WEBVTT NOTE 9. Roots of Marxism: Messianic Communism 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:10.000 9. Roots of Marxism, Messianic Communism 1. Early Communism 2 00:00:10.000 --> 00:00:19.000 For centuries, the alleged ideal of Communism had come to the world as a Messianic and millennial creed. 3 00:00:19.000 --> 00:00:29.000 Various seers, notably Joachim of Fior, had prophesied the final state of mankind as one of perfect harmony and equality, 4 00:00:29.000 --> 00:00:37.000 One where all things are owned in common, where there is no necessity for work or need for the division of labor. 5 00:00:37.000 --> 00:00:49.000 In the case of Joachim, of course, problems of production and property, indeed of scarcity in general, were solved by man no longer possessing a physical body. 6 00:00:49.000 --> 00:01:00.000 As pure spirits, men as equal and harmonious psychic entities spending all their time chanting praise to God might make a certain amount of sense. 7 00:01:00.000 --> 00:01:10.000 But the communist idea applied to a physical mankind still needing to produce and consume is a very different matter. 8 00:01:10.000 --> 00:01:17.000 In any case, the communist ideal continued to be put forward as a religious millennial doctrine. 9 00:01:17.000 --> 00:01:25.000 We have seen in Volume 1 its enormous influence on the Anabaptist wing of the Reformation in the 16th century. 10 00:01:25.000 --> 00:01:35.000 Millennial and Communist dreams also inspired various fringe Protestant sects during the English Civil War of the mid-17th century, 11 00:01:35.000 --> 00:01:40.000 particularly the Diggers, the Ranters and the Fifth Monarchy men. 12 00:01:40.000 --> 00:01:58.000 The most important forerunner of Marxian Communism among these Civil War Protestant sectarians was Gerard Winstanley, 1609-1660, the founder of the Digger Movement and a man much admired by Marxist historians. 13 00:01:58.000 --> 00:02:09.000 Winstanley's father was a textile merchant, and young Gerard became an apprentice in the cloth trade, rising up to become a cloth merchant in his own right. 14 00:02:09.000 --> 00:02:20.500 Winstanley's business failed, however, and he found himself downwardly mobile, an employed agricultural laborer from 1643 to 1648. 15 00:02:20.500 --> 00:02:30.500 As the Protestant Revolution escalated in the late 1640s, Winstanley turned to writing pamphlets espousing mystical messianism. 16 00:02:30.500 --> 00:02:38.460 By the end of 1648, Winstanley had expanded his teleastic doctrine to embrace egalitarian 17 00:02:38.460 --> 00:02:43.500 world communism in which all goods are owned in common. 18 00:02:43.500 --> 00:02:50.100 His theological groundwork was the heretical pantheistic view that God is within every 19 00:02:50.100 --> 00:02:55.740 man and woman and is not a personal deity external to man. 20 00:02:55.740 --> 00:03:03.500 This pantheistic god has decreed cooperation, which for Winstanley meant compulsory communism 21 00:03:03.500 --> 00:03:09.820 rather than the market economy, whereas the antithetical creed of the devil glorified 22 00:03:09.820 --> 00:03:12.280 individual selfishness. 23 00:03:12.280 --> 00:03:19.500 In Winstanley's schema, god, meaning reason, created the earth, but the devil later originated 24 00:03:19.500 --> 00:03:23.980 selfishness and the institution of private property. 25 00:03:23.980 --> 00:03:30.620 They added the absurd view that England enjoyed communist property before the Norman Conquest 26 00:03:30.620 --> 00:03:38.080 in 1066 and that this conquest created the institution of private property. 27 00:03:38.080 --> 00:03:44.480 His call then was to return to the supposedly original communist system. 28 00:03:44.480 --> 00:03:50.720 In the final, most fully developed version of his system, the law of freedom in a platform 29 00:03:50.720 --> 00:04:00.240 or True Magistracy Restored, 1652, Winstanley envisioned a largely agrarian society in which 30 00:04:00.240 --> 00:04:07.000 all goods would be communally owned and where all wage labor and all commerce or trade would 31 00:04:07.000 --> 00:04:08.520 be outlawed. 32 00:04:08.520 --> 00:04:14.720 In fact, all sale or purchase of goods would be punishable by death as treasonous to the 33 00:04:14.720 --> 00:04:16.640 communist system. 34 00:04:16.640 --> 00:04:22.240 Money would be clearly unnecessary since there would be no trade, and presumably it would 35 00:04:22.240 --> 00:04:24.300 be outlawed as well. 36 00:04:24.300 --> 00:04:30.080 The government would establish storehouses to collect and distribute all goods, and severe 37 00:04:30.080 --> 00:04:33.440 penalties would be levied on idlers. 38 00:04:33.440 --> 00:04:40.080 By this time, Winstanley's pantheism had begun to shade into atheism, for all professional 39 00:04:40.080 --> 00:04:45.880 clergy would be outlawed, there would be no Sabbath observation, and ministers would be 40 00:04:45.880 --> 00:04:51.620 would be elected by the voters to give what would be essentially secular sermons, teaching 41 00:04:51.620 --> 00:04:55.560 everyone the virtues of the communist system. 42 00:04:55.560 --> 00:05:00.400 Education would be free and compulsory, and most of the children would be channeled into 43 00:05:00.400 --> 00:05:06.640 useful crafts, a foreshadowing of the progressive educational creed. 44 00:05:06.640 --> 00:05:13.200 Book learning, which the uneducated Winstanley felt to be far inferior to practical vocational 45 00:05:13.200 --> 00:05:16.200 would be discouraged. 46 00:05:16.200 --> 00:05:23.200 Winstanley's strategic recipe for communist victory was for various groups of his followers, 47 00:05:23.200 --> 00:05:32.200 or diggers, to move peacefully into waste or common lands, and to set up communist societies upon them. 48 00:05:32.200 --> 00:05:40.200 The first digger group, led by Winstanley, moved on to wastelands near South London in April 1649, 49 00:05:40.200 --> 00:05:45.800 and ten digger settlements were thereby established over the next year. 50 00:05:45.800 --> 00:05:51.680 Only thirty diggers moved into the first commune, and only a few hundred set up communes across 51 00:05:51.680 --> 00:05:53.000 the country. 52 00:05:53.000 --> 00:05:59.300 The notion was that these egalitarian communist settlements would so inspire the masses that 53 00:05:59.300 --> 00:06:05.920 they would abandon wage work or private property and move on to digger settlements, thus bringing 54 00:06:05.920 --> 00:06:10.840 Talking about the withering away of the market and of private property. 55 00:06:10.840 --> 00:06:16.360 In reality, the masses treated the digger communes with great hostility, causing their 56 00:06:16.360 --> 00:06:19.400 suppression in a short period of time. 57 00:06:19.400 --> 00:06:27.000 By the time of his magnum opus in 1652, Winstanley was vainly appealing to the dictator Oliver 58 00:06:27.000 --> 00:06:31.720 Cromwell to impose his cherished system from above. 