The Blanqui Reader: Political Writings, 1830-1880

Philippe Le Goff and Peter Hallward, eds, The Blanqui Reader: Political Writings, 1830-1880, (New York: Verso, 2018), 384 pp., $120.

When Louis-Auguste Blanqui is remembered at all today by the left, it is as a cautionary tale. Throughout the twentieth century, social democrats saw Blanquism as synonymous with adventurism, putschism and ultra-leftism that must be avoided at all costs. When communists were accused by social democrats of “Blanquism” it had very little to with the politics of Blanqui, but more as objections to communist willingness to engage in uncompromising revolutionary struggle.

This leaves the question of who exactly was Blanqui? Louis-Auguste Blanqui (1805-1881) was one of the most revered, dedicated and uncompromising communist revolutionaries in nineteenth century France. He participated in all the major political upheavals of his era from the July Days of 1830 to the 1848 revolution to the Paris Commune. He was the heir to both the Enlightenment and the Jacobin traditions who took both to their communist conclusions. Unlike many of his utopian socialist contemporaries, Blanqui refused to formulate ideas in the abstract; he took immediate action to overthrow injustice. His revolutionary strategy was decidedly simple: a small and secretive elite would lead an insurrection and create a socialist republic. His efforts failed spectacularly resulting in Blanqui spending half his life in prison. Throughout his lifetime of struggle and deprivation, Blanqui remained steadfast in his devotion to communist revolution. Blanqui's dedication was recognized by Karl Marx, who called him “the brains and inspiration of the proletarian party in France.” In the end, Blanqui did not win, but he remained unconquered.

Although Blanqui was primarily a man of action, his imprisonment gave him plenty of time to write on many topics including the art of insurrection, philosophy, religion, and education. While many French editions exist of Blanqui's writings, The Blanqui Reader is the first English collection. The Blanqui Reader includes new and complete translations of Blanqui's major works, some of which are not even available in French. Included are his journalistic articles, treatise on astronomy Eternity by the Stars, letters, speeches and reflections. The editors Peter Hallward and Philippe Le Goff have done a great service for scholars and activists. The Blanqui Reader will remain a necessary reference book for years to come.

Included in the Reader is the first full English translation of Instructions for an Armed Uprising written in 1868. This essay was Blanqui’s most mature reflection on the tactics of urban warfare and barricade construction drawn from his lifetime of experience. It not only shows a master street fighter and tactician, but the ultimate limitations of Blanqui's politics. In reflecting on the failure of the June Days of 1848, when the workers of Paris had risen up and were massacred, Blanqui observed that the insurgents possessed the advantage:

not only through devotion [dévouement], but even more so through intelligence. They have the moral and even the physical upper hand as a result of their conviction, vigour, and resourcefulness, their vitality of mind and body; they combine stout hearts with clear heads. No troops in the world are equal to these elite men. (206)

That being the case, why did they fail? Blanqui argued that the June insurgents were defeated because they lacked centralization and organization. As he bluntly declared:

They lack that sense of unity and solidarity which, in leading them to coordinate their efforts towards one and the same goal, thereby fosters all those very qualities that isolation renders powerless. They lack organisation, without which they have no chance. Organisation means victory; dispersal means death. (206)

However, no insurrection ever succeeded based on Blanqui's axioms. Blanquist insurrection tactics were outmoded as the state made its own preparations to withstand urban warfare by improving communications and creating wider streets to forestall barricade construction which enabled the easy movements of troops and artillery. This doesn't mean that Blanqui's insurrectionary treatise has only antiquarian interest. He anticipated Lenin, Trotsky, and the Bolsheviks in recognizing that a successful armed uprising required planning and organization. The seizure of power can not be left to spontaneity, otherwise the ruling class will regroup and stifle the will of the people. Subsequent history proved Blanqui correct: to prevail insurrection must be treated as an art.

