only to make peace it had been elected. This polemical argument, however, was merely a blow in the air, because the Commune did not represent an insurrection for the purpose of compelling a new election, but for the purpose of winning special rights for Paris (election of its own officials, National Guard, etc.) in order to save Paris and the other large towns from the Versaillese reaction which had found expression through universal suffrage. A member of the Central Committee of Paris declared in reply to Clemenceau's reproach quoted above, "We are not thinking of laying down laws for France—we have suffered from that too long already—but we are no longer willing that the force of the people being outvoted by the backward rural districts should continue. The point in question is not whether your mandate or ours (that is, the mandate of the National Assembly or that of the Communards) is the lawful one. We say to you! 'The revolution is here, but we are no usurpers. We desire to call upon Paris to appoint its representatives.'" While Herr Kautsky, after shamelessly concealing the character of the Commune as an insurrection against the "democratic" National Assembly represents the general election to the Commune as the burial of its democratic character and of the source of its power, this bowing of the Commune to the democracy of Paris after it had rebelled against the democracy of the country districts, has no meaning from the point of view of principle. The tactical manoeuvre of the Commune is perfectly clear. The reaction against which the Commune rebelled had not its majority in Paris or in the large towns, but in the rural districts. Paris, where the proletariat and the Radical petit-bourgeoisie had a decisive majority; Paris, whose counter-revolutionaries had fled; Paris, which recognized the general election, had nothing to do with democracy "in general:" what it achieved was the subordination of all others to the mass of the proletariat and the petit-bourgeoisie, the bearers of the Commune.
From the circumstance that the Commune of Paris had no enemies on its own soil (the counter-revolutionaries and
