User:Wiki the Octopus/Sandbox/Babouvism

Radical faction

Facción radical
Radical faction Facción radical
	Coat of arms of Paraguay under de Francia
Supreme and Perpetual Dictator of Paraguay	José Rodríguez de Francia (until 1840)
Consul of Paraguay	Carlos Antonio López (1841-1862)
President of Paraguay	Francisco Solano López (1862-1870)
Founded	1811
Dissolved	1870
Ideology	Babouvism; Paraguayan nationalism; Paraguayan independence from United Provinces of the Río de la Plata and Empire of Brazil; Jacobinism; Radicalism; Republicanism; Anti-Imperialism; Dirigisme; Indigenism; Isolationism (until 1840); Statism; Christophobia; Protectionism; Progressivism; Left-wing nationalism; Guaraní nationalism; Bonapartism; Militarism (from 1840)
Political position	Far-left
Colours	Red, White, Blue (Paraguayan Tricolour); Light blue (customary)
Anthem	Paraguayan National Anthem (adopted 1846)
Party flag
	Politics of Paraguay; Political parties; Elections;

Society of the Equals

Société des Égaux
Society of the Equals Société des Égaux
	Solar imagery appears in Babeuf's writings (not necessarily the one above)
Leader	François-Noël Babeuf; Sylvain Maréchal; Philippe Buonarroti; Augustin Darthé
Spokesperson	François-Noël Babeuf
Founded	30 March 1796
Banned	10 May 1796
Preceded by	Jacobin Club (including The Mountain); Enragés
Newspaper	Le tribun du peuple; Révolutions de Paris
Political club	Panthéon Club
Membership	934 (November 1795); ~2,400 (February 1796); 245 (May 1796)
Ideology	Babouvism; Neo-Jacobinism; Utopian Socialism; Feminism; Proto-Communism (French); Ultra-radicalism; Left-wing populism; Republicanism; Progressivism; Anti-Directory; Anti-corruption; Direct democracy; Pro-1793 Constitution; Egalitarianism; Communitarianism; Revolutionary socialism; Meslierism; Insurrectionary anarchism (some)
Political position	Far-left
Slogan	PEOPLE OF FRANCE, Open your eyes and your hearts to the fullness of happiness: recognize and proclaim with us the REPUBLIC OF EQUALS.
Anthem	Chanson nouvelle a l'usage des faubourgs
Parliament	0 / 150
Party flag
	Politics of France; Political parties; Elections;

Babouvism is a proto-communist political ideology advocating the sharing of money and other property collectively. While not advocating the complete abolition of private property, it still influenced many ideologies (such as Marxism) which advocate for just that.

Society of the Equals and origins of Babouvism (1795-96)

The Society of the Panthéon (French: Société du Panthéon), also called the Babouvists or the Society of the Equals, was a French radical political organization that advocated for ideas such as the redistribution of wealth, universal equal income, the sharing of all wealth equally, and direct democracy. It lasted during the later revolutionary period.

Following the 9th of Thermidor coup, moderate Jacobins called the Thermidorians took over the running of the French Republic. They wrote a new constitution that created a new government, the Directory, and walked back some rights granted by the previous constitution.

More radical Jacobins opposed the constitution and the White Terror initiated by the Thermidorians, and after the 13 Vendémiaire monarchist revolt, they decided to pressure the Directory into adopting more left-wing positions. In order to advance their cause, these radicals founded the Panthéon Club on the 6 November 1795. While initially intended to reform the Directory, the club quickly attracted far-left former Montagnards and memebers of the Committee of General Security who wanted to abolish the Directory and return to the 1793 constitution.

Ultimately, the club attracted a certain François-Noël Babeuf and some of his friends (such as Augustin Darthé, Philippe Buonarroti, and radical atheist Sylvain Maréchal). Maréchal wrote the Manifesto of the Equals and the club grew rapidly. They advocated for utopian socialism and proto-communism.

