ABSTRACT
All Revolutions centre around the relation of political authority to the distribution of economic power; for, as Madison long ago insisted, the only durable source of faction is property. Anyone who examines the history of French social thought in the eighteenth century realizes at once that its very essence is a changing conception of the place of property in the State. This chapter shows that the effort of Babeuf and his fellow-conspirators was the one genuine socialist movement in this epoch with a definite programme and an equally definite method of moving towards its realization. It describes what of significance there was in the socialist experience of this epoch and how far it has given any specific character to the socialist movement of a later time. The chapter discusses a simple affirmation. Neither in the cahiers nor in the pamphlets which resulted from the summons of the States-General is there any important or general socialist doctrine.
