(d) Babeuf

At the portals of what purports to be a history of thought, Babeuf—Gracchus Babeuf or François Noël Babeuf, according as one prefers his familiar adopted name or his forgotten baptismal name—should perhaps knock in vain; for there are those who have suggested that Babeuf was innocent of thought. Yet he has a place in history, and in some ways is a portent. Babeuf represents a combination of Mably and Morelly, transferred to the field of action. The pessimistic shrug of the shoulders with which Mably had acknowledged the futility of doing anything is replaced by a demoniacal subterranean energy, aiming at the destruction of all things. On the theoretical side, the doctrine is unalloyed Mably-Morelly, apart from such minor modifications and variations of emphasis as inevitably emerge when an accepted point of view is restated in the light of another environment. Babeuf had not enjoyed the ample surroundings which had enabled Mably to discourse frigidly of equality in classical dialogues. On the contrary, poverty had lurked incessantly by his doorway. It would probably be true to say that Babeuf was not without envy in his heart, envy of those who had been more kindly treated in the lottery of life. His appeal for a higher way of life is accordingly addressed to the lower instincts and passions of mankind. Babeuf is thus of interest as showing the logical continuation, downhill, of Mably and Morelly, when their gospel is accepted by one who is not beset by academic jitters, as was Mably. He is also of interest because, in the rage for destruction which finally consumed him and his sect, the Babouvists are a connecting link with nihilism and later destructive anarchism.

The stormy life and the tempestuous death of Babeuf are part of the history of the French Revolution. The barest bones, designed to ‘place’ him, must suffice here. Born in 1764, he was already a provincial journalist, practising in Amiens on Le Correspondent Picard, before the Revolution sucked him into the Parisian vortex. He became a figure on the extreme left-wing, assumed the name of Caius Gracchus, and was ever afterwards known as Gracchus Babeuf. Also, without any authority apart from his own mere volition, he called himself the ‘Tribune of the People,’ and in the course of time published under this title a paper which periodically went underground. After the fall of Robespierre and under the reaction of 1795 (la réaction thermidorienne), Babeuf developed an extraordinary subterranean activity, which culminated in the notorious ‘Conspiration.’ The object of the conspiracy, engineered by the ‘Secte des Egaux’ was to overthrow the existing government and to establish complete and ‘real’ equality. The whole story of the conspiracy has about it a flavour of fantastic melodrama, and in view of its wide ramifications and extensive publicity, the existing government was rather obtuse not to have become alive to the danger sooner than it did. It may be that we of our generation have little experience of conspiracies of this nature; yet, even allowing for our disability in this respect, it is difficult to resist the impression that the conspirators were melodramatically acting the part of plotters, and were greatly enjoying the experience. In time they established a ‘directoire secret de salut public.’ There is a curious document enacting that ‘the people is in insurrection against tyranny,’ preceded by four pages of clauses, each beginning with ‘considérant que...’ for all the world as though they were the I.L.O. in full session.¹ It is not thus, one imagines, that conspiracies are usually run. At the last moment, the plot was betrayed by a traitor to the cause, Georges Grisel. The leaders were arrested, and a somewhat wearisome and protracted trial ensued. In the end, Babeuf and his chief supporter Darthe were condemned to death. Across the distance of years, it is rather surprising that in so far-reaching a conspiracy, justice was supposed to be satisfied with a mere two capital sentences. The final scene has an element of ghoulishness which happily is almost unique. True to the inspiration of the name ‘Gracchus’ and the old Roman Stoic virtues which it suggested, Babeuf and Darthe endeavoured to fall on each other's swords after being condemned. Such a method of suicide obviously calls for a certain technique of its own, nor is suicide the kind of thing in which the necessary dexterity can be acquired by practice. The conspirators merely succeeded in grievously wounding each other, so that they bled profusely until their execution next day (24th February, 1797): it was what Buonarotti rightly calls ‘une exécution sanglante.’

