A-Infos (en) Spaine, Regeneracion - Equality Against the Old World - The Conspiracy of the Equals of 1796 and the Limits of the French Revolution. By LIZA (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

All agents of production and manufacturing will work for the common 
storehouse, and each will send to it the product of their individual 
activity in kind. Agents of distribution, for their part-no longer 
operating on their own account but on behalf of the great family-will 
channel back to every citizen their equal and varied share of the entire 
mass of products from the whole association. Letter from François 
Babeuf, July 28, 1795, regarding "the great fraternal objective."
Table of Contents
* From 1789 to the Convention: The French Revolution and the limits of 
bourgeois equality
* Babeuf and the Conspiracy of the Equals: When the revolution imagined 
a world beyond
* From Babouvism to the modern revolutionary tradition
* Women, colonialism, and revolutionary memory
* The memory of the defeated and the red thread of history

In May 1796, as the French Revolution began to ossify under the weight 
of a triumphant new bourgeoisie, a small group of revolutionaries 
decided to take to its ultimate conclusion a process of transformation 
that was shaking Europe. If the monarchy had fallen, if feudal 
privileges had been abolished, and if the people had burst onto the 
scene with unprecedented force, why then did hunger, poverty, and 
inequality persist? Why did the liberty proclaimed in the grand salons 
and clubs of the Revolution seem to halt before the platform of private 
property and the wealth of the few?

The so-called Conspiracy of the Equals-organized around François Babeuf 
and other revolutionary militants-represented one of the first modern 
attempts to politically formulate radical social equality. It was not 
yet communism as it would develop throughout the 19th century, nor a 
proletarian movement in the strict sense. The industrial working class 
was only just beginning to take shape, and the political categories of 
later scientific socialism were still nonexistent. However, within that 
defeated and persecuted movement emerged insights, organizational 
practices, and egalitarian ideals that would profoundly influence 
subsequent revolutionary currents.

The Conspiracy of the Equals was an early warning against the new order 
born of the French Revolution itself. Where the bourgeoisie saw the end 
of the revolutionary process, Babeuf and his comrades perceived only the 
beginning of changes that had to go to the root. In the hungry streets 
of Paris, among persecuted former sans-culottes , urban workers, small 
artisans, and demobilized soldiers, the conviction survived that 
political equality was meaningless without material equality. That idea, 
still embryonic and contradictory, would run through the following 
decades like an undercurrent, culminating in the workers' revolutions of 
the 19th century, the Paris Commune, and the many socialist and 
libertarian traditions.

To speak today of the Conspiracy of the Equals does not imply 
artificially projecting modern communism onto the 18th century. We must 
overcome ahistorical perspectives, and it means, rather, recognizing how 
revolutionary popular movements were the result of developing 
increasingly advanced political tools to confront domination. And also 
understanding that the struggles for equality never arose from abstract 
ideas, but from the concrete experience of the exploited classes facing 
hunger, repression, and injustice.

From 1789 to the Convention: The French Revolution and the limits of 
bourgeois equality
The French Revolution erupted in 1789 as a historical rupture of 
enormous proportions, ushering in a new era in Europe. The French Ancien 
Régime, sustained by absolute monarchy, aristocratic privileges, and 
inequality between social classes, was beginning to crumble under the 
weight of a profound economic, fiscal, and social crisis. The rise of a 
wealthy bourgeoisie, the spread of Enlightenment ideas, and the growing 
poverty of the lower classes ultimately opened an irreversible rift.

The storming of the Bastille on July 14, 1789, symbolized more than just 
the assault on a prison for the nobility: it was the direct irruption of 
the people as active agents in modern political history. Peasants 
burning feudal archives, armed urban crowds, women marching on 
Versailles to demand bread, political clubs and revolutionary newspapers 
multiplying throughout Paris. The French Revolution was not merely an 
institutional transformation; it was a massive popular mobilization that 
altered daily life, the structural order, and challenged all inherited 
hierarchies.

The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen proclaimed 
principles that were remarkably advanced for its time: liberty, popular 
sovereignty, and legal equality. However, this equality was born with 
profound limitations. Private property appeared as an "inviolable and 
sacred" right, while property-based suffrage excluded a large part of 
the popular classes from political life. Revolutionary liberty still 
retained a strong element of bourgeois domination.

