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Rebel to the core
Louise Michel
Edited by Nic Maclellan (part of the Rebel Lives series)
Ocean Press, 2004, £9.99
Reviewed by
Sarah Sachs-Eldridge
TEACHER, REVOLUTIONARY, lover, writer, fighter, feminist and
anti-imperialist are just some of the words that could be used to describe
Louise Michel. Living in late 19th century Paris, at a time of turmoil, she
seems to have spent every second of her life passionately organising, orating
and opposing all forms of oppression.
From setting up day-care for 200 children in besieged Paris
to fighting on the barricades to defend the Commune, Michel is certainly one of
the heroes of the Paris Commune of 1871 who should be remembered. In France she
has streets and stations named after her but I have to admit that I had never
heard of her before.
This short book is basically a tantalising taste which whets
the appetite for further reading on a whole range of issues from the Paris
Commune to the struggle in Algeria to overthrow French imperialism, to the role
of women in struggle. It gives us a flavour of life in France in the second half
of the 19th century, between the setting up of the International Working Men’s
Association, the Paris Commune, and its aftermath.
Michel was a passionate, empathetic character. The immense
sympathy she felt, which led to her radical and revolutionary life, started with
a hatred of the pain inflicted on animals and their inability to fight back. It
developed into ferocious opposition to the oppression of mankind and towards an
understanding of the potential of the working class to transform society.
This book is a catalogue of the ideas which influenced
Michel from the analysis of capitalism by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels to
Pierre Proudhon’s anarchistic approach and Michel’s own plans to assassinate
Louis Thiers, who was in charge of crushing the Paris Commune before becoming
French president – which she was dissuaded from doing. She was a rebel to the
core, who challenged and questioned everything. Arrested after the fall of the
Paris Commune, Michel faced a military tribunal in December 1871. She taunted
the judge, demonstrating her lack of respect for the authority of the court:
"Since it seems that any heart which beats for liberty has the right only to a
small lump of lead, I demand my share. If you let me live, I will not stop
crying for vengeance, and I will denounce the assassins on the board of pardons
to avenge my brothers".
Michel also challenged the stereotyping of women. She strove
to involve women in the struggle and was a member of both the women’s and the
men’s vigilance committees, going from one meeting to the next to ensure she
participated in as much discussion as possible. "People didn’t worry about which
sex they were before they did their duty", she writes in her memoirs. In an
excerpt from Women, Resistance and Revolution, Sheila Rowbotham illustrates the
attitude taken by the courts to these revolutionary women: "Unworthy creatures
who seem to have taken it on themselves to become an opprobrium to their sex,
and to repudiate the great and magnificent role of woman in society… a
legitimate wife, the object of our affection".
This is not just a biography but a mix of voices, ideas and
formats. Lines from the Berthold Brecht play, The Days of the Commune, are based
on the scene where Michel led the women of Montmartre to protect cannon on the
hill overlooking Paris. From her memoirs we learn that the cannon had been paid
for by the national guard and when the reactionaries from Versailles came for
the weapons the women of Paris covered the cannon with their bodies. When the
soldiers were told to fire they refused and the cannon remained with the people.
Three verses of the revolutionary anthem, L’Internationale,
written by Eugène Pottier in 1871 while he was jailed after the defeat of the
commune, are including in this book. Marx, Engels and Vladimir Lenin are quoted,
as well as Peter Kropotkin and Mikhail Bakunin. This is a snapshot of Louise
Michel – her thoughts and influences, and her passions and compassion – and of
this most important historical period. This is truly the life of a rebel.
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