Eventually, the Directory banned the club and Napoleon Bonaparte carried out their orders, but the ideas promoted by Babeuf and his supporters became more and more popular. The Equals (French: Les égaux) was founded by Babeuf on 30 March 1796. In the military, several commanders began to support Babouvist ideology.

Doctrine

The ultimate goal of François-Noël Babeuf and his comrades was absolute equality. The purpose of the Conspiracy was to continue revolution and to lead it to the collectivisation of lands and the means of production to ‘put an end to civil dissension and public poverty.’ They furthermore demanded the application of the Constitution of Year 1 (dating from 1793, the first constitution of the Republic, which was never applied).

The ideas of the Conspiracy were particularly set forth in the Manifesto of Equals of 1796, which was written by Babeuf’s top aide Sylvain Maréchal. The manifesto advocated a radical reform of France which went further than the French Revolution's Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen to enforce the practice of absolute equality across all aspects of society. Maréchal rejected the notion that equality before the law itself was sufficient enough to define societal equality, and thus placed a strong emphasis on the abolition of private property and equal access to food. The manifesto further denounced the privileged bourgeoisie who benefited from the Revolution such as the wealthy landowners who continued to profit off the ‘common good’ of land. Although the Conspiracy acknowledged the ‘selfish’ would oppose their aims to preserve their unjust privileges, their sacrifice of power was deemed necessary to enact real equality.

The Manifesto additionally reads: ‘We aspire to live and die equal, the way we were born: we want real equality or death; this is what we need. And we’ll have this real equality, at whatever the cost.’ However, the Conspiracy failed to include colonial slaves into their manifesto’s thinking, and only championed equality for those they considered the ‘People of France’.

The Manifesto was not met with unanimous support from the directors of the revolt. Maréchal’s point ‘Let the arts perish, if need be, as long as real equality remains’ was especially contested.

Result of the Conspiracy

Fearing for its existence, the Directory arrested Babeuf and other leaders on the 10 May 1796, effectively banning the organization. After his trial, Babeuf was sentenced to death in 1797.

Post-Conspiracy history (after 1796)

Although the conspiracy itself failed, Babouvism would survive due to Buonarroti writing the History of Babeuf's Conspiracy for Equality. Babouvist ideology would later inspire many socialist thinkers, including Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Louis Auguste Blanqui, and Karl Marx.

France

Neo-Babouvism is a revolutionary socialist current in French political theory and action in the 19th century. It hearkened back to the Conspiracy of the Equals of Gracchus Babeuf and his associates, who tried to overthrow the Directory at the end of the French Revolution. After Babeuf's execution, his programme of radical Jacobin republicanism and economic collectivism was propagated by Philippe Buonarroti, who had been associated with the Conspiracy of the Equals and survived. Buonarroti's writings influenced many French revolutionaries in the 1830s and 1840s, among them Théodore Dézamy, Richard Lahautière, Albert Laponneraye and Jean-Jacques Pillot.^{[citation needed]}

The neo-Babouvists represented the extreme left-wing of the neo-Jacobin republican movement. Many of them participated in the revolutionary events of the 19th century such as the Revolution of 1848 and the Paris Commune.^{[citation needed]} They provided a link between the utopian socialism of the French Revolution and Marxism.^[1]

Louis-Auguste Blanqui is sometimes also grouped with the followers of Babeuf. Babouvists and Blanquists were often allies such as in the Paris Commune. However, Blanqui regarded himself as a political descendant of Jacques Hébert and his followers, not of Babeuf. Blanqui also had no organisational ties to the societies of the Babouvists and lacked the clear commitment to economic communism of the Babouvists. The writings of Buonarroti and through them the doctrines of Babeuf also had a considerable influence on some socialists within the British Chartist movement, notably on James Bronterre O'Brien.^{[citation needed]}

Neo-Babouvism largely disappeared in the second half of the 19th century, although an echo of it may be found in the small non-Marxist Alliance Révolutionnaire Communiste that existed briefly in the 1890s.^{[citation needed]}

Paris Commune (1871)

The Commune returns workmen's tools pawned during the siege.