Even in the most summary account of Babeuf, this fellow-conspirator, Buonarotti, has an indefeasible right to be mentioned, for in a sense he supplies the epilogue. It is not clear why he escaped the fate of Babeuf, for, assuming guilt, he seems to have been as guilty as any. In his own words the Tribunal merely said to him and some others: ‘Allez traîner une vie malheureuse loin de la patrie dans des climats brûlans et meurtriers,’¹ which may be accepted as an ornate paraphrase of a sentence of banishment. But before the end Buonarotti had given the martyrs a solemn pledge that he would one day write the full story of the conspiracy, and justify their memories. He kept his word, although not until after the lapse of some thirty years of vagabondage. His Conspiration pour l'Egalité, dite de Babeuf (1828), with as many ‘pièces justicatives’ as time had spared, was until quite recent years the real source of our knowledge regarding Babeuf. Moreover, though it may not be a great book, it is a book of some interest as carrying still further the Mably-Morelly tradition.

A consideration of Babeuf raises a question of great historical interest, which in its time has been much discussed. How far was the French Revolution a movement inspired by socialist ideas in the ordinary acceptation of the phrase? The fullest answer in one sense has been given by M. Janet.² The lectures which lie at the base of M. Janet's book were delivered in 1872. Doubtless the acid test of what should be regarded as socialism in 1872 is not what would be accepted as appropriate to-day; doubtless also M. Janet was sufficiently near the generation of Sudre, Thonissen, and Reybaud, to have an instinctive feeling that socialism was of the devil. Yet, with these reservations, the conclusions of M. Janet are probably substantially correct. For Janet, socialism covers generally any doctrine which undermines the principle of private property; just as conversely (if it is conversely) the strongest weapon against socialism is private property. Now according to Janet, ‘nowhere, at no time, and in no country, has the right of private property been more firmly claimed and more firmly guaranteed than by the Revolution.’ ³ For the detailed argument the reader must consult Janet himself; in the brevity which is here imposed, it is sufficient to recall that the right of property was indeed viewed as one of the fundamental rights of man. In the Constitution of the French Republic decreed in the year 1793, it is expressly stated (Article 2) that the natural and imprescriptible rights of man are: ‘l'égalité, la liberté, la sureté, la propriété’; and Article 16 defines the right of property as ‘celui qui appartient à tout citoyen, de jouir et de disposer à son gré de ses biens, de ses revenus, du fruit de son travail et de son industrie.’¹ Much of Babeuf's revolutionary activity was directed to getting back to the Constitution of 1793, as a stepping-stone, but he never disguised the fact that its consecration of property was, in his eyes, a grave blot. Buonarotti quotes with approval the superior version of the Declaration of the Rights of Man, drafted by Robespierre, where property is defined as ‘le droit qu'a chaque citoyen de jouir et de disposer à son gré de la portion de bien qui lui est garantie par la loi.’ Those who attacked property were, according to Janet, a dissident minority, standing apart from the main stream of thought and action, which, while it doubtless interfered with property in various ways, never dreamed of questioning the fundamental right of property. Here then lies the significance of Babeuf; he was a protest against the Revolution stopping halfway in its task; in a world that spoke of Equality, he clamoured for ‘real’ equality, which (he held) could not be attained so long as property existed.

Even a brief summary of Babeuf runs the risk of being a tedious repetition, on a different plane, of a point of view encountered elsewhere. Yet though the substance does not differ materially from what may be found in those who inspired him, the flavour in Babeuf is different; and enough must be said to catch, if it be possible, something of this peculiar flavour. Apart from what he wrote for Le Tribun du Peuple, Babeuf was a very valiant correspondent. M. Maurice Dommanget has brought together in a volume of Pages Choisies as much as—indeed probably a great deal more than—anyone is likely to desire in the matter of Babeuf's writings. For that matter a very lengthy letter of July 28, 1795, together with No. 35 of Le Tribun du Peuple, are sufficient to give the clotted cream of Babeuf's views on things in general.²

