Buonarroti and His International Secret Societies
ARTHUR LEHNING BUONARROTI AND HIS INTERNATIONAL SECRET SOCIETIES On the 27th May 1797 the High Court at Vendome sentenced Babeuf to death and Buonarroti, then 36 years old, to deportation, but this being postponed there followed a long life of imprisonment and exile. Buonarroti led a mysterious life, and our knowledge about certain phases of his life and activities since Vendome is incomplete. Buonar- roti has, of course, always been known as one of the important actors of the conspiracy connected with the name of Babeuf, and as the author of a book, dealing with this conspiracy. This rare and famous book, published in 1828 1, was mainly regarded as the historical account of an eye-witness and participant of a post-thermidorian episode of the French Revolution. The book, however, was also a landmark in the historiography of the French Revolution, and did much for the revaluation and the rehabilitation of Robespierre and the revival of the Jacobin tradition under the Monarchy of July. By exposing the social implications of the Terror, and by a detailed account of the organisation and the methods and the aims of the conspiracy of 1796, the book became a textbook for the communist movement in the 1830's and fourties in France, and the fundamental source for its ideology. In fact, with the "Conspiration" started the Jacobin trend in European socialism. In speaking of his widespread influence 2 one has to consider differ- ent aspects: his communist ideology, his conspirative and insurrectio- nal methods and his theory of a revolutionary dictatorship. In what has always been called somewhat vaguely Babouvism and neo-Babouvism there has never been made a distinction between the ideas of Babeuf and Buonarroti, nor has the question ever been asked as to how far the 1 Conspiration pour l'egalite dite de Babeuf, Bruxelles 1828, 2 vol.
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