The Commune adopted the discarded French Republican Calendar^[2] during its brief existence and used the socialist red flag rather than the republican tricolor. Despite internal differences, the council began to organise public services for the city which at the time consisted of two million residents. It also reached a consensus on certain policies that tended towards a progressive, secular, and social democracy. Because the Commune met on fewer than sixty days before it was suppressed, only a few decrees were actually implemented. The decrees included:

remission of rents owed for the entire period of the siege (during which payment had been suspended);
abolition of child labour and night work in bakeries;
granting of pensions to the unmarried companions and children of national guardsmen killed in active service;
free return by pawnshops of all workmen's tools and household items, valued up to 20 francs, pledged during the siege;
postponement of commercial debt obligations, and the abolition of interest on the debts;
right of employees to take over and run an enterprise if it were deserted by its owner; the Commune, nonetheless, recognised the previous owner's right to compensation;
prohibition of fines imposed by employers on their workmen.^[3]

Paraguay (De Francism)

One Latin American scholar, Antonio de la Cova, summarised Francia's rule as follows:

"... we find a strange mixture of capacity and caprice, of far-sighted wisdom and reckless infatuation, strenuous endeavours after a high ideal and flagrant violations of the simplest principles of justice. He cut off Paraguay from the rest of the world by stopping foreign commerce, but carefully fostered its internal industries and agriculture under his personal supervision. Dr. Francia disposed to be hospitable to strangers from other lands, and kept them prisoners for years; lived a life of republican simplicity, and severely punished the slightest want of respect. As time went on he appears to have grown more arbitrary and despotic. Deeply imbued with the principles of the French Revolution, he was a stern antagonist of the church. He abolished the Inquisition, suppressed the college of theology, did away with the tithes, and inflicted endless indignities on the priests. He kept the aristocracy in subjection and discouraged marriage both by precept and example, leaving behind him several illegitimate children. For the extravagances of his later years the plea of insanity has been put forward."^[4]

Francia aimed to found a society on the principles of Rousseau's Social Contract^[5] and was also inspired by Robespierre and Napoleon. To create such a utopia, he imposed a ruthless isolation upon Paraguay, interdicting all external trade, and he fostered national industries.

Francia in some ways resembles the caudillos of the post-colonial era, but he deviated from the elitist tendencies of most of his contemporaries. Instead, he attempted to reorganize Paraguay in accordance with the wishes of the lower classes and other marginalized groups. He greatly limited the power of the Church and the landed elites in favor of giving peasants a way to make a living on state-run estancias. He is criticized by some scholars for being entirely against the Church, he wanted only to diminish the institution's all-encompassing political control. He actually built new churches and supported religious festivals using state funds. Francia's government also took over services usually under church supervision, such as orphanages, hospitals, and homeless shelters, to manage them more efficiently. Francia and his policies were in fact very well received by the majority of Paraguayans, excluding the small ruling classes, and his neutrality in foreign affairs kept peace in a period of turmoil.^[6]

Francia's authoritarian regime built the foundations of a strong and dirigiste state in order to undertake the economic modernization of the country. Paraguay thus instituted rigorous protectionism at a time when most other countries were adopting the free-trade system promoted by the United Kingdom while entrusting their national bourgeoisie with the task of piloting wealth creation. This model, continued after Francia's death by his successors Carlos Antonio López and Francisco Solano López, made Paraguay one of the most modern and socially advanced countries in Latin America: the redistribution of wealth was so great that many foreign travelers reported that the country had no begging, hunger or conflict. The agrarian reform has allowed for a fairly equitable distribution of land. Asunción was one of the first capitals on the continent to inaugurate a railroad network. The country had a growing industry and a merchant fleet made up of ships built in national shipyards, had a trade surplus and was debt-free.^[7]

Francia detested the political culture of the old regime and considered himself a revolutionary. He admired and emulated the most radical elements of the French Revolution. Although some commentators have compared him to the Jacobin Maximilien de Robespierre (1758–1794),^[8]^[9] Francia's policies and ideas perhaps were closest to those of François-Noël Babeuf, the French utopian who wanted to abolish private property and to communalize land as a prelude to founding a "republic of equals". The government of Caraí Guazú ("Great Señor", as the poor Guaranís called Francia) was a dictatorship that destroyed the power of the colonial élite and advanced the interests of common Paraguayans. In contrast to other states in the region, Paraguay was efficiently and honestly administered, stable, and secure (by 1827 army grew to 5000 men with 20 000 in reserve). The justice system treated criminals leniently. Murderers, for example, were put to work on public projects. Asylum to political refugees from other countries was granted, as in the notable case of Uruguayan patriot José Gervasio Artigas.