The starting-point is inevitably the familiar contention that Nature has made all men equal in rights and needs. If there are inequalities, the law of society should act so as to redress the balance and maintain the equality designed by Nature; but in fact it has acted in precisely the opposite direction.³ Babeuf is perhaps peculiar in the emphasis he lays on the fact that human prejudices have unjustly favoured certain occupations. Some are given ‘une valeur d'opinion.’⁴ It is a point on which he is almost inclined to nag, so that one almost suspects that the prosperity of some of his fellow-villagers had become an offence to him. In fact, all honest men are equal. Every one ‘qui a des vertus’ honours his calling, and all should therefore enjoy ‘une égale aisance.’¹ There is perhaps more originality—and up to a point more commendable originality—in his views on education. Babeuf has that pathetic faith in education, which is to be found only in those who have been denied it, and who have struggled to make good a self-confessed deficiency. It colours all his frequently expressed anxieties with regard to the future of his children. Yet to Babeuf, with his eyes intent on equality, the system of education is full of dangers. For inequality has one of its roots in the different education of rich and poor. In a phrase which has an arresting quality seldom found in Babeuf, he asserts that education has become ‘a species of property.’ Education, like other property, should therefore be something that all should share alike. There is a touch of the wild language later characteristic of the Secte des Egaux in Babeuf's exclamation that there should either be no education at all, or all should be able to have it equally. Consistently through life, he was an advocate of ‘all or nothing.’²

Where there is inequality, there must be injustice; if one has superfluity, another must lack. For Babeuf, like his immediate predecessors, is extraordinarily well informed as to the intentions of Nature, and is able to define these intentions with the utmost precision. Nature, which is described as ‘économe de ses dons,’ produces only just approximately what is useful for all the beings it creates³; apparently, Nature takes a census, and quite apart from what may be done meanwhile by the beings it creates, it sends sufficient rations and no more, like a somewhat stingy Minister of Food. It follows that if one enjoys superfluity, drawn from this nicely calculated store, somewhere else there must be someone suffering a corresponding deficiency: ‘ce qui manque au grand nombre existe dans le trop, dans le superflu du petit nombre.’⁴ By a natural transition (even though Proudhon has not yet spoken the word) this becomes a species of theft. The deficit, where there is a deficit, springs from what others have stolen—‘stolen legitimately, if you like, with the help of laws made by brigands.’ ⁵ There is here sufficient groundwork for an extreme statement of the class warfare, and Babeuf expresses it in various picturesque phrases. There is perpetual war between the starvers and the starved, les affameurs et lés affamés; a war between rich and poor; a war between those who have nothing and those who have all.⁶ Moreover, the doctrine of the class war is driven home by a liberal and oratorical appeal to the envy and the discontent of the unfortunate. Why should some have la bonne table, and others le pain noir? ⁷ How can you expect me, Babeuf, to ‘temporiser,’ to ‘politiquer,’ when I have not eaten for 48 hours; when, on rising in the morning, I do not know whether it is my old breeches, my shirt, my shabby coat, or my frayed bed-cover that I shall have to sell? ¹

In the eyes of Babeuf, as of Fourier later, everything is wrong; and in the extremely significant letter of July 28, 1795 (or should we say, of the 10th thermidor of the Year III?), addressed to Charles Germain, he comes nearer than elsewhere to a systematic indictment of the world in which we live.² Commerce exists, he says, for the purpose of pumping the sweat and blood of more or less everybody, in order to form lakes of gold for the benefit of the few; it is a Fourieresque thought, down even to the confused picture which it evokes. The idea of exploitation is hinted at on lines familiar to a later generation. There is a conspiracy (complot) of the part against the whole: the procedure, in a rather cumbrous and lumbering phrase, is to contrive to set in motion a multitude of arms without allowing those who in fact move these arms to receive their destined fruit. Wealth flows to criminal speculators, who are aided and abetted by merchants, their co-voleurs—a pleasant word. The most essential workers get least: this, in a significant phrase, is ‘la loi barbare dictée par les capitaux.’ It is a world of uncertainty: we can never be sure that we or our offspring are secure against the danger of destitution. It is a thought which obsesses Babeuf, ever yearning for his children. He has already reached the characteristic note of the later ‘Conspiration,’ in avowing that the only course is to destroy everything. Had I but the magic fairy ring, he exclaims, ‘je ferais la poussière du passé,’ and simultaneously evoke from the earth the much-dreamed-of Société des Egaux. Here, as with the anarchists of the deed, what is desired is the annihilation of all things, trusting that out of the dust of destruction a fair city may arise. And buoyed by such a hope, how blithely would Babeuf bide the stour.

