What the National Convention Wants to Do Is Limit Sectional Assembly Meetings

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The National Convention wants to quell all of these different competitors with its power. So they restrict how often sectional assemblies can meet. They offer a 40 sue indemnity to any working person who wants to come to a sectional assembly. The Jacobins begin to demobilize their most fervent supporters because they see that as a way of protecting the kind of revolution we're going to affect.

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. Check out the newsletter and our vast archives at thedigradio.com Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDig