ABSTRACT
The French Revolution saw the first direct attempt to create a society freed from private property, with the Conspiracy of the Equals led by Gracchus Babeuf. I will try to show how the generation of French communists of the 1840s, often inspired by Babeuf’s ideas, reclaimed the legacy of the Enlightenment and the Revolution by sketching out the points of convergence but also the internal debates within this current. I will also evoke the influence that their ideas exerted over the young Marx and Engels during their Paris exile in 1843–4.
