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Louis Auguste Blanqui
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| Biography: Louis Auguste Blanqui |
The French revolutionary Louis Auguste Blanqui (1805-1881) was an unrelenting enemy of every French regime of the 19th century. The most heroic figure in the French socialist movement, he spent most of his life in prison.
Louis Blanqui was born in Puget-Théniers, near Nice, on Feb. 1, 1805. While studying and working as a journalist in Paris, in 1824 he became involved with the secret society of the Carbonari. This was the first step in a lifetime attachment to the use of conspiratorial methods to achieve political and social change. In 1827 he escaped arrest after his first battle with the police. Blanqui took part in the street fighting of July 1830 and was decorated by the July Monarchy of Louis Philippe for his part in its birth.
Blanqui soon parted company with Louis Philippe's bourgeois monarchy and joined the extreme republican opposition. He was arrested in both 1831 and 1832 for plotting against the regime, but he invariably resumed his activities. Involved in two of the more elaborate conspiracies of the 1830s - the Society of the Seasons and the Society of the Families - he was arrested in 1836 for manufacturing arms. He received his first death sentence in January 1840 for his part in the May 1839 uprising. The sentence was commuted, and he was sent to the prison of Mont-Saint-Michel, where the harsh conditions permanently undermined his health. As a result of his illness, in 1844 he was transferred to a prison in Tours and was released in April 1847.
Upon learning of the February Revolution of 1848, Blanqui hurried to Paris, where he organized cooperation among the political clubs of the left. He pressured the provisional government for social reforms and advocated postponing elections until the country could be educated in republicanism. Apparently tolerant of the provisional republic, Blanqui at first opposed the leftist demonstration of May 15. But then he felt compelled to take part in order to keep the faith of his followers, and he led in the invasion of the new assembly. For this he was arrested and condemned to 10 years' imprisonment. He was deported by the government of the Second Empire to Africa in 1859 but was set free in August of that year.
Resuming his work in the republican secret societies, Blanqui was arrested again in 1861 and sent to the Sainte-Pélagie prison, where he had a large measure of freedom to study, reflect, and discuss his ideas. In 1865 he was even able to edit a journal from prison. To avoid deportation, he escaped in August 1865, going to Geneva and then Brussels, from which he was able to visit Paris secretly.
Taking advantage of early reverses in the Franco-Prussian War, Blanqui launched an uprising in August 1870; he was rescued from its failure by the fall of the Second Empire on September 4. Imprisoned at Cahors by the new government for another ill-timed insurrection in October, he was unable to play a part in the Commune. Condemnations to death and, later, deportation were not carried out because of his ill health, and in 1877 he was transferred to the island prison of Château d'If in the Mediterranean.
By this time the aging and ill Blanqui had become a symbol of resistance to oppressive government, and a campaign was undertaken to secure a pardon for him. In April 1879 he was elected to the Chamber from Bordeaux but was rejected by the Chamber. After receiving a pardon in June, he was defeated for reelection. He died on Jan. 1, 1881.
By the end of Blanqui's life his conspiratorial approach to revolution seemed outmoded to most socialists, but his lifelong willingness to suffer for his cause and his refusal to accept defeat assured his reputation as a hero of the left. Believing in the fundamental importance of the class struggle, he emphasized the necessity for the seizure of political power by a proletarian elite, which would then establish the collective ownership of the means of production. An extreme rationalist, he was violently anticlerical, seeing in the church - indeed, in all religion - the principal cause of human misery and the principal obstacle to progress.
Further Reading
Alan B. Spitzer, The Revolutionary Theories of Louis Auguste Blanqui (1957), shows that Blanqui must be taken seriously as a thinker, not merely as an insurrectionist. See also Neil Stewart, Blanqui (1939). The most famous work on Blanqui, a fictionalized biography, is in French: Gustave Geffroy, L'Enfermé (1897; rev. ed., 2 vols., 1926). The leading authority on all aspects of Blanqui's career, Maurice Dommanget, also writes in French.
| Political Dictionary: Louis-Auguste Blanqui |
(1805-81) French insurrectionary communist who failed completely in all his attempted coups d'état, and spent more than thirty years in prison. In his theory of revolutionary organization, based on the cell structure, he was a precursor of Lenin and of many communist and terrorist movements after the Russian Revolution (1917).
— Carl Slevin
| French Literature Companion: Auguste Blanqui |
Blanqui, Auguste (1805-81). Revolutionary socialist and insurrectionary, prominently involved in the political upheavals of 1830, 1848, and 1870-1. His unwavering belief in armed rebellion as an instrument of political change led to long periods of imprisonment, during one of which he was elected president of the Paris Commune of 1871. His writings were collected posthumously as Critique sociale (1885).
[Malcolm Bowie]
| Columbia Encyclopedia: Louis Auguste Blanqui |
Blanqui, Louis Auguste (lwē ôgüst'), 1805-81, French revolutionary and radical thinker. While a student in Paris, he joined (1824) a branch of the Carbonari, a revolutionary secret society; thenceforth he was prominent in every revolutionary upheaval in France until his death. More than half his life was spent in prison. In 1847 he set up the Central Republican Society, which was powerful in the February Revolution of 1848. An exile in Brussels (1865-70), Blanqui organized the extremist opposition against Napoleon III, in whose deposition (Sept. 4, 1870) he was instrumental. The crucial role played by Blanqui and his followers in the expulsion (Oct., 1870) of the moderate government of Paris led his opponents to compromise on a government headed by Adolphe Thiers, and shortly before the proclamation of the Commune of Paris, Thiers had Blanqui arrested. The commune, whose temporary success was largely Blanqui's work, vainly offered its hostages in exchange for Blanqui. He was released in 1879 and was elected a deputy from Bordeaux, although the government did not allow him to serve. His followers, the Blanquists, were eventually absorbed into the unified socialist party. Advocating direct revolutionary action, Blanqui was among the first to conceive of the professional revolutionary.
