Manifesto of the Equals (1989)

Sylvain Maréchal 1750-1803.

From the July 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

This document should be read alongside the following article that also appeared in the July 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard. 

This manifesto, drawn up by Sylvain Maréchal, for an attempt to organise an insurrection in Paris in 1796 known as the "Conspiracy of the Equals", was never formally adopted by the conspirators. It is nevertheless a fine appeal for the establishment of the same sort of classless communist society as Winstanley and the Diggers had advocated in the course of the English revolution some 150 years previously.

PEOPLE OF FRANCE!
For fifteen hundred years you have lived in slavery and in misery. And for the last six years you have existed in the hourly expectation of independence, happiness, and equality.

Equality is the first principle of nature, the most elementary need of man, the prime bond of any decent association among human beings. But in this you, the French people, have fared no better than the rest of mankind. Humanity, the world over, has always been in the grip of more or less clever cannibals—creatures who have battened on men in order to advance their own selfish ambitions and to nourish their own selfish lust for power. Throughout man’s history he has been gulled with fine words, he has received only the shadow of a promise, not its substance. Hypocrites, from time immemorial, have told us that men are equal; and yet monstrous and degrading inequality has, from time immemorial, ground humanity into the dust. Since the dawn of human history man has understood that equality is the finest ornament of the human condition, yet not once has he been successful in his struggles to bring his vision to life. Equality has remained a legal fiction, beautiful but baseless. And today, when we demand it with a new insistence, our rulers reply: “Silence! Real equality is an idle dream. Be content with equality before the law. Ignorant and lowborn herd, what else do you need?"

Men of high degree—lawmakers, rulers, the rich—now it is your turn to listen to us.

Men are equal. This is a self-evident truth. As soon say that it is night when the sun shines, as deny this.

Henceforth we shall live and die as we have been born—equal. Equality or death: that is what we want. And that is what we shall have, no matter what the price to be paid. Woe to you who stand in our way or try to thwart the realization of our dearest wish!

The French Revolution is only the forerunner of another, even greater, that shall finally put an end to the era of revolutions. The people have swept away the kings and priests who have been leagued against them. Next they will sweep away the modern upstarts, the tyrants and tricksters who have usurped the ancient seats of power.

What else do we need other than equality before the law?

We need not only this equality as it is written down in the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen; we need it in life, in our very midst, in our homes. For the true and living equality we will give up everything. Let the arts perish, if need be! But let us have real equality.

Men of high degree—lawmakers, rulers, the rich—strangers as you are to the love of man, to good faith, to compassion: it is no good to say that we are only "bringing up again the old cry of loi agraire.” It is our turn to speak. Listen to our just demands and to the law of nature which sanctions them.

The loi agraire—the division of the land—has been the instinctive demand of a handful of soldiers of fortune, of peoples here and there governed by passion, not by reason. We intend something far better and far more just: the COMMON GOOD, or the COMMUNITY OF GOODS. There must be an end to individual ownership of the land, for the land is nobody’s personal property. Our demand is for the communal ownership of the earth’s resources. These resources are the property of mankind.

We say that an end must be put to the situation in which the overwhelming majority of mankind, living under the thumb of a tiny minority, sweats and toils for the sole benefit of a few. In France fewer than a million persons own and dispose of wealth that rightfully belongs to twenty millions of their fellow men, to their fellow citizens.

There must be an end to this outrage! Will people in times to come even be able to conceive that such a situation ever existed? There must be an end to this unnatural division of society into rich and poor, into strong and weak, into masters and servants, into rulers and ruled.

Age and sex are the sole natural distinctions existing between men. All men have the same needs, all are endowed with the same faculties, all are warmed by the same sun, and all breathe the same air. Why then should not all receive an equal share of food and clothing—equal both in that quantity and quality to which all shall be entitled?

But a howl arises from the sworn enemies of a truly natural order of things. ‘Anarchists! Demagogues!" they shriek. “You are nothing more than instigators of mob violence. That’s what you are."

PEOPLE OF FRANCE,

We shall not waste time dignifying such charges with an answer. But to you we say: the high enterprise which we are engaged upon has a single purpose— to put an end to civil strife and to the sufferings of the masses.

No vaster plan than ours has ever been conceived or put into execution. Once in a long while men of vision have discussed it, cautiously and in whispers; none of them has had the boldness to speak out and to tell the whole truth.

The hour for decisive action has now struck. The people’s suffering has reached its peak; it darkens the face of the earth. For centuries chaos has reigned under the name of "order." Now the time has come to mend matters. We, who love justice and who seek happiness—let us enter the struggle for the sake of equality. The time has come to establish THE REPUBLIC OF EQUALITY, to prepare an asylum for mankind. The time has come to set the earth to rights. You, who are oppressed, join us: come and partake of the feast which nature has provided for all her sons and daughters.