59 00:06:31.720 --> 00:06:38.060 The idea of mass direct action to establish his system was rapidly abandoned in the face 60 00:06:38.060 --> 00:06:40.480 of reality. 61 00:06:40.480 --> 00:06:45.880 Another more mystical communist sect during the English Civil War was the half-crazed 62 00:06:45.880 --> 00:06:47.120 Ranters. 63 00:06:47.120 --> 00:06:52.880 The Ranters were classic antinomians, that is, they believed that all human beings were 64 00:06:52.880 --> 00:06:59.780 automatically saved by the existence of Jesus, and that therefore all men are free to disobey 65 00:06:59.780 --> 00:07:04.080 to obey all laws and to flout all moral rules. 66 00:07:04.080 --> 00:07:10.420 Indeed, it was supposed to be good and desirable to commit as many sins as possible in order 67 00:07:10.420 --> 00:07:17.140 to demonstrate one's automatic freedom from sin and to purge oneself of false guilt about 68 00:07:17.140 --> 00:07:18.860 committing sins. 69 00:07:18.860 --> 00:07:24.180 To the pure at heart the renters opined, all things are pure. 70 00:07:24.180 --> 00:07:30.260 The ranters, like Joachim of Fior and the Anabaptists of the Reformation, proclaimed 71 00:07:30.260 --> 00:07:35.260 the coming age of the Holy Spirit, which moved in every man. 72 00:07:35.260 --> 00:07:41.380 The key difference from orthodox Calvinism or Puritanism is that in those more orthodox 73 00:07:41.380 --> 00:07:48.140 creeds the workings of the Holy Spirit were closely tied to the Holy Word, that is, the 74 00:07:48.140 --> 00:07:49.260 Bible. 75 00:07:49.260 --> 00:07:55.940 For the ranters and other inner-light groups, however, all deuces were literally wild. 76 00:07:55.940 --> 00:08:00.100 The ranters pursued this path, too, to pantheism. 77 00:08:00.100 --> 00:08:05.820 As one of their leaders declared, the essence of God was as much in the ivy leaf as in the 78 00:08:05.820 --> 00:08:08.260 most glorious angel. 79 00:08:08.260 --> 00:08:14.500 The ranters, then, combined their belief in communism with total sexual license, including 80 00:08:14.500 --> 00:08:21.100 The Practices of Communism of Women and Communal Homosexual and Heterosexual Orgies 81 00:08:21.100 --> 00:08:25.580 2. 82 00:08:25.580 --> 00:08:32.180 Secularized Millennial Communism, Mabli and Morelli 83 00:08:32.180 --> 00:08:37.500 During the havoc and upheaval of the French Revolution, the communist creed, as well as 84 00:08:37.500 --> 00:08:43.740 millennial prophecies, again popped up as a glorious goal for mankind. 85 00:08:43.740 --> 00:08:48.000 But this time the major emphasis was a secular context. 86 00:08:48.000 --> 00:08:53.060 But the new secular communist prophets were faced with a grave problem. 87 00:08:53.060 --> 00:08:56.700 What will be the agency for this social change? 88 00:08:56.700 --> 00:09:03.980 In short, religious chileasts never had problems about agency, that is, how this mighty change 89 00:09:03.980 --> 00:09:05.740 would come about. 90 00:09:05.740 --> 00:09:11.220 The agent would be the hand of providence, specifically either the second advent of Jesus 91 00:09:11.220 --> 00:09:18.460 Jesus Christ for pre-millennialists or designated prophets or vanguard groups who would establish 92 00:09:18.460 --> 00:09:25.940 the millennium in anticipation of Jesus' eventual return for post-millennialists. 93 00:09:25.940 --> 00:09:31.060 King Bockelson and Thomas Munzer were examples of the latter. 94 00:09:31.060 --> 00:09:36.260 But if the Christian millennialists possessed the assurance of the hand of divine providence 95 00:09:36.260 --> 00:10:01.260 The Secularist Task was made more difficult by the fact that religious millennialists looked to the end of history and the achievement of their goal by means of a bloody apocalypse. 96 00:10:01.260 --> 00:10:16.260 The final reign of millennial peace and harmony could only be achieved in the course of a period known as the tribulation, the final war of good against evil, the final triumph over the antichrist. 97 00:10:16.260 --> 00:10:28.260 All of which meant that if the secular communists wished to emulate their Christian forebears, they would have to achieve their goal by bloody revolution, always difficult at best. 98 00:10:28.260 --> 00:10:37.260 It is no accident, therefore, that the heady days of the French Revolution would give rise to such revolutionary hopes and aspirations. 99 00:10:37.260 --> 00:10:46.260 The first secularized communists appeared in the shape of two isolated individuals in mid-18th century France. 100 00:10:46.260 --> 00:10:52.260 The works of these two men would later burgeon into an activist revolutionary movement 101 00:10:52.260 --> 00:10:58.260 amidst the hothouse atmosphere and the sudden upheavals of the French Revolution. 102 00:10:58.260 --> 00:11:05.260 One was the aristocrat Gabriel Bonneau de Mably, 1709 to 1785, 103 00:11:05.260 --> 00:11:12.260 the elder brother of the laissez-faire liberal philosopher Etienne Bonneau de Condiac. 104 00:11:12.260 --> 00:11:16.260 In contrast to his brother, the distinguished philosopher, 105 00:11:16.260 --> 00:11:22.460 Mabli devoted himself to being a lifelong writer on a large variety of subjects. 106 00:11:22.460 --> 00:11:29.740 A man whose works, as Alexander Gray wittily writes, are deplorably numerous and extensive. 107 00:11:29.740 --> 00:11:36.220 Mabli's prolix and confused writings were astoundingly popular in his day. 108 00:11:36.220 --> 00:11:43.380 His entire collected works, ranging from 12 to 26 volumes, being published in four different 109 00:11:43.380 --> 00:11:46.660 Additions within a few years of his death. 110 00:11:46.660 --> 00:11:53.940 Mabry's main focus was to insist that all men are perfectly equal and uniform, that 111 00:11:53.940 --> 00:11:57.480 all men are one and the same everywhere. 112 00:11:57.480 --> 00:12:01.780 He professed to discern this alleged truth in the laws of nature. 113 00:12:01.780 --> 00:12:10.360 Thus, in his chief work, Deux Proposés, 1786, an attack on the libertarian natural rights 114 00:12:10.360 --> 00:12:17.880 This theory of Mercier de la Rivière, Mably presumes to interpret the voice of nature. 115 00:12:17.880 --> 00:12:21.740 Nature says to us, I love you equally. 116 00:12:21.740 --> 00:12:27.440 As in the case of most communists after him, Mably found himself confronted with one of 117 00:12:27.440 --> 00:12:30.200 the great problems of communism. 118 00:12:30.200 --> 00:12:36.480 If all property is owned in common and each person is equal, then the incentive to work 119 00:12:36.480 --> 00:12:43.900 is negative, since only the common store will benefit and not the individual worker in question. 