p In France the revolutionary trend of utopian socialism was founded by Jean Meslier (1664-1729), who spent most of his life in the countryside and personally witnessed the benumbing poverty and suffering of the peasants, and their back-breaking, forced labour for the feudal lords. His Testament, a passionate, 16 merciless indictment of feudal exploitation, royal power and the Church, circulated first in manuscript form, and was published many years after his death. Meslier dreamed of communism, of a society without exploiters founded on publicly-owned property and collective labour. He was well aware that the oppressors would not voluntarily surrender their privileges, wealth and dominant position, and therefore called for the revolutionary overthrow of the existing system: “Everybody unite in unanimous determination to achieve liberation from this hated and odious yoke. . .” he exhorted. His great contribution to the development of socialist ideas was that he sought to inject communist ideals into the popular, peasant revolution.
p However, he failed to give even a rough outline of the future society. A more or less detailed blue print is to be found in Code of Nature or the True Spirit of Her Laws (1755), written by the French Utopian Morelly, who opposed private ownership, which, he said, had perverted and spoiled man’s nature. He drew up draft laws of the new society. The first of these laws abolished private ownership with the exception of ownership of articles of personal use; the second guaranteed the right to work and proclaimed that it was the duty of all to work; the third required people to benefit society to the best of their ability, in accordance with their strength, talents and age. The latter law was the first document clearly defining one of the basic principles of socialism, namely, the necessity of each person working according to his ability. Morelly also advanced the idea of distribution according to needs, but this was a primitive, equalitarian distribution. He sought to adapt society to the level of the medieval peasant’s requirements, to his extremely narrow world outlook.
p A considerable step forward in developing the communist principle of distribution was made by the French philosopher Gabriel Bonnot de Mably (1709-1785), who advocated the building of a society that would ensure to each citizen “the largest possible sum of delight and happiness". This society could be built only after private ownership was abolished. Mably mourned for the “Golden Age”, when private ownership was non-existent, and considered that the division of property, which put an end to 17 that age, was the greatest evil because it perverted people, arousing in them a lust for gain. But, alone, the lust for gain could not induce people to work. The striving to promote the well-being of society as a whole, respect for one’s fellow citizens and honest competition could be much more powerful stimuli for industriousness than greed and vanity.
p While recognising the right of oppressed people to accomplish a revolution, Mably believed that reforms enforced by a democratic republic would deliver man from the loathsome habits of proprietorship. He regarded this republic as a phase of the transition from a society of private ownership and exploitation to communist society.
p He thus posed social thinking with the immensely important and complex problem of whether the new society should be achieved by revolution or by reforms.
p The French revolutionary Gracchus Babeuf (1760-1797) and his supporters, known as Babouvists, replied that the solution lay in revolution and the forcible overthrow of the existing system by a group of fearless conspirators, devoted to the people and implacably hating exploitation and wealth.
p Babeuf was the leader of a revolutionary peasant movement for the establishment of a nation-wide commune—a “republic of equals”. In the 18th century many socialists confined themselves to criticising the falsehood, the injustice and the unreasonableness of the existing system. But in the case of the Babouvists, life prompted them to adopt the doctrine of insurrection and seizure of power. They witnessed and participated in the great French bourgeois revolution of 1789-93 and soon realised that this revolution had not abolished exploitation but only changed its form. Far from contributing anything to the people’s happiness, the revolution forced the people to go on sweating and shedding their blood, which ultimately turned into gold for a tiny handful of rich men. The Babouvists maintained that the bourgeois revolution would be followed by a new, people’s revolution during which the people would seize power, establish a revolutionary dictatorship and organise a “society of equals”. In that society, founded on collective ownership, there would be neither rich nor poor, nobody would appropriate property, and each would 18 work for the common weal to the best of his ability. In their Manifesto the Babouvists wrote that equality implied primarily “that everybody would work and equally share the fruits of their work".
p True, the Babouvist notions of equality were primitive. Equalitarian consumption was one of their leading theo ries. No matter what work a man did, they argued, it did not make his belly any bigger. Hence their underestimation of skilled labour, education, art and science. If necessary, they wrote, let all art perish so long as real equality was preserved. They failed to appreciate the role of cultural progress and the need for an abundance of material and cultural blessings enabling man continuously to develop his abilities.
p The Babouvists’ idea of communism was that of a highly organised, centralised society founded on collective ownership and united on a nation-wide scale. Their idea of a centralised administration of society was of inestimable value.
They were spokesmen of the then nascent French proletariat, but the proletariat’s immaturity and lack of organisation in those days were mirrored in their crude notions of a society of the future and of the ways of building that society. Their conspiratorial tactics and their weak link with the people doomed them to defeat. Members of the “conspiracy of equals" were arrested, and Babeuf himself was guillotined.
Notes