Louis Auguste Blanqui

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Louis Auguste Blanqui (1805 – 1881) was a French radical revolutionary socialist. He was involved in multiple armed insurrections, including the French Revolution of 1848, and was jailed after their suppression. Blanqui had been sentenced to prison more than nine times between 1831 and 1872 and spent there more than 33 years of his entire life.

Blanqui developed the term No gods, no masters

The advent of Socialism[edit]

While being in prison, Blanqui developed his own socialistic theory circled around the idea of dictatorship of the proletariat. His main idea was that there could be no Socialist transformation of society without a temporary dictatorship that would first disarm the bourgeois guards, confiscate the property of the church and of the bourgeoisie. In his words, "Arms and organization, these are the decisive elements of progress, the serious method for putting an end to poverty. Who has iron, has bread. ... France bristling with workers in arms means the advent of socialism."^[1]

Forerunner of Marxism[edit]

For a more detailed treatment, see Blanquism.

Blanqui also wrote an address to the committee of social democrats in London, the text was later noted and introduced by Karl Marx.^[2]

Attitudes towards Christianity[edit]

While facing mostly only a caricature of Christianity represented by French rulers of his day, Blanqui became ardent anti-Christian who tried to deceive the public about the nature of Christianity by calling it a "terrible disease", that in his mistaken view "for nearly two thousand years kept humanity nailed to a bed of sorrows."^[3] By doing so he exhibited the traits of disturbed character such as Selective attention.

Publications[edit]

• The Eternity According to the Stars — strange book, phantasmagorical manifesto with Gnostic traits about a moody speculative cosmology that Blanqui wrote while imprisoned at the Fort du Taureau (or Castle of the Bull) in the early days of the Third Republic.^[4][5] Blanqui's treatment is obscure, idiosyncratic, and layered by a quality that transforms astronomy into poetry and scientific observation into an encrypted political metaphysics.^[6] He relates his views to cosmogony of Laplace, calls the 19th century to be "the century of disillusionment and skepticism", and expresses his belief in "millions of earths," "many identical populations that pass each other without suspecting their mutual existence,"^[5] the universe as a structure “whose center is everywhere”and that “all celestial bodies without exception, have one single origin, the blaze resulting from collisions.”^[6]

Legacy[edit]

Blanqui's phrase ‘Who has iron, has bread’ translated into Italian as “Chi ha del ferro ha del pane” was at the front page of the Italian fascist newspaper Il Popolo d'Italia where Benito Mussolini was editor.^[7]

External links[edit]

• Auguste Blanqui - French socialist by Encyclopædia Britannica

References[edit]

1. ↑ Louis Auguste Blanqui. Works of Auguste Blanqui 1851: Warning to the People.
2. ↑ Works of Marx and Engels 1851: Introduction to the Leaflet of L. A. Blanqui's Toast Sent to the Refugee Committee (10 Feb 1851). Retrieved on 14 Jan 2018.
3. ↑ Auguste Blanqui (March–April 1869). Works of Auguste Blanqui 1869. Retrieved on 14 Jan 2018.
4. ↑ Louis Auguste Blanqui (2013). Eternity Through the Stars. Contra Mundum Press, 3–5. ISBN 978-0983697299. 
5. ↑ ^{5.0 5.1} Louis Auguste Blanqui (1872). L'éternité par les astres (Eternity Through the Stars). Librairie Germer Bailliére. Retrieved on 14 Jan 2018.
6. ↑ ^{6.0 6.1} Andrew Pendakis. Critical Inquiry: Eternity by the Stars: An Astronomical Hypothesis. Chicago journals. Retrieved on 14 Jan 2018. 
7. ↑ Christopher Hibbert (2008). Mussolini: The Rise and Fall of Il Duce. St. Martin's Press, 21.