Karl Marx’s analysis of the Paris Commune of 1871, when the citizens of Paris rose up against their government and installed a system of radical democracy until they were bloodily suppressed, is widely regarded as the definitive account. In his incisive introduction to this new presentation, Alain Badiou shows how a movement propelled itself into history.

Alain Badiou is the author of Ethics, Metapolitics, and Polemics. He teaches philosophy at the École Normale Superieure.