Eugène Edine Pottier

[6] His songs of this period include titles such as "Etats généraux du travail" [Estates General of Labor] "Liberté, égalité, fraternité, et gaité" (best translated as "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity--and Fun")[7][8] After the coup by Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte, who called himself Napoleon III, crushed the Second Republic in favor of the Second Empire, Pottier worked as an industrial designer.

Pottier's songs from this period, while not as overtly political, still critiqued social and economic injustice, with titles such as "Ce que dit le pain" [What the Bread Says], or environmental destruction "La mort d'un globe" [Death of a World].

[11][12] Others reflected his curiosity and engagement with science and industrial innovation in France and the world, in songs such as "La nouvelle ère" [The New Era], which celebrated the first trans-Atlantic telegraphic cable and with it instantaneous contact between Europe and North America.

[19][20] In his cover letter, he said that Freemasonry was "composed of a group of freethinkers who, having made a clean sweep on tradition and recognizing nothing superior to human reason, consciously dedicate themselves in search of Truth and Justice".

[21] Although not well-known in the U.S., Pottier gave several speeches to commemorate the inaugural meeting of the U.S. Socialist Labor Party, Paterson, N.J chapter in 1878, and the anniversary of the Commune's founding on 18 March 1878; the latter was publishes as a pamphlet in New Jersey and as far away as San Francisco.

When "Chacun vit de son métier" [To Each His Trade] won the silver medal at La Lice Chansonnière (a workers' song competition) in 1883, Pottier resumed contact with his Communard comrades, especially Jean Allemane and Jules Vallès.

[24] Allemane published this and other popular songs by Pottier such as "Jean Misère (best translated as Johnny Misery) and "Political Economy" in pamphlet form and in a small anthology with a telling title, Poésies d'économie sociale et chansons socialistes révolutionnaires.

[28][29] The setting that is usually sung today was composed only in July 1888 by Pierre De Geyter for the workers singing club Le Lyre Travailleur after a young socialist teacher Charles Gros shared it with the future mayor of the industrial town of Lille Gustave Delory.

This version served as the anthem of the Soviet Union from 1919–40 and Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, aka Lenin, who admired the Commune, acknowledged the 25th anniversary of Pottier's death in a 1913 article in Pravda.

A key song on Barback album,The Commune did not die, written in Paris in May 1886, may celebrate not only the Communard dead and their French socialist inheritors but also activists in the International Working Peoples Association killed in the Haymarket incident in Chicago that month.