Recently studying the history of the French Revolution, I have looked at a lot of materials, among which the revolutionary process of Babeuf is astonishing. In the past, bourgeois historians viewed the French Revolution as a history driven by heroic figures, praising the reactionaries while slandering the true revolutionaries. Even Robespierre, a bourgeois revolutionary, was fiercely slandered, and Babeuf, a representative of the proletariat, was even directly erased.
Although the French Revolution was a bourgeois revolution, it was actually driven by the proletarians; without the heroic struggles of the working people, the revolution would not have continued to develop. Even though the Jacobin dictatorship was overthrown by the big bourgeoisie, the working people did not give up their struggle; Babeuf and his comrades continued to fight for the revolution. Ultimately, history is created by the masses.
巴贝夫1.pdf (695.6 KB)
French Revolution Era Proletariat’s Early Development.pdf (1.0 MB)
Babeuf’s Utopian Communist Doctrine.pdf (816.8 KB)
Let’s do some research on this
The people, and only the people, are the driving force behind the creation of world history. “On the United Front”
Currently, Chinese history textbooks only mention Robespierre in passing, and even then, they wildly slander his revolutionary terror as “massacre”; as for the Jacobins, they have simply disappeared from history books.
When I used to stay at school and study the history of the French Revolution, I truly didn’t know this glorious and bourgeois-concealed history. Some sentences really seem very shocking.
“After destroying the barbaric private ownership system, the happy days of the golden age and true love on earth will immediately arrive. At that time, people’s labor will become a source of joy and health, and human culture and arts will flourish. They wave excitedly to this truly equal new society: ‘Let everyone work for the great social family, and let everyone’s labor bring them the joy of survival and happiness.’”
“The blood shed because of the Great Revolution could be contained in a single square; the French people who died unjustly under a thousand years of despotism, the entire France could not contain. Dark clouds have been gathering for fifteen hundred years. After fifteen centuries, the clouds have dispersed, yet you want to add guilt to the thunder. Justice is angry, and righteous anger is a factor of progress.”
I am deeply impressed by this sentence; revolutionary violence is necessary, and it is precisely to reduce losses.
But Hugo was a rather extraordinary person. He initially opposed the Paris Commune, but after the failure of the Paris Commune, the reactionary government persecuted the revolutionaries of the Paris Commune. Hugo then helped them and condemned the French government, but he refused to use violence, a view he also expressed in Les Misérables. It can be said that he was relatively opposed to revolutionary violence. At that time, French capitalism was also no longer in its ascendant period.