Bibliography
See R. W. Postgate, Revolution from 1789-1906 (1920) and study by A. Spitzer (1957, repr. 1970).
| Wikipedia: Louis Auguste Blanqui |
Louis Auguste Blanqui (February 8, 1805 in Puget-Théniers, Alpes-Maritimes – January 1, 1881) was a French political activist, notable for the revolutionary theory of Blanquism, attributed to him.
Contents |
Biography
Early life, political activity and first imprisonment (1805-1848)
Blanqui was born in Puget-Théniers, Alpes-Maritimes, where his father, Jean Dominique Blanqui, was subprefect. He studied both law and medicine, but found his real vocation in politics, and quickly became a champion of the most advanced opinions. A member of the Carbonari society since 1824, he took an active part in most republican conspiracies during this period. In 1827, under the reign of Charles X (1824-1830), he participated in a street fight in Rue Saint-Denis, during which he was seriously injured. In 1829, he joined Pierre Leroux's Globe newspaper before taking part in the July Revolution of 1830. He then joined the Amis du Peuple ("Friends of the People") society, where he made acquaintances with Philippe Buonarroti, Raspail, and Armand Barbès. He was condemned to repeated terms of imprisonment for maintaining the doctrine of republicanism during the reign of Louis Philippe (1830-1848). In May 1839, a Blanquist inspired uprising took place in Paris, in which the League of the Just, forerunners of Karl Marx's Communist League, participated.
Implicated in the armed outbreak of the Société des Saisons, of which he was a leading member, Blanqui was condemned to death on January 14, 1840, a sentence later commuted to life imprisonment.
Release, revolutions and further imprisonment (1848-1879)
He was released during the revolution of 1848, only to resume his attacks on existing institutions. The revolution had not satisfied him. The violence of the Société républicaine centrale, which was founded by Blanqui to demand a change of government, brought him into conflict with the more moderate Republicans, and in 1849 he was sentenced to ten years' imprisonment. While in prison, he sent a brief address (written in the Prison of Belle-Ile-en-Mer, February 10, 1851) to a committee of social democrats in London. The text of the address was noted and introduced by Marx.[1]
In 1865, while serving a further term of imprisonment under the Empire, he escaped, and continued his propaganda campaign against the government from abroad, until the general amnesty of 1869 enabled him to return to France. Blanqui's predilection for violence was illustrated in 1870 by two unsuccessful armed demonstrations: one on January 12 at the funeral of Victor Noir, the journalist shot by Pierre Bonaparte; the other on August 14, when he led an attempt to seize some guns from a barracks. Upon the fall of the Empire, through the revolution of September 4, Blanqui established the club and journal La patrie en danger.
He was one of the group that briefly seized the reins of power on October 31, and for his share in that outbreak he was again condemned to death in absentia on March 9 of the following year. On March 17, Adolphe Thiers, aware of the threat represented by Blanqui, took advantage of his resting at a friend physician's place, in Bretenoux in Lot, and had him arrested. A few days afterwards the insurrection which established the Paris Commune broke out, and Blanqui was elected president of the insurgent commune. The Communards offered to release all of their prisoners if the Thiers government released Blanqui, but their offer was met with refusal, and Blanqui was thus prevented from taking an active part. Karl Marx would later be convinced that Blanqui was the leader that was missed by the Commune. Nevertheless, in 1872 he was condemned along with the other members of the Commune to transportation; on account of his broken health this sentence was again commuted to one of imprisonment. On April 20, 1879 he was elected a deputy for Bordeaux; although the election was pronounced invalid, Blanqui was freed, and immediately resumed his work of agitation.
Ideology
As a socialist, Blanqui favored a just redistribution of wealth. But Blanquism is distinguished in various ways from other socialist currents of the day. On one side, contrary to Karl Marx, Blanqui did not believe in the preponderant role of the working class, nor in popular movements: he thought, on the contrary, that the revolution should be carried out by a small group, who would establish a temporary dictatorship by force. This period of transitional tyranny would permit the implementation of the basis of a new order, after which power would be handed to the people. In another respect, Blanqui was more concerned with the revolution itself than with the future society that would result from it: if his thought was based on precise socialist principles, it rarely goes so far as to imagine a society purely and really socialist. In this he differs from the Utopian Socialists. For the Blanquists, the overturning of the bourgeois social order and the revolution are ends sufficient in themselves, at least for their immediate purposes. He was one of the non-Marxist socialists of his day.
Death
After a speech at a revolutionary meeting in Paris, he was struck down by apoplexy. He died on January 1, 1881 and was interred in the Père Lachaise Cemetery. His elaborate tomb was created by Jules Dalou.
Legacy
Blanqui's uncompromising communism, and his determination to enforce it by violence, brought him into conflict with every French government of his lifetime, and half his life was spent in prison. Besides his innumerable contributions to journalism, he published an astronomical work entitled L'Eternité par les astres (1872), where he espoused a theory of eternal return, and after his death his writings on economic and social questions were collected under the title of Critique sociale (1885).
The Italian fascist newspaper Il Popolo d'Italia, founded and directed by Benito Mussolini, had on its mast a motto by Blanqui: Who has iron, has bread.
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References
- ^ Introduction to the Leaflet of L. A. Blanqui's Toast Sent to the Refugee Committee, written at the prison of Belle-Ile-en-Mer, February 10, 1851, hosted at Marxists.org, last retrieved April 25, 2007
- This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica, Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.
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