Babeuf - François-Noël Babeuf

French thinker and revolutionary. He called himself Gracchus Babeuf after the ancient Roman reformer. He was born to a poor tax collector's family in Saint-Quentin, northern France. After receiving his education from his father, he worked as an apprentice to a feudal lord's land manager from the age of about 15. While working on examining the feudal lord's land register, surveying the land, and determining the rights of the lord and the peasants, he learned that the land system was the cause of the peasants' suffering. At the same time, he read the works of Enlightenment thinkers such as Rousseau and became keenly aware of the need for social reform. The first expression of this was the publication of "The Permanent Cadastre" (1789), which called for the redistribution of farmland and reform of the tax system.

With the outbreak of the French Revolution (1789), he went to Paris and joined the political movement, publishing pamphlets calling for the realization of equality. From 1790 to 1791, he published the journal "L'escritique de Picardie" in Loix, near his hometown, and led the peasant anti-tax struggle. In 1793, he returned to Paris and allied with the Hébert faction, but immediately after the "Thermidor Reaction" of 1794, he published the "L'escritique Libertée" (later renamed "Les Tribunes") and worked to rebuild the popular movement. He was arrested in February 1795, but in prison he got to know revolutionaries such as Buonarroti. After his release in the autumn of the same year, he worked with Buonarroti and others to prepare an armed uprising, calling for the restoration of the "Constitution of 1793" and the realization of equality and liberty, but his plans were discovered due to an internal betrayal, and he was arrested. After more than sixty trials, his death sentence was finalized on May 26, 1797, and he was executed by guillotine the following day, May 27.

His communism was not an idea of ​​liberation for modern workers, but rather an idea of ​​liberation by the community of poor peasants who had been pushed into severe poverty and slavery by the feudal tax system and the advance of capitalism. However, the idea of ​​achieving communism through thorough egalitarianism, armed uprising and transitional revolutionary dictatorship was popularized by Buonarroti, and continued to live on in the revolutionary thought of Blanqui, Marx, Lenin and others.

[Takashi Sakagami]

"The Babeuf Conspiracy" by Michio Shibata (1968, Iwanami Shoten) " "People Obsessed with Equality - Babeuf and His Friends" by Noboru Hiraoka (Iwanami Shinsho)

Source: Shogakukan Encyclopedia Nipponica About Encyclopedia Nipponica Information | Legend

フランスの思想家、革命家。古代ローマの改革者の名をとってグラックス・バブーフGracchus Babeufと自ら名のった。北フランスのサン・カンタンの貧しい徴税吏の家に生まれた。父から教育を受けたのち、15歳ごろから領主の領地管理人の見習いとして働いた。領主の土地台帳を調べ領地を測量して、領主と農民の権利関係を確定する仕事に従事するなかで、土地制度が農民の苦難の原因であることを知ると同時に、ルソーなどの啓蒙(けいもう)思想家の著作を読み、社会改革の必要を痛感した。農地の再分配と租税制度の改革を訴える『永久土地台帳』の出版（1789）がその最初の表現である。

　フランス革命の勃発(ぼっぱつ)（1789）とともにパリに出て、平等の実現を訴えるパンフレットを出版して政治運動に加わった。1790年から1791年にかけて、故郷に近いロアで『ピカルディー通信』誌を発行して農民の反税闘争を指導した。1793年、再度パリに出てエベール派と結んだが、1794年の「テルミドールの反動」直後、『出版自由新聞』（のちに『護民官』と改題）を刊行して民衆運動の再建に努めた。1795年2月に逮捕されたが、獄中でブオナローティなどの革命家と知り合った。同年秋に出獄後、「1793年憲法」の復活、平等と自由の実現を求めて、ブオナローティらと共同して武装蜂起(ほうき)の準備を進めたが、内部の裏切りによって発覚し、逮捕された。六十数回の審理ののち、1797年5月26日に死刑が確定し、翌27日ギロチンで処刑された。

　彼の共産主義は、近代的労働者の解放思想ではなく、封建的租税制度と資本主義化の進行によって深刻な貧困と隷属に突き落とされている貧農の共同体による解放の思想というべきである。しかし徹底した平等主義と、武装蜂起と過渡的な革命的独裁によって共産主義を実現するという主張は、ブオナローティによって広められ、その後もブランキ、マルクス、レーニンなどの革命思想のなかに生き続けた。

［阪上　孝］

『柴田三千雄著『バブーフの陰謀』（1968・岩波書店）』▽『平岡昇著『平等に憑かれた人々――バブーフとその仲間たち』（岩波新書）』

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