In her latest reading of French revolutionary events, Ross decenters the story of the Paris Commune. For her, the Commune represents neither a stage in French national history located in 1871 Paris nor an anticipation of the Bolshevik revolution. Instead, the meaning of the Commune lies in the political imaginary that followed. It is less important as an event than as a generator of theory. “Actions produce dreams and ideas,” she claims, “not the reverse” (7).
For Ross, the ideas that spun out in the decades after 1871 can be distilled into the phrase “communal luxury.” For the Communards and their fellow travelers, including Élisée Reclus, William Morris, Peter Kropotkin, and Karl Marx, “The world [was] divided between those who can and those who cannot afford the luxury of playing with words and images” (50). The Paris Commune sought to dismantle this division and establish an alternative to nation-state and...