PEOPLE OF FRANCE,

A glorious and historic destiny has been reserved.for you.

Hidebound tradition and blind prejudice will set barriers, as they always have, in the way of the establishment of the Republic of Equality. True equality—that alone provides for all human needs without sacrificing some men to the selfish interests of others—will not be welcome to everyone. Selfish and ambitious people will curse us. Men who have grown rich by thieving from their fellows will be the first to cry "thief." Proud men, living in privilege or in idleness, who have grown callous to the sufferings of others, will do battle with us. Men who wield arbitrary power, or who are its creatures, will not unprotesting bow their stiff necks beneath the yoke. The shape of things to come, the common good, their blind eyes cannot see. But how can a handful of such people prevail against a whole nation that has at last found the rapturous happiness it sought so long?

The day after the revolution for true equality has taken place people will be amazed. They will say “The common good was so easy to attain! We only had to will it! Why on earth didn’t we realize that sooner—why did we have to be told so often? It’s absolutely true: when one man is richer and more powerful than the rest of us, everything is spoiled; crime and misery flourish”.

PEOPLE OF FRANCE,

What is the hallmark of excellence in a constitution? Only true equality can serve as a foundation on which to base your Republic and satisfy all your needs. The aristocratic charters of 1791 and 1795 did not break your chains: they riveted them upon you more firmly. The Constitution of 1793 was a giant step toward true equality, the greatest that we have yet taken. It was dedicated to the goal of the common good, but did not, even so, fully provide the basis for organizing it.

PEOPLE OF FRANCE,

Open your eyes and hearts to full happiness: recognize the REPUBLIC OF EQUALITY. Join with us in working for it.

Cuba: No ‘New Man’ (2017)

From the November 2017 issue of the Socialist Standard

Seen in its most favourable light (and not just as a theory of political dictatorship that it is), Leninism can be seen as the view that the way to socialism is for a minority of socialists to seize power at the head of a discontented but non-socialist working class and then using this power to educate this majority into becoming socialists.

This accepts that socialism is a classless, stateless, wageless, moneyless society based on common ownership and with voluntary work and free access to goods and services, and also that such a society can only function with majority support and participation. (Leninists call it ‘communism’, confusingly reserving the word ‘socialism’ to describe the state-capitalist regimes they establish when they come to power.)

This view is based on the premise that, due to capitalist control of the idea-forming apparatus, a majority can never come to be socialists while capitalist rule lasts; only a minority can and therefore it is their duty to seize power to liberate the majority. Lenin did not invent this view; he merely followed a tradition that went back to Babeuf’s ‘Conspiracy of the Equals’ in the French Revolution.

One Leninist who took this seriously was Che Guevara who was a minister in the Cuban government in the early 1960s. He liked to quote from a review Lenin wrote in January 1923 of a chronicle of the Russian Revolution written by the non-Bolshevik Russian revolutionary Nikolai Sukhanov:

'You say that civilization is necessary for the building of socialism. Very good. But why could we not first create such prerequisites of civilization in our country by the expulsion of the landowners and the Russian capitalists, and then start moving toward socialism? Where, in what books, have you read that such variations of the customary historical sequence of events are impermissible or impossible? ' (MIA Link.)

Answer: in everything that Karl Marx wrote.

Guevara wanted Cuba to ‘start moving towards socialism’ straightaway by, among other things, creating ‘the new man’. This meant the 'revolutionary vanguard', as the government, educating people into becoming and behaving like socialists, in particular getting them to participate in the running and work of society on a voluntary basis because they realised this had to be done in the common interest. Hence he favoured ‘moral incentives’ over ‘material incentives’.

In Socialism and Man in Cuba Guevara said that creating 'the new man' had to involve moving away from commodity production (production for sale):

'The commodity is the economic cell of capitalist society. So long as it exists its effects will make themselves felt in the organization of production and, consequently, in consciousness.' (MIA Link). 

Castro took the same view, declaring in an interview with a French magazine in 1967:

‘I am against material incentives because I regard them as incompatible with socialism . . .  What we want is to demystify money, not rehabilitate it. We even intend to abolish it completely’ (Nouvel Observateur, 17 September 1967).

Quite apart from considerations of how voluntary for some workers’ ‘voluntary work’ really was, this was never going to succeed because people in Cuba were not living in socialist conditions. Socialism presupposes that plenty for all is being produced. People can’t be expected to behave in a socialist way in conditions of continuing scarcity, such as existed in Cuba. Marx and Engels pointed this out in a passage in The German Ideology which is the perfect answer to Lenin’s question (though Lenin was not aware of it since this work wasn’t published until 1932). Discussing ‘the alien relation between men and what they themselves produce’ when there is private property, they wrote:

'This “alienation” (to use a term which will be comprehensible to the philosophers) can, of course, only be abolished given two practical premises. For it to become an “intolerable” power, ie. a power against which men make a revolution, it must necessarily have rendered the great mass of humanity “propertyless,” and produced, at the same time, the contradiction of an existing world of wealth and culture, both of which conditions presuppose a great increase in productive power, a high degree of its development. And, on the other hand, this development of productive forces (which itself implies the actual empirical existence of men in their world-historical, instead of local, being) is an absolutely necessary practical premise because without it want is merely made general, and with destitution the struggle for necessities and all the old filthy business would necessarily be reproduced .'