Precisely for this reason, currents began to emerge from within the 
Revolution itself that pushed the process far beyond the limits of 
bourgeois equality. The Parisian sans-culottes -small artisans, urban 
workers, and radicalized popular sectors-demanded price controls, 
measures against hoarding, and a much more direct democracy. Figures 
like Jacques Roux and the Enragés openly denounced that "liberty is a 
phantom when one class of men can starve another to death."

Jean-Paul Marat, writing in the periodical L'Ami du Peuple , articulated 
one of the fiercest critiques of the moderate revolutionary elites and 
defended the legitimacy of direct popular intervention against 
aristocratic conspiracies. The most radical Jacobinism, especially 
during the period of the Committee of Public Safety, introduced social 
measures that were progressive for their time: price controls, partial 
redistribution of goods, public education, and the formal abolition of 
slavery in the colonies in 1794.

But even the most advanced wings of Jacobinism were still operating 
within a revolution that, historically speaking, was primarily driven by 
the rise of the bourgeoisie. Full social equality was not yet explicitly 
defined. Radicalized popular sectors sensed the problem, but still 
lacked a theory and organization capable of definitively breaking with 
the emerging liberal framework.

The fall of Robespierre and Saint-Just in 1794 and the beginning of the 
Thermidorian Reaction marked a decisive turning point. The revolutionary 
bourgeoisie, now terrified by popular pressure, began to dismantle many 
of the social gains achieved during the Jacobin period. Popular clubs 
were closed, the former sans-culottes persecuted, and poverty once again 
spread across Paris. The Directory ushered in an era of corruption, 
repression, and the restoration of a controlled social order. It was 
precisely in this context of defeat and hunger that the Conspiracy of 
the Equals would take root.

Babeuf and the Conspiracy of the Equals: when the revolution thought 
there was an afterlife
François-Noël Babeuf was born in 1760 into a humble family in Picardy, 
in northeastern France. Before the Revolution, he worked as a land 
surveyor and witnessed firsthand the profound rural inequalities of the 
feudal system. This experience would profoundly shape his political 
thought. During the revolutionary years, he adopted the name "Gracchus" 
Babeuf, in reference to the reformist Roman tribunes, and engaged in 
intense journalistic and organizational activity.

Unlike many bourgeois revolutionaries, Babeuf understood early on that 
legal equality was insufficient without transforming the material 
conditions of existence. His newspapers denounced the accumulation of 
wealth, speculation, and the abandonment of the poor after the fall of 
the Jacobins. For Babeuf, the Revolution had been betrayed.

Around him began to form a clandestine network composed of radical 
former Jacobins, persecuted sans-culottes , disaffected soldiers, and 
popular militias. Among them, Sylvain Maréchal, an atheist poet and 
philosopher, stood out, tasked with drafting the famous Manifesto of the 
Equals . The text constitutes one of the most radical political 
documents of the entire French Revolution.

"We no longer want equality written in a table of rights; we want it 
under the roof of our homes."

Those words encapsulated a decisive break. Equality ceased to be 
understood solely as an abstract legal principle and became a material 
and social issue. The manifesto openly denounced concentrated private 
property and proposed the need for a community of goods oriented towards 
collective well-being and improvement.

The conspiracy began to organize clandestinely during 1795 and 1796. It 
relied on popular networks that had survived the Thermidorian 
Repression: former revolutionary clubs, guild and urban workers' 
circles, and spaces of political sociability where egalitarian 
newspapers and pamphlets continued to circulate. The revolutionary 
experience had left behind an enormously rich popular political culture, 
reaching a point of no return. Although defeated, the radical sectors 
continued to organize.

The Conspiracy of the Equals combined propaganda, strategic planning, 
and insurrectionary preparation. Their aim was to overthrow the 
Directory and establish an egalitarian republic based on collective 
forms of economic and political organization. Their proposals were still 
ambiguous in many respects and contained authoritarian elements 
inherited from Jacobinism, but they clearly pointed in a new direction: 
the subordination of private property to the collective interest.