Putting it otherwise, the revolution, however nobly it may have been originally designed, has turned out a misfire, above all since 1793. So long as everything that is worthless has not been overthrown, we have not yet ‘assez revolutionné pour le peuple.’ So far as the people are concerned, there has been no revolution. The revolution must be continued until it becomes the revolution of the people. Indeed, the whole thing must be done over again: la révolution est à réfaire.³ And in this, what is primarily necessary is a work of destruction.⁴

Before we glance at certain of the documents relating to the conspiracy, Buonarotti, in his capacity of literary and revolutionary executor, should perhaps be allowed to supplement Babeuf. Apart from the pièces justificatives which throw a flood of light on dark places, the chief interest of Buonarotti lies in the fact that a substantial part of the first volume is devoted to a systematic outline of the Babouvist heaven. Babeuf had been anything but systematic, and Buonarotti's re-editing of the ultimate aims of the conspirators, thirty years after the event, is a better statement than Babeuf could himself have produced. What, however, most impresses in reading Buonarotti is our nearness to Mably and Morelly. In this world of ‘égalité sans mensonge,’ the right to property is replaced by a right to an existence as happy as that enjoyed by anyone else ¹; although, obviously, a state that seeks to equalise so elusive a thing as happiness has some nice psychological problems in its path. It is a world of abundance to all, with, however, this caveat, that what cannot be ‘communicated’ to all, must be severely cut down. In effect, unless everyone is to have everything, no one is to have anything.² It is a world of simplicity, cutting out the arts and turning its back on foreign trade and the luxuries and dangers it brings with it³; a world where every citizen is a soldier, and where youth will be encamped on the frontier, but which nevertheless finds its most sure shield of defence in its simplicity and integrity ⁴; a world where there are few laws, for laws are not required where there is equality. What laws, indeed, beyond the simplest, are needed among a people who are ‘without property, and without the vices and crimes which it engenders, without commerce, without money, without taxes, without finances, without civil processes, and without poverty’?⁵ It is a world where education is to be ‘national, common and equal,’ since political equality springs from equality in education.⁶ Unfortunately, and it represents the debit side of much socialist Utopian speculation, it is also to be a world in which the individual will have no life of his own: ‘La patrie s'empare de l'individu naissant pour ne le quitter qu'à la mort.’⁷ In a world which has shed so many things that laws have become virtually unnecessary, it is odd that the State should continue as an octopus, against whose encirclements the grave alone provides a secure asylum.⁸

Even a short account of Babeuf calls imperatively for some reference to the numerous proclamations and what-nots in which his conspiracy was shrouded. Never surely was a conspiracy so amply ‘documented’: the plotters shed their ink as freely as they urged their followers to shed their blood; and the result is a curious collection of manifestos, draft decrees, and instructions which may be found among Buonarotti's pièces justificatives. They are of interest in showing the path a successful Babouvism would have followed. The most notorious is the Manifeste des Egaux, said to be the work of Sylvain Maréchal. This is a fire-eating and loud-mouthed production: the unkind might even call it rant. A few sentences will suffice:

Eh bien! We claim henceforward to live and die equals, as we have been born equals. We demand real equality, or Death; that is what we must have.

And we will have this real equality, no matter at what price. Woe to those whom we meet, coming between it and us! Woe to whomsoever offers resistance to so determined a desire.

The French Revolution is only the fore-runner of another revolution, still greater, still more solemn, and which will be the last....

We must have this equality, not merely transcribed in the declaration of the rights of man and of the citizen: we must have it in our midst, under the roof of our houses. We consent to everything for its sake, to make table rase, so that we may cleave to it alone. Perish, if need be, all the arts, provided there remains to us real equality!¹

The various projects and fragments of projects, the body of decrees drawn up by the ‘insurrectionary committee’ in preparation for ‘the day,’ furnish an interesting introduction into the technique of revolution, though perhaps the ultimate lesson lies in the revelation of what should be avoided. The curious ‘Acte d'Insurrection,’ which purports to enact a state of insurrection, provides in Article 12 that all opposition will be overcome on the spot, and that those who oppose will be exterminated. More humanely (Articles 13 and 14) it provides for a free distribution of victuals to the people, and conscripts the bakers to bake bread incessantly. Article 17 provides for the goods of the enemies being distributed among the defenders of, the Fatherland.² Another projected decree enacts that poor citizens who are at the moment badly housed, will not return to their ordinary dwellings: the houses and the furniture of the former rich will be made available for their use.³

