552 Chapter XXIII
mented by the thought of an unmerciful class struggle, “a war declared between
patricians and plebeians, between rich and poor.”^16 Reproved even by his radical
friends for preaching class war, he replied that this war already existed, that the
rich had started it by robbing the poor, that it had always gone on, and was per-
petual until the general acceptance of his own doctrines.
In this formulation of an everlasting class struggle Babeuf anticipated Marxism,
but he offered no analysis that a Marxist could call “scientific.” He had no concep-
tion of an economic system as a system, and his critique fell less on capitalism, as
such, than on the evils produced by uncontrolled inflation, high prices, scarcity,
poverty, ignorance, and the luxurious self- indulgence of the idle rich. We hear in
him the voice of the outraged victim of circumstances more than the social phi-
losopher. He had none of Marx’s interest in the processes of capital formation, or
the role of wages and profit in the allocation of incomes, or the proletariat and
bourgeoisie as classes generated by the relationships of production. Babeuf ’s enemy
was not the “bourgeois” (a term he rarely used) but the “patriciate,” the “gilded mil-
lion,” the “rascals,” the “bloodsuckers,” the “starvers and invaders of the rights of
the People.”^17 The whole doctrine was non- economic: it saw no problem of pro-
duction; a kind of natural and automatic plenty was posited, in which equality was
upset because, from sheer cupidity, some people stole what others ought to have.
In his Tribun du peuple, at the end of 1795, he published a proposed Plebeian
Manifesto.^18 “It is time,” he said, “to speak of democracy itself.” We are accused of
favoring the “agrarian law.” This is ridiculous: we do not propose to divide up prop-
erty, since no equal division would ever last. We propose to abolish private prop-
erty altogether. Only thus can true equality be assured. Equality must be under-
stood literally—”a sufficiency for all, but no more than a sufficiency.” No one must
be allowed to excel others in wealth or knowledge. We must prevent, “as a social
scourge,” any man from working harder or producing more than another in order
to gain more income. No one has a right to take advantage of any special abilities.
It is a vulgar prejudice to believe that a watchmaker should have twenty times the
income of a plowman, or that tasks requiring intelligence should be more highly
compensated than ordinary labor, or that inventors deserve any reward, since it is
“society” that really gives birth to inventions and new ideas. “Stomachs are equal.”
In place of private property we need a “common administration,” with each man
placing his product in a common store, and receiving from it his perfectly equal
share. Babeuf concluded the Manifesto with a resounding call: “Let everything
then be confounded together! Let all the elements be confused, jumbled and
knocked against one another! Let all return to chaos, and from chaos let a world
rise new and regenerated!”^19
16 Ibid., 236.
17 Ibid., 278 and passim. It should be pointed out that Dommanget, Georges Lefebvre, and others
have shown a higher regard than the present author for the scientific character, or at least the intel-
lectual quality, of Babeuf ’s analysis.
18 Published by Dommanget, 250–64.
19 Dommanget, 264. In the following number of the Tribun du peuple Babeuf refuted the charge
of being an anarchiste or désorganisateur, and after his arrest declared that the conspirators had engaged
in no more than a philanthropic dream, like those of other philosophes of the century.