Moral exhortations cannot overcome the economic reality of material scarcity. Scarcity means that people are obliged to try to get as much money as they can, not for its own sake but to get access to what they need to live. In other words, ‘material incentives’ will prevail.

There was a rather less appealing side to the attempt to create ‘the new man’ as it also involved the 'revolutionary vanguard' stopping people hearing further the capitalist-individualist ideas that had been inculcated in them before the revolution. In practice this meant suppressing these ideas and the parties and individuals (imprisoning some) deemed to be advocating them, including some of the original Cuban revolutionaries who thought that the revolution’s aim was political democracy rather than socialism (actually, this had been Castro’s view at the time too).

Castro and Guevara were of course well aware that socialism (or communism as they called it) was not possible in isolation on the island of Cuba, but they did believe that progress towards it could be made. Fifty years later, however, there is still production for sale, money still exists, and ‘material incentives’ prevail.

The fact is that Lenin could not have been more wrong in imagining that progress towards socialism could be made where its essential prerequisites did not exist, neither objective (a sufficient development of productive capacity) nor subjective (a working class with a sufficient degree of culture wanting and understanding socialism). All a socialist minority that seized power in the absence of these conditions could do would be to preside over the further development of capitalism in one form or another; which, granting that Castro and Guevara did want socialism, was what happened in Cuba. State capitalism was supposed to be a step on the way to socialism but that's where it stopped.

Adam Buick

The Bourgeois role of Bolshevism (1970)

Book Review from the November 1970 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Insurrectionists, by W. J. Fishman. Methuen. 55s.

The theme of this book is one we ourselves have often advanced: that, as we put it in the April Socialist Standard, Lenin’s theory of the vanguard party can be traced back through Russian revolutionaries like Ogarev and Tkachev to French revolutionaries like Babeuf and Buonarroti.

Fishman writes as an obvious opponent of what he thinks is Socialism and so does not really know what Marxism is all about. Nevertheless he does describe well enough the evolution of insurrectionist ideas as they spread from 18th century France to 20th century Russia and he does make some useful points.

The original Jacobins under Robespierre ruled France for a brief period in 1793-4. Though not against private property, they were on the side of the poor against the rich and believed in the ruthless use of violence to crush any opposition to Equality, one of the supposed aims of the French Revolution.

The first to combine the idea of an armed uprising and then a temporary exercise of armed power with that of communism was Babeuf (1760-1797), who was executed for his part in an abortive such coup in 1796. One of his collaborators was Buonarroti, whose account of the uprising under the revealing title of Conspiration pour L'Égalité served as a handbook for the following generation of would-be insurrectionists. Buonarroti, who lived on as an active conspirator till his death in 1837. argued that, since the old order so degraded the masses that they were unable either to see where their interests lay or to act for themselves, it was only an active, conscious minority that could overthrow the old order. This minority should be organised as a secret society with the aim of seizing power in an insurrection.

Auguste Blanqui (1805-1881). who spent most of his life in prison, was the man who more than any other personified this kind of insurrectionism. He, too, stood for a vague communist society and again argued that the masses were so ignorant as a result of the old order that its overthrow would have to be the work of a minority. Marx had a great respect for Blanqui as a man of action, but their ideas of the social revolution was quite different. For Marx it was not a question of a minority insurrection followed by a minority rule leading to communism, but rather a question of a majority capture of power (perhaps by peaceful means) followed by democratic majority rule leading to communism (or Socialism—he gave the two words the same meaning). The emancipation of the working class, proclaimed Marx in a famous slogan, was the task of the working class itself. Although Fishman quotes Engels’ well-known repudiation of minority insurrection in 1895, he does not bring out the important difference between the theories of Marx and those of previous communist revolutionaries like Babeuf, Buonarroti and Blanqui. He stood for majority revolution; they stood for minority insurrection. What he learned from them was the need to win and use political power ("dictatorship" as it was then called) to carry through the social revolution.

French revolutionary ideas spread all over Europe, including Tsarist Russia where an attempted coup was made as early as 1825. Here the secret society was the only possible form of revolutionary organisation and it was strongly advocated by Ogarev (1814-1877), a collaborator of Alexander Herzen. Ogarev was well acquainted with Buonarroti’s book and it was through him that French ideas on how to organise an insurrection — including the secret “vanguard” party — were transmitted to the Russian opponents of Tsarism.