The project included elements that were extraordinarily advanced for its 
time: a universal right to subsistence, collective distribution of 
resources, a critique of private accumulation, and a challenge to 
economic privilege. In a Europe still dominated by absolute monarchies 
and feudal structures, these ideas appeared as an intolerable threat; a 
specter of emancipation was beginning to rise across the European continent.

The repression was swift. The conspiracy was leaked by police informants 
and thwarted before it could launch the planned insurrection. Mass 
arrests began in May 1796. Babeuf and numerous associates were 
imprisoned and put on trial.

The trial sought to portray the Equals as bloodthirsty fanatics and 
enemies of civilization. The conservative press stoked fears of chaos 
and the redistribution of wealth. In reality, the Directory fully 
understood the political danger these ideas represented in a context of 
hunger and growing popular discontent. Babeuf was executed in 1797 along 
with Augustin Darthé. According to several accounts, he attempted 
suicide before ascending the scaffold. The conspiracy had been defeated, 
but its memory was just beginning to acquire a much greater historical 
dimension.

Because what was truly important was not the military capacity of the 
Equals-limited and easily crushed-but the political horizon they opened 
up. The French Revolution had demonstrated that it was possible to 
destroy the Old Regime; Babeuf argued that it was also possible to 
challenge the social inequality produced by the new bourgeois society.

From Babuvism to the modern revolutionary tradition
The defeat of the Conspiracy of the Equals did not mean the end of its 
ideas. Filippo Buonarroti, one of the survivors of the conspiracy, 
condemned to deportation, would play a fundamental role in transmitting 
that experience to later generations of European revolutionaries. His 
work on Babeuf and the conspiracy circulated clandestinely for decades 
and influenced radical republican, socialist, and communist movements.

Babuvism thus functioned as a historical bridge between the popular 
radicalization of the French Revolution and the future workers' 
organizations of the 19th century. Auguste Blanqui would inherit many of 
its conspiratorial and organizational elements, while various utopian 
socialist movements would adopt its egalitarian critique of private 
property.

However, the subsequent development of the labor movement would also 
involve significant advancements. The industrial proletariat that 
emerged from capitalist expansion introduced new forms of collective 
struggle: trade unions, workers' associations, internationalism, and the 
aspiration for mass organization. Where Babeuf was still operating 
within a heterogeneous and pre-industrial social structure, the later 
labor movement would be based on a working class increasingly defined as 
a political subject.

From a libertarian communist perspective, the experience of the Equals 
is particularly interesting for several reasons. First, because it 
demonstrates that aspirations for material equality do not arise solely 
from later theoretical elaborations, but from concrete experiences of 
popular self-organization in the face of poverty and oppression.

Secondly, because it demonstrates the importance of revolutionary 
organization on all fronts. The Conspiracy of the Equals was not a mere 
spontaneous outburst or a desperate explosion of violence without a 
political horizon. There was an ideological framework, a militant 
network, clandestine mechanisms, and a strategic will to transcend 
purely spontaneous actions from a position of power with popular 
support. Even with all its historical limitations, that movement already 
understood that revolutionary transformation requires organization, 
coordination, and sustained political construction.

At the same time, the Babouvist experience reveals some of the dangers 
inherited from Jacobinism: centralizing tendencies, excessive reliance 
on conspiratorial minorities, and a limited capacity to develop broad 
forms of permanent popular self-organization. The subsequent libertarian 
tradition would insist precisely on overcoming these limitations through 
federative structures, direct democracy, and the independent leadership 
of the exploited classes with their own program.

The Paris Commune of 1871 incorporated some of that historical learning. 
Many of the elements anticipated by previous French revolutionary 
movements reappeared there: popular self-government, material 
socialization, worker protagonism, and armed defense of the revolution. 
But much more developed forms of popular organization and collective 
participation also emerged.

Revolutionary history never progresses in a straight line. Each 
generation inherits incomplete experiences, defeats, and contradictions. 
The Conspiracy of the Equals was one of those fertile defeats that, even 
after being crushed, continue to fuel subsequent struggles.

Women, colonialism and revolutionary memory
The French Revolution was not solely led by great male leaders or 
confined to the most renowned political salons. Working women played a 
decisive role from the very beginning of the revolutionary process: 
marches for bread, neighborhood organizing, political agitation, 
participation in clubs, and support for popular uprisings.

