§ 6. Foreigners are forbidden entry to public meetings.
§ 7. Foreigners arc under the direct surveillance of the supreme administration, to which is reserved the right to eject them from their domicile and send them to places of correction.
In the decree 'of work' everything is assessed and assigned: at what time to do what; how many hours to work. Foremen give 3" In 1 796 Bnbeuf hended the revolutionary-communistic 'Agreement in the name of equality.' (A.S. )
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'an example of zeal and activity,' others report to the authorities on everything done in the workshop. Workmen are sent from one place to another (as with us peasants are driven to work on the roads) according to the need for hands and labour.
§ 1 1 . The supreme administration sends to forced labour (trauaux forces) , under supervision of communes designated by it, persons of both sexes whose bad citizenship ( incivisme) , idleness, luxurious living and bad behaviour set a bad example to society. Their property will be confiscated. ·
§ 1 4. Special officials will care for the maintPnance and increase of cattle, for the clothing, removals and amenities of working citizens.
Decree of the distribution of property:
§ 1 . No one member of a commune may make use of anything except that which is assigned to him by law and given through the instrumentality of an official (magistral) invested with the power.
§ 2. A people's commune from the very beginning gives to its members quarters, clothes, laundry, light, heat, a sufficient quantity of bread, meat, poultry, fish, eggs, butter, wine and other beverages.
§ 3. In each commune, at fixed times, there will be communal meals, at which the members of the commune are obliged to be present.
§ 5. Every member taking payment for work, or keeping money by him, is punished.
Trade decree:
§ 1. Foreign trade is forbidden to private persons. The wares will be confiscated, the criminal punished.
Trade will be carried on by officials. Subsequently money is abolished. It is forbidden to introduce gold and silver. The republic does not issue money; domestic private debts are cancelled, foreign ones discharged; and if anyone deceives or defrauds he is punished with perpetual slavery (esclavage perpetuel) .
At the bottom of this you would expect to find: 'Peter. Tsarskoye Selo,' or 'Count Arakcheyev. Georgia'; but it is signed not by Peter I but by the first French socialist, Gracchus Babeuf!36
36 "Being an opponent of the centralized state, Herzen tries to present Babeuf's designs in an unfavorable light," note the savants of the
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I t would be hard t o complain that i n this project there i s not enough government. There is solicitude for everything, supervision of everything, custodianship of everything; everything is organised and set in order. Even the reproduction of animals is not left to their own weaknesses and coquetry but is regulated by superior authority.
And what, do you think, is the purpose of all this? For what are these serfs of well-being, these prisoners adscripti to equality, fed on 'poultry and fish, washed, clothed and amused'J Not simply for their own sakes: indeed, the decree says that all this shall be done mediocrement. 'The republic alone must be rich, splendid and omnipotent.'
This reminds one forcefully of our Iverskaya Mother of God: sie hat Per/en und Diamanten, a carriage and horses, regular priests to serve her, coachmen with unfreezable heads-in a word, she has everything-only she does not exist: she owns all this wealth in effigie.
The contrast between Robert Owen and Gracchus Babeuf is very remarkable. In a hundred years' time, when everything on this terrestrial globe will have changed, it will be possible by means of these two molar teeth to reconstruct the fossil skeletons of England and France down to the last little bone. The more these two mastodons of socialism belong in essence to one family, and proceed towards one goal and from the same stimuli, the clearer is the difference between them.
The one saw that, in spite of the execution of the King, of the proclamation of the Republic, the annihilation of the Federalists, and the democratic Terror, the people remained of no account; the other, that in spite of the huge development of industry, of capital, of machinery and of increased productivity, 'merry England' was more and more becoming 'sorry England,' and greedy England -nore and more hungry England. This led both of them to the necessity for change in the basic conditions of Academy of Sciences of the U.S.S.R. Tries and, I'd say, succeeds. Their accusation that Herzen presents Babeuf's decrees-which must have had a most familiar ring to their ears-"in a form which is somewhat simplified and exaggerated" would be more impressive had they given examples. How they must have suffered, though, during their scholarly labors' Usually, to their credit, in silence. But Herzen's savage treatment of Babeuf's prematurely Leninist program was too much. Their protest that Herzen was prejudiced against Babeuf's left-totalitarian u topia because he was "an opponent of the central ized state," as indeed he was-this is a real cri de coeur from these ambivalent victims-cumhighpriests of Soviet ideology. ( D.M. )
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political and economic life. Why they (and many others) happened upon this way of thinking almost at the very same time is easily understood. The contradictions in the life of society had not become more numerous or worse than before, but by the end of the eighteenth century they stood out more sharply. Elements of social life, developing separately, destroyed the harmony which had formerly existed among them in less favourable circumstances.
Having been so close to each other at the point of departure, they both went off in opposite directions.
Owen sees, in the fact that social evil was being recognised, the last achievement, the last victory in the hard, complex, historic campaign; he greets the dawn of a new day, which had never existed or been able to exist in the past, and tries to persuade the children to cast away their swaddling-clothes and leading-strings as soon as possible and stand on their own feet.
He has taken a look through the doors of the future and, like a traveller who has reached his destination, he no longer rages at the road or curses the posting-station masters or the broken-down horses.
But the constitution of 1 793 thought differently, and Gracchus Babeuf,37 too, thought differently along with it. It decreed the restoration of the natural rights of man which had been forgotten and lost. The way in which life was lived in a State was the criminal fruit of usurpation, the consequence of the wicked conspiracy of tyrants and their accomplices, the priests and aristocrats. They must be punished as enemies of their country, their property must be returned to its legal sovereign, who now had nothing and for that reason was called a sansculotte. The time had come to restore his ancient, inalienable rights. . . .
Where were they? Why is the proletarian the sovereign? Why is it to him that all the property plundered by others belongs? Ah!
you doubt-you are a suspect fellow: the nearest sovereign takes you off to the citizen judge, and he sends you to the citizen executioner, and you will not be doubting any more!