Auguste Blanqui

Auguste Blanqui (born February 1, 1805, Puget-Théniers, France—died January 1, 1881, Paris) was a revolutionary socialist, a legendary martyr-figure of French radicalism, imprisoned in all for more than 33 years. His disciples, the Blanquists, played an important role in the history of the workers’ movement even after his death.

Blanqui’s father was a subprefect in the little town of Puget-Théniers in the French Maritime Alps. In 1818 Blanqui joined his elder brother, Adolphe, the future liberal economist, in Paris and studied both law and medicine until 1824. From 1827 he began taking part in the student demonstrations against the restored Bourbon monarchy, but he was disappointed by the Revolution of July 1830, which established the bourgeois monarchy of Louis-Philippe. Blanqui then began his true political career. A member of the Société des Amis du Peuple (“Society of the Friends of the People”), he was pursued and twice imprisoned (1831 and 1836). In these years he was much influenced by the doctrines of Filippo Buonarroti, who in 1796 had been involved in the abortive rising against the Directory government by François Noël (Gracchus) Babeuf’s Société des Égaux (“Society of Equals”). He studied the popular insurrections of the French Revolutionary period and became increasingly convinced of the inevitability of class struggle, in which he regarded the rich as the aggressors. Blanqui was thereafter convinced that in order to establish a popular government it was absolutely necessary first to build up heavily disciplined groups of conspirators. His taste for secret societies stemmed from this conviction; he organized first the Société des Familles (“Society of Families”) and then the Société des Saisons (“Society of the Seasons”). The latter society’s disastrous attempt at insurrection on May 12, 1839, was the classic prototype of the Blanquist surprise attack. Five hundred armed revolutionaries took the Hôtel de Ville (“City Hall”) of Paris, but, isolated from the rest of the population, they were easily defeated after two days of fighting. Blanqui escaped but was later arrested. His death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment, and he was sent to the island of Mont-Saint-Michel off the Normandy coast. After four years of solitary confinement, he was believed to be dying and was granted a formal pardon; but he was not able to leave the prison hospital at Tours until just before the Revolution of 1848.

This revolution was a decisive experience for Blanqui. Returning to Paris, he founded the Société Républicaine Centrale (“Central Republican Society”) and urged the provisional government that had formed after Louis-Philippe’s fall to pursue more socialistic policies. Although he took an active part in the organization of workers’ demonstrations, he was convinced that the people were not ready for the universal suffrage that the provisional government proposed, and he demanded the postponement of the impending elections. The election results confirmed Blanqui’s apprehensions: the conservatives constituted the majority of the Constituent Assembly. Blanqui was sentenced to 10 years’ imprisonment for having participated, on May 15, in a popular demonstration of which he had, in fact, disapproved. Released in 1859, he again organized secret societies and was rearrested in 1861, remaining in prison until he escaped to Belgium in 1865. Great changes occurred in France while the man they had begun to call l’enfermé (“the locked-up one”) was able to take no part in events. The Parisian workers were defeated on the barricades of June 1848. Louis-Napoleon executed his coup d’état of December 2, 1851, and became, as Napoleon III, hereditary emperor of the French the following year. An unprecedented industrial growth created conditions suited for the development of a modern workers’ movement. Consideration of these changes led Blanqui to study and write about political economy and Socialism; most of these works were published after his death under the title Critique sociale. After 1865 Blanqui often went clandestinely from Brussels to Paris, where the first Blanquist groups were being organized among students and, later, among workers. He also wrote Instruction pour une prise d’armes (1867–68; “Instruction for a Taking Up of Arms”), a kind of manual for urban guerrilla warfare. When the first defeats of the French Army in the Franco-German War of 1870 began to threaten Napoleon III’s position, Blanqui returned to Paris.

On September 4, 1870, two days after Napoleon III’s surrender to the Germans, there was a bloodless revolution in Paris, as a result of which the Third Republic was proclaimed and a provisional government was formed. In this action the Blanquist groups took some part. With the German armies advancing on Paris, Blanqui showed himself a patriot as well as a revolutionary, founding both a club and a newspaper of the same extremely Jacobin name: La Patrie en danger (“Our Country in Danger”). He invited Parisians to unite against Germany and support the government, and he showed considerable military skill in indicating what measures should be taken for the defense of Paris. He very soon became convinced that the provisional government, fearing the populace, was failing to take adequate defense measures. Consequently, the Blanquists twice unsuccessfully attempted to overthrow the government (October 31, 1870; January 22, 1871). After the capitulation of Paris and the elections of February 8, 1871, which were won by conservatives, Blanqui retired to the country, where he was arrested on March 17 for his part in the revolt of October 31.

The day after Blanqui’s arrest the insurrection called the Paris Commune occurred, and the Blanquists played a very important role in it. Blanqui himself was elected president of the Commune, but the government of Adolphe Thiers refused to release him from prison. Eventually the Commune capitulated, and, in the struggle for amnesty for its adherents, Blanqui became a kind of symbol. Still in prison, he was elected deputy for Bordeaux in April 1879. His election was invalidated, but he was pardoned and set free. For two years, in spite of his advanced age, he continued as a journalist and an ardent campaign speaker in favour of Socialism. On the eve of a meeting, he was struck by apoplexy and died a few days later. Shortly afterward, a rapprochement between the Marxists and the Blanquists resulted in the founding in 1881 of the Comité Révolutionnaire Central (Central Revolutionary Committee) and in 1898 of the Parti Socialiste Révolutionnaire (Revolutionary Socialist Party).

In relation to other Socialists, Blanqui cannot be considered either an economist or a philosopher. He was essentially a theoretician of revolution and a practitioner of insurrection. He thought that the taking of power could be the act only of a small minority. Blanqui’s main idea was that there could be no Socialist transformation of society without a temporary dictatorship that would first disarm the bourgeoisie, confiscate the wealth of the church and of the large property holders, and bring the great industrial and commercial enterprises under state control. The next stage would be to establish industrial and agricultural-production associations and develop education so as to render the people capable of organizing the country’s economy to their own benefit.