While Blanqui had unrivaled knowledge on the organizational technique of insurrection, his very strength was also his weakness. His singular focus on the technical and tactical side of insurrection means that he effectively excludes workers from any role in their own liberation. Rather, Blanqui believed that the majority of the people are too ignorant to liberate themselves, but required an enlightened elite to act in their stead. Summarizing this weakness of Blanqui's politics, Philippe Le Goff says in the introduction:

Blanqui's conception of conscious volition too often overstates the gap between knowledge and ignorance, between who has and who lacks the intellectual capacities that decisive voluntary action demands. It leaves him unable to formulate a convincing account of politics as self-emancipation, and occasionally leads him to embrace substitutionist forms of political organization, whereby a vanguard group might act on behalf of the people rather than with them. (xxxiv)

Ultimately, the gap between party and class, remained an unbridgeable chasm for Blanqui, whereas subsequent revolutionaries such as the Bolsheviks overcame it.

A number of selections in the Reader show just how important Blanqui thought mass education was if the people were ever to exercise their own collective capacities. Blanqui argued that religion was the main buttress for oppression and needed to be annihilated. In its place, he defended the principles of the Enlightenment as the philosophy of revolution:

The philosophy inaugurated by Diderot and d'Holbach in the eighteenth century, then affirmed and promulgated by the unanimous verdicts of science in the nineteenth century, is the sole basis for the future. The point has been proved by experience. The abandonment of this philosophy has been the cause of all the Revolution's failures since 1789. One must choose between this philosophy and the Middle Ages. It will therefore be our flag. (137)

Blanqui was adamant that mass education and liberation must be founded on the materialist and rationalist philosophy of the Enlightenment. In line with his philosophy, Blanqui defended the principles of the French Revolution - secularism, republicanism, and egalitarianism – as necessary for social progress. However, he knew that the French Revolution had not realized those principles. Blanqui stated that socialism could only be achieved by building on the foundations laid in 1789:

Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, and that admirable symbol, the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen, which, broadly interpreted, contains the seeds of all the developments of future society. (87)

The logical conclusion was that bourgeois society must be overthrown to finally realize the Enlightenment.

The importance of the Enlightenment to Blanqui's political project is not discussed by Hallward and Le Goff in their introductions. Instead, they focus far more on Blanqui‘s voluntarism and politics of the will. It's true that Blanqui was a voluntarist, but those views remained in tension with his Enlightenment philosophy. Throughout his life, Blanqui tried to balance between voluntarism and French chauvinism on the one hand and the Enlightenment and communist universalism on the other. He was never to develop a consistent worldview. He was never able to resolve these antinomies. After his death, Blanqui's followers faced the choice of either consistently developing the universal elements of his philosophy or abandoning them for a cult of action, vitalism, and national rebirth: ultimately choosing between Marxism or reaction. Blanqui failed to consistently develop the radical and universalist elements of his Enlightenment worldview delete. This still remains the task of revolutionaries today.

If there is one major drawback to the Blanqui Reader it is the hardcover price of $120. Thankfully, Verso will release a cheaper paperback edition next year. Hallward and Le Goff's Blanqui Reader is an essential work in rescuing L'Enfermé from obscurity and rediscovering his relevance for today.

While Blanqui's politics were deeply flawed in many respects with elitism and chauvinism, he asked the right questions: how is power taken? How are the people mobilized for struggle? What is the correct worldview to guide a revolutionary movement? Blanqui correctly understood that a revolution demanded theory, leadership, organization, discipline and terror. If you want to win, then you need the means. Blanqui has much to teach us in that regard. On a human level, Blanqui, like Che Guevara, was an incorruptible revolutionary who embodied in both thought and action an utter devotion and self-sacrifice to the communist ideal. Those who seek to follow Blanqui's example and learn from his mistakes are fortunate to have this invaluable reader at their disposal.

Doug Enaa Greene
Author, Communist Insurgent: Blanqui's Politics of Revolution
greene.douglas1982@gmail.com
greene.douglas@ymail.com