Gracchus Babeuf

French revolutionary and journalist who led the Conspiracy of Equals (1796) — the first explicitly communist revolutionary conspiracy — guillotined by the Directory for plotting to overthrow the post-Thermidorian government.

First communist revolutionary: Babeuf's Conspiracy of Equals (1796) was the first revolutionary movement to explicitly call for the abolition of private property and the common ownership of all goods — going beyond the French Revolution's equality of rights to demand equality of condition. Babeuf called himself 'Gracchus' (after the Roman reformers) and published the Tribune of the People. His 'Manifesto of Equals' demanded total economic equality: 'No more individual property in land: the land belongs to no one.' The conspiracy was betrayed; Babeuf was executed in 1797. He was rediscovered by Marx and Engels as the first communist revolutionary.