At the same time, a system of internal espionage destroyed free speech. People were arrested without charge and disappeared without trial. Torture in the so-called "Chamber of Truth" was applied to those suspected of plotting to overthrow Francia. He sent political prisoners, numbering approximately 400 in any given year, to a detention camp where they were shackled in dungeons and denied medical care and even the use of sanitary facilities.

In 1820, four years after the Congress had named Francia dictator for life with the title Supremo Dictator Perpetuo de la Republica del Paraguay (Supreme Dictator in Perpetuity), Francia's security system uncovered and quickly crushed a plot by the élite to assassinate El Supremo. Francia arrested almost 200 prominent Paraguayans among whom were all the leading figures of the 1811 independence movement, and executed most of them. In 1821 Francia struck against the Spanish-born elite, summoning all of Paraguay's 300 or so peninsulares to Asunción's main square, where he accused them of treason, had them arrested, and held them in jail for 18 months. They were released only after agreeing to pay an enormous collective indemnity of 150,000 pesos (about 75 percent of the annual state budget), an amount so large that it broke their predominance in the Paraguayan economy.^[10]

In order to destroy the colonial racial hierarchy which had discriminated against him because of his mixed blood, Francia forbade Europeans from marrying other Europeans, thus forcing the élite to choose spouses from the local population. He sealed Paraguay's borders to the outside world and executed anyone who attempted to leave. Foreigners who managed to enter Paraguay had to remain there in virtual arrest for years. Both of these decisions actually helped to solidify the Paraguayan identity. There no longer were separate racial identities; all inhabitants had to live within the borders of Paraguay and build a new society which has created the modern Paraguayan society in which Hispanic and Guaraní roots were equally strong.^[11]

Paraguayan international trade stopped almost completely. The decline ruined exporters of yerba maté and tobacco. These measures fell most harshly on the members of the former ruling class of Spanish or Spanish-descended church officials, military officers, merchants, and hacendados (large landowners). The state soon developed native industries in shipbuilding and textiles, a centrally planned and administered agricultural sector, which was more diversified and productive than the prior export monoculture, and other manufacturing capabilities. These developments supported Francia's policy of economic self-sufficiency.

Notes

^ arrest of Babeuf and other leaders
^ not directly, but Babeuf did adopt and develop some of their ideas. See Enragés#Other_groups
^ banned before the Society of the Panthéon was founded
^ presumed conspirators
^ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Flag_of_Paraguay_(1812-1826).svg