The view that because of their oppression the masses were so ignorant that a minority organised as a secret society would have to act for them was held by many well-known Russian revolutionaries, including Nechaev (1847-1882) (the man who made a fool of Bakunin) and Tkachev (1844-1886) and even by Bakunin himself.

Tkachev, who associated with the Blanquists while in exile, is particularly important in that he anticipated some of Lenin's views on how to overthrow the Tsar. He realised that by themselves the revolutionaries could not overthrow the Tsarist bureaucracy; they needed a mass basis. He suggested the peasants as the weapon the revolutionary leaders should wield. He even realised the possibilities of using the then developing urban working class as the main element in the mass struggle. In the insurrection, said Tkachev, the Tsarist bureaucratic State should be completely smashed but the victorious leaders should set up another State in its place — an idea Lenin later tried to foist on Marx with regard to the modern bourgeois State.

By Lenin's time the use which a revolutionary minority might be able to make of the urban working class was even more obvious. Lenin, sticking to the by now well-established Russian revolutionary idea of a vanguard party and the ignorance of the masses, suggested a new tactic: the anti-Tsarist revolutionaries should concentrate on using the working class as their main weapon.

It is here that Fishman’s lack of understanding of Marxism leads him astray. He thinks that Lenin advocated this tactic as a means of establishing Socialism in Russia (in fact he mistakenly thinks there is now Socialism there, but that’s another matter). But until 1917 Lenin’s aim was the traditional one of the Russian revolutionaries: the establishment of a democratic republic. From his study of Marxism, he knew that this was the task of the bourgeoisie and one they had carried out in some West European countries. Lenin saw that in Russia the bourgeoisie was too weak to do this and applied Marx’s analysis of the period of Jacobin rule in France to the Russia of his day. By their drastic actions against the old feudal order. Marx pointed out, the Jacobins though not themselves of the bourgeoisie had furthered the bourgeois revolution by taking measures the bourgeoisie was afraid to take itself, Lenin’s suggestion was that this was more or less what would have to happen in Russia: Russia’s bourgeois revolution (the establishment of a democratic republic) would have to be accomplished without the bourgeoisie by the vanguard party leading the workers and peasants.

Trotsky argued that if the working class were to gain power in the course of Russia's bourgeois revolution they would, and should, go on to take "socialist” measures. Fishman does not seem to realise that Lenin did not come round to this view till 1917, nor that Trotsky did not accept the vanguard party idea till 1917 either. He has them as collaborators from 1902 on, an elementary mistake.

Lenin’s switch in 1917 from aiming at a democratic republic to a "socialist” one took him even further away from Marxism, but it did not invalidate his previous analysis of how Russia’s bourgeois revolution would come. The role of the Bolsheviks in Russia’s bourgeois revolution did indeed turn out to be the same as that of the Jacobins in France’s, that is, to carry through measures against the old order the bourgeoisie themselves were incapable of. The great difference was that while the Jacobins' rule did not last, the Bolsheviks’ rule did and the Bolshevik rulers gradually evolved into a new bourgeoisie (or capitalist class) themselves. Lenin and Trotsky confirmed their own earlier prognosis: their seizure of power in 1917 and subsequent short rule paved the way for the further development of capitalism in Russia.

Adam Buick

Abandon The Idols. (1923)

From the May 1923 issue of the Socialist Standard

The need for knowledge, lest we be duped, is constantly forced upon us. The clergyman tells us the ins and outs of the twilight land—and takes our humble offerings. The doctor doses us for complaints for which we do not suffer—and takes our humble pence. The lawyer assures us that our case is worth fighting, drains us of what little money we have, then finds our case too weak to contest. The average politician asks for our trust, and promises to cure our social ills; experience afterwards informs us that we have been "sold again."

Where knowledge is possessed in these different directions, how altered is the position! Knowledge of the laws of nature frees is from the clergyman's assistance; unnecessary medical attention; knowledge of the laws of "Justice" enables us to instruct the lawyer; and knowledge of the laws of society enables us to appreciate the limits of the politician's power.

There are limits to the quantity of knowledge each individual can acquire, but one department is open to all to acquire sufficient to free them from dependence upon self-appointed guides. As far as the worker is concerned, that department is connected with his position in society and the method whereby it can be improved.

It has become a habit for the worker, in his struggle for better conditions, to depend upon the instructions of individuals supposedly possessing to an unusual degree the intelligence necessary for conducting the struggle in the best way. This dependence generally consists of a blind trust in a "leader," and a faithful carrying out of his instructions wheresoever they may lead. The disasters that constantly accompany this idol worship eventually bring about the fall of one popular idol, only to leave room for another. The position is further complicated by a war among the idols for the favours attached to leadership.

