The First French Communists: The Conspiracy of the Equals
[This article is excerpted from An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought (1995), volume 2, chapter 9: “Roots of Marxism: Messianic Communism,” section 3, “The Conspiracy of the Equals.”
Inspired by the works of Mably and especially Morelly, a young journalist from Picardy decided, amidst the turmoil of the French Revolution, to found a conspiratorial revolutionary organization to establish communism. Strategically, this was an advance on the two founders, who had had no idea but simple education of how to achieve their goal. François Noël (”Caius Gracchus”) Babeuf (1764–1797), a journalist and commissioner of land deeds in Picardy, came to Paris in 1790, and imbibed the heady revolutionary atmosphere. By 1793, Babeuf was committed to economic equality and communism. Two years later, he founded the secret Conspiracy of the Equals, organizing around his new journal, The Tribune of the People. The Tribune, like Lenin’s Iskra a century later, was used to set a coherent line for his cadre as well as for his public followers. As James Billington writes, Babeuf’s Tribune “was the first journal in history to be the legal arm of an extralegal revolutionary conspiracy.”1
The ultimate ideal of Babeuf and his Conspiracy was absolute equality. Nature, they claimed, calls for perfect equality; all inequality is injustice: therefore community of property was to be established. As the Conspiracy proclaimed emphatically in its Manifesto of Equals — written by one of Babeuf’s top aides, Sylvain Maréchal — “We demand real equality, or Death; that is what we must have.” “For its sake,” the Manifesto went on, “we are ready for anything; we are willing to sweep everything away. Let all the arts vanish, if necessary, as long as genuine equality remains for us.”
In the ideal communist society sought by the Conspiracy, private property would be abolished, and all property would be communal and stored in communal storehouses. From these storehouses, the goods would be distributed “equitably” by the superiors — apparently, there was to be a cadre of “superiors” in this oh so “equal” world! There was to be universal compulsory labor, “serving the fatherland … by useful labour.” Teachers or scientists “must submit certifications of loyalty” to the superiors. The Manifesto acknowledged that there would be an enormous expansion of government officials and bureaucrats in the communist world, inevitable where “the fatherland takes control of an individual from his birth till his death.” There would be severe punishments consisting of forced labor against “persons of either sex who set society a bad example by absence of civic-mindedness, by idleness, a luxurious way of life, licentiousness.” These punishments, described, as one historian notes “lovingly and in great detail,”2 consisted of deportation to prison islands.
Freedom of speech and the press are treated as one might expect. The press would not be allowed to “endanger the justice of equality” or to subject the Republic “to interminable and fatal discussions.” Moreover, “No one will be allowed to utter views that are in direct contradiction to the sacred principles of equality and the sovereignty of the people.” In point of fact, a work would only be allowed to appear in print “if the guardians of the will of the nation consider that its publication may benefit the Repub
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