Jean-Jacques Pillot
Encyclopedia
Jean-Jacques Pillot was a French revolutionary and republican communist. He participated in the Revolution of 1848 and in the Paris Commune
of 1871.
in 1796. Pillot called for a revolutionary coup d'état and the establishment of a republican régime that would collectivise all property and guarantee every citizen an equal share of the necessities of life. He is usually mentioned as a representative of Neo-Babouvism
, along with writers like Philippe Buonarroti
.
, but he also accounted for this belief in a manner that resembles Ludwig Feuerbach's theory of religious alienation: because human beings are powerless, they project omnipotence onto an imaginary God; because they are poor and suffering, they project infinite luxury and happiness onto an imaginary heaven. Because people love an imaginary hereafter, they despise nature. (Pillot seems to have drawn an interesting link between religion, socio-political inequality and ecological depredation). To dispel religious superstition by means of science was an urgent necessity, because human beings must free their minds before they can free themselves socially. (By contrast, Marx
saw religion as a consequence, not a cause, of social alienation and expected that the former would disappear with the latter. For Pillot, the abolition of religion was a condition of socialism; For Marx, socialism was a condition for the abolition of religion.
a popular history of Babeuf's 'Society of the Equals' with lessons for the present; Ni Châteaux, ni Chaumières, ou État de la Question sociale en 1840 (Neither Castles nor Cabins, 1840); and an account of his defence at his trial, La Communauté n'est plus une Utopie! Conséquence du Procès des Communistes (1841).
Pillot supported the February Revolution of 1848. He was unsuccessful in his efforts to get himself elected to the National Assembly, but sympathised with the collectivist theories of Constantin Pecqueur
at the Luxembourg Commission of Labour. However, Pillot, who was associated with the extreme left wing of the Jacobin
movement, soon grew disenchanted with the Second Republic
. He was implicated in the workers' uprising of June, 1848, which was brutally put down. When Louis Bonaparte
became President, Pillot fiercely opposed him, and after the Bonapartist coup d'état, Pillot was condemned to deportation to a penal colony and hard labour for life. He managed to escape to Brasil and eventually returned to France, where he worked as a producer of dentures, apparently unmolested.
, although his role seems to have been minor. He joined the First International, whose French section was then dominated by followers of Proudhon
. In 1870, with the siege of Paris during the Franco-Prussian War
, Pillot resumed his revolutionary activities. He was a noted orator at the Club of the School of Medicine and was elected to the Council of the Commune as delegate from the first arondissement. In the Paris Commune, Pillot allied himself with the Blanquist and Jacobin factions and voted for the creation of a Committee of Public Safety. He was later accused of being involved in burning the Tuileries palace. On October 31, 1870, he participated in an armed uprising against the Versailles government. He was captured and imprisoned after the uprising. In May of 1872 he was finally tried and sentenced to hard labour for life, but the sentence was commuted to life in prison. Pillot died in the central prison at Melun on June 13, 1877.
(1805-1850), Richard Lahautière
(1813-1882), Albert Laponneraye
(1808-1849) and Jules Gay (1807-1887) as a representative of materialist communism in France and was cited as a forerunner by Karl Marx
. Pillot was not only a metaphysical materialist but is also credited with a rudimentary class analysis of political conflict. Pillot thus represents one of the links from Babouvism and utopian Jacobin communism to Marxism.
Billington, J., Fire in the Minds of Men: The Origins of the Revolutionary Faith. New Jersey, 2009 [1980].
Lowell, D.F., 'The French Revolution and the Origins of Socialism: The Case of Early French Socialism.' French History (1992) 6 (2), pp. 185-205.
Garaudy, R., Les Dources françaises du Socialisme scientifique. Paris, 1948.
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Jacques_Pillot
Paris Commune
The Paris Commune was a government that briefly ruled Paris from March 18 to May 28, 1871. It existed before the split between anarchists and Marxists had taken place, and it is hailed by both groups as the first assumption of power by the working class during the Industrial Revolution...
of 1871.
Early Life
Jean-Jacques Pillot was born in Vaux-Lavalette. He came from a pious family of humble means, entered the seminary at Marennes and became a priest. However, he deplored the role of the Catholic Church in propping up the Restoration régime and became increasingly doubtful about the existence of God. In the 1830s he underwent a crisis of conscience and prepared his exit from the Church by studying medicine. In 1837 he renounced his priesthood and became a doctor in Paris. He also proclaimed himself an atheist, a republican and a communist. Pillot increasingly devoted himself to political activism and journalism. From 1839 on contributed to and later edited the journal La Tribune du Peuple. He was an admirer of François-Noël 'Gracchus' Babeuf, the utopian communist revolutionary who had revolted against the DirectoryFrench Directory
The Directory was a body of five Directors that held executive power in France following the Convention and preceding the Consulate...
in 1796. Pillot called for a revolutionary coup d'état and the establishment of a republican régime that would collectivise all property and guarantee every citizen an equal share of the necessities of life. He is usually mentioned as a representative of Neo-Babouvism
Neo-Babouvism
Neo-Babouvism is a term commonly used to designate a revolutionary communist current in French political theory and action in the nineteenth century....