A case in point, with regard to idol worship, is that of J. H. Thomas, whose popularity at present among railwaymen is probably greater than ever, in spite of the disasters that have accompanied the policies he put forward and his openly boasted friendship with the railwaymen's opponents.

As long as the first place in the minds of the workers is occupied by this blind and unreasoning trust in another to accomplish that which one can accomplish readily and satisfactorily oneself, the condition of the majority of the people will continue one of slavery and misery.

Ideas that have been fixed in the mind by habit are difficult to remove. When such ideas serve the interests of a ruling class, their removal becomes still more difficult. The idea of "Leadership" is of the latter kind. Born of the delegation of function in early societies it has grown into the slavish habit of placing the hands of a popular idol the power to settle the affairs of large groups almost as he wishes. Times innumerable, these popular leaders have used this influence to put their followers at the mercy of the enemy. In the London Transport Strike of 1911 the workers held out for some time, in spite of going hungry for weeks, and, when finally the proposition to resume work was put before them, they voted it down by a large majority. Immediately after the result was announced, Tillett, Jones and Gosling signed the agreement that sent the dockers back to work under worse conditions than before the strike.

The leadership idea has cursed the working class movement from the beginning. At an earlier period those supporting the ideas had motives of benevolence, its later supporters have  also benevolent motives—but the benevolence is directed towards themselves. They make stepping stones of their followers to reach comfort and security.

In France, in 1793, Babeuf and his friends sacrificed their fortunes and lives in the attempt to relieve the misery of the mass of oppressed. The method was a sudden attack upon the central seat of power by a courageous and determined minority. Once the centre of power was captured, the conspirators were to issue the regulations that were to guide the people in the formation of the new society. Whether the mass of the people wished it or not, they were to be forced into the new regime. The energetic minority were to hold on to the power they had grasped until such times as the mass of people understood and accepted the new social regulations.

Babeuf's intentions were excellent, but his method was rotten at the root. Instead of first getting the mass of the people to understand and desire the new programme, he proposed to force it upon the, from without. The idea being that the intellectual few knew better what was good for the masses, than the masses did themselves.

Later, Blanqui, also a Frenchman, attempted to carry out Babeuf's idea, modified in the light of experience by altering the form of the secret organisation. Leadership of the many by the enlightened few was still the basis of the movement. In May, 1839, and again in May, 1848, Blanqui led an attaclkon the seat power, but his attempts were crowned with as little success as Babeuf's. He also had good intentions, and paid for them by spending nearly half of his life in prison.

In 1836, an association of working men were formed in London that blossomed out into the first national movement of wage workers. This association took the name of "The London Workingmen's Association" and published an address, the concluding words of which put forward a new outlook for the oppressed, telling them to have done with leaders and trust only in themselves:

"Be assured that the good there is to be must be begun by ourselves."—(Lovett's Autobiography.)

Marx has put the case more definitely, as follows:

"The emancipation of the working-class must be the work of the working-class itself."

Here the essence of the position is stated. Leaders, no matter how energetic, courageous, or good intentioned, cannot introduce fundamental social changes that the mass of the people do not understand. This, quite apart from the fact that fundamental social changes are not the work of this or that individual, but are the result of economic development, and are accomplished under the direction of the social group that will benefit by the social change.

In working out his emancipation, the worker must study the conditions that surround and oppress him. He must look to "great principles." and not to "great men" in his struggles. The great man view breeds arguments as to whether this man is a good leader, or that man a bad. The energy that should be given to a study of principles is wasted in endless arguments over idols; and apathy and discouragement often follow the finding of the idol's feet of clay.

He who would enter the land of promise, must first cut his path to the gate. A little study of elementary principles will clear off the brambles that strew the way. Armed with knowledge the worker can direct his organisation himself, and will then abandon the slavish worship of leaders.

Gilmac.

Backwaters of History - 2 (1953)

From the October 1953 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Babeuf Conspiracy

The prisoners were working feverishly at their tasks on the walls of their prison. The escape had to be made that night or it would be too late. The plans for escape had been well made. The guards had been won over, tools had been smuggled to the prisoners, and their friends outside would be waiting this night with horses to carry them away to some place of safe hiding. There were only a few hours left.

If they could not escape that night they were doomed. Their trial, which had lasted for weeks, would end the next day and none of them were in doubt of the verdict. It would be death for some and, at least, transportation and imprisonment in some penal colony for the remainder. During their trial they had made little effort to defend themselves. Instead, they had used the courtroom as a forum to expound their political views and publicise their activities. Now, it was at an end and this planned escape was their only hope.

They were accused of an attempt to overthrow the government by armed force. To make their present troubles worse, their attempt had almost succeeded and the government was now taking no chances. In fact, a number of the government's political opponents had been arrested and thrown into prison with the insurrectionaries even though they knew nothing of the attempted insurrection, merely because it was a convenient opportunity to get rid of them.

