Blog post

The Paris Commune remains alive

Celebrating the 155th anniversary of The Paris Commune.

27 May 2026

The Paris Commune remains alive

The Paris Commune ended in the early afternoon of May 28th 1871, but its legacy lives on.

In Quentin Deluermoz's newly translated history of the commune, he shows how the Paris Commune reverberated around the globe, as a world revolutionary event and as a laboratory for republican and socialist ideas. 

"Unquestionably, the Paris Commune remains alive in the twenty-first century. It has taken on meanings of its own, on a global scale, extending beyond the ideological reinterpretations that accumulated around it during the twentieth century. Indeed, its meanings are still evolving. While the Commune remains synonymous with social struggle and the desire for equality, for instance, it is today more closely associated with the project of reappropriating democracy ‘from below’ than with the workers’ movements with which it was long identified. One cannot help but be struck by how multi-layered the Commune’s meanings are. This multiplicity reflects our contemporary moment – though not that alone. What about the events of 1871 that explains the Commune’s enduring presence, and its continual metamorphoses? And what might have escaped historians’ attention? The Paris Commune seeks to answer these questions."

All books on this list, including the newly released The Paris Commune, are available for 30% off until Tuesday, June 2nd at 11:59 EST. 

[book-strip index="1"]

[book-strip index="2"]

Book strip #1

Book strip #2

  • The History of the Paris Commune of 1871
    In 1871, the working class of Paris, incensed by their lack of political power and tired of being exploited, seized control of the capital. This book is the outstanding history of the Commune, theh...
    Paperback
  • Communal Luxury
    Kristin Ross’s new work on the thought and culture of the Communard uprising of 1871 resonates with the motivations and actions of contemporary protest, which has found its most powerful expression...
    Paperback
  • Revolution
    This book reinterprets the history of nineteenth and twentieth-century revolutions by composing a constellation of “dialectical images”: Marx’s “locomotives of history,” Alexandra Kollontai’s sexua...
  • The Emergence of Social Space
    The 1870s in France – Rimbaud’s moment, and the subject of this book – is a decade virtually ignored in most standard histories in France. Yet it was the moment of two significant spatial events: F...
    Paperback
  • The Invention of Paris
    The Invention of Paris is a tour through the streets and history of the French capital under the guidance of radical Parisian author and publisher Eric Hazan.Hazan reveals a city whose squares echo...
    Paperback