120 00:12:43.900 --> 00:12:50.300 Mabli in particular had to confront this problem since he also maintained that man's natural 121 00:12:50.300 --> 00:12:57.540 and original state was communism, and that private property arose to spoil matters precisely 122 00:12:57.540 --> 00:13:03.380 because of the indolence of some who wished to live at the expense of others. 123 00:13:03.380 --> 00:13:09.300 Mablis' proposed solutions to this grave problem were scarcely adequate. 124 00:13:09.300 --> 00:13:16.800 One was to urge everyone to tighten their belts, to want less, to be content with Spartan austerity. 125 00:13:16.800 --> 00:13:22.020 His other answer was to come up with what Che Guevara and Mao Tse Tung would later 126 00:13:22.020 --> 00:13:29.160 call moral incentives to substitute for crass monetary rewards the recognition of one's 127 00:13:29.160 --> 00:13:42.040 Alexander Gray notes that Mabli makes use of such distinctions or birthday honors lists 128 00:13:42.040 --> 00:13:44.660 to stimulate everyone to work. 129 00:13:44.660 --> 00:13:50.560 He goes on to point out that the more distinctions are handed out as incentives, the less they 130 00:13:50.560 --> 00:13:55.960 will truly distinguish, and the less influence they will therefore exert. 131 00:13:55.960 --> 00:14:03.400 Furthermore, Mabli does not say how or by whom his distinctions are to be conferred. 132 00:14:03.400 --> 00:14:10.840 Gray adds that in a communist society in reality, many people who don't receive honors may and 133 00:14:10.840 --> 00:14:17.880 probably will be disgruntled and resentful at the supposed injustice involved, yet their 134 00:14:17.880 --> 00:14:20.480 zeal doesn't flag. 135 00:14:20.480 --> 00:14:27.000 Thus in his two proffered solutions, Gabriel de Mably was resting his hope on a miraculous 136 00:14:27.000 --> 00:14:33.400 transformation of human nature, what the Marxists would later see as the advent of the new 137 00:14:33.400 --> 00:14:40.980 socialist man, willing to bend his desires and his incentives to the requirements of, 138 00:14:40.980 --> 00:14:44.580 and baubles conferred by, the collective. 139 00:14:44.580 --> 00:14:50.840 But for all his devotion to communism, Mabli was at bottom a realist, and so he held out 140 00:14:50.840 --> 00:14:53.040 no hope for its triumph. 141 00:14:53.040 --> 00:14:59.120 On the contrary, man is so steeped in the sin of selfishness and private property that 142 00:14:59.120 --> 00:15:06.500 only the palliatives of coerced redistribution and prohibitions of trade are even possible. 143 00:15:06.500 --> 00:15:12.680 It is no wonder that Mabli was not equipped to inspire and stimulate the birth and growth 144 00:15:12.680 --> 00:15:16.440 of a Revolutionary Communist Movement. 145 00:15:16.440 --> 00:15:22.860 If Gabriel de Mably was a pessimist, the same cannot be said of the highly influential work 146 00:15:22.860 --> 00:15:31.040 of the unknown Morelli, author of The Code of Nature, published in 1755 and going into 147 00:15:31.040 --> 00:15:35.560 five further editions by 1773. 148 00:15:35.560 --> 00:15:39.800 Morelli had no doubts of the workability of communism. 149 00:15:39.800 --> 00:15:44.440 For him, there was no problem of laziness or negative incentives. 150 00:15:44.440 --> 00:15:50.880 There was no need, in short, for any change in human nature or the creation of a new socialist 151 00:15:50.880 --> 00:15:51.880 man. 152 00:15:51.880 --> 00:15:59.240 In a vulgarization of Rousseau, man is everywhere good, altruistic and dedicated to work. 153 00:15:59.240 --> 00:16:05.200 It is only institutions that are degrading and corrupt, specifically the institution 154 00:16:05.200 --> 00:16:12.920 of Private Property, Abolish That and Man's Natural Goodness Would Easily Triumph, Query, 155 00:16:12.920 --> 00:16:20.200 Where Did These Corrupt Institutions Come From, If Not From Man, Banish Property and Crime 156 00:16:20.200 --> 00:16:22.520 Would Disappear. 157 00:16:22.520 --> 00:16:28.760 For Morelli, the administration of the communist utopia would also be easy, assigning every 158 00:16:28.760 --> 00:16:35.120 person his task in life and also deciding what material goods and services would fulfill 159 00:16:35.120 --> 00:16:50.160 All this was merely a matter of trivial enumeration, of listing things and persons. 160 00:16:50.160 --> 00:16:56.160 Here is the ancestor of Marx and Lenin's dismissal of the gigantic problems of socialist 161 00:16:56.160 --> 00:17:02.360 administration and allocation as merely a question of bookkeeping. 162 00:17:02.360 --> 00:17:06.320 But things, after all, are not going to be that easy. 163 00:17:06.320 --> 00:17:12.280 Mabli, the pessimist on human nature, was apparently willing to leave matters to voluntary 164 00:17:12.280 --> 00:17:14.640 actions of individuals. 165 00:17:14.640 --> 00:17:21.720 But Morali, the alleged optimist, was cheerfully prepared to employ brutally coercive methods 166 00:17:21.720 --> 00:17:25.440 to keep all the good citizens in line. 167 00:17:25.440 --> 00:17:31.240 Once again, as in Mabli, the edicts of the proposed state would be written clearly by 168 00:17:31.240 --> 00:17:35.400 by Nature, as revealed to the founder, Morelli. 169 00:17:35.400 --> 00:17:42.200 Morelli worked out an intricate design for his proposed government and society, all allegedly 170 00:17:42.200 --> 00:17:48.320 based on the clear dictates of natural law, and most of which were to be changeless and 171 00:17:48.320 --> 00:17:53.460 eternal, to Morelli, a vital part of the scheme. 172 00:17:53.460 --> 00:17:59.660 In particular, there is to be no private property except for daily needs. 173 00:17:59.660 --> 00:18:06.060 Every person is to be maintained and employed by the collective, every man is to be forced 174 00:18:06.060 --> 00:18:12.280 to work, to contribute to the communal storehouse according to his talents, and will then be 175 00:18:12.280 --> 00:18:18.700 assigned goods from these stores according to his needs, to be brought up communally 176 00:18:18.700 --> 00:18:24.940 and absolutely identically in food, clothing and training. 177 00:18:24.940 --> 00:18:32.020 Public and religious doctrines are to be absolutely prescribed, no differences are to be tolerated, 178 00:18:32.020 --> 00:18:38.180 and children are not to be corrupted by any fable, story, or ridiculous fictions. 179 00:18:38.180 --> 00:18:44.260 All buildings must be the same and grouped in equal blocks, all clothing is to be made 180 00:18:44.260 --> 00:18:51.460 out of the same fabric, occupations are to be limited and strictly assigned by the state. 181 00:18:51.460 --> 00:19:02.260 Finally, these laws are to be sacred and inviolable, and anyone attempting to change them is to be isolated and incarcerated for life. 182 00:19:02.260 --> 00:19:17.560 As in all the communist utopias, Mablis and Moralis, as Alexander Gray makes clear, are ones under which no sane man would on any conditions consent to live if he could possibly escape. 