The year was 1796. The revolutionary fervour that had swept France during the past few years was petering out. The wealthier section of the new French capitalist class was in the saddle and was tightening its grip on the reins. In all revolutions where the wealthy capitalists struggle against the feudal aristocracy they rely for support upon their less wealthy capitalist friends and the peasants and workers. They hide their own political objectives and pay lip service to the political and economic aspirations of their supporters. In the early stages of the struggle all these elements are united, but as soon as the feudal opponents are subdued each element strives to achieve its own separate ambitions. The capitalists join hands and use their newly won political power to wipe out any organisations that the peasants or the workers may have created. Thus they stabilise the revolution by checking any tendency to carry it to limits dangerous to themselves.

That was the position in France in 1795. A number of active revolutionaries who voiced the ideas of some of the workers had formed an organisation known as the "Equals." Francois Noel Babeuf, who later called himself Gracchus Babeuf, was the prime motivator in this organisation. During the revolutionary period he had thrown away his comfortable livelihood and reduced his family to poverty in his enthusiasm for his cause. He had published a paper called "The Tribune of the People" mainly at his own expense, and, through its columns, had not hesitated to violently attack most of the leading men of the revolution. Danton, Robespierre and Hebert had experienced the venom of his pen.

Babeuf, Germain, Darthe, Antonelle, Buonarroti, Didier, Massart and others met at the "Pantheon" on the working class quarter of Paris and became known as the Society of Pantheon. The society grew in numbers until the government became alarmed and closed the meeting place and dissolved the society.

Babeuf and his friends then set about building a secret organisation to prepare an insurrection. Their object was mainly communistic. They claimed that political freedom was useless without economic freedom and that could only be achieved by the wealth of the community, in particular the land, being held in common by all the people. They published much literature, most of it written by Babeuf. In the "Manifesto of the Equals," "Analysis of the Doctrines of Babeuf," "An Opinion on our Two Constitutions,: "Triumph of the French People against its Oppressors," "Address of the Tribune to the Army," and other broadsheets, they set out in detail their insurrectionary objectives and their plans for the future society.

In those days the idea of social evolution was little known. Social organisation was conceived to be the result of a contract between the members of society. If the existing contract was unsatisfactory it became necessary to devise a new one.

The plans for insurrection went ahead at full steam. Darthe and Germain were Babeuf's right hand men. They introduced to the secret society a certain George Grisel who was an army captain stationed at the camp at Grenelle near paris. Grisel was given the task of winning over the troops at his camp. Germain secured the allegiance of the legion of police and other military sections became attached to the insurrectionary movement.

Seventeen thousand men, all experienced fighting men, were eventually enrolled and Grisel ensured the support of the troops at Grenelle. In addition the workers of Paris were expected to rise as soon as the insurrection was under way. Men from the provinces joined and a few members of the government flirted with the movement. Supporters were attracted by the claim that the constitution instituted by the Robespierre government in 1793 and since discarded, was to be re-introduced.

All was ready. The organisation was well prepared. Officers and generals were appointed and detailed plans were prepared. Everyone waited. The leaders hesitated. Then came catastrophe. George Grisel proved to be a government agent who was passing on all the detailed information to his employers. The troops at Grenelle were not recruited to the movement and the government struck at the eleventh hour by arresting all the leaders.

A feeble attempt to get the insurrection going without the leaders was soon suppressed and afforded the government the excuse for hunting down all those suspected of revolutionary sympathies in Paris and its environs, and many executions took place.

The leaders were imprisoned at the Abbaye and Temple prisons and later taken in cages like wild beasts to the town of Vendôme where they were to be tried.

Then, with their trial almost over, came the plan for escape. The digging and scraping was finished; a breach was made in the prison walls and they were ready to make their get-away. Someone had been careless in hiding the evidence of their work on the prison walls. The authorities became suspicious and the attempt to escape was thwarted.

So, the prisoners entered the court room to face the tribunal for the last time. The court was crowded with sad sympathisers of the prisoners. Even the foreman of the jury was sentimentally affected. Fifty-six of the accused were acquitted, five were condemned to the island fortress of Pelée, and Babeuf and Darthe were condemned to death. As soon as the verdict was announced Babeuf and Darthe attempted to commit suicide by stabbing themselves with improvised daggers made in prison. They were seized and only succeeded in wounding themselves. The next day they went manfully to the guillotine and their beheaded bodies were thrown by the executioner into the sewer.

Thus ended one of the first attempts by the workers to give expression to their class interests. Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, referring to Babeuf and his movement had this to say:

"The first direct attempts of the proletariat to attain its own ends, made in times of universal excitement, when feudal society was being overthrown, these attempts necessarily failed owing to the then undeveloped state of the proletariat, as well to the absence of the economic conditions for its emancipation, conditions that had yet to be produced, and could be produced by the impending bourgeois epoch alone. The revolutionary literature that accompanied these first movements of the proletariat had necessarily a reactionary character. It inculcated universal asceticism and social levelling in its crudest form."

