François-Noël Babeuf



François-Noël Babeuf, known as Gracchus Babeuf, (23 November 1760 - 27 May 1797) (8 prairial year V), was a French revolutionary. He fomented the conjuration des Égaux (conspiracy of the Equals) against the Directory to enforce the constitution of 1793. He was guillotined. His doctrine babouvisme (Babeufism) is a precursor of communism.

On feudalism

 * Ce fut dans la poussière des archives seigneuriales que je découvris les affreux mystères des usurpations de la caste noble.
 * It was in the dust of the seigneurial archives that I discovered the frightful mysteries of the usurpations of the noble caste.


 * ''La connaissance des pratiques féodales « est la raison pour laquelle je fus peut-être le plus redoutable fléau de la féodalité. »
 * The knowledge of feudal practices is the reason why I was perhaps the most formidable scourge of feudalism.


 * La féodalité n'est qu'un système d'Esclaves et de Tyrans; ma patrie veut-être libre, ne peut plus rien conserver dans ce qui tient à ce système.
 * Feudalism is but a system of Slaves and Tyrants; my country, desiring to be free, can no longer preserve anything in this system.

On property

 * C'est la grande propriété qui a inventé et soutient le trafic des blancs et des noirs qui vend et achète les hommes... C'est elle qui dans les colonies donne aux nègres de nos plantations plus de coup de fouet que de morceau de pain.
 * It is the system of great landed estates which invented and sustains the trafficking of whites and blacks who sell and buy men. ... It is this system which in the colonies gives the blacks of our plantations only a blow with a whip and a morsel of bread.


 * La nature n'ayant donné de propriété à personne.
 * Nature having given no property to anyone.


 * La propriéte est odieuse dans son principle et meurtrière dans ses effets.
 * Property is odious in its principle and murderous in its effects.

On women

 * Le mari et la femme doivent-être égaux.
 * The husband and the wife must be equal.


 * La prétendue supériorité de l'homme sur la femme et la despotique autorité qu'il s'arroge sur elle ont la même origine que la domination de la noblesse.
 * The pretended superiority of man over woman, and the despotic authority which he arrogates to himself, have the same origin as the domination of the nobility.


 * Admettre l'inégalité, c'est souscrire à une dépravation de l'espèce.
 * Admitting inequality means subscribing to a depravity of the species.


 * N'impose pas non plus silence à ce sexe qui ne mérite pas qu'on le méprise.
 * Nor does it impose silence on this sex which does not deserve to be despised.


 * L'avis que tu nous donnes sur la partie qu'on peut en tirer des femmes est sensé et judicieux; nous en profiterons. Nous connaissons toutes l'influences que peut avoir ce sexe intéressant qui ne supporte pas plus indifféremment que nous le joug de la tyrannie; et qui n'est doué d'un moindre courage, lorsqu'il s'agit de concourir à le briser.
 * The opinion which you give us the contribution which can be derived from women is sensible and judicious. We will benefit. We all know the influence which this interesting sex can possess, which cannot bear more indifferently than we the yoke of tyranny.; and which is not endowed with less courage, when it is a question of contriving to break it.

The people and the citizens

 * Si le peuple est souverain, il doit exercer lui-même tout le plus qu'il peut de souveraineté.
 * If the people are sovereign, they must themselves exercise as much as they can of the sovereignty.


 * Le vrai Citoyen préfère l'avantage général à son avantage.
 * The true citizen prefers the general advantage to his advantage.

On Maximilien de Robespierre

 * Il n'est et ne sera que l'avocat des pauvres. (1786)
 * He is and will be an advocate only for the poor.


 * Réapprendre et plus difficile qu'apprendre.
 * Relearning and more difficult than learning.


 * Nous distinguerons dans Robespierre deux hommes apôtre de la liberté et Robespierre le plus infâme des tyrans.
 * We shall distinguish in Robespierre two men, apostle of liberty, and Robespierre the most infamous of tyrants.


 * Je confesse aujourd'hui de bonne foi que je m'en veux d'avoir autrefois vu en noir, et le gouvernement révolutionnaire et Robespierre et Saint-Just. Je crois que ces hommes valaient mieux à eux seuls que tous les révolutionnaires ensemble.
 * I confess today in good faith that I am angry with myself for having formerly seen in a bad light, within the revolutionary government, Robespierre and Saint-Just. I believe that these two men were better on their own than all the revolutionaries together.

On prejudices

 * ...enfans de l'ignorance qui ont fait en tous tems le malheur des races humaines.
 * ... children of ignorance, who have at all times made the misfortunes of the human races.


 * Il ne s'est jamais rien fait de grand dans le monde que par le courage et la fermeté d'un seul homme qui brave les préjugés de la multitude.
 * There has never been anything great in the world except through the courage and resolve of one man who defies the prejudices of the multitude.

On education

 * L'éducation est une monstruosité lorsqu'elle est inégale, lorsqu'elle est le patrimoine exclusif d'une portion de l'association; puisqu'alors elle devient la main de cette portion, un amas de machines, une provisions d'armes de toutes sortes, à l'aide desquelles cette première portion combat l'autre qui est désarmé.
 * Education is a monstrosity when it is unequal, when it is the exclusive patrimony of one class of the society; because education then becomes the controlling hand of this class, a mass of mechanisms, a provision of weapons of all kinds, by which the ruling class combats the other class, which is disarmed.


 * Nul ne peut par l'accumulation de tous les moyens priver l'autre de l'instruction nécessaire pour son bonheur; l'instruction doit-être commune.
 * No one can by monopolization deprive others of the instruction necessary for their happiness; the instruction must be communal.

On religion

 * Il faut avancer... parce que le christianisme et la liberté sont incompatibles
 * We must advance ... because Christianity and Freedom are incompatible


 * Je fais vœu de d'appeler prêtre c'est-à-dire charlatans, imposteurs tous ceux que je verrai dévier de la ligne des droits de l'homme.
 * I vow to call a priest, in other words, charlatans, impostors, all those whom I shall see deviate from the line of the rights of men.

About Babeuf

 * François-Noël Babeuf, the self-educated son of a gabellou and himself a man whose business it was before 1789 to show the rich how they might become richer by squeezing the peasants for feudal dues, did somehow produce the first modern and coherent communist political strategy.


 * Prior to the middle of the nineteenth century, the ideal of equality was an aspiration that occasionally produced social violence but lacked both a theory and a strategy. Thus, in seventeenth-century England, Gerrard Winstanley, the leader of a radical group called the Diggers, exhorted his followers to seize the commons and turn them into arable land. He formulated something like a communistic doctrine that denounced commerce in land or its product. During the French Revolution, a century and a half later, the French radical François-Noël Babeuf organized a “Conspiracy for Equality,” which called for the socialization of all property. Neither man, however, had a doctrine capable of demonstrating how the kind of social revolution he advocated would come into being. The same held true of socialist idealists active in the early nineteenth century, such as the Comte de Saint-Simon and Charles Fourier, who pinned their hopes on persuading the rich to part with their wealth.
 * Richard Pipes, Communism: A History (2001)


 * 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. ... 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!
 * 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.”


 * Babeuf was made a public example by being taken to Vendôme in a cage—an indignity which not long before had filled the Parisians with fury when the Austrians had inflicted it on a Frenchman. His defense, which lasted for six sittings at the court and fills more than three hundred pages, is an impressive and moving document. Babeuf knew well that he was facing death and the Revolution was doomed. .. His defense is like a summary of the unrealized ideas of the Enlightenment and a vindication of their ultimate necessity. And it has moments of grandeur which it is not absurd to compare to Socrates' Apology.
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