The Paris Commune or Fourth French Revolution s a government that briefly rules Paris from March 18 (more formally, from March 28) to May 28, 1871.

It exists before the split between anarchists and Marxists takes place, and it is hailed by both groups as the first assumption of power by the working class during the Industrial Revolution.

Debates over the policies and outcome of the Commune contribute to the break between these two political groups.In a formal sense, the Paris Commune simply acts as the local authority, the city council (in French, the "commune"), which exercises power in Paris for two months in the spring of 1871.

However, the conditions in which it formed, its controversial decrees, and its violent end make its tenure one of the more important political episodes of the time.