In Honor Of The 145^th Anniversary Of The Paris Commune -Jean Jacques Paget’s Dream

 

Jean Jacques Paget, all of age fourteen, son of Francois Paget the journeyman tinsmith and a known radical thinker, a follower of Proudhon, around the neighborhood, had not slept a wink the past twenty-four hours. Well, maybe a couple of winks after they, he and his comrades, had erected the barricade at the corner of Saint Catherine’s, and he had rested his eyes for a few minutes. But like the bulletin from the Central Committee of the National Guard stated every citizen of Paris, every honest democrat, every person who stood against the depredations of the Thiers government that had fled to Versailles in panic needed to be vigilant, needed to defend the Commune with his or her life. And young Paget, leaning for support against some chairs that had hastily been thrown on the pile was willing, young as he was, to defend the Commune with his life (and he thought his father too although he was away at the Hotel de Ville attending to Committee of Public Safety business and so not at the barricade). He was sure of that, just as sure as he was of the dream he had of what would come of all this when the dust settled, when they could take down the barricades and begin life, a people’s  commune life, like his father kept  arguing with one and all about.

Young Paget, if he had been asked the finer points of  political doctrine would have had to confess that he was unaware of what the programs of Blanqui  and Proudhon and like were about  but he  knew, knew in a mind’s eye way, what he wanted. First and foremost he wanted cheap bread for the table; bread so he did not allows feel hungry like now with bread dear in his growing bones, bones suffering all the suffering a fourteen year old suffers. He wanted free education so he could learn to read better, and maybe become a printer or a skilled tradesman and not have to drudge away in some crummy old factory like the ones that were starting to foul up the air of the neighborhood. He wanted an end to military service for the state, the state that had taken his older brother Leon away, Leon who was now a prisoner of the bloody Germans who were howling at the outer walls of his dear Paris. Let the Central Committee of the National Guard provide for the defense, they could do better than that fool Louis Bonaparte had done. He wanted the banks abolished, or at least controlled some so Paget, Senior, Papa, could finally end his journeymanship and open his own shop. He wanted the streets cleaned up too so every time it rained he didn’t get his shoes all mucked up and smelly for a week. He wanted a house where the roof didn’t leak and there were not about eight people to each room. He wanted a room of his own, if possible, no more than two though. He wanted free boat rides on the Seine although he would not insist on that demand. Mainly though he wanted the government to leave him and family alone, stop taking their money for never-ending taxes and keeping Paget, Senior away from his dream. And he thought he was right, right in the sense that he was feeling that his father and his friends and comrades could figure out how to run the government without a lot of muss and fuss, and that was what he really was willing to defend, defend to the death if necessary if it came to that…