The Commune was the biggest festival of the nineteenth century. Underlying the events of that spring of 1871 one can see the insurgents’
feeling that they had become the masters of their own history, not so
much on the level of “governmental” politics as on the level of their
everyday life.
Internationale situationniste #12
The Commune represents the only implementation of a revolutionary urbanism to date—attacking on the spot the petrified signs of the dominant organization of life, understanding social space in political
terms, refusing to accept the innocence of any monument.
Internationale situationniste #12
The Paris Commune succumbed less to the force of arms than the force of habit.
Internationale situationniste #12
Theoreticians who examine the history of this movement from a divinely omniscient viewpoint (like that found in classical novels) can easily demonstrate that the Commune was objectively doomed to failure and could not have been fulfilled. They forget
that for those who really lived it, the fulfillment was already there.