183 00:19:17.560 --> 00:19:27.360 The reason, apart from the grave lack of incentives in utopias to produce or innovate, is that life has reached a static state. 184 00:19:27.360 --> 00:19:32.560 Nothing happens, nothing can happen, in any of them. 185 00:19:32.560 --> 00:19:41.360 It should be added that these utopias were debased, secularized versions of the visions of the Christian millennialists. 186 00:19:41.360 --> 00:19:51.860 In the Christian millennium, Jesus Christ, or alternatively, his surrogates and predecessors, comes back to earth to put an end to history. 187 00:19:51.860 --> 00:20:00.360 And, presumably, there will be enough enchantment in glorifying God without worrying about the absence of earthly change. 188 00:20:00.360 --> 00:20:09.860 And, as we have seen, this is particularly true in Joachim of Fior's Envisioned Millennium of People Without Earthly Bodies. 189 00:20:09.860 --> 00:20:17.600 But in the secularized utopias, there reigns, at best, gray gloom and stasis, totally contrary 190 00:20:17.600 --> 00:20:19.900 to man's nature on earth. 191 00:20:19.900 --> 00:20:25.940 Meanwhile, however, Christian millennialism was also revived in these stormy times. 192 00:20:25.940 --> 00:20:33.740 Thus, the Swabian-German pietist Johann Christoph Oettinger, during the mid-18th century, prophesied 193 00:20:33.740 --> 00:20:41.100 a coming theocratic world kingdom of saints, living communally, without rank or property, 194 00:20:41.100 --> 00:20:45.300 as members of a millennial Christian commonwealth. 195 00:20:45.300 --> 00:20:51.140 Particularly influential among later German pietists was the French mystic and theosophist 196 00:20:51.140 --> 00:21:03.260 Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin, 1743-1803, who in his influential Errors and Truth, 1773, 197 00:21:03.260 --> 00:21:09.700 portrayed an inner church of the elect, allegedly existing since the dawn of history, which 198 00:21:09.700 --> 00:21:12.780 would take power in the coming age. 199 00:21:12.780 --> 00:21:20.340 This Martinist theme was developed by the Rosicrucian movement, concentrated in Bavaria. 200 00:21:20.340 --> 00:21:26.300 Originally alchemist mystics during the 17th and 18th centuries, the Bavarian Rosicrucians 201 00:21:26.300 --> 00:21:32.880 began to stress the coming takeover of world power by the inner church of the elect during 202 00:21:32.880 --> 00:21:35.360 During the Dawning Millennial Age. 203 00:21:35.360 --> 00:21:41.780 The most influential Bavarian Rosicrucian author, Carl von Eckart'shausen, expounded 204 00:21:41.780 --> 00:21:55.040 on this theme in two widely read works, Information on Magic 1788-1792 and On Perfectibility 1797. 205 00:21:55.040 --> 00:21:59.920 In the latter work he developed the idea that the inner church of the elect had existed 206 00:21:59.920 --> 00:22:15.240 The Third and final age of history, the age of the Holy Spirit, was now at hand. 207 00:22:15.240 --> 00:22:21.480 The illuminated elect destined to rule the new communal world were, fairly obviously, 208 00:22:21.480 --> 00:22:27.720 the Rosicrucian Order itself, since their major evidence for the dawn of the Third Age 209 00:22:27.720 --> 00:22:33.400 was the rapid spread of Martinism and Rosicrucianism itself. 210 00:22:33.400 --> 00:22:39.040 And these movements were indeed spreading during the 1780s and 1790s. 211 00:22:39.040 --> 00:22:44.760 The Prussian king Frederick William II and a large portion of his court were converted 212 00:22:44.760 --> 00:22:52.800 to Rosicrucianism in the late 1780s, as was the Russian Tsar Paul I a decade later, based 213 00:22:52.800 --> 00:22:59.160 Based on his reading of Saint-Martin and Eckhart's Hausen, both of whom he considered to be transmitters 214 00:22:59.160 --> 00:23:05.800 of divine revelation, Saint-Martin was also influential through his leadership of Scottish 215 00:23:05.800 --> 00:23:12.600 Rite Masonry in Lyon, and was the main figure in what might be called the apocalyptic Christian 216 00:23:12.600 --> 00:23:16.720 wing of the Masonic movement. 217 00:23:16.720 --> 00:23:18.960 3. 218 00:23:18.960 --> 00:23:22.640 The Conspiracy of the Equals 219 00:23:22.640 --> 00:23:29.760 Inspired by the works of Mabli and especially Morelli, a young journalist from Picardy decided, 220 00:23:29.760 --> 00:23:36.360 amidst the turmoil of the French Revolution, to found a conspiratorial revolutionary organization 221 00:23:36.360 --> 00:23:38.840 to establish communism. 222 00:23:38.840 --> 00:23:45.440 Strategically this was an advance on the two founders, who had had no idea but simple education 223 00:23:45.440 --> 00:23:47.960 of how to achieve their goal. 224 00:23:47.960 --> 00:23:57.960 François Noël, Caius Gracchus Babouf, 1764-1797, a journalist and commissioner of land deeds 225 00:23:57.960 --> 00:24:05.680 in Picardy, came to Paris in 1790 and imbibed the heady revolutionary atmosphere. 226 00:24:05.680 --> 00:24:12.080 By 1793, Babouf was committed to economic equality and communism. 227 00:24:12.080 --> 00:24:17.880 Two years later, he founded the secret Conspiracy of the Equals, organizing around his 228 00:24:17.880 --> 00:24:21.120 Babouf's new journal, The Tribune of the People. 229 00:24:21.120 --> 00:24:27.560 The Tribune, like Lenin's Iskra, a century later, was used to set a coherent line for 230 00:24:27.560 --> 00:24:31.540 his cadre, as well as for his public followers. 231 00:24:31.540 --> 00:24:37.020 As James Billington writes, Babouf's Tribune was the first journal in history to be the 232 00:24:37.020 --> 00:24:42.240 legal arm of an extra-legal revolutionary conspiracy. 233 00:24:42.240 --> 00:24:47.400 The ultimate ideal of Babouf and his conspiracy was absolute equality. 234 00:24:47.400 --> 00:24:51.840 Nature, they claimed, calls for perfect equality. 235 00:24:51.840 --> 00:24:54.400 All inequality is injustice. 236 00:24:54.400 --> 00:24:58.800 Therefore, community of property was to be established. 237 00:24:58.800 --> 00:25:04.520 As the conspiracy proclaimed emphatically in its Manifesto of Equals, written by one 238 00:25:04.520 --> 00:25:11.780 of Babouf's top aides, Sylvain Maréchal, we demand real equality or death. 239 00:25:11.780 --> 00:25:14.020 That is what we must have. 240 00:25:14.020 --> 00:25:18.460 For its sake, the manifesto went on, we are ready for anything. 241 00:25:18.460 --> 00:25:21.500 We are willing to sweep everything away. 242 00:25:21.500 --> 00:25:29.120 Let all the arts vanish if necessary, as long as genuine equality remains for us. 243 00:25:29.120 --> 00:25:35.820 In the ideal communist society sought by the conspiracy, private property would be abolished, 244 00:25:35.820 --> 00:25:40.600 and all property would be communal and stored in communal storehouses. 245 00:25:40.600 --> 00:25:46.360 From these storehouses the goods would be distributed equitably by the superiors. 