There is something refreshingly humorous in a conspiracy, of which the primary purpose is the abolition of property, drafting in advance an enactment legalising loot. After a lapse of thirty years the point had obviously begun to worry Buonarotti. It would be wrong, he says, to consider the promise of a large distribution of goods as contrary to the spirit of communism which was aimed at: Le grand point était de réussir. This surely is the disarming simplicity of old age.¹

There is further a fragment of an economic decree which seems to foreshadow something in the nature of national workshops, and is of some mild interest in tracing the affiliations of Louis Blanc.² Of more general significance, however, is a project of a police decree dealing with ‘étrangers,’ which, to avoid the implications of the words ‘stranger’ and ‘foreigner,’ should perhaps be translated as ‘outsiders.’ Those who do nothing for the Fatherland, that is, those not engaged in certain specified useful occupations (and in fact not all these), are classed as ‘outsiders,’ to whom the Republic accords ‘hospitality,’—which sounds quite honorific. In fact, their ultimate destination is one or other of the small islands off the French coast, converted into places of correction. These islands, moreover, are to be ‘rendered inacessible.’ ³ The hospitality accorded by the unborn Republic is, in short, the hospitality of the concentration camp. There may have been many reasons for the failure of the ‘Conspiration, dite de Babeuf.’ A perusal of Buonarotti leaves little doubt that one reason among others was that they all talked too much, and spent too much time elaborating draft edicts to come into force on the blessed day of revolution.

Enough—perhaps too much—of Babeuf for the narrow confines of this book. Weighed dispassionately, he may have had few gifts, apart from a certain inflammatory biliousness in his pen. In ordinary times he would have been one of the world's very small men, going to and coming from his appointed task, somewhere in Picardy. Do not let us condemn him in that he called himself Caius Gracchus; it was in accordance with the custom of the time. Less pardonable was his assumption of the title of ‘Tribune of the People’; for to such an office or dignity no man may nominate himself. Let it be remembered that he was dreadfully in earnest. Nor let us be too censorious over his censorious rebukings of the actors at Amiens, at whose hands he was condemned ‘à voir des Marquis et d'autres gens de cette espèce.’ ‘Moi republicain, moi homme libre, moi ami de l'égalité’ could hardly be expected to sit in the pit unprotestingly under such an outrage.⁴He was a sans-culotte, and took himself seriously. Moreover, taking himself seriously, he was at times rather inclined to think well of himself, though this may have been but the workings of the inferiority complex. One feels most kindly towards Babeuf when reading his intimate letters, through which there glows such a love of wife and children as would have won the approval of Robert Burns in his more official moments. His letters written from prison in the last days almost achieve real pathos, and might have succeeded in doing so had he been able to prune somewhat the sproutings of his egotism. But even on the night before his execution, a man should not comfort his wife by foretelling the satisfaction she will feel when men say of her husband: ‘Il fut parfaitement vertueux.’ ¹

Nevertheless, when all has been said in demonstration of the inherent insignificance and commonplaceness of Babeuf, he remains vastly more interesting than many who have been more generously endowed. He represents one end of a tradition, if traditions ever do end without being immediately reborn. It is instructive, even if it be not edifying, to witness the platonic dialogues of Mably debouching in the rather fatuous decrees of La République des Egaux, conceived but never born. Babeuf is also of interest because his wild rage of destruction, his willingness to smash the universe if frustrated, is, in its intensity, something new, and for anything similar we have to await the Russian nihilists. The significance of Babeuf then is that he represents the nodal point at which the academic egalitarianism of Mably becomes transformed into the ungovernable destructiveness of left-wing anarchism.

There is another respect in which Babeuf, if certainly not unique, is at least an example of a moderately rare phenomenon. He speaks somewhere rather slightingly of Rousseau as a dreamer, the suggestion being that Rousseau was a dealer in words who did nothing. It is true that revolutionary writers have not always been revolutionaries, nor even conspirators. Even Marx beyond the age of thirty may perhaps be described as a dreamer in this sense, sowing revolutionary seed, but to the ordinary eye a mere bourgeois, living on the fringes of debt and of Hampstead. Lenin is perhaps the great example of the theoretical revolutionary carrying his theories into practice. It is a far cry from the Russian Revolution to the Conspiration des Egaux; but, to put it no higher, Babeuf would have liked to resemble Lenin.