Oluthemi O. Tywell: Beboath was in prison when the worst of inflation struck. He and Charles Germain smuggle letters back and forth to one another. They discuss democracy, but they also discuss social equality,. And Beboath says, we need to find a way to improve the lives of ordinary people. Right. So he's using this model from 1793, 1794, using this kind of Jacobin model of distribution and army supply to make a case for abolishing property.
Featuring Laura Mason on her book The Last Revolutionaries: The Conspiracy Trial of Gracchus Babeuf and the Equals. Mason discusses Babeuf's call to abolish property, his radically egalitarian conspiracy against the Directory government, and the end of the French Revolution. How a centrist government turned its back on popular democracy, presided over growing inequality and working-class poverty, and abetted the rise of the reactionary right that would ultimately overthrow it.
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