The Red Flag: A History of Communism Read Online Free PDF Page A

‘Gracchus’, after the brothers who, as Roman tribunes, redistributed land to the poor.
    The revolution may have destroyed Babeuf’s business, but it gave him the opportunity to put his ideals into practice. He helped to organize peasant resistance to taxes, and from 1791 he became committed to the ‘agrarian law’ – the land redistribution which the Gracchus brothers had introduced into ancient Rome. Babeuf joined the Jacobins and became a secretary to the Food Administration of the Paris Commune. The job entailed finding supplies to feed Paris, enforcing the Jacobins’ price controls and punishing speculators. Babeuf saw his work in visionary terms, writing enthusiastically to his wife:
    This is exciting me to the point of madness. The
sans-culottes
want to be happy, and I don’t think that it is impossible that within a year, if we carry out our measures aright and act with all the necessary prudence, we shall succeed in ensuring general happiness on earth. 22
    Although Babeuf was working for the Jacobins, his vision was closer to the levelling paradise of the
sans-culottes
. His utopia was a society in which everybody would be fed, and the immoral rich would be brought under strict control.
    The fact that the Jacobins were employing people like Babeuf showed how radical Parisian politics had become. The army was particularly affected. Authority was democratized and the harsh discipline of the past was replaced by judgement by peers; meanwhile officers were appointed on the basis of ideological commitment rather than expertise.The revolutionary general Charles Dumouriez argued that this was the best way to motivate the troops: ‘a nation as spiritual as ours ought not and cannot be reduced to automatons, especially when liberty has just increased all its faculties’. 23 The War Ministry, under the control of the radical Jean-Baptiste Bouchotte, distributed
Le père Duchesne
, a newspaper published by the journalist Jacques Hébert, written in the voice of a crude, violent
sans-culotte
. Hundreds of thousands of soldiers read it or heard it read.
    Conflict between the Jacobins and the
sans-culottes
seemed inevitable. Whilst the Robespierrists envisaged France as a classical city-state populated with high-minded, self-sacrificing citizens, the
sans-culottes
wanted a land of good-cheer, bawdy fun and violent class retribution. But the Jacobins needed the
sans-culottes
to fight for them, and so compromise was necessary. Various
sans-culotte
demands were conceded: price controls were imposed, and the death penalty for hoarders of grain introduced. Meanwhile ‘revolutionary armies’ of militant
sans-culottes
were sent to the countryside to seize food from recalcitrant peasants, thus supplying the towns. The new
levée en masse
, the universal military draft, which included all males, of whatever social background, also satisfied the
sans-culottes
’ desire for equality.
    However, whilst willing to make concessions, the Jacobins had no intention of being
led
by the untutored masses. Their goal was to mobilize and channel mass energies behind an increasingly centralized state. This was the meaning of the Festival of the Unity and Indivisibility of the Republic held in August 1793, when the figure of Hercules became the dominant allegorical figure. During the festival, pikes, the
sans-culottes
’ weapon, were brought from every locality and bound together into a giant fasces. Ordinary people were to be players in the drama of politics, but the state was going to bind and discipline them. To this end, the Jacobins limited the powers of the Revolutionary Armies and constrained the powers of the
sans-culotte sections
.
    The Jacobins were also intent on reducing the power of the
sans-culottes
because they were convinced that they needed people with expertise to help them win the war against their European enemies. Lazare Nicolas Carnot, a former engineer, reorganized the army along more professional lines. He protected