François-Noël Babeuf, the Gracchus Babeuf

French political journalist born in Saint-Quentin, Picardy, journalist who participated in the French Revolution and considered the creator of political strategies that provided a model for the left movements of the century Following. Son of Claude Babeuf, a soldier in the French army who had deserted (1738) to join Maria Theresa's army of Austria and, amnesty (1755), returned to France. He lived his first years of life in extreme difficulties, which certainly contributed to the development of his political opinions, which were heavily influenced by his father's humanist opinion. He did not have a good basic education, and at the age of 12, he started working as a bricklayer in the construction of the Picardy canal and at 17 he became an apprentice at a notary's office.
With the death of his father (1780), he worked hard to support his wife, two children, his mother and brothers. After reading Rousseau, he went on to develop his own theories in favor of the equality and collectivization of land and to write prolifically on socialist theories. He started out as a political journalist (1788) and, already in Paris, founded a periodical, Le Correspondant Picard (1789), which earned him his first conviction. After his arrest he worked as a civil servant in the Somme department. Back in Paris he founded a new periodical, Le Tribun du Peuple (1794), in which he attacked the Jacobins.


Imprisoned Again (1795) formulated his egalitarian doctrines in prison, preaching the distribution of land and wealth in similar ways to that of the Roman statesman Gracchus. After the French Revolution, he occupied municipal functions and returned to writing political articles, under the signature of Gracchus Babeuf, creating the movement called babovism. Again imprisoned (1796) for participating in a movement that defended the return of the constitution (1793), the Conspiracy of Equals, he was tried and sentenced to death at the guillotine and executed in Paris. Although the terms socialism and communism did not exist at the time he lived, they were used later to describe his ideas.
Source: Biographies - Academic Unit of Civil Engineering / UFCG

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