246 00:25:46.360 --> 00:25:52.360 Apparently there was to be a cadre of superiors in this oh-so-equal world. 247 00:25:52.360 --> 00:25:59.040 There was to be universal compulsory labor, serving the fatherland by useful labor. 248 00:25:59.040 --> 00:26:04.620 Teachers or scientists must submit certifications of loyalty to the superiors. 249 00:26:04.620 --> 00:26:09.620 The manifesto acknowledged that there would be an enormous expansion of government officials 250 00:26:09.620 --> 00:26:16.660 In the communist world, inevitable, where the fatherland takes control of an individual 251 00:26:16.660 --> 00:26:22.180 from his birth till his death, there would be severe punishments consisting of forced 252 00:26:22.180 --> 00:26:30.020 labor against persons of either sex who set society a bad example by absence of civic-mindedness, 253 00:26:30.020 --> 00:26:34.960 by idleness, a luxurious way of life, licentiousness. 254 00:26:34.960 --> 00:26:41.760 These punishments, described as one historian notes, lovingly and in great detail, consisted 255 00:26:41.760 --> 00:26:45.840 of deportation to prison islands. 256 00:26:45.840 --> 00:26:50.080 Freedom of speech and the press are treated as one might expect. 257 00:26:50.080 --> 00:26:55.580 The press would not be allowed to endanger the justice of equality or to subject the 258 00:26:55.580 --> 00:26:59.240 republic to interminable and fatal discussions. 259 00:26:59.240 --> 00:27:09.580 Moreover, no one will be allowed to utter views that are in direct contradiction to the sacred principles of equality and the sovereignty of the people. 260 00:27:09.580 --> 00:27:21.180 In point of fact, a work would only be allowed to appear in print if the guardians of the will of the nation consider that its publication may benefit the Republic. 261 00:27:21.180 --> 00:27:30.380 All meals would be eaten in public in every commune, and there would, of course, be compulsory attendance for all community members. 262 00:27:30.380 --> 00:27:37.180 Furthermore, everyone could only obtain his daily ration in the district in which he lives. 263 00:27:37.180 --> 00:27:42.780 The only exception would be when he is traveling with the permission of the administration. 264 00:27:42.780 --> 00:27:51.080 All private entertainment would be strictly forbidden, lest imagination, released from the supervision of a strict judge, 265 00:27:51.080 --> 00:27:58.760 should engender abominable vices contrary to the common will, and as for religion, all so-called 266 00:27:58.760 --> 00:28:07.320 revelation ought to be banned by law. Not only was Babouf's egalitarian communist goal an important 267 00:28:07.320 --> 00:28:15.160 influence on later Marxism-Leninism, but so too was his strategic theory and practice in the concrete 268 00:28:15.160 --> 00:28:18.480 Organization of Revolutionary Activity. 269 00:28:18.480 --> 00:28:23.940 The unequal, the Babouvists proclaimed, must be despoiled. 270 00:28:23.940 --> 00:28:28.280 The poor must rise up and sack the rich. 271 00:28:28.280 --> 00:28:33.120 Above all, the French Revolution must be completed and redone. 272 00:28:33.120 --> 00:28:39.840 There must be total upheaval, total destruction of existing institutions, so that a new and 273 00:28:39.840 --> 00:28:43.240 perfect world can be built from the rubble. 274 00:28:43.240 --> 00:28:50.000 As Babouf called out at the conclusion of his own plebeian manifesto, may everything return 275 00:28:50.000 --> 00:28:56.480 to chaos and out of chaos may there emerge a new and regenerated world. 276 00:28:56.480 --> 00:29:02.720 Indeed, the plebeian manifesto, published slightly earlier than the Manifesto of Equals 277 00:29:02.720 --> 00:29:09.560 in November 1795, was the first in a line of revolutionary manifestos that would reach 278 00:29:09.560 --> 00:29:15.760 a Climax in Marx's Communist Manifesto a half century later. 279 00:29:15.760 --> 00:29:21.840 The two manifestos revealed an important difference between Babouf and Maréchal, which might 280 00:29:21.840 --> 00:29:28.920 have caused a split had not the equals been crushed soon afterwards by police repression. 281 00:29:28.920 --> 00:29:35.760 For in his plebeian manifesto, Babouf had begun to move toward Christian messianism, 282 00:29:35.760 --> 00:29:44.040 Not only paying tribute to Moses and Joshua, but also particularly to Jesus as his, Babouf's, 283 00:29:44.040 --> 00:29:45.760 co-athlete. 284 00:29:45.760 --> 00:29:52.100 And in prison, Babouf had written A New History of the Life of Jesus Christ. 285 00:29:52.100 --> 00:29:57.840 Most of the equals, however, were militant atheists, spearheaded by Maréchal, who liked 286 00:29:57.840 --> 00:30:07.380 to refer to himself with the grandiose acronym HSD, l'homme sans Dieu, the man without God. 287 00:30:07.380 --> 00:30:14.240 In addition to the idea of conspiratorial revolution, Babouf, fascinated by military 288 00:30:14.240 --> 00:30:21.220 matters, began to develop the idea of people's guerrilla warfare, of a revolution being formed 289 00:30:21.220 --> 00:30:28.720 in separate phalanxes by people whose permanent occupation would be making revolution, what 290 00:30:28.720 --> 00:30:32.940 Lenin would later call professional revolutionaries. 291 00:30:32.940 --> 00:30:40.300 He also toyed with the idea of military phalanxes securing a geographical base and then working 292 00:30:40.300 --> 00:30:47.740 outwards from there, advancing by degree, consolidating to the extent that we gain territory 293 00:30:47.740 --> 00:30:50.580 we should be able to organize. 294 00:30:50.580 --> 00:30:57.620 A secret conspiratorial inner circle, a phalanx of professional revolutionaries. 295 00:30:57.620 --> 00:31:03.580 Inevitably this meant that Babouf's strategic perspective for his revolution involved some 296 00:31:03.580 --> 00:31:06.300 fascinating paradoxes. 297 00:31:06.300 --> 00:31:12.500 For in the name of a goal of harmony and perfect equality, the revolutionaries were to be led 298 00:31:12.500 --> 00:31:17.060 by a hierarchy, commanding total obedience. 299 00:31:17.060 --> 00:31:20.920 The Inner Cadre would work its will over the mass. 300 00:31:20.920 --> 00:31:27.060 An absolute leader heading an all-powerful cadre would, at the proper moment, give the 301 00:31:27.060 --> 00:31:32.020 signal to usher in a society of perfect equality. 302 00:31:32.020 --> 00:31:35.900 Revolution would be made to end all further revolutions. 303 00:31:35.900 --> 00:31:44.000 An all-powerful hierarchy would be necessary, allegedly, to put an end to hierarchy forever. 304 00:31:44.000 --> 00:31:50.220 But of course, as we have seen, there was no real paradox here, no intention to eliminate 305 00:31:50.220 --> 00:31:51.640 hierarchy. 