Honoring Edmond Megy, the escaped Blanquist Communard who came to the U.S. and died the previous year, the ‘Alarm’ published his speech before Commune commemoration at New York’s Beethoven Hall on March 17, 1878.

‘Edmond Megy, Workingman and Revolutionist, Talks to American Workingmen’ from The Alarm (Chicago). Vol. 2 No. 7. November 14, 1885.

PARIS COMMUNE ITS OBJECT AND PURPOSES DESCRIBED BY AN ESCAPED COMMUNIST.

READ AND PONDER.

The following speech was made by one of the prominent participants in the Paris commune. A careful reading of it will give American workingmen an intelligent idea of the true object and character of the revolution of 1871, in Paris, which has been so shamefully and foully misrepresented by the capitalistic press of the entire world:

The full text of the speech delivered by Citizen Elmond Megy, the escaped Communist, at Beethoven Hall banquet, March 17, 1878, says the New York World, has been published in pamphlet form, the proceeds of its sale being applied to the benefit of the Communists transported to New Caledonia. Mr. Megy’s speech begins as follows:

The honorary president of the association, it should be said, is the veteran revolutionist, Blanqui, whom the French authorities have held in prison for the last seven years. (He is now dead)

Now more than ever the name of Blanqui is an actuality, for (to the shame of the self-styled French republic) the great apostle of Social Revolution is still confined in the prison of Clairveaux, his offense being his refusal to become the accomplice of the traitors who gave up the republic to the royalists of France and the imperialists of Germany.

Thiers, who had already prepared his coup d’etat, with a view to advertising himself as the savior of society, and to the destruction of the republic, had arrested Blanqui at Calors a fortnight before the 18th of March, [Note The date of the Communist rising of 1871] and when the Commune, in whose operation he took no part, proposed the exchange of our illustrious friend against all the hostages he might name, Thiers promptly refused to enter into the arrangement. “You dare not meet Blanqui,” said Citizen Flotte, the delegate of the Commune. “Well, I had rather not,” replied Thiers. “Do what you will with will with your hostages; I will keep mine.”

The pretended republican government of today, by keeping Blanqui in prison for seven years, commits a most infamous act of most abominable cowardice, and it is to protest anew against the perfidy of these bogus republicans who at this moment hold France in their talons that we have selected Citizen Blanqui as honorary president of this celebration.

Blanqui made his debut in public life behind a barricade in the Rue St. Denis at the elections of 1827. He was there wounded in the neck. He fought again in 1830, and took part in all the revolutionary enterprises, of the republican party against Louis Philippe. Condemned to death in May, 1839, his sentence was commuted to perpetual imprisonment. He was dying in the hospital of Tours, when the revolution of 1848 freed him. To the provisional goernment he appeared like a spectre. “Have you come to overthrow us?” said Recurt. “No,” said Blanqui, “but to bar the road behind you.” Blanqui’s legendary honesty, his absolute devotion to the revolutionary cause, have made the intriguers and thieves who, beneath a republican mask, cheat the people with enervating doctrines, which lead them round of perpetually the same ignominy and misery have made them shiver with fear. These child ren of falsehood fear truth; for this reason they have buried Blanqui alive, so that the people might not hear the last appeal of him who, for the sake of the revolutionary cause, has undergone all humiliations–every torture of body and mind upon whom the implacable haters of right most hideous have heaped the calumnies. The France of the revolution, brutified by clericalism, accepted the eighteen years of the Empire, and, by her apathy and maddening cowardice, made herself privy to all the acts of Bonaparte. She made her bed in the gutter and gloried in it; she made of her sons food of powder at the demand of a brigand; she let perish of hunger the wives, sisters and daughters to whom fusillades, the guillotine and exile left no means of support but prostitution; she applauded the soldiery that on every side shot down the workingmen; she hailed the reign of the sabre and cried. “Vive l’Empereur.”

After glorifying “the handful of courageous citizens who offered themselves as a holocaust,” Blanqui, Flourens, Duval, Ferre, Gentón, Delescluze, and others, Citizen Megy proceeded to describe the outbreak of March 18, 1871, viewing it from the Communists’ standpoint, of course, as a popular manifestation against the disarmament and surrender of Paris, and applauding the execution by the revolted National Guards of their generals, Lecomte and Clement-Thomas. He then continued:

A people up in arms is a free people. “Get lead and you’ll have bread,” Blanqui had said.

