after failed exchange efforts—an episode later used to frame the Commune as criminal and to justify intensified repression.
The last Commune-held positions fell as Versailles completed its reconquest of Paris, ending the 72-day experiment in revolutionary municipal government and triggering a long aftermath of trials, imprisonments, and deportations.
Working-Class Politics and the Paris Commune (1868–1871)
