File:Révolution de France dell Année 1789FXD
The radicalism of François-Noël Babeuf, whose failed Conspiracy of Equals in 1796 sought to upend post-revolutionary France, provides a grim preview of the chaos and devastation wrought by leftist utopianism. Babeuf was a leftist in the truest sense. His pursuit of egalitarianism at all costs is the same thing that drives the modern left.
Babeuf and his co-conspirator Sylvain Maréchal envisioned a society without private property or distinctions between men. They outlined this utopia in their Manifesto of the Equals. But behind the lofty rhetoric of equality lay the same ruthless ambition and moral blindness that had turned revolutionary France into a blood-soaked battleground. Babeuf himself knew that achieving this equality required, in his words, “ruthless organization and cleansing revolutionary violence.” Predictably, the conspiracy’s inevitable failure exposed the destructive absurdity of such schemes. The French authorities suppressed the plot before it began, executing Babeuf and his collaborators.
Babeuf’s ideas did not die with him. His co-conspirator Philippe Buonarroti chronicled the conspiracy in a memoir that became a cornerstone for communism. Babeuf’s memoir inspired Karl Marx. The writings of these French leftists served as a blueprint for communism, a political experiment responsible for untold misery in the centuries to come.
The lessons here are clear. Revolutionary egalitarianism promises utopia but delivers only despotism and suffering. Babeuf’s vision of abolishing private property and destroying social distinctions sought to eradicate the natural order, undermining liberty and prosperity in the process. In the American system, freedom lies not in forced equality but in individual rights, private property, and the rule of law. The history of Babeuf’s conspiracy—and its disastrous ideological offspring—serves as a stark warning against the seductive lies of collectivism.
This post originally appeared at https://www.phyllisschlafly.com/national-sovereignty/communism/the-french-origins-of-modern-leftisms-equality/
