By Stephen Millies
One hundred fifty years ago, poor and working people in Paris took power into their own hands. The Paris Commune was born on March 18, 1871.
Karl Marx ― the founder of scientific socialism, also known as communism ― wrote that the workers in Paris “had stormed heaven.”
The world’s first working-class government lasted just 72 days before being drowned in blood. At least 30,000 of its supporters were killed by counter-revolutionary forces.
Yet the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution and every socialist revolution that followed were inspired by the workers of Paris. The Bolshevik leader Lenin declared that “we all stand on the shoulders of the Commune.”