supporters of private property and favoured moral equality over material equality.
Nowhere was this more evident than in the summary punishment meted out to the
faction constituted by the Hébertists. Jacques-René Hébert and his followers were
not only atheists (anathema to Robespierre) but also advocates of an ‘agrarian law’
modelled on that of ancient Rome and designed to bring about a wholesale
redistribution of wealth. On the instructions of the Committee of Public Safety
they were executed on 24 March 1794. In contrast, the Jacobin vision was one of a
moralized capitalism, free of speculation, monopoly, and undue opulence, and
peopled by hard-working and frugal property owners and artisans.
With the removal of the Jacobins from power, it became clear to what remained
of the radical supporters of the sans-culottes that the Revolution had stalled and that
all efforts to ameliorate the conditions of the poor were to be abandoned. Now, and
in the shape of the Conspiration pour l’Égalité led by François-Noël (Gracchus)
Babeuf, France was to witness the birth of her first recognizably communist
movement. The key document was Sylvain Maréchal’s Manifeste des Egaux, the
programmatic statement that set out the goals of Babeuf and his fellow conspira-
tors. Its central argument was that the French Revolution was ‘only the harbinger of
a greater and more solemn revolution’.11 Thus conceived, the goal of the revolution
was to destroy inequality and re-establish the happiness and well-being of all. To
that end, the manifesto proclaimed, the only choice was between ‘real equality and
death’. Let us be finished, it went on, with ‘the revolting distinctions between rich
and poor, the great and the small, masters and servants, the governors and the
governed’. There must be an end to private property: ‘the earth belongs to no one’.
The ‘common good’ and the ‘community of goods’ were to be the guiding
principles of the new society.
Needless to say, Babeuf ’s conspiracy came to nothing, a police spy having kept
the government of the Directory informed of their every move. The leaders were
arrested on 10 May 1796 and Babeuf, after a trial in which he proclaimed that
‘property is the source of all the evils upon this earth’,12 was subsequently executed
in May 1797. It was a glorious fate, he told his accusers, ‘to die for the cause of
virtue’. Others of the conspirators, including Filippo Buonarroti, were deported.
But despite this ignominious defeat a set of principles had been set out that was to
inspire many a later socialist in their quest to establish a republic of equals. The
immediate consequence, however, was to drive egalitarian demands underground
and to encourage a seemingly inexhaustible enthusiasm for secret organizations and
societies among those intent upon securing radical social change. The latter
flourished in particular under the Restoration but none was able to mastermind
11 See Philippe Buonarroti, Conspiration pour l’Égalité, dite de Babeuf (Brussels, 1828), ii. 130–6.
12 Ibid. i. 53.
392
Insurrection, Utopianism, and Socialism
anything but the most abortive and futile of uprisings. All the same, the principles
of Babouvism came to the surface yet again when in 1828, and to great effect, the
now-aged exile Buonarroti published his history of Babeuf ’s conspiracy.
When retold in this sanitized version, the Revolution had been a struggle
between the ‘order of egoism and of aristocracy’ and the promoters of ‘the order
of equality’, between avarice and ignorance and the ‘sublime cause’ of ‘the impre-
scribable rights of humanity’. For all its misplaced recognition of the right to
property, the democratic constitution of 1793, with its acknowledgement of the
sovereignty of the people, had been the Revolution’s high point, the very ‘palladi-
um of French liberty’. It had also held out the prospect of greater economic
equality. The constitution of 1795, in contrast, was an instrument of tyranny
and violence, an act of treason and counter-revolution: and, with just cause, it had
been this corrupt and illegal regime that Babeuf and his fellow conspirators had
sought to overthrow. What followed from the pen of Buonarroti was, first, an
account of the manner in which the insurrection was to be carried out and, second,
a description of ‘the system of equality’.
Conceived in the subterranean worlds of the prison cell and the Directoire secret
de salut public, the plan had been to place an agent in each of the (then) twelve
arrondissements of Paris and to supplement these with others among the military
units located in and around the capital. At a precisely coordinated moment and
upon the orders of its central command, this clandestine organization was to draw
upon the discontent of the masses and instigate a popular insurrection. ‘From this
way of thinking’, Buonarroti commented, ‘was born the project of replacing the
existing government with a revolutionary and provisional authority constituted in
such a manner as to protect forever the people from the influence of the enemies of
equality and to provide them with the unity of will necessary to secure republican
institutions.’13 To this Buonarroti added his own opinion that the ‘experience of
the French Revolution’ had demonstrated that ‘in order to establish equality in a
corrupt nation one had need of a strong and irresistible authority’ placed in the
hands of those who were ‘wise and strongly committed to revolution’.14 No sooner
would the insurrection have commenced than the first measures designed to
establish ‘the new social order’ would have been introduced. The possessions of
the enemies of the people were to be redistributed immediately and the poor would
be housed and fed at the expense of the republic. After this, a set of ‘transitional
institutions’ were to be put in place with the express intention of creating ‘an
unrestricted equality’ and of founding ‘the greatest possible happiness for all’.
