Neo-Babouvism

Neo-Babouvism is a revolutionary socialist current in French political theory and political action in the 19th century. It hearkened back to the May 1796 Conspiracy of the Equals of Gracchus Babeuf and his associates, who tried to overthrow the Directory in May 1796 during the French Revolution. After Babeuf's execution (1797), his programme of radical Jacobin republicanism and economic collectivism (Babeufism ^[1] or Babeuvism ^[2] or Babouvism, French : babouvisme) ^[3] was propagated by Philippe Buonarroti (1761-1837), who had been associated with the Conspiracy of the Equals but had survived. Buonarroti's writings influenced many French revolutionaries in the 1830s and 1840s, among them Théodore Dézamy, Richard Lahautière, Albert Laponneraye and Jean-Jacques Pillot.^{[ citation needed ]}

The neo-Babouvists represented the extreme left-wing of the neo-Jacobin republican movement. Many of them participated in the revolutionary events of the 19th century such as the Revolution of 1848 and the Paris Commune of 1871.^{[ citation needed ]} They provided a link or a contrast between the utopian socialism of the French Revolution and Marxism. ^[4]

Louis-Auguste Blanqui (1805-1881) is sometimes grouped with the followers of Babeuf. Babouvists and Blanquists were often allies - such as in the Paris Commune. However, Blanqui regarded himself as a political descendant of Jacques Hébert (1757-1794) and his followers, not of Babeuf. Blanqui also had no organisational ties to the societies of the Babouvists and lacked the clear commitment to economic communism of the Babouvists. The writings of Buonarroti and through them the doctrines of Babeuf also had a considerable influence on some socialists, such as those within the British Chartist movement of 1838-1858, ^[5] notably on James Bronterre O'Brien (1804-1864).^{[ citation needed ]}

Neo-Babouvism largely disappeared in the second half of the 19th century, although an echo of it may be found in the small non-Marxist^{[ citation needed ]} Alliance Révolutionnaire Communiste that existed briefly in the 1890s.^{[ citation needed ]}

References

1. Kautsky, Karl (1 October 2019) [1905]. "The Republic and Social Democracy in France: The Second Republic and the Socialists". In Lewis, Ben (ed.). Karl Kautsky on Democracy and Republicanism. Historical Materialism Book Series - volume 196. Translated by Lewis, Ben. Leiden: Brill. p. 175. ISBN   9789004392847 . Retrieved 25 November 2024. [...] Babeufism was nothing more than the continuation of Jacobinism translated from a petty-bourgeois outlook to a proletarian one.
2. Billington, James H. (24 October 2017) [1980]. "The Objects of Belief". Fire in the Minds of Men: Origins of the Revolutionary Faith. New Brunswick. New Jersey: Transaction Publishers. p. 78. ISBN   9781351519816 . Retrieved 25 November 2024. Frustrated in Piedmont, Babeuvist activists moved on to Milan, where they briefly help organize a local militia and introduced the Italian tricolor prior to the arrival of Napoleon. The Babeuvists helpd form the hierarchical revolutionary organization the Society of Lights (or Black League), founded by Cerise and others in Bologna late in 1798. [...] The echo of Babeuvism from occupied Poland was more distant and muffled. [...] Within France, there were flickers of revival among the surviving Babeuvists - notably in July 1799, when they gathered to form a Society of the Friends of Equality and Freedom. Such activity was snuffed out with the arrival of Napoleon later that year.
3. Vanderort, Bruce. "Babouvism (Babeuvism)" . Retrieved 25 November 2024.
4. Balibar, E. (1999). "The Notion of Class politics in Marx". In Jessop, Bob; Wheatley, Russell (eds.). Karl Marx's Social and Political Thought. Critical assessments of leading political philosophers, Second Series, ISBN 0415193265, 9780415193269 - volume 6: Modes of Production, the World System, Classes, and Class Struggle. London: Taylor & Francis. p. 494. ISBN   9780415193283 . Retrieved 25 November 2024. [...] Marx defines for the first time the revolution as proletarian politics which is, as we know, the key to the Communist Manifesto, for Marx the direct link to the experience which seems to him the furthest from the 'utopianism' of those advocating the 'end of the political': neo-Babouvism and Blanquism.
5. Fried, Albert; Sanders, Ronald (eds.). "Early French Communism: 'Gracchus' Babeuf". Socialist Thought: A Documentary History. Morningside Books (revised ed.). New York: Columbia University Press. p. 44. ISBN   9780231082655 . Retrieved 25 November 2024. [Buonaroti wrote] an account [...] that transformed Babouvism into a legend. The book became a source of inspiration for such middle-class revolutionary movements as the Carbonari, as well as for socialist movements such as Chartism. Babeuf can be said to be the bridge between eighteenth-century communism and modern socialism.