François-Noël Babeuf

Babeuf  was born in 1760at St. Nicaise near the town of Saint-Quentin. His father, Claude Babeuf, had been a soldier in the French army but had been reduced to the level of a salt pan guard.  At twelve years old Babeuf had to work on the Picardy Canal and worked assisting a feudal notary in obtaining their duties.  He was learning to be a land surveyor when the revolution began.  By this stage his father had died and he was having to provide for his entire family.

With the revolution in progress he wrote a series of pamphlets outlining his fledgling political beliefs.  These were further illustrated in his extended piece called Cadastre perpetual which was published in 1790 where he stated the need for equal taxation, public help for the poor and free education for all.  He created several petitions to the Constituent Assembly which incited the Picardy peasantry and caused Babeuf to be imprisoned temporarily.

On his release he created the Correspondent Picard which was a political journal.  In this journal he railed against the plans for the voting system in which votes would be weighed against social standing and he also called for the introduction of progressive taxation.  He was elected a member of the council general of the department of the Somme.  Alas he was accused of fraud over an altered name in a land deal.  He fled to Paris where he was sentenced to twenty years imprisonment.  He was made secretary to the relief committee of the Paris Commune.  He was eventually acquitted of his crimes on the 18th July 1794.

After the Thermidor Coup and the fall of Robespierre he published his Tribune of the People.  He condemned some of the excesses of the revolution notably the persecution of Nantes.  He also rejected the Jacobins stance on women and wished them to be included in political clubs.  He called for more actual equality and lamented the lack of economic achievements during the revolution.  It was during this time period he started to refer to himself as Gracchus (Roman politicians who sought equality through land redistribution).  He was arrested and imprisoned in Arras.

His time in jail only helped confirm his views that there was a need for further revolution.  When he was released just after he called for the restoration of the Constitution of 1793.  He saw the need for the end of all commerce and the sharing of artisan and agricultural production.  Many former Jacobins were rallying to his cause as they saw the need for revolution against the Directory.  He was arrested again in February in 1795.  However with economic crisis gripping France he was released.

With food crises throughout the country Babeuf’’s views became even more popular and he formed the Societé des égaux.  On 30th March 1796 he created Secret Directory of Public Safety which was to be a complicated organisation with spies infiltrating key positions throughout the country.  During this time a Babeuf penned song "Dying of Hunger, Dying of Cold"  became popular and was sung throughout Paris.  The Directory passed a law making it punishable by death for anyone calling for the restoration of the 1793 constitution.  Babeuf and his comrades were arrested.  After a lengthy trial at Vendôme Babeuf he was executed on 26th May 1795.

Gracchus Babeuf on the individual within society.  Taken from The Defense of Gracchus Babeuf, Schocken Books, New York(1972) P21-22

The natural right and destiny of man are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Society is created in order to guarantee the enjoyment of his natural right.

In the event that this right is not so guaranteed to all, the social compact is at an end.

To prevent the dissolution of the compact, a fundamental right is reserved to the individual.

This is none other than the right of every citizen to be vigilant against violations of the compact, to alert others when they occur, to be the first to resist tyranny, and to urge others to follow the same course.

From this follows the inviolable right of the individual to think and to communicate his thoughts to others; to keep a jealous watch that the social compact is followed to the letter in conformity with the natural rights of man; to rise up against usurpation, oppression, and tyranny; and to show men ways of putting an end to such excesses on the part of their rulers and of winning back the rights that have been lost.

Gracchus Babeuf on what is wrong with the French order of society.  Taken from The Defense of Gracchus Babeuf, Schocken Books, New York (1972) p34

The accumulation of power and privilege in the hands of a tiny majority already rendered formidable by a reason of its wealth alone, and the slavish subjection of practically the entire people to this handful of the mighty- this the prosecution calls order.  But we call this disorder.  Order is only thinkable to us when the entire people are free and happy.

Gracchus Babeuf on what is wrong with the French society.  Taken from The Defense of Gracchus Babeuf, Schocken Books, New York (1972) p54

These three roots of our public woes- heredity, alienability, and the differing values which arbitrary opinion assigns to different types of social product-proceed from the institution of private property.  All the evils of society flow from them.  They isolate the people from each other; they convert every family into a private commonwealth, pit it against society at large, and dedicate it with an ever growing emphasis to inequality in all its vicious, suicidal forms.

I formulated these observations and came to think of them as self-evident truths.  It did not take me very long to draw the following conclusions:

If the earth belongs to none and its fruits to all; if private ownership of public wealth is only the result of certain institutions that violate fundamental human rights; then it follows that this private ownership is a usurpation; and it further follows that all that a man takes off the land and its fruits beyond what is necessary for sustenance is theft from society…..

It is clear from the foregoing that whatever a man possesses over and above his rightful share of the social product has been stolen.  It is therefore right and proper to take this wealth back again from those who have wrongly appropriated it….

The only way to do this is to organise a communal regime which will suppress private property, set each to work at the skill or job he understands, requires each to deposit the fruits of his labour in kind at the common store, and establish an agency for the distribution of basic necessities. This agency will maintain a complete list of people and of supplies, will distribute the later with scrupulous fairness, and will deliver them to the home of the worker.

Gracchus Babeuf on what is wrong with the French society.  Taken from The Defense of Gracchus Babeuf, Schocken Books, New York (1972) p54

These three roots of our public woes- heredity, alienability, and the differing values which arbitrary opinion assigns to different types of social product-proceed from the institution of private property.  All the evils of society flow from them.  They isolate the people from each other; they convert every family into a private commonwealth, pit it against society at large, and dedicate it with an ever growing emphasis to inequality in all its vicious, suicidal forms.

I formulated these observations and came to think of them as self-evident truths.  It did not take me very long to draw the following conclusions:

If the earth belongs to none and its fruits to all; if private ownership of public wealth is only the result of certain institutions that violate fundamental human rights; then it follows that this private ownership is a usurpation; and it further follows that all that a man takes off the land and its fruits beyond what is necessary for sustenance is theft from society…..

It is clear from the foregoing that whatever a man possesses over and above his rightful share of the social product has been stolen.  It is therefore right and proper to take this wealth back again from those who have wrongly appropriated it….

The only way to do this is to organise a communal regime which will suppress private property, set each to work at the skill or job he understands, requires each to deposit the fruits of his labour in kind at the common store, and establish an agency for the distribution of basic necessities. This agency will maintain a complete list of people and of supplies, will distribute the later with scrupulous fairness, and will deliver them to the home of the worker.