(Communist Manifesto, S.P.G.B. Edition, page 88.)

W.Waters. 

Books for students: -

"The Last Episode of the French Revolution," by Ernest Belfort Bax.

"The Communist Manifesto of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels," by D. Ryazanoff.

"Ten Essays on the French Revolution," edited by T. A. Jackson.

"Blanqui," by Neil Stewart

Marxism and needs (2008)

Book Review from the October 2008 issue of the Socialist Standard

Does Marxism need to be reinterpreted in the light of the ecological problem faced by humanity?

Is the “world of abundance” traditionally advocated by socialists feasible? Not according to Claude Bitot, known as the author of a book on the future of the movement for communism (see Socialist Standard, December 1995), in his recent book Quel autre monde possible? (“What other world is possible”?). Echoing the ideas of some Greens but denying any affinity with them as “bobos” (trendies), Bitot argues that the only viable form of communism (or socialism) today is the austere pre-industrial communism advocated by Babeuf and his followers during the French Revolution and first part of the 19th century.

His criticism of Marx – that he accepted the development of capitalism as a necessary step towards socialism – can be traced back to the influence of a “productivist” or technological determinist reading of Marx, based on The Poverty of Philosophy and the Communist Manifesto, which the great man was considerably qualifying by the time he got round to writing the Grundrisse. According to this simplified version of Marxism – faithfully trotted out by Bitot – it is the development of the forces of production that drives history. Capitalism in the form of merchant capital develops in the pores of feudalism, notably in the towns. Over time the forces of production develop to the point where feudal relations become fetters on the possibilities of further development. Feudalism therefore disappears with the rise of the revolutionary bourgeoisie whose task it is to abolish lordly privilege so as to permit the further development of the forces of production. Eventually the enormous development of the forces of production – notably industrialisation and mass production – would enter into contradiction with the limitations placed on the restricted consumption capacity of the proletarians. The latter in their turn become the new revolutionary class capable whose “historic task” is to overthrow the capitalist class and unleash of the forces of production to meet a greatly expanded range of human needs.

To further add to the confusion, the building of what was falsely called ‘communism’ in Russia by the Soviet authorities popularized the idea that a long transition period – misleadingly called ‘socialism’ – was required in order to bring about the communist utopia. During the transition period working class consumption would be sidelined to allow the breakneck development of the forces of production, (tractor factories, dams, electrical power plants and the like). And there was of course doctrinal justification for such a position given that Marx was absolutely clear that in underdeveloped countries like early twentieth century Russia ‘communism’ was not in any way feasible. Although Marx never separated the ‘socialist’ stage from the ‘communist’ one, the early enthusiasm for the Soviet experiment led to the transitional stage idea sticking. Indeed, many left-leaning thinkers became obsessed with technological development as such, with Bordiga – as Bitot conveniently points out – in the uncomfortable position of trashing the need for further technical advance in capitalist Italy whilst recommending the rapid development of the forces of production in Soviet Russia. This has created a good deal of confusion about what progress towards socialism really means.

Bitot’s objection to capitalist development seems in many ways to be an attempt to overcome the legacy of these confusions in the light of what he rightly considers to be a looming ecological crisis. But he adds a few more confusions of his own. To begin with he goes back to the very origins of communism as a political movement: the agrarian communism of Buonarroti and Babeuf and he contrasts this with what he sees as the consumerist interpretations of socialism popularized during the twentieth century. As we know these pioneering communists were imprisoned and – in Babeuf’s case executed – in the years following the French revolution. Bitot sees in these interpretations an anticipation of the errors which socialists would make in the second half of the twentieth century.
Incorrectly believing that the emergence of agricultural capitalism could be largely explained by the immoderate expansion of needs and taste for luxury, the agrarian communists turned their backs on the unconstrained development of industry and championed a system based on fair but austere shares for all. In this communist utopia technological development in the shape of machinery would take place simply as a need to lighten manual labour, production being oriented toward the meeting of a fixed standard of living.

The development of English commerce depended, Bitot tells us, on the sharpening of acquisitive appetites and the introduction of machinery to meet an ever-expanding sphere of consumption: the upward spiral of capitalist production. This simplified depiction of capitalist development has the advantage of wrong-footing Marx who notoriously celebrated the technical achievements of the English industrial revolution in the Communist Manifesto and castigated the narrow material basis of the agrarian communists in France (he called them “crude communists”). Indeed, since Marx was prepared to admit that industrial capitalism provided the material preconditions for communism, he had in effect became a de facto fellow-traveller in the capitalist party, albeit a pretty unruly one. The solution, according to Bitot was to have nipped the capitalist weed in the bud by a bit of revolutionary action and Bitot appreciates the fact that French agrarian communism was an extension of the revolutionary political approach adopted earlier by Robespierre, the advocate of revolutionary terror. If only, one thinks, the English had read these thinkers rather than that scoundrel Adam Smith then they would have abandoned their silly economic ideas and got us to socialism a lot earlier.