Buonarroti’s description of this process of transition was detailed in the extreme.
Top of the list were measures to secure the complete abolition of private property
and the equal distribution of wealth. To these was added an obligation upon
everyone to work equally for the prosperity and maintenance of society as a
whole. Labour was to be the constituent activity of the new order. Much followed
from this. Work was to be a function regulated by law and citizens were to be
13 See Philippe Buonarroti, Conspiration pour l’Egalité, dite de Babeuf (Brussels, 1828), 133.
14 Ibid. 134 n. 1, 139 n. 1.
Insurrection, Utopianism, and Socialism
393
distributed to particular occupations according to the needs of the nation. All
external trade was to be subject to the direction of the republic. The ‘surplus’ of the
population, no longer required to serve the rich and perform the old functions of
government, would move from the capital and the large cities, the countryside as a
consequence being ‘imperceptibly’ covered by villages built in ‘the most healthy
and convenient locations’. Houses, furniture, and clothing would be simple
and
clean. ‘It is essential to the happiness of individuals and to the preservation of public
order’, Buonarroti wrote, ‘that in his compatriots the citizen habitually finds only
those who are his equals and his brothers and that he nowhere comes across the least
sign of superiority, however superficial.’15 Public buildings, and especially those
dedicated to the exercise of popular sovereignty, were however to be ‘magnificent’
in design.
The political structures of the new society were to be similarly reformed. Once
the insurrectionary committee had decided that temporary dictatorship had served
its purpose, the people were to be called upon constantly to exercise their sover-
eignty and all those who had served the requisite time in ‘military camps’ were to
play their role as citizens. An intricate system of legislative and consultative
assemblies would be introduced but few laws, it was envisaged, would be required
by a people without property, vices, crimes, money, or need for taxes. Thus, for the
most part, the assemblies of the people would concern themselves with instituting
the festivals and ceremonies needed to encourage civic duty and to ‘repress the
secret desires of egoism’. Education, taking account of the ‘natural division’
between the sexes, would ‘change the face of the nation’, instilling a love of country,
of liberty, and of equality; freedom of the press would exist but would not extend to
the right to question ‘the sacred principles of equality and of the sovereignty of the
people’. In similar vein, it would be decreed that equality alone met with the
approval of the divine power. It goes without saying that a simplicity of morals
would be required of everyone and that everything was to be done to discourage a
liking for frivolity and the superfluous. Taken as a whole, the project was no better
summarized than by Buonarroti’s observation that ‘the masterwork of politics lies
in the modification of the human heart through education, example, reasoning,
opinion, and encouragement in such a way that no other desires are formed than
those which tend to make society more free, happier, and stronger. When a nation
has reached this point . . . the most onerous duties are observed with pleasure;
laws are obeyed freely; the limits imposed upon natural independence are seen as
benefits; reasonable proposals meet with no opposition; and a unity of interest, will
and action exists within the body politic.’16
There was much in this argument that presaged the calamities of the future, not
least the misguided assumption that revolutionary dictatorship would be only
temporary and the belief that the liberty of the individual could be so easily and
readily subsumed without loss under the wishes of a unanimous collectivity.
Nevertheless, by effectively ignoring the differences that had separated the Jacobins
15 Ibid. 225.
16 Ibid. 228–9.
394
Insurrection, Utopianism, and Socialism
from Babeuf and his supporters, Buonarroti established that, if the Revolution of
1789 had not been socialist, it had given birth to a set of egalitarian aspirations and
had provided an experience of revolution that could be drawn upon by adherents of
a nascent socialist movement in the years to come. The nineteenth century was to
provide no shortage of such enthusiasts.
