Chapter 36 Paris Commune, guarding the golden rice bowl and starving

At the cemetery of Père Lachaise in Paris at the end of May 1871, with a few gunshots, the last batch of fighters of the Paris Commune fell under the "Communist Wall". Their eyes were full of fearlessness, anger, and a trace of regret and hope. Puzzled.The first proletarian regime in human history, the Paris Commune, was brutally suppressed only two months after its birth.What exactly caused the flames of revolution to be extinguished so quickly? A key element is money, the Bank of France's money! Any regime needs money if it wants to operate the state machinery in an organized manner.Without money, various resources cannot be mobilized, and wars cannot be waged.The Paris Commune was a lesson learned in blood.

"The Bank of France was established in 1800. 200 shareholders with voting rights are eligible to elect 12 members of the board of directors. If you analyze it in detail, you can find that these 200 shareholders basically belong to the same group of people who control the Bank of France. The 44 major families. And the seats owned by these families can be inherited. Among them, the seats of three families have remained unchanged for a hundred years. They are Mallet, Mirabeau and Rothschild Germany. The first two belong to the Swiss banking family. They were authorized by Napoleon to establish the Bank of France because they secretly funded Napoleon's "Coup d'état" in 1799. Rothschild is the representative of the Jewish banking family that emerged later. Through Napoleon who was in power in France The government, the Bourbon dynasty, and the Duke of Orleans regime carried out financial operations under cloud and rain, and the Luo family started the 'July Dynasty', which was unprecedentedly prosperous in France, and became a core member of the Bank of France." [2] The Bank of France controlled by them It is the core of the financial industry in Paris. At that time, Paris was not only the economic and financial center of France, but also the financial center of the entire European continent.The franc it issues is the legal tender of France, and the foreign exchange and gold it holds guarantee the international purchasing power of the franc.

The bankers who controlled the Bank of France believed that the goal of the proletarian regime represented by the Paris Commune was to oppose the bourgeoisie and fundamentally attack their core interests.On the other hand, they were concerned with war reparations and financing arrangements for Prussia.Even if the Paris Commune had nothing to do with the Bank of France after it came to power, the proletarian government would definitely insist on a tough attitude when it comes to reparations and financing.Not only may the amount of reparations be reduced, but financing may not necessarily be arranged by them. It is more likely that the government will borrow directly from the people. In this way, the big cake of war bonds they have dreamed of will be wiped out.Money has no motherland, bankers only see profits!Now that the Versailles government was easier to navigate, the bankers' choice was obvious.

The leaders of the faction who control the economic policy of the Paris Commune naively believe that the goal of the Paris Commune is the local autonomy of Paris, rather than becoming the central government of France. A fatal mistake was made at the hands of the old Authority, which was closely connected with Versailles. The leaders of the Paris Commune did not realize that whoever controls the Bank of France controls the economic lifeline of France.This lifeline not only determines who allocates resources, but also determines who the state apparatus serves.So this is not only an economic mistake, but also a political mistake.As Engels said, if the Commune took over the Bank of France, "it would be more meaningful than taking 10,000 hostages."

During the more than two months of the existence of the Commune, the Bank of France had billions of francs in cash alone.The Commune applied for and accepted a measly 16 million francs from the banks.The Commune did not take over the Bank of France. As a result, they starved for their golden rice bowls, and they were unable to force the bankers headed by Rothschild to put pressure on the Versailles government to force them to negotiate peace with the Paris Commune. Go to more than 200 million francs! With this huge sum of money, the Versailles government was able to "be rewarded with a lot of brave men". On the basis of more than 10,000 remnants and defeated generals, it took only a short time to assemble an army of 110,000 to counterattack the commune.

At this critical moment, in order to ensure the interests of the bankers, Rothschild directly intervened in the negotiations between the Versailles government and Bismarck on reparations after the Franco-Prussian War. "Bismarck's army has begun to rest, but the international bankers are busier. The war reparations business of up to 5 billion francs is a huge business that makes everyone salivate. If a 1% management fee is charged, this is the only item It's a big pie worth 50 million francs! In terms of the amount of war reparations, the French Thiers government envisioned 5 billion francs, but Bismarck took a piece of paper and quickly wrote down 6 billion francs!Thiers jumped up as if bitten by a dog.The two began to quarrel violently.