Bitot’s French communists may have been poor but they were neither wage-labourers nor serfs. Subsistence with only limited participation in the monetary economy still remained a possibility and the village could still operate as a community. In this sense, the emergence of capitalism could all too easily be identified with the inability of individuals to control their own desires once faced with the temptations of the marketplace. But however admirable their thinking was on any number of issues – and they were interesting thinkers - they were nonetheless not faced with the peculiar economic system which we now call capitalism. Furthermore, even if agrarian communist communities could have resisted the advent of a world market in agricultural products it is more than likely that an ever-more powerful capitalist class would have found a way to break them up as they have always done and continue to do today.

The problem with Bitot’s interpretation of the communist tradition is that it facilitates the treatment of technological development as a force which develops in a social vacuum justified by a largely ahistorical appreciation of the development of needs. In fact, the aim of the mature Marx was always to demonstrate that the ‘immutable laws’ of political economy were in fact nothing more than the expression of highly specific social and historical relations. The hothouse development of technology under capitalism, for example, was simply a vector of its unremitting search for new markets and its insatiable appetite for profits. As Bitot himself concedes, Marx shows how the needs of the wage labourer under capitalism contain a historical and relative element beyond the purely physiological necessities which also have to be satisfied: in other words my wages now allow me to obtain some commodities which used to be considered as luxuries but I can still be ‘poor’ in the (Marxist) sense that I still have to sell my labour-power to another. Dependence on the capitalist is neither based on being starved nor reduced by the possession of a few luxuries; it resides in the fact that my access to the means of subsistence has become indirect in that it is mediated by the possession of money.

Thus, although Bitot seems to have discovered a convenient jumping off point for the criticism of capitalism, his ideas provide few clues about how to find a way out. In the terms of this critique socialists who continue to believe in the possibility of open access to the means of consumption under socialism can be too easily accused of wanting to continue the consumerist game and Bitot doesn’t hesitate to tar the SPGB. with this brush. On the other hand, Bitot seems to accept that a fairly austere socialism is possible following the abolition of commodity production. But with the wants created by consumer society unconnected to the overall functioning of production, he is left with the difficulty of defining ‘moderate needs’ and showing how they would emerge within a society where commodity production no longer existed. After all, even if we can all agree that socialism will place more emphasis on meeting essential needs over the satisfaction of the trivial desires excited by capitalism, one still has the difficulty of defining these ‘essential needs’ no matter how austere one believes that socialism should be. But the problem of ‘austere’ or ‘abundant’ socialism is perhaps in the final analysis something of a quibble over words. As anyone who has argued the socialist case on a street corner will know, the ‘abundance’ referred to by socialists has never referred to the open-ended consumerism encouraged by the advertisers but has rather as its target a stable and more satisfying way of life in which the scramble to get things is no longer central. With material survival removed from the casino of the marketplace by the abolition of commodity production we can expect that individuals will calm down their acquisitive desires and pursue more satisfying activities.

Fortunately even though he rehearses the usual arguments against socialism brought up by conservatives, Bitot seems reluctant to abandon the revolutionary idea altogether. He remains committed to the abolition of commodity production and has adopted the notion that production under socialism needs to be co-ordinated and de-centralized. (The SPGB can tell him how to do this without the price system). On the down side, he has now taken up the Third World population problem as a factor which he claims has been totally neglected by socialists. Regardless of the charge of inconsistency he then argues that further industrial development in these countries is necessary presumably on the grounds that the Third World exists on another planet. But capitalism is now more than ever a global system – witness the avalanche of books on the ills of globalization. The green beans in our plates come from Kenya, the knives and forks from China and the shirts on our backs from India. Subsidized crops from the advanced countries are killing peasant production in Africa. But the Third World industrial proletariat now outstrips that of the so-called First World. Bitot’s argument here is clearly self-defeating: If there is already a major population problem, then socialism as a world system is not only impossible but it is getting more impossible with every day which passes. So why write a book on the subject? Whilst there is clearly a need to deal with this problem lucidly, Bitot seems to have accepted the Malthusian legend at face value. But he gives only one statistic to prove the case about agricultural production in the Third World whilst First World production is subject to a statistical over-kill. Even Malthus, whose jeremiads have so far proved disastrously wrong, provided more substance to his arguments.

One is left with a curious diatribe against the word ‘abundance’ coupled to an off-centre accusation that socialists advocate a world of passive consumerism and idleness; a picture of the Third World as a boundless reservoir of illegal immigrants associated with the conviction that the abolition of commodity production is nonetheless possible.

Malcolm Mansfield