Of one thing there can be no doubt: conceptions of property were transformed
during the Revolution.17 No longer was ownership to be tied to privilege but to
labour. Similarly, the spirit and practices of corporation that had so defined the
economy of the ancien régime were consigned to the past, making way for the
emergence of something resembling a market economy. In those circumstances,
France took its first, hesitant steps towards industrialization and, in place of the
craft workshop and the artisan, there gradually emerged the factory and the
proletarian. If this pattern of industrial development was not uniform either across
the country or over time, it was extensive, especially in such sectors as textiles and
mining. The organized labour movement, on the other hand, remained little
developed during the years of the Restoration, with the result that expressions of
popular protest and disaffection were not only spasmodic but also pre-industrial in
style and content (the bread riot posing far more of a threat to public order than
strike action). Consequently, in the early decades of the century socialist ideas
tended to emerge outside and separate from those workers’ organizations that had
come into existence, and to that extent they reflected a different set of concerns and
preoccupations. The ambition was first and foremost to capture the apparatus of
the State.18
This was best exemplified by the inheritors of the Babouvist tradition, and most
notably by the person of Auguste Blanqui. Blanqui’s life was one of agitation,
conspiracy, trials, and lengthy imprisonment, his career as a dedicated revolutionary
stretching from the early 1830s until his death in 1881. If he himself became a
legend and an object of intense reverence, no one did more to perpetuate and
glorify the revolutionary memories of the past or to consolidate them into a living
tradition of opposition to the established order. To that end, Blanqui never wavered
in his conviction that, to achieve the goal of emancipation, the people would have
need of ‘a revolutionary authority’ led by a minority of committed revolutionaries.
Partial reforms and the ballot box were an irrelevance beside the imperative of
forcibly seizing control of the State at the earliest possible opportunity. To his
credit, Blanqui repeatedly attempted to put these ideas into practice, but to no avail
and at great personal cost: nevertheless, among his admirers, faith in the tactics of
insurrection lived on through the Revolution of 1848, the Paris Commune, and,
although much diminished, into the early years of the Third Republic.
One writer on the left who, on the face of things, never shared this vision of
conspiratorial politics was Étienne Cabet. Rather than the insurrectionary and
17 See William H. Sewell, jun., Work and Revolution in France: The Language of Labor from the
Old Regime to 1848 (Cambridge, 1980).
18 Marxism and the French Left: Studies on Labour and Politics in France 1830–1981 (Oxford,
1986), 58.
Insurrection, Utopianism, and Socialism
395
violent seizure of power, his preferred course of action was the setting up of model
communities based upon principles sketched out in his famous Voyage en Icarie as
well as in other writings from the late 1830s onward. This he attempted first in
Texas and then Nauvoo, Illinois, with little success in either case.19 The ‘interest
of the people’, Cabet wrote, prevents us from wanting revolution. This was so
because the first signs of revolt would be crushed by the State at a heavy cost to the
people themselves. Even if the revolution were successful and managed to defeat
‘the foreign coalition’ intent upon its destruction, the beneficiaries would not be
the people but the bourgeoisie. The people, Cabet explained, were not sufficiently
well educa
ted or sure of their rights to prevent their victory being ‘stolen’ from
them. In addition, the destruction of commerce and industry arising from ‘a great
catastrophe’ of this kind would leave the ‘unfortunate proletarian’ in a worse
material condition than before. ‘How’, Cabet asked, ‘from an old society, with its
prejudices, customs and innumerable obstacles, could we ever hope to enter a
new society?’ In America, by contrast, ‘from the very first, there would be the most
beautiful roads, the most perfect towns and villages, the most magnificent work-
shops, perfection in housing, furniture, clothing, food, hygiene, and education,
in a word, in everything!’20 In brief, for Cabet, emigration to an unpopulated and
virgin territory appeared a far better strategy than riots, conspiracies, and the
machinations of secret societies. This was even more firmly his view after the failure
of the Revolution of 1848.
Yet all was not entirely as it might have seemed, for Cabet too was not untouched
by the weight of Jacobinism and the revolutionary tradition. Drawn to the world of
radical secret societies during the 1820s, Cabet had taken to the streets in July 1830
and had initially lent his support to the new regime of Louis-Philippe.21 Elected to
parliament, he was quickly disillusioned by what he was to describe as a ‘disappear-
ing revolution’22 and in 1833 launched his own radical newspaper, Le Populaire. By
the standards of its day, this proved to be a great success, circulation quickly
reaching 12,000. Its existence was short-lived. Support for the right of association
brought prosecution and, faced with the prospect of two years’ imprisonment,
Cabet chose exile in England. It was there that he wrote his four-volume Histoire
Populaire de la Révolution Française de 1789 à 1830.23
Written expressly as a refutation of the monumental history recently provided by
Adolphe Thiers, Cabet had no doubt that the Revolution of 1789 was ‘the greatest
event of modern times’24 and that, when ‘exposed in all its truth’, it provided ‘the
most complete practical course in politics and philosophy’.25 Like so many of his
19 See Prospectus: Grande Émigration au Texas en Amérique pour réaliser la Communauté d’Icarie
(Paris, 1847).
20 Réalisation d’Icarie (1847), 33.
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