The 18th of March may be described as containing two very distinct insurrections–that of the government against the people, that of the people against the govern- mental coup d’etat. d’etat. I come now to.

THE COMMUNE.

“The Commune was the rising of the workers, enslaved by the existing social organization, against those who arrogate to themselves the right to consume, without laboring, the production of the workers, who receive for their toil only poverty.”

Thus thought all who fought under the flag of the Commune. “Communalism,” municipal liberty,’ and the like are hollow words which answer to nothing serious and serve to mislead the people and make them lose sight of the true and only aim of social revolution. We could not too vehemently hold up those who use these words to popular distrust.” In point of fact, what matters it whether one hand or another wields the lash that falls upon our backs- whether the chain that binds us to the pillory of misery is silvered or gilt? Is not the result always the same?

What the people want is the rights of life, not the ridiculous privilege of naming their jailers. Let it be thoroughly understood: The right to live is not to be granted as a favor, it is only really possessed where it has been obtained by conquest.

It is for these reasons that the Commune of Paris was not a local matter, but in the highest sense a question affecting all humanity. In affirming its rights the populace of Paris affirmed the rights of every being who suffers. It was over thrown, but the Communist idea is stronger than ever, because misery is more intense than ever.

The workingmen of Pittsburg proved recently that the people everywhere stand on the platform of the right to live, and that the great social revolution had been implanted in American soil.

Now let the people do their duty. Citizens, the frightful crisis through which we are passing shows in the clearest fashion that only revolution can give to the producer that which belongs to him of right. They have their labor for their pains who seek to prove that economic crises spring from the shutting down of this or that man’s works, the suspension of banks, the too keen competition of machinery with workingmen. Bosh! All bosh!

For our part we hold that so long as the sun shines and water guns, while the earth yields a harvest and the seas are not dried up, there should be upon the earth no human being in want. The hideous misery beneath which groan and writhe the masses, is a crime against humanity to be laid to the account of the “directing classes” that are interested in starving and brutifying the people the more successfully to rob it. In that day when the people, knowing that the earth belongs to all, shall resolutely reclaim its rights, in that day, citizens, the actual existing (fabric of) society, begetter of crime and of misery, shall have had its day. But the people must be on the alert. If they are not, there will be a perpetual crisis and never ending misery.

The Alarm was an extremely important paper at a momentous moment in the history of the US and international workers’ movement. The Alarm was the paper of the International Working People’s Association produced weekly in Chicago and edited by Albert Parsons. The IWPA was formed by anarchists and social revolutionists who left the Socialist Labor Party in 1883 led by Johann Most who had recently arrived in the States. The SLP was then dominated by German-speaking Lassalleans focused on electoral work, and a smaller group of Marxists largely focused on craft unions. In the immigrant slums of proletarian Chicago, neither were as appealing as the city’s Lehr-und-Wehr Vereine (Education and Defense Societies) which armed and trained themselves for the class war. With 5000 members by the mid-1880s, the IWPA quickly far outgrew the SLP, and signified the larger dominance of anarchism on radical thought in that decade. The Alarm first appeared on October 4, 1884, one of eight IWPA papers that formed, but the only one in English. Parsons was formerly the assistant-editor of the SLP’s ‘People’ newspaper and a pioneer member of the American Typographical Union. By early 1886 Alarm claimed a run of 3000, while the other Chicago IWPA papers, the daily German Arbeiter-Zeitung (Workers’ Newspaper) edited by August Spies and weeklies Der Vorbote (The Harbinger) had between 7-8000 each, while the weekly Der Fackel (The Torch) ran 12000 copies an issue. A Czech-language weekly Budoucnost (The Future) was also produced. Parsons, assisted by Lizzie Holmes and his wife Lucy Parsons, issued a militant working-class paper. The Alarm was incendiary in its language, literally. Along with openly advocating the use of force, The Alarm published bomb-making instructions. Suppressed immediately after May 4, 1886, the last issue edited by Parson was April 24. On November 5, 1887, one week before Parson’s execution, The Alarm was relaunched by Dyer Lum but only lasted half a year. Restarted again in 1888, The Alarm finally ended in February 1889. The Alarm is a crucial resource to understanding the rise of anarchism in the US and the world of Haymarket and one of the most radical eras in US working class history.

PDF of full issue: https://dds.crl.edu/item/54015