Babeuf and the Conspiracy of Equals

In 1796 François-Noël Babeuf, a journalist who called himself 'Gracchus' after Roman reformers, organised a secret plot to overthrow the Directory. The 'Conspiracy of Equals' argued that political equality was meaningless without economic equality, and it called for the abolition of private ownership of land and for goods to be shared in common. Babeuf's group planned an insurrection and hoped to restore the Constitution of 1793. An informer betrayed them, and the leaders were arrested in May 1796.

After a long trial, Babeuf was executed in 1797. The plot itself had little support, but its ideas lived on. One conspirator, Filippo Buonarroti, published an account in 1828 that influenced 19th-century radicals. Some historians see Babeuf as a forerunner of modern socialism and communism, while others stress that his ideas were rooted in an older tradition of agrarian egalitarianism.