Louis Auguste Blanqui was a French socialist and political activist, notable for his revolutionary theory of Blanquism.
Background
Blanqui was born on 5 February in 1805 in Puget-Théniers, Alpes-Maritimes, where his father, Jean Dominique Blanqui, was subprefect. He was the younger brother of the liberal economist Jérôme-Adolphe Blanqui. He studied both law and medicine, but found his real vocation in politics, and quickly became a champion of the most advanced opinions.
Education
Blanqui was educated in the atmosphere of dissent and conspiracy which characterized Parisian student life under the Bourbon Restoration of 1815-1830.
Career
Louis joined the secret revolutionary society of the Carbonari and, in 1827, was wounded during riots against the government of Charles X.
In 1827 he escaped arrest after his first battle with the police.
Blanqui took part in the street fighting of July 1830 and was decorated by the July Monarchy of Louis Philippe for his part in its birth.
He helped to overthrow it in the July Revolution of 1830, but, believing the new kingdom of Louis Philippe to be a betrayal of the revolution, enlisted in the most radical opposition to the July Monarchy.
He was arrested in both 1831 and 1832 for plotting against the regime, but he invariably resumed his activities.
It was expressed through secret societies which, in 1836 and 1839, were shattered by the police.
The revolution which began in February of that year was expected by Blanqui's admirers and enemies to provide great opportunities for his peculiar talents.
His enemies attacked him through an alleged account of Blanqui's revelations to the police in 1839, and his enthusiastic followers urged him into adventures he knew to be impracticable.
As a result of his illness, in 1844 he was transferred to a prison in Tours and was released in April 1847.
Upon learning of the February Revolution of 1848, Blanqui hurried to Paris, where he organized cooperation among the political clubs of the left.
But then he felt compelled to take part in order to keep the faith of his followers, and he led in the invasion of the new assembly.
For this, he was arrested and condemned to 10 years' imprisonment.
Because he reluctantly accompanied a mob which broke into the Constituent Assembly on May 15, 1848, he was arrested and returned to an imprisonment which was not lifted until Napoleon III proclaimed an amnesty in 1859.
Upon his release, he moved immediately into the characteristic revolutionary's cycle of conspiracy, imprisonment, escape, and exile.
Resuming his work in the republican secret societies, Blanqui was arrested again in 1861 and sent to the Sainte-Pélagie prison, where he had a large measure of freedom to study, reflect, and discuss his ideas.
To avoid deportation, he escaped in August 1865, going to Geneva and then Brussels, from which he was able to visit Paris secretly.
After 1865 he managed to direct from Belgium a clandestine organization of students and workers in Paris.
These "Blanquists" were ridiculously ineffectual in attempts to subvert the Second Empire before its overthrow on September 4, 1870.
Taking advantage of early reverses in the Franco-Prussian War, Blanqui launched an uprising in August 1870; he was rescued from its failure by the fall of the Second Empire on September 4.
Imprisoned at Cahors by the new government for another ill-timed insurrection in October, he was unable to play a part in the Commune.
But, on that day, they did apparently play a significant role in reinforcing the sudden overwhelming opposition to the Napoleonic regime.
He had been arrested on March 17, 1871, on orders of the new national executive under Adolphe Thiers, the day before armed conflict broke out in Paris.
Although the Blanquists played an important role in the radical Commune, they sorely missed their leader, Le Vieux ("the old one"), whose life had been a preparation for just such a struggle.
He was not committed to conspiracy for its own sake but only because he thought a revolutionary elite had to anticipate and control the revolution to keep bourgeois politicians from depriving the proletariat of its victory. Notwithstanding his failures, Blanqui influenced several generations of French radicals and, through the Russian revolutionary Peter Tkachev, is presumed to have contributed to the background of V. I. Lenin.
"Blanquism" is still used in European radical polemics as an opprobrious term to characterize so-called putschist or adventurist political tendencies.
Thiers refused to trade Blanqui for hostages held by the Commune, observing that his most implacable opponent was worth an army corps. The Third Republic, which rose on the ruins of the Second Empire and of the Commune, kept Blanqui behind prison walls until 1879 after a political campaign had almost made him a member of the Chamber of Deputies.
In April 1879 he was elected to the Chamber from Bordeaux but was rejected by the Chamber.
After receiving a pardon in June, he was defeated for reelection.
Believing in the fundamental importance of the class struggle, he emphasized the necessity for the seizure of political power by a proletarian elite, which would then establish the collective ownership of the means of production.
Religion
While studying and working as a journalist in Paris, in 1824 he became involved with the secret society of the Carbonari.
Involved in two of the more elaborate conspiracies of the 18306-the Society of the Seasons and the Society of the Families-he was arrested in 1836 for manufacturing arms.
Politics
By the middle of the 1830's his radicalism was already anticapitalist as well as republican.
His followers retained coherence as a faction in the Socialist First International and as a Socialist splinter party.
After splitting over the issue of Boulangism, a movement to put into power a popular French general, the remaining Blanquists were eventually absorbed in the French Socialist Party.
While studying and working as a journalist in Paris, in 1824 he became involved with the secret society of the Carbonari.
Involved in two of the more elaborate conspiracies of the 1836-the Society of the Seasons and the Society of the Families-he was arrested in 1836 for manufacturing arms.
Views
While his revolution was to destroy capitalism, he would have postponed the destruction until a revolutionary dictatorship had prepared men's minds for the new order.
Blanqui's lifetime of conspiracy, insurrection, and virtually forty years of imprisonment is often characterized as that of a mindless adventurer committed to violent action for its own sake.
Membership
He was a member of the Carbonari society since 1824.
He was a leading member of the Société des Saisons.