References

^ Jessop, Bob; Wheatley, Russell (1999). Karl Marx's Social and Political Thought. Taylor & Francis. p. 494. ISBN 978-0-415-19328-3.
^ Robb, Graham (2010). Parisians: An Adventure History of Paris. W. W. Norton. p. 181. ISBN 978-0-393-06724-8.
^ Marx and the Proletariat: A Study in Social Theory by Timothy McCarthy
^ Antonio de la Cova. "Jose Gaspar Rodriguez Francia". Latinamericanstudies.org. Retrieved 2012-08-16.
^ War of The Triple Alliance Archived 7 August 2014 at the Wayback Machine Retrieved 14 November 2010
^ Meade, Teresa A. (2016-01-19). A history of modern Latin America: 1800 to the present (Second ed.). Chichester, West Sussex. ISBN 9781118772485. OCLC 915135785.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
^ Una Otan de la Economía. Revista Punto de Vista Número 8. Editorial UNED. 2 November 2015. ISBN 9788495798268.
^ "Letters on Paraguay". The British and Foreign Review or European Quarterly Journal. 7. London: Ridgway: 602. July–October 1838. Retrieved 2016-02-23. Among the most remarkable of these few, if not the most remarkable, was the Dictator Francia, whom we might without any great violation of historical propriety call the Robespierre of Paraguay.
^ Crespo, Maria Victoria (2007). "The Concept and Politics of Tyranny and Dictatorship in the Spanish American Revolutions of 1810". In Palonen, Kari (ed.). Redescriptions: Yearbook of Political Thought and Conceptual History. Vol. 10. Berlin/Münster: LIT Verlag. p. 100. ISBN 9783825899264. Retrieved 2016-02-23. Interpreted along the lines of an extreme Jacobinism, rather than as a tyrant, Francia emerges as a successful, tropical Robespierre.
^ Rengger, Johann Rudolph (1827). The Reign of Doctor Joseph Gaspard Roderick de Francia in Paraguay: Being an Account of Six Years' Residence in that Republic, from July, 1819--to May, 1825. T. Hurst, E. Chance. p. 45. Retrieved 2017-01-07.
^ Schweller, R.L. (2006). Unanswered Threats: Political Constraints on the Balance of Power. Princeton University. p. 94. ISBN 9780691124254. Retrieved 2017-01-07.

[1] rrest of Babeuf and other leaders

[2] t directly, but Babeuf did adopt and develop some of their ideas. See Enragés#Other_groups

[3] re the Society of the Panthéon was founded

[4] resumed conspirators

[8] ttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Flag_of_Paraguay_(1812-1826).svg

[5] Jessop, Bob; Wheatley, Russell (1999). Karl Marx's Social and Political Thought. Taylor & Francis. p. 494. ISBN 978-0-415-19328-3.

[6] Robb, Graham (2010). Parisians: An Adventure History of Paris. W. W. Norton. p. 181. ISBN 978-0-393-06724-8.

[7] Marx and the Proletariat: A Study in Social Theory by Timothy McCarthy

[9] Antonio de la Cova. "Jose Gaspar Rodriguez Francia". Latinamericanstudies.org. Retrieved 2012-08-16.

[10] War of The Triple Alliance Archived 7 August 2014 at the Wayback Machine Retrieved 14 November 2010

[11] Meade, Teresa A. (2016-01-19). A history of modern Latin America: 1800 to the present (Second ed.). Chichester, West Sussex. ISBN 9781118772485. OCLC 915135785.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)

[12] Una Otan de la Economía. Revista Punto de Vista Número 8. Editorial UNED. 2 November 2015. ISBN 9788495798268.

[13] "Letters on Paraguay". The British and Foreign Review or European Quarterly Journal. 7. London: Ridgway: 602. July–October 1838. Retrieved 2016-02-23. Among the most remarkable of these few, if not the most remarkable, was the Dictator Francia, whom we might without any great violation of historical propriety call the Robespierre of Paraguay.

[14] Crespo, Maria Victoria (2007). "The Concept and Politics of Tyranny and Dictatorship in the Spanish American Revolutions of 1810". In Palonen, Kari (ed.). Redescriptions: Yearbook of Political Thought and Conceptual History. Vol. 10. Berlin/Münster: LIT Verlag. p. 100. ISBN 9783825899264. Retrieved 2016-02-23. Interpreted along the lines of an extreme Jacobinism, rather than as a tyrant, Francia emerges as a successful, tropical Robespierre.

[History_of_Paraguay_google-15] Rengger, Johann Rudolph (1827). The Reign of Doctor Joseph Gaspard Roderick de Francia in Paraguay: Being an Account of Six Years' Residence in that Republic, from July, 1819--to May, 1825. T. Hurst, E. Chance. p. 45. Retrieved 2017-01-07.

[History_of_Paraguay_google3-16] Schweller, R.L. (2006). Unanswered Threats: Political Constraints on the Balance of Power. Princeton University. p. 94. ISBN 9780691124254. Retrieved 2017-01-07.

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