In the end, Thiers asked Rothschild to come forward to make amends.When Rothschild appeared, Bismarck directed all his anger at Rothschild, and everyone present was stunned.Rothschild was unmoved, still insisting that 5 billion francs is a 'sustainable amount of compensation'.If you get angry, Rothschild's position in the international financial market is unshakable. If you don't accept his conditions, you will never be able to raise enough war reparations in the European market.After weighing the pros and cons, Bismarck had to accept Rothschild's offer of 5 billion francs.When the French Thiers government could not handle the matter, the Luo family settled it immediately as soon as they came forward. "[3] With money, everything is easy to handle! "Iron Prime Minister" Bismarck generously promised to repatriate tens of thousands of French prisoners of war and maintain "neutral" cooperation, even including the Versailles army crossing the Prussian defense line to attack Paris.

It is a pity that when the Versailles government, Bismarck, and international bankers united to destroy their common enemy, the Paris Commune, and try to regain power, the revolutionaries spent their time and energy on such trivial matters as how to improve the treatment of teachers superior.So, the tragedy happened so inevitably. The power of a bank stems from the commodity it deals in—money, and the power of a central bank stems from its control over the source of money.The most effective way to control an economy is to control the currency of the economy; and to control the currency of an economy, the most important thing is to control the banking system that creates money, especially the central bank.

The lessons of the Paris Commune show how fragile and vulnerable a revolutionary regime is without its economic lifeline.In modern society, banks, especially the financial system with the central bank as the core, are very important to a regime and an economy.As early as 1848 in the Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels clearly pointed out that the proletariat, which has become the ruling class, should "concentrate credit in the hands of the state through the state bank with state capital and exclusive monopoly power" [4 】. Half a century after the failure of the Paris Commune, it was Lenin who turned the ideas of Marx and Engels into reality. Lenin's understanding and practice of the banking system were very good. He pointed out that banks are "the center of modern economic life and are The nerve center of the entire capitalist national economic system" [5]. "Modern banking is so inextricably bound up with commerce (food and all other commerce) and industry that absolutely nothing of importance, anything 'revolutionary democracy' can be done without 'handling' the banks. "

It is precisely because the Soviet Union has firmly controlled the banking system that it has miraculously survived countless difficulties. In just 15 years, it has transformed from a backward low-level country into a world-class one. Superpower and leader of the communist world. Since the Russo-Japanese War in 1905 ended in Russia's disastrous defeat, Russia has been reduced to a poor beggar among the great powers. In the late period of the First World War in 1917, the Russian October Revolution broke out. In order to preserve its strength for the construction of the Soviet Union, Soviet Russia withdrew from the First World War and signed the "Brest Peace Treaty" with Germany, which was humiliating and humiliating, and ceded 1 million square meters kilometers of land, lost 90% of coal, 73% of iron ore, 54% of industry and 33% of railways, and paid 6 billion marks to Germany.Then there was the civil war in Soviet Russia that lasted for many years, and the situation did not gradually stabilize until 1923.After the establishment of the Soviet Union, economic work gradually entered the right track, and the banking system under state control immediately exerted great power on economic recovery and the rise of heavy industry.Just 15 years later, the gross industrial output of the Soviet Union jumped to the second place in the world and became one of the most powerful countries in the world.When the Japanese army and the Soviet army collided head-on in Nomonhan in 1939, on the battlefield of 7 square kilometers, on the front of hundreds of meters wide, the torrent of Soviet tanks covered the sky, the sound of guns was rumbling, and the elite of the Japanese Kwantung Army Lost all.During the Great Patriotic War, the strong production capacity of heavy industry ensured that the Soviet Union could continuously supply military equipment to the front until Berlin was conquered.

Without strong financial power, there can be no strong industry and national defense.