Louis Auguste Blanqui (French pronunciation:
​[lwi oɡyst blɑ̃ki]; 8 February 1805
– 1 January 1881) was a French socialist
and political activist, notable for his revolutionary
theory of Blanquism.
== Biography ==
=== 
Early life, political activity and first imprisonment
(1805–1848) ===
Blanqui was born in Puget-Théniers, Alpes-Maritimes,
where his father, Jean Dominique Blanqui,
of Italian descent, 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.
A member of the Carbonari society since 1824,
he took an active part in most republican
conspiracies during this period.
In 1827, under the reign of Charles X (1824–1830),
he participated in a street fight in Rue Saint-Denis,
during which he was seriously injured.
In 1829, he joined Pierre Leroux's Globe newspaper
before taking part in the July Revolution
of 1830.
He then joined the Amis du Peuple ("Friends
of the People") society, where he made acquaintances
with Philippe Buonarroti, Raspail, and Armand
Barbès.
He was condemned to repeated terms of imprisonment
for maintaining the doctrine of republicanism
during the reign of Louis Philippe (1830–1848).
In May 1839, a Blanquist inspired uprising
took place in Paris, in which the League of
the Just, forerunners of Karl Marx's Communist
League, participated.
Implicated in the armed outbreak of the Société
des Saisons, of which he was a leading member,
Blanqui was condemned to death on 14 January
1840, a sentence later commuted to life imprisonment.
=== Release, revolutions and further imprisonment
(1848–1879) ===
He was released during the revolution of 1848,
only to resume his attacks on existing institutions.
The revolution had not satisfied him.
The violence of the Société républicaine
centrale, which was founded by Blanqui to
demand a change of government, brought him
into conflict with the more moderate Republicans,
and in 1849 he was sentenced to ten years'
imprisonment.
While in prison, he sent a brief address (written
in the Prison of Belle-Ile-en-Mer, 10 February
1851) to a committee of social democrats in
London.
The text of the address was noted and introduced
by Karl Marx.In 1865, while serving a further
term of imprisonment under the Empire, he
escaped, and continued his propaganda campaign
against the government from abroad, until
the general amnesty of 1869 enabled him to
return to France.
Blanqui's predilection for violence was illustrated
in 1870 by two unsuccessful armed demonstrations:
one on 12 January at the funeral of Victor
Noir, the journalist shot by Pierre Bonaparte;
the other on 14 August, when he led an attempt
to seize some guns from a barracks.
Upon the fall of the Empire, through the revolution
of 4 September, Blanqui established the club
and journal La patrie en danger.
He was one of the group that briefly seized
the reins of power on 31 October and for his
share in that outbreak he was again condemned
to death in absentia on 9 March of the following
year.
On 17 March, Adolphe Thiers, aware of the
threat represented by Blanqui, took advantage
of his resting at a friend physician's place,
in Bretenoux in Lot, and had him arrested.
A few days afterwards the insurrection which
established the Paris Commune broke out, and
Blanqui was elected president of the insurgent
commune.
The Communards offered to release all of their
prisoners if the Thiers government released
Blanqui, but their offer was met with refusal,
and Blanqui was thus prevented from taking
an active part.
Karl Marx would later be convinced that Blanqui
was the leader that was missed by the Commune.
Nevertheless, in 1872 he was condemned along
with the other members of the Commune to transportation;
on account of his broken health this sentence
was again commuted to one of imprisonment.
On 20 April 1879 he was elected a deputy for
Bordeaux; although the election was pronounced
invalid, Blanqui was freed, and immediately
resumed his work of agitation.
=== Ideology ===
As a socialist, Blanqui favored what he described
as a just redistribution of wealth.
However, Blanquism is distinguished in various
ways from other socialist currents of the
day.
On one side, contrary to Karl Marx, Blanqui
did not believe in the preponderant role of
the working class, nor in popular movements:
he thought, on the contrary, that the revolution
should be carried out by a small group, who
would establish a temporary dictatorship by
force.
This period of transitional tyranny would
permit the implementation of the basis of
a new order, after which power would be handed
to the people.
In another respect, Blanqui was more concerned
with the revolution itself than with the future
society that would result from it: if his
thought was based on precise socialist principles,
it rarely goes so far as to imagine a society
purely and really socialist.
In this he differs from the utopian socialists.
For the Blanquists, the overturning of the
bourgeois social order and the revolution
are ends sufficient in themselves, at least
for their immediate purposes.
He was one of the non-Marxist socialists of
his day.
=== Death ===
Following a speech at a political meeting
in Paris, Blanqui had a stroke.
He died on 1 January 1881 and was interred
in the Père Lachaise Cemetery.
His elaborate tomb was created by Jules Dalou.
== Legacy ==
Blanqui's uncompromising radicalism, and his
determination to enforce it by violence, brought
him into conflict with every French government
during his lifetime, and as a consequence,
he spent half of his life in prison.
Besides his innumerable contributions to journalism,
he published a work entitled, L'Eternité
par les astres (1872), where he espoused his
views concerning eternal return.
After his death his writings on economic and
social questions were collected under the
title of Critique sociale (1885).
The Italian fascist newspaper Il Popolo d'Italia,
founded and edited by Benito Mussolini, had
a quotation by Blanqui on its mast: Chi ha
del ferro ha del pane ("He who has iron, has
bread").Blanqui's political activism and his
book L'Eternité par les astres were commented
on by Walter Benjamin in his Arcades Project
and are referred to in the novel The Secret
Knowledge by Andrew Crumey.
== See also ==
French demonstration of 15 May 1848
La patrie en danger
No gods, no masters
== Works ==
=== French ===
L'Armée esclave et opprimée
Critique sociale: Capital et travail
Critique sociale: Fragments et notes
Instructions pour une prise d'armes.
Maintenant il faut des armes
Ni dieu ni maitre
Qui fait la soupe doit la manger
Réponse
Un dernier mot
=== English translations ===
The Eternity According to the Stars, tr. by
Mathew H. Anderson, with an afterword by Lisa
Block de Behar ("Literary Escapes and Astral
Shelters of an Incarcerated Conspirator").
In CR: The New Centennial Review 9/3: 61-94,
Winter 2009.
The first full-length translation into English.
Eternity by the Stars.
Frank Chouraqui, trans.
New York: Contra Mundum Press, 2013.
== Footnotes ==
This article incorporates text from a publication
now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh,
ed. (1911).
"Blanqui, Louis Auguste".
Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.).
Cambridge University Press.
== Further reading ==
Mitchell Abidor (trans.), Communards: The
Story of the Paris Commune of 1871 as Told
by Those Who Fought for It.
Pacifica, CA: Marxists Internet Archive, 2010.
Doug Enaa Greene, Communist Insurgent: Blanqui's
Politics of Revolution.
Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2017.
== External links ==
Louis-Auguste Blanqui Archive at Marxists
Internet Archive