306 00:31:51.640 --> 00:31:58.560 The peons to equality were a flimsy camouflage for the real objective, a permanently entrenched 307 00:31:58.560 --> 00:32:07.940 and absolute dictatorship, in Orwell's striking image, a boot stamping on a human face, forever. 308 00:32:07.940 --> 00:32:14.300 After suffering police repression at the end of February 1796, the conspiracy of the equals 309 00:32:14.300 --> 00:32:20.640 went further underground, and a month later constituted themselves as the secret directory 310 00:32:20.640 --> 00:32:22.480 of public safety. 311 00:32:22.480 --> 00:32:28.780 The seven secret directors meeting every evening reached collective and anonymous decisions, 312 00:32:28.780 --> 00:32:35.820 and then each member of this central committee radiated activity outwards to twelve instructors, 313 00:32:35.820 --> 00:32:43.020 Each of whom mobilized a broader insurrectionary group in one of the 12 districts of Paris. 314 00:32:43.020 --> 00:32:49.860 In this way, the conspiracy managed to mobilize 17,000 Parisians, but the group was betrayed 315 00:32:49.860 --> 00:32:55.140 by the eagerness of the secret directorate to recruit within the army. 316 00:32:55.140 --> 00:33:02.660 An informer led to the arrest of Babouf on 10 May 1796, followed by the destruction of 317 00:33:02.660 --> 00:33:04.980 the Conspiracy of the Equals. 318 00:33:04.980 --> 00:33:08.980 The Babouf was executed the following year. 319 00:33:08.980 --> 00:33:14.980 Police repression, however, almost always leaves pockets of dissidents to rise again, 320 00:33:14.980 --> 00:33:20.980 and the carrier of the torch of revolutionary communism was a babouvist arrested with the leader, 321 00:33:20.980 --> 00:33:24.980 but who managed to avoid execution. 322 00:33:24.980 --> 00:33:31.980 Filippo Giuseppe Maria Lodovico Buonarroti, 1761-1837, 323 00:33:31.980 --> 00:33:37.260 was the eldest son of an aristocratic but impoverished Florentine family 324 00:33:37.260 --> 00:33:40.940 and a direct descendant of the great Michelangelo. 325 00:33:40.940 --> 00:33:45.740 Studying law at the University of Pisa in the early 1780s, 326 00:33:45.740 --> 00:33:51.180 Buonarroti was converted by disciples of Morelli on the faculty. 327 00:33:51.180 --> 00:33:56.140 As a radical journalist and editor, Buonarroti then participated in battles 328 00:33:56.140 --> 00:33:59.660 for the French Revolution against Italian troops. 329 00:33:59.660 --> 00:34:05.980 In the spring of 1794, he was put in charge of the French occupation in the Italian town 330 00:34:05.980 --> 00:34:13.100 of Onalia, where he announced to the people that all men must be equal, and that any distinction, 331 00:34:13.100 --> 00:34:17.340 whatever among men, is a violation of natural law. 332 00:34:17.340 --> 00:34:23.780 Back in Paris, Buonarroti successfully defended himself in a trial against his use of terror 333 00:34:23.780 --> 00:34:29.940 and finally plunged into Babouf's conspiracy of equals. 334 00:34:29.940 --> 00:34:35.500 His friendship with Napoleon allowed him to escape execution and eventually to be shipped 335 00:34:35.500 --> 00:34:39.700 from a prison camp to exile in Geneva. 336 00:34:39.700 --> 00:34:45.580 For the rest of his life, Buonarroti became what his modern biographer calls the first 337 00:34:45.580 --> 00:34:52.220 professional revolutionist, trying to set up revolutions and conspiratorial organizations 338 00:34:52.220 --> 00:34:54.020 throughout Europe. 339 00:34:54.020 --> 00:34:59.500 Before the execution of Babouf and others, Buonarroti had pledged his comrades to write 340 00:34:59.500 --> 00:35:06.620 their full story, and he fulfilled that pledge when, at the age of 67, he published in Belgium 341 00:35:06.620 --> 00:35:11.980 The Conspiracy for Equality of Babouf, 1828. 342 00:35:11.980 --> 00:35:18.140 Babouf and his comrades had been long forgotten, and this massive work now told the first and 343 00:35:18.140 --> 00:35:21.760 most thoroughgoing story of the Babouvist saga. 344 00:35:21.760 --> 00:35:28.640 The book proved to be an inspiration to revolutionary and communist groupings, and it sold extremely 345 00:35:28.640 --> 00:35:29.640 well. 346 00:35:29.640 --> 00:35:36.440 The English translation of 1836 selling 50,000 copies in a short space of time. 347 00:35:36.440 --> 00:35:42.680 For the next decade of his life, the previously obscure Buonarroti was lionized throughout 348 00:35:42.680 --> 00:35:45.680 the European ultra-left. 349 00:35:45.680 --> 00:35:51.760 Brooding over previous revolutionary failures, Buonarroti counseled the need for iron elite 350 00:35:51.760 --> 00:35:57.160 rule immediately after the coming to power of the revolutionary forces. 351 00:35:57.160 --> 00:36:04.280 In short, the power of the revolution must be immediately given over to a strong, constant, 352 00:36:04.280 --> 00:36:10.520 enlightened, immovable will, which will direct all the force of the nation against internal 353 00:36:10.520 --> 00:36:33.440 4. 354 00:36:33.440 --> 00:36:36.680 The Burgeoning of Communism 355 00:36:36.680 --> 00:36:43.720 The 1830s and 1840s saw the burgeoning of messianic and chileastic communist and socialist 356 00:36:43.720 --> 00:36:49.880 groups throughout Europe, notably in France, Belgium, Germany and England. 357 00:36:49.880 --> 00:36:57.560 Owenites, Cabeyists, Fourierites, Satsimonians and many others sprouted and interacted, and 358 00:36:57.560 --> 00:37:02.440 we need not examine them or their nuanced variations in detail. 359 00:37:02.440 --> 00:37:10.460 While the Welshman Robert Owen, 1771-1858, was the first one to use the word socialist 360 00:37:10.460 --> 00:37:18.540 in print in 1827, and also toyed with the word communionist, the word communist finally 361 00:37:18.540 --> 00:37:22.840 caught on as the most popular label for the new system. 362 00:37:22.840 --> 00:37:29.320 It was first used in a popular printed work, Etienne Cabaye's utopian novel, Voyage in 363 00:37:29.320 --> 00:37:32.520 in Icaria, 1839. 364 00:37:32.520 --> 00:37:38.440 And from there the word spread like wildfire across Europe, spurred by the recent development 365 00:37:38.440 --> 00:37:42.840 of regular steamboat mail service and the first telegraphy. 366 00:37:42.840 --> 00:37:48.280 When Marx and Engels, in the famous opening sentence of their culminating Communist Manifesto 367 00:37:48.280 --> 00:37:55.820 of 1848, wrote that, a spectre is haunting Europe, the spectre of Communism, this was 368 00:37:55.820 --> 00:38:00.620 is a bit of hyperbolic rhetoric, but was still not far off the mark. 369 00:38:00.620 --> 00:38:07.140 As Billington writes, the talismanic word communism spread throughout the continent with a speed 370 00:38:07.140 --> 00:38:12.420 altogether unprecedented in the history of such verbal epidemics. 