Autograph manuscript signed by Gracchus Babeuf. Three pages on three leaves and nine lines (on the verso of the first leaf). He still writes under the name François-Noël and Camille (in homage to Camille Desmoulins) in the autograph manuscript heading on the first leaf ("F.N. Cam. Babeuf citoyen français"). Autograph pagination in the upper left corner of each leaf. Minor marginal tears not affecting the text, occasional foxing, slight horizontal center fold.

This long discourse is one of the first significant documents in which Babeuf, the Marat of Picardy and precursor of communism, speaks about himself after devoting his pen to defending the rights of peasants and workers since the beginning of the Revolution. In this veritable revolutionary credo, Babeuf replaces the rejection of Satan with that of the aristocracy and its works. He intends to prove that his past as a feudiste (whose work consisted in reconstituting or recovering the deeds by which lords could claim to collect from peasants rights that had fallen into disuse) paradoxically makes him the most qualified to abolish the feudal regime and its property privileges - ultimately achieving an early version of communism Babeuf was adamantly advocating for. 

"Feudality is nothing but a system of slavery and tyranny; my homeland wishes to be free, it must preserve nothing of what relates to such a regime. Recently, speaking to me of the former lords, I was asked very seriously this question: - do you renounce them? -yes, I replied, I renounce them and forever."

Babeuf recounts his revolutionary conversion in this biographical memoir. Another version is known, of which his biographer Advielle had only cited extracts or paraphrased passages (Histoire de Gracchus Babeuf et du babouvisme, I, pp. 92-94). The present manuscript, possibly a draft, is in all likelihood unpublished and does not appear in the Inventaire des manuscrits et imprimés de Babeuf by Daline, Saitta and Soboul, which cites a manuscript bearing the same title but with a different collation (probably the one cited by Advielle). The latter is part of the collection of the Institute of Marxism-Leninism, now deposited in the archives of the Russian Federation.

This paper was written in response to an attack by a member of the clergy Pierre Tournier, who had denounced Babeuf for having led a campaign of defense and support for the peasant revolt of Davenescourt. The château of Davenescourt, property of the Countess de la Myre, had been invaded by villagers in a "sudden explosion of peasant anger pushed to its limit by the manifest excesses of a very marked seigneurial reaction, combined with noble disdain: 'I will make you eat the straw from your shoes' the countess dared to say to her serfs" (Jacques Foucart-Borville). Babeuf, who had been responsible for drafting the cahiers de doléances since the Estates General, wrote numerous petitions in defense of peasant rights, particularly in favor of those present during the Davenescourt riot. Angered by this disruptive republican, Tournier who was close to the countess, had penned a libel dated July 1791 signed Gouy de la Myre, a "filthy pamphlet [that] showers me with every insult in the language; only the truth offends, I merely replied to him verbally" begins Babeuf in the manuscript. Tournier "showed himself greatly angered that after having spent the early years of my youth in the state of feudiste and seigneurial agent, I became the most ardent adversary of all that remains to us of the feudal system, according to him I am the viper that tears the breast that nourished it". Babeuf thus practiced a sort of "entryism" before its time, having been part of the very institutions he would set about dismantling. Although complicit in feudal-seigneurial exploitation in Picardy, it was through this very position that he came to know and understand the social reality of these countryside areas. Moreover, he was very soon acquainted with inequalities due to his humble origins (he began working as a mason). 

He first recounts his awakening: "As long as I was young, I accepted without reflection everything that came to us in the present from the past: I imagined that everything that existed had to be and I did not doubt that one of the necessities of this world was that there should constantly be persecuted and persecutors [Advielle cites in the variant manuscript: "absolutely necessary that there be persecutors and persecuted"]". One cannot help but think, reading this picture of the French monarchy, of that famous phrase from the Communist Manifesto describing class struggle: "Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master and journeyman, in a word: oppressors and oppressed". Babeuf continues, in the style of Robespierre: "I therefore at first bore great filial respect to my mother feudality, but as soon as I became somewhat more of a man [...] I thus armed myself against the hundred-headed hydra, and I dared to attack it, at the risk of being called a viper by despicable partisans". His first great experience of revolutionary struggle would be his fierce participation in the Picard agrarian movement during the years 1790-1792.

A revolutionary at work: "from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs"

One can already see in his work the same impulse that would trigger his famous conspiracy intended to overthrow the Directory to relaunch the revolution, which according to him was far from over. In both cases, it involves relentlessly pursuing the application of revolutionary principles: "When the decrees relating to the feudal regime were issued, I regretted not seeing a more complete, more genuine, less equivocal, less illusory abolition, I would have wished that full satisfaction had been given to this principle: the land must be free like the men who inhabit it." The text sketches the communautist measures of the Equals, which would become fundamental pillars of socialism summarized by that well-known adage: "from each according to his abilities..." and taken up by Marx in his Critique of the Gotha Programme. It is precisely his abilities as a feudiste that Babeuf offers here to his fellow citizens: "I place myself from now on at the disposal of either individuals or entire communities [...] and I offer to guide them in their proceedings, on which few practitioners are able to enlighten them, since to do so successfully, one must be accustomed to deciphering old deeds, be capable of recognizing whether they are in good and due form, and of establishing whether those of different dates contain conforming redundancies or not". This proposal is part of a two-point program written in the final part of the manuscript: the first urges peasants to "be on guard against the ruses and subterfuges used by former lords to evade the laws requiring the production and verification of their deeds" and the second announces Babeuf's legislative project, as a patriotic writer in the service of the public: "2°) to petition the legislative body to give more attention to the abolition of rights without compensation, and to defend all measures appropriate to ensure their total disappearance

With this aim I am preparing a major work in concert with deputies of the national assembly, which they will submit to the judgment of the legislative body, it involves - 1° rectifying everything that escaped the members of the feudal committee, which issued the decrees relating to feudality - 2°) determining based on historical research conducted rather in archives than in books, [...] - 3°) proposing decrees that will pronounce their real abolition [...]".

A poignant manifesto coupled with a plan of attack for the abolition of privileges, by the hand of one of the most emblematic activists and political figures of the Revolution: "as soon as the dawn of the Revolution shone, my mind opening to the new light, I looked and recognized that feudality was a monster that had to be fought and destroyed".