Abstract

The article discusses the experience of the Paris Commune of 1871 from the point of view of the conceptions of democracy. It situates its historical novelty on the basis of the opposing views of Friedrich Nietzsche and Karl Marx. It critically exposes some of the later interpretations of the democratic content of the Commune in Marxism to inquire about the specificity of the democratic principle of the Commune, its novelty and its differences with representative democracies under capitalism.