this post was submitted on 22 Sep 2026
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Who exactly is surprised that an independent collective in the middle of a capital city surrounded by armies of every country allying themselves because independence is worse than their decades-old feud cannot sustain an army and is thus crushed, violently executed and has their history erased by building a cutesy church on top of it
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacr%C3%A9-C%C5%93ur,_Paris
"They couldn't feed their army" is an interesting critique for an egalitarian project
We are talking about economic systems. If the system is not able to keep even the most basic of roles of organized society (defense), it has failed.
defense is not the most basic role of society, what kind of distorted view is that. Defense for everyone is already a specific point of view at odds with the whole concept of what the Commune is about. There's little need to talk about an economic system if the economic science itself doesn't account for what is the goal here (namely, self-organization doesn't revolve around a market)
Not the basic role, but it is one of the most basic ones.
You are projecting. You wish that people could live in peace and harmony and that followed the "concept" of the Commune. I am just pointing out that - as noble and good their ideals were - the Commune catastrophically failed when it was put into practice and had to face the reality of the world.
It shows a lot of hubris to talk about "goals" for society at large. It can work for a small group of people with a shared view and unchallenged leadership (like a small corporation or a family clan), but try living like that in anything larger than a small village and you will quickly see that the system is not sustainable. The Commune of Paris is only one of many examples.
The Commune was slaughtered by an international alliance of interests aligned with capitalistic and aristocratic interests. We don't know whether it would have worked or not, but it has brought enough progress in its short lifetime to justify it as better than the rest: free school for everyone, everyone (man, woman, foreigner) can vote and be elected, work is limited in time, etc...
The "reality of the world" doesn't exist. You make it sound like it's fate, it's destiny, but it's not: humans actively decided to fill the streets of Paris with the blood of Communards, humans actively executed the orders, spread this.
Then maybe we shouldn't try to have large-spanning entities. Those are only possible with a highly hierarchical system which is exactly the source of the problem. Better to have a thousand Communes than one big State. Just like internet services. Yes, one big central monopolistic servic can be run but no one here will ever argue it is better or inevitable or "just how the real world works", because it's not.
No, it didn't. It's very easy to see progress in the short term if you are sacrificing the long-term. The "free school for everyone" was not really free, it was sustained by the Commune taking resources from outside, but sooner or later they would run out of Other People's Money.
Yes, agreed. This is one of the reasons that I don't like to see the Fediverse as a bunch of "platforms" and would prefer to have it working as a proper decentralized web.
Internet services only work because everyone speaks the same language/protocols, which is only achievable with a large centralized authority, or with a network where peers do no trust each other (blockchain-style).
Resources they themselves were producing ? How is that other people's resources ? If you're talking about land/factories, it's the same thing: how does it not belong to those who build and work it ?
I see we are at odds at appreciating what people can do. There is no need for an authority to enforce anything: people do talk with each other. People can build trust in each other without an authority breathing down their neck, and without assuming everyone's against each other. Working with each other, for each other, works.
Not enough to sustain itself. This is what I meant in the beginning with "not able to afford its own army". They were clearly unable to produce enough total wealth to share and distribute among the people.
Only if you are willing to accept medieval-age levels of economic output, and only for small scale populations who are completely isolated who have somewhat equal access to available resources.