Babeuf, François Noël

Babeuf, François Noël (1760-1797), French revolutionary and the founder of revolutionary socialism, born in St-Quentin. His early years were spent in the service of the landed aristocracy. Babeuf, who hated inequality and injustice, enthusiastically supported the French Revolution, but, at the end of the Reign of Terror, attacked the Revolution because it had not developed along the lines of his own socialistic theories. Under the pen name of Gracchus Babeuf, he published a journal, Tribun du peuple (Tribune of the People), in which he bitterly condemned the enemies of the Revolution. An advocate of common ownership of land and property and absolute economic and political equality of all citizens, he proposed doing away with all private ownership of property by confiscation and by the abolition of inheritance. These principles became known as Babouvism. Babeuf's participation in 1796 in a plot to overthrow the Directory, the executive branch of the government, and to establish a communistic state resulted in his execution.