Conspiracy of equals
The Conspiracy of Equals ( French Conjuration des Égaux ) was an early socialist secret society . It was built in 1795 in the third phase of the French Revolution by François Noël Babeuf , a French revolutionary imprisoned at the time.
The secret society strove to overthrow the upper-class directory and to impose a kind of communist society in France through social revolutionary measures in favor of the landless peasants and the urban proletariat .
Other names for the federal government are society or community of equals (French: Société des égaux ).
history
Babeuf's group was formally founded as the Society of Friends of the Republic in Paris after his amnesty . Colloquially they were called - after their meeting place near the Panthéon in Paris - mostly Club du Panthéon .
On February 27, 1796, the club was closed again by the young General Napoléon Bonaparte on the instructions of the board of directors. The further measures of the conspiracy were betrayed until 1797, Babeuf and most of his followers were arrested again in May 1796. In the following trial before the High Court of Justice , the leaders François Noël Babeuf and Augustin Alexandre Darthé were sentenced to death and guillotine executed in late May 1797 .
The other conspirators were either acquitted or, like the revolutionary Filippo Buonarroti from Pisa , condemned to exile. In the preliminary phase of the Italian Risorgimento, he had ultimately unsuccessfully tried to realize the ideas of the same in some areas of the regions of Piedmont and Lombardy occupied by France .
Aftermath
Filippo Buonarroti published his main work Conspiration pour l'égalité (French for conspiracy for equality ) in 1828 , in which he presented the intellectual history of the conspiracy of equals and the ideas of Babeuf. These ideas also influenced subsequent left-wing revolutionary movements of the 19th century, in France itself in particular the Blanquism founded by Louis-Auguste Blanqui .
Later activists and theorists of anarchism as well as communism - among them Pierre-Joseph Proudhon , among others Wilhelm Weitling ( League of the Just ) and Karl Marx ( League of Communists ) - invoked Babeuf's theses, the ideas of the Same and their first attempt to realize the concept of a classless society in political practice.
literature
- Philippe Buonarroti : Babeuf and the conspiracy for equality with the process it initiated and the pieces of evidence. Dietz-Verlag Bonn, Bad Godesberg, reprint of Buonarroti's main work published in 1828 (German translation), 2nd edition 1975, ISBN 3-8012-1049-9 .
- John Anthony Scott (Ed.): Francois-Noel Gracchus Babeuf, The Conspiracy for Equality. Talk about the legitimacy of the resistance. (with essays by Herbert Marcuse and Albert Soboul ), Junius Collection, Hamburg 1988, ISBN 3-88506-402-2 .
- François Noël Babeuf (edited by Peter Fischer): The war between rich and poor - articles, speeches, letters. Wagenbach-Verlag, Berlin 1975, ISBN 3-8031-2009-8 .
- Bernard Picard: Rousseau et la conjuration des Égaux. In: The French Review , Vol. 64, No. 1 (Oct. 1990), pp. 32-41.
- KD Tönnesson: The Babouvists. From Utopian to Practical Socialism. In: Past & Present , No. 22 (Jul., 1962), pp. 60-76.
Fiction processing:
- Ilja Ehrenburg : conspiracy of equals . (Заговор равных). (Historical novel) Petropolis, Berlin 1928.
Web links
- Andreas Heyer: "The burden of the conspiracy - Gracchus Babeuf's theory of freedom and equality" - political science contribution in UTOPIE Kreativ , issue 195 (January 2007), pp. 5-19 (PDF, 106 KiB)
- “Conspiracy of Babeuf and Comrades” chapter from Max Beer : General History of Socialism and Social Struggles , with additions by Dr. Hermann Duncker , pages 396-401
- "The Last Episode of the French Revolution Being a History of Gracchus Babeuf and the Conspiracy of the Equals" (English on marxists.org, links to the individual chapters); by Ernest Belfort Bax from 1911, biography of Babeuf focusing on the conspiracy of equals, (translated title: The last episode of the French Revolution as the story of Gracchus Babeuf and the conspiracy of equals )
- Ralf Höller : Babeuf, François Noël (Gracchus Babeuf). In: Kurt Groenewold , Alexander Ignor, Arnd Koch (Eds.): Lexicon of Political Criminal Trials , January 2020.