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Title: Manifesto of Equals Author: Sylvain Maréchal Date: 1796 Language: en Topics: anarcho-communism Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/france/revolution/conspiracy-equals/1796/manifesto.htm Notes: Source: Ph. Buonarroti. La conspiration pour l'égalité, Editions Sociales, Paris. 1957; Translated: for marxists.org by Mitchell Abidor; CopyLeft: Creative Commons (Attribute & ShareAlike) marxists.org 2004, 2016. Written by Sylvain Marechal, one of the conspirators, the Manifesto didn’t meet with unanimous support from the directors of the revolt. Especially contested was Marechal’s “Let the arts perish, if need be, as long as real equality remains.”
People of France!
For fifteen centuries you lived as slaves and, consequently, unhappy.
For the last six years you barely breathe, waiting for independence,
freedom and equality.
EQUALITY! The first wish of nature, the first need of man, the first
bond of all legitimate association! People of France! You were not more
blessed than the other nations that vegetate on this unfortunate globe!
Everywhere and at all times the poor human race, delivered over to more
or less deft cannibals, served as an plaything for all ambitions, as
prey for all tyrannies. Everywhere and at all times men were lulled with
beautiful words; at no time and in no place was the thing itself ever
obtained along with the word. From time immemorial they hypocritically
repeat to us: all men are equal; and from time immemorial the most
degrading and monstrous inequality insolently weighs upon the human
race. As long as there have been human societies the most beautiful of
humanity’s privileges has been recognized without contradiction, but was
only once put in practice: equality was nothing but a beautiful and
sterile legal fiction. And now that it is called for with an even
stronger voice the answer us: be quiet, you wretches! Real equality is
nothing but a chimera; be satisfied with conditional equality; you're
all equal before the law. What more do you want, filthy rabble?
Legislators, rulers, rich landowners, it is now your turn to listen.
Are we not all equal? This principle remains uncontested, because unless
touched by insanity, one can’t seriously say it is night when it is day.
Well then! We aspire to live and die equal, the way we were born: we
want real equality or death; this is what we need.
And we'll have this real equality, at whatever the cost. Woe on those
who stand between it and us! Woe on those who resist a wish so firmly
expressed.
The French Revolution is nothing but the precursor of another
revolution, one that will greater, more solemn, and which will be the
last.
The people marched over the bodies of kings and priests who were in
league against it: it will do the same to the new tyrants, the new
political Tartuffes seated in the place of the old.
What do we need besides equality of rights?
We need not only that equality of rights written into the Declaration of
the Rights of Man and Citizen; we want it in our midst, under the roofs
of our houses. We consent to everything for it, to make a clean slate so
that we hold to it alone. Let all the arts perish, if need be, as long
as real equality remains!
Legislators and politicians, you have no more genius than you do good
faith; gutless and rich landowners, in vain do you attempt to neutralize
our holy enterprise by saying: They do nothing but reproduce that
agrarian law asked for more than once in the past.
Slanderers, be silent: and in the silence of your confusion listen to
our demands, dictated by nature and based on justice.
The Agrarian law, or the partitioning of land, was the spontaneous
demand of some unprincipled soldiers, of some towns moved more by their
instinct than by reason. We lean towards something more sublime and more
just: the common good or the community of property! No more individual
property in land: the land belongs to no one. We demand, we want, the
common enjoyment of the fruits of the land: the fruits belong to all.
We declare that we can no longer put up with the fact that the great
majority work and sweat for the smallest of minorities.
Long enough, and for too long, less than a million individuals have
disposed of that which belongs to 20 million of their kind, their
equals.
Let it at last end, this great scandal that our descendants will never
believe existed! Disappear at last, revolting distinctions between rich
and poor, great and small, masters and servants, rulers and ruled.
Let there no longer be any difference between people than that of age
and sex. Since all have the same faculties and the same needs, let there
then be for them but one education, but one nourishment. They are
satisfied with one sun and one air for all: why then would the same
portion and the same quality of food not suffice for each of them?
Already the enemies of the most natural order of things we can imagine
raise a clamour against us.
They say to us: You are disorganizers and seditious; you want nothing
but massacres and loot.
PEOPLE OF FRANCE:
We won’t waste our time responding to them. We tell you: the holy
enterprise that we are organising has no other goal than that of putting
an end to civil dissension and public poverty.
Never before has more vast a plan been conceived of or carried out. Here
and there a few men of genius, a few wise men, have spoken in a low and
trembling voice. None have had the courage to tell the whole truth.
The moment for great measures has arrived. Evil has reached its height:
it covers the face of the earth. Under the name of politics, chaos has
reigned for too many centuries. Let everything be set in order and take
its proper place once again. Let the supporters of justice and happiness
organize in the voice of equality. The moment has come to found the
REPUBLIC OF EQUALS, the great home open to all men. The day of general
restitution has arrived. Families moaning in suffering, come sit at the
common table set by nature for all its children.
PEOPLE OF FRANCE:
The purest of all glories was thus reserved for you! Yes it is you who
should be the first to offer the world this touching spectacle.
Ancient habits, antique fears, would again like to pose an obstacle to
the establishment of the Republic of Equals. The organisation of real
equality, the only one that responds to all needs, without causing any
victims, without costing any sacrifice, will not at first please
everyone. The selfish, the ambitious, will tremble with rage. Those who
possess unjustly will cry out about injustice. The loss of the
enjoyments of the few, of solitary pleasures, of personal ease will
cause lively regret to those heedless of the pain of others. The lovers
of absolute power, the henchmen of arbitrary authority, will with
difficulty bow their superb heads before the level of real equality.
Their shortsightedness will penetrate with difficulty the imminent
future of common happiness; but what can a few thousand malcontents do
against a mass of happy men, surprised to have sought so long a
happiness that they had right at hand.
The day after this real revolution, they'll say with astonishment: What?
Common happiness was so easy to obtain? All we had to do was want it?
Why oh why didn’t we desire it sooner? Did they really have to make us
speak of it so many times? Yes, without a doubt, one lone man on earth
richer, stronger than his like, than his equals, and the balance is
thrown off: crime and unhappiness are on earth.
PEOPLE OF FRANCE;
By what sign will you now recognize the excellence of a constitution?
...That which rests in its entirety on real equality is the only one
that can suit you and fulfill all your wishes.
The aristocratic charters of 1791 and 1795 tightened your chains instead
of breaking them. That of 1793 was a great step towards true equality,
and we had never before approached it so closely. But it did not yet
touch the goal, nor reach common happiness, which it nevertheless
solemnly consecrated as its great principle.
PEOPLE OF FRANCE,
Open your eyes and your hearts to the fullness of happiness: recognize
and proclaim with us the REPUBLIC OF EQUALS.