371 00:38:12.420 --> 00:38:18.440 In this welter of individuals and groups, there are some interesting ones to focus on. 372 00:38:18.440 --> 00:38:24.980 The earliest German exile group of revolutionaries was the League of Outlaws, founded in Paris 373 00:38:24.980 --> 00:38:29.980 by Theodore Schuster 374 00:38:29.980 --> 00:38:53.980 Schuster's pamphlet, Confessions of Faith of an Outlaw, 1834, was perhaps the first projection of the coming revolution as a creation of the outlaws and marginal outcasts of society, the ones outside the circuit of production whom Marx would understandably dismiss brusquely as the Lumpenproletariat. 375 00:38:53.980 --> 00:39:11.980 The Lumpen were later emphasized in the 1840s by the leading anarcho-communist, the Russian Mikhail Bakunin, 1814-1876, and by various strains of the New Left of the late 1960s and early 1970s. 376 00:39:11.980 --> 00:39:24.980 The Outlaws were the first international organization of communist revolutionaries, comprised of about 100 members in Paris and nearly 80 in Frankfurt am Main. 377 00:39:24.980 --> 00:39:33.980 The League of Outlaws, however, disintegrated about 1838, many, including Schuster, going off into nationalist agitation. 378 00:39:33.980 --> 00:39:39.500 But it was succeeded quickly by the larger group of German exiles, the League of the 379 00:39:39.500 --> 00:39:43.380 Just, also headquartered in Paris. 380 00:39:43.380 --> 00:39:48.300 The German communist groups always tended to be more Christian than the others. 381 00:39:48.300 --> 00:39:54.800 Thus, Carl Schaper, leader of the Paris headquarters section of the League of the Just, addressed 382 00:39:54.800 --> 00:40:01.060 his followers as Brothers in Christ and hailed the coming social revolution as the Great 383 00:40:01.060 --> 00:40:03.760 Resurrection Day of the People. 384 00:40:03.760 --> 00:40:09.520 Intensifying the religious tone of the League of the Just was the prominent German communist, 385 00:40:09.520 --> 00:40:15.000 the tailor Wilhelm Weitling, 1808-1871. 386 00:40:15.000 --> 00:40:20.240 In his secretly printed manifesto that he wrote for the League of the Just, Humanity 387 00:40:20.240 --> 00:40:27.460 as it is and as it ought to be, 1838, which, though secret, was widely disseminated and 388 00:40:27.460 --> 00:40:33.860 discussed, Veitling proclaimed himself as a social Luther and denounced money as the 389 00:40:33.860 --> 00:40:37.340 source of all corruption and exploitation. 390 00:40:37.340 --> 00:40:42.800 All private property and all money was to be abolished and the value of all products 391 00:40:42.800 --> 00:40:49.980 to be calculated in labor hours, the labor theory of value taken all too seriously. 392 00:40:49.980 --> 00:40:56.100 For work in public utilities and heavy industry, Veitling proposed to mobilize a centralized 393 00:40:56.100 --> 00:41:01.980 Industrial Army, fueled by the conscription of every man and woman between the ages of 394 00:41:01.980 --> 00:41:04.860 15 and 18. 395 00:41:04.860 --> 00:41:12.260 Expelled from France after revolutionary troubles in 1839, the League of the Just moved to London, 396 00:41:12.260 --> 00:41:17.500 where it also established a broader front group, the Educational Society for German 397 00:41:17.500 --> 00:41:20.780 Working Men, in 1840. 398 00:41:20.780 --> 00:41:27.580 The three top leaders of the society, Carl Schopper, Bruno Bauer and Josef Moll, managed 399 00:41:27.580 --> 00:41:35.940 to enlarge the total to over 1,000 members by 1847, including 250 members in other countries 400 00:41:35.940 --> 00:41:38.500 in Europe and Latin America. 401 00:41:38.500 --> 00:41:44.680 A fascinating contrast is presented in the persons of two young communists, both leaders 402 00:41:44.680 --> 00:42:04.920 One was the English Christian visionary and 403 00:42:04.920 --> 00:42:12.600 and Fantast, John Goodwin Barmby, 1820 to Uncertain Time of Death. 404 00:42:12.600 --> 00:42:18.660 At the age of 20, Barmby, then an Owenite, arrived in Paris with a proposal to set up 405 00:42:18.660 --> 00:42:23.380 an international association of socialists throughout the world. 406 00:42:23.380 --> 00:42:29.980 A provisional committee was actually formed, headed by the French Owenite Jules Gay, but 407 00:42:29.980 --> 00:42:32.080 nothing came of the scheme. 408 00:42:32.080 --> 00:42:36.720 The proposal, however, did prefigure the First International. 409 00:42:36.720 --> 00:42:42.800 More importantly, in Paris, Barmby discovered the word communist and adopted and spread 410 00:42:42.800 --> 00:42:44.880 it with enormous fervor. 411 00:42:44.880 --> 00:42:51.120 To Barmby, communist and communitarian were interchangeable terms, and he helped organize 412 00:42:51.120 --> 00:42:56.920 throughout France what he reported to the English Owenites as social banquets of the 413 00:42:56.920 --> 00:43:00.140 communist or communitarian school. 414 00:43:00.140 --> 00:43:03.520 Back in England, Barmby's fervour was undiminished. 415 00:43:03.520 --> 00:43:09.260 He founded a communist propaganda society, soon to be called the Universal Communitarian 416 00:43:09.260 --> 00:43:17.220 Society, and established a journal, The Promethean or Communitarian Apostle, soon renamed the 417 00:43:17.220 --> 00:43:19.900 Communist Chronicle. 418 00:43:19.900 --> 00:43:26.680 Communism to Barmby was both the society science and the final religion of humanity. 419 00:43:26.680 --> 00:43:33.000 His credo, propounded in the first issue of the Promethean, avowed that the divine is 420 00:43:33.000 --> 00:43:37.440 communism, that the demoniac is individualism. 421 00:43:37.440 --> 00:43:43.240 After that flying start, Barmby wrote communist hymns and prayers, called for the building 422 00:43:43.240 --> 00:43:50.160 of communitariums, all directed by a supreme communarchy, headed by an elected communarch 423 00:43:50.160 --> 00:43:52.440 and communarchus. 424 00:43:52.440 --> 00:43:58.960 He repeatedly proclaimed the religion of Communism and made sure to begin things right by naming 425 00:43:58.960 --> 00:44:03.400 himself Potipharc of the Communist Church. 426 00:44:03.400 --> 00:44:09.640 The subtitle of the Communist Chronicle revealed its neo-Christian messianism, the apostle 427 00:44:09.640 --> 00:44:15.440 of the Communist Church and the community of life, communion with God, communion of 428 00:44:15.440 --> 00:44:21.920 the saints, communion of suffrages, communion of works and communion of goods. 429 00:44:21.920 --> 00:44:28.080 The struggle for Communism, declared Barmby, was apocalyptic, bound to end with the mystical 430 00:44:28.080 --> 00:44:31.140 reunion of Satan into God. 431 00:44:31.140 --> 00:44:36.160 In the Holy Communist Church, the devil will be converted into God. 432 00:44:36.160 --> 00:44:42.940 And in this conversion of Satan doth God call people in the communion of suffrages, of works, 433 00:44:42.940 --> 00:44:48.180 and of goods, both spiritual and material, for these latter days. 434 00:44:48.180 --> 00:44:55.180 The arrival in London of Wilhelm Wietling in 1844 led him and Barmby to collaborate on 435 00:44:55.180 --> 00:45:02.060 promoting Christian Communism, but by the end of 1847 they had lost out and the Communist 436 00:45:02.060 --> 00:45:06.100 movement was shifting decisively toward atheism. 