Figures like Olympe de Gouges denounced the political exclusion of women 
early on through the Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Female 
Citizen . But beyond these well-known figures, there existed a whole 
network of organized working-class women who sustained much of the 
revolutionary political life in Parisian neighborhoods and markets.

Many of those women also participated in the more radical currents of 
the Revolution. The Thermidorian factions quickly grasped the danger 
posed by this popular female political participation and closed the 
women's clubs after the Jacobin fall. The restoration of bourgeois order 
also required the reconstruction of patriarchal hierarchies.

The Conspiracy of the Equals itself developed in a context where 
revolutionary women continued to perform organizational, propaganda and 
clandestine support tasks, although they were subsequently made 
invisible by much of traditional historiography.

Similarly, the colonial question was deeply intertwined with the 
contradictions of the French Revolution. While universal rights were 
being proclaimed in Paris, the French colonies continued to be sustained 
by slavery and racial exploitation. It was the rebellions of enslaved 
people, especially in Saint-Domingue-the future Haiti-that truly 
propelled the abolitionist movement.

The Haitian Revolution, led by enslaved Black people, is probably one of 
the most radical expressions of revolutionary universalism of the time. 
There, the principles of liberty and equality were taken much further 
than the French and colonial bourgeoisie were willing to accept.

Although Babeuf and the Equals did not develop a modern anti-colonial 
theory, their egalitarian proposals were part of a political current 
that clashed head-on with the racial and economic hierarchies necessary 
to sustain the colonial system. The abolition of slavery in 1794-later 
reversed by Napoleon-was driven by pressure from both Black uprisings 
and the most radical revolutionary sectors.

The cultural legacy of the Conspiracy of the Equals survived for decades 
in underground newspapers, secret societies, workers' circles, and 
militant memoirs. Babeuf became a symbolic figure for multiple 
subsequent revolutionary generations: socialists, communists, radical 
republicans, and anarchists would all critically discuss his legacy.

Because, beyond its historical limitations, the experience of the Equals 
raised a question that would continue to resonate throughout capitalist 
modernity: what does equality really mean in a society divided between 
rich and poor?

The memory of the defeated and the red thread of history
The Conspiracy of the Equals was militarily defeated. Its leaders were 
imprisoned, executed, or condemned to exile. The Thermidorian Reaction 
and subsequently the Napoleonic rise seemed to close the revolutionary 
cycle that began in 1789. However, revolutionary defeats rarely 
disappear entirely. They remain as memory, lessons learned, and 
accumulated experience of the oppressed classes.

There is a historical thread that connects those who, in different eras, 
confronted the dominant order seeking to expand the boundaries of 
freedom and equality. This is not about constructing artificial 
genealogies or turning Babeuf into a "proto-communist" out of his 
historical context. It is about understanding how popular struggles 
leave behind political experiences, organizational insights, and 
examples of collective courage that transcend generations.

In times when capitalism seeks to reduce all possibility of 
transformation to the resigned management of our misery, recovering 
these historical experiences is also a form of political struggle. 
Working-class and revolutionary memory is not nostalgia: it is a 
battleground for deciding what futures we want to build.

The Conspiracy of the Equals reminds us that even in moments of defeat, 
movements can emerge that are capable of profoundly questioning the 
existing order. That equality was never a generous concession from the 
elites, but a conquest won through organization, conflict, and 
collective commitment.

And perhaps therein lies one of the most valuable lessons of that 
experience: faced with spontaneity without a horizon, faced with despair 
turned into an isolated gesture, or faced with the individualistic 
solutions offered by the system, the revolutionary movements that left a 
mark were those capable of building sustained popular organization, 
social roots, and strategic will.

Because those who went to the scaffold in 1797 were not fighting only 
for themselves. They were part of that long chain of anonymous men and 
women who, generation after generation, refused throughout history to 
accept that inequality was the inevitable destiny of humanity.

Ángel Malatesta, a member of Liza .

https://regeneracionlibertaria.org/2026/09/15/la-igualdad-contra-el-mundo-viejo/
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