437 00:45:06.100 --> 00:45:13.520 The crucial turn came in June 1847 when the two most atheistic Communist groups, the League 438 00:45:13.520 --> 00:45:25.520 The League of the Just in London and the small 15-man Communist Correspondence Committee of Brussels, led by Karl Marx, merged to form the Communist League. 439 00:45:25.520 --> 00:45:39.520 In its second congress in December, ideological struggles within the League were resolved when Marx was asked to write the statement for the new party to become the famed Communist Manifesto. 440 00:45:39.520 --> 00:45:48.520 In any case, Cabaye and Veitling each left permanently for the United States in 1848 to try to establish Communism there. 441 00:45:48.520 --> 00:45:56.520 Both attempts foundered ignominiously amid America's expanding and highly individualistic society. 442 00:45:56.520 --> 00:46:04.520 Cabaye's Icarians settled in Texas and then in Nauvoo, Illinois, then split and split again, 443 00:46:04.520 --> 00:46:11.900 until Cabaye, ejected by his former followers in Nauvoo, left for St. Louis and died, spurned 444 00:46:11.900 --> 00:46:15.600 by nearly everyone, in 1856. 445 00:46:15.600 --> 00:46:18.880 As for Veitling, he gave up more rapidly. 446 00:46:18.880 --> 00:46:24.920 In New York, he became a follower of Josiah Warren's individualistic, though left-Ricardian 447 00:46:24.920 --> 00:46:32.840 labor-money scheme, and in 1854 he deviated further to become a bureaucrat with the U.S. 448 00:46:32.840 --> 00:46:40.840 and Human Action Service, spending most of his remaining 17 years trying to promote his various inventions. 449 00:46:40.840 --> 00:46:48.840 Apparently, Veitling, willy-nilly, had at last voted with his feet to join the capitalist order. 450 00:46:48.840 --> 00:46:54.840 Meanwhile, Goodwin Barmby sequestered himself in one after another of the Channel Islands 451 00:46:54.840 --> 00:47:01.840 to try to found a utopian community and denounced a former follower for setting up a more practical 452 00:47:01.840 --> 00:47:06.940 The Journal as an infringement of his copyright on the word Communism. 453 00:47:06.940 --> 00:47:14.780 Gradually, however, Barmby abandoned his Universalism and began to call himself a National Communist, 454 00:47:14.780 --> 00:47:22.340 and in 1848 he went to France, became a Unitarian minister and friend of Mazzini, and abandoned 455 00:47:22.340 --> 00:47:26.340 Communism for revolutionary nationalism. 456 00:47:26.340 --> 00:47:34.700 On the other hand, a leading young French communist, Théodore de Zamy, 1808-1850, represented 457 00:47:34.700 --> 00:47:40.400 a competing strain of militant atheism and a tough cadre approach. 458 00:47:40.400 --> 00:47:47.220 In his youth, the personal secretary of Cabaye, de Zamy led the sudden communist boom launched 459 00:47:47.220 --> 00:47:50.380 in 1839 and 1840. 460 00:47:50.380 --> 00:47:56.500 By the following year, Des Amis became perhaps the founder of the Marxist-Leninist tradition 461 00:47:56.500 --> 00:48:03.820 of ideologically and politically excommunicating all deviationists from the correct line. 462 00:48:03.820 --> 00:48:12.060 In fact, in 1842, Des Amis, a highly prolific pamphleteer, turned bitterly on his old mentor 463 00:48:12.060 --> 00:48:20.620 of Mr. Cabey and denounced him in his Slanders and Politics of Mr. Cabey for chronic vacillations. 464 00:48:20.620 --> 00:48:27.700 In Slanders, Dezami, for the first time, argued that ideological as well as political discipline 465 00:48:27.700 --> 00:48:31.360 was requisite for the communist movement. 466 00:48:31.360 --> 00:48:37.580 More importantly, Dezami wanted to purge French communism of the influence of the quasi-religious 467 00:48:37.580 --> 00:48:46.180 This poetic and moralistic communist code propounded by Cabaye in his Voyage in Icaria, 468 00:48:46.180 --> 00:48:54.780 and especially in his Communist Credo of 1841, Dezami attempted to be severely scientific 469 00:48:54.780 --> 00:49:00.140 and claimed that communist revolution was both rational and inevitable. 470 00:49:00.140 --> 00:49:04.820 It is no wonder that Dezami was greatly admired by Marx. 471 00:49:04.820 --> 00:49:09.820 Furthermore, pacific or gradual measures must be rejected. 472 00:49:09.820 --> 00:49:17.820 Des Amis insisted that a communist revolution must confiscate all private property and all money immediately. 473 00:49:17.820 --> 00:49:21.820 Half measures will satisfy no one, he claimed. 474 00:49:21.820 --> 00:49:24.820 And furthermore, as Billington paraphrases it, 475 00:49:24.820 --> 00:49:29.820 swift and total change would be less bloody than a slow process, 476 00:49:29.820 --> 00:49:33.820 since communism releases the natural goodness of man. 477 00:49:33.820 --> 00:49:41.820 Not only would revolutionary communism be immediate and total, it would also be global and universal. 478 00:49:41.820 --> 00:49:48.820 In the future communist world there will be one global congress of humanity, a single language, 479 00:49:48.820 --> 00:49:56.820 and a single labor service called industrial athletes who perform work in the form of communal youth festivals. 480 00:49:56.820 --> 00:49:57.820 levels. 481 00:49:57.820 --> 00:50:04.060 Moreover, the new universal country would abolish not only narrow nationalism, but also 482 00:50:04.060 --> 00:50:07.700 such divisive loyalties as the family. 483 00:50:07.700 --> 00:50:15.100 In stark practical contrast to his own career as ideological ex-communicator, Dezami proclaimed 484 00:50:15.100 --> 00:50:20.140 that under communism, conflict would be logically impossible. 485 00:50:20.140 --> 00:50:23.140 There can be no splits among communists. 486 00:50:23.140 --> 00:50:29.940 Our struggles among ourselves can only be struggles of harmony or reasoning, since communitarian 487 00:50:29.940 --> 00:50:35.140 principles constitute the solution to all problems. 488 00:50:35.140 --> 00:50:41.980 Amidst this militant atheism, there was, however, a kind of religious fervor, and even faith. 489 00:50:41.980 --> 00:50:48.060 For Dezami spoke of this sublime devotion which constitutes socialism, and he urged 490 00:50:48.060 --> 00:51:03.940 Des Amis' arrest and trial in 1844 inspired German communists in Paris, such as Arnold 491 00:51:03.940 --> 00:51:10.460 Ruga, Moses Hess and Karl Marx, and Hess began to work on a German translation of Des 492 00:51:10.460 --> 00:51:16.980 Mises-Ami's Code under the encouragement of Marx, who proclaimed the code scientific, 493 00:51:16.980 --> 00:51:20.500 socialist, materialist, and real humanist.