, along with writers like Philippe Buonarroti
Philippe Buonarroti
Filippo Giuseppe Maria Ludovico Buonarroti more usually referred to under the French version Philippe Buonarroti was an Italian egalitarian and utopian socialist, revolutionary, journalist, writer, agitator, and freemason; he was mainly active in France.-Early activism:Buonarroti was born in Pisa...
.
Atheism
After leaving the priesthood, Pillot became a militant atheist. He saw belief in God as superstition, in the manner of the atheists of the EnlightenmentAge of Enlightenment
The Age of Enlightenment was an elite cultural movement of intellectuals in 18th century Europe that sought to mobilize the power of reason in order to reform society and advance knowledge. It promoted intellectual interchange and opposed intolerance and abuses in church and state...
, but he also accounted for this belief in a manner that resembles Ludwig Feuerbach's theory of religious alienation: because human beings are powerless, they project omnipotence onto an imaginary God; because they are poor and suffering, they project infinite luxury and happiness onto an imaginary heaven. Because people love an imaginary hereafter, they despise nature. (Pillot seems to have drawn an interesting link between religion, socio-political inequality and ecological depredation). To dispel religious superstition by means of science was an urgent necessity, because human beings must free their minds before they can free themselves socially. (By contrast, Marx
Karl Marx
Karl Heinrich Marx was a German philosopher, economist, sociologist, historian, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. His ideas played a significant role in the development of social science and the socialist political movement...
saw religion as a consequence, not a cause, of social alienation and expected that the former would disappear with the latter. For Pillot, the abolition of religion was a condition of socialism; For Marx, socialism was a condition for the abolition of religion.
Communist Activism and Revolution
Pillot was more of an activist than a theorist, however. In 1840 he was instrumental in organising the first explicitly communist reform banquet in Belleville. The banquet campaign was a common opposition tactic in France in the 1840s. Since expressly political meetings were illegal, meetings took the form of banquets, and political speeches were disguised as lengthy toasts. In 1841 he was sentenced to six months in prison for belonging to a communist secret society. After his release he resumed his conspiratorial activities and published a few pamphlets, including Histoire des Égaux ou Moyens d'établir l'Égalité absolue parmi les Hommes (1840),a popular history of Babeuf's 'Society of the Equals' with lessons for the present; Ni Châteaux, ni Chaumières, ou État de la Question sociale en 1840 (Neither Castles nor Cabins, 1840); and an account of his defence at his trial, La Communauté n'est plus une Utopie! Conséquence du Procès des Communistes (1841).
Pillot supported the February Revolution of 1848. He was unsuccessful in his efforts to get himself elected to the National Assembly, but sympathised with the collectivist theories of Constantin Pecqueur
Constantin Pecqueur
Constantin Pecqueur was a French economist, socialist theoretician and politician. He participated in the Revolution of 1848 and influenced Karl Marx.-Life and Thought:...
at the Luxembourg Commission of Labour. However, Pillot, who was associated with the extreme left wing of the Jacobin
Jacobin
Jacobin may refer to:* Jacobin , a member of the Jacobin club, or political radical, generally* The Jacobin Club, a political club during the French Revolution* Jacobin , an American leftist political magazine....
movement, soon grew disenchanted with the Second Republic
Second Republic
-Europe:* French Second Republic * Second Polish Republic * Second Hellenic Republic * Second Spanish Republic * Portuguese Second Republic, known as Estado Novo * Czechoslovak Second Republic...
. He was implicated in the workers' uprising of June, 1848, which was brutally put down. When Louis Bonaparte
Louis Bonaparte
Louis Napoléon Bonaparte, Prince Français, Comte de Saint-Leu , King of Holland , was the fifth surviving child and the fourth surviving son of Carlo Buonaparte and Letizia Ramolino...
became President, Pillot fiercely opposed him, and after the Bonapartist coup d'état, Pillot was condemned to deportation to a penal colony and hard labour for life. He managed to escape to Brasil and eventually returned to France, where he worked as a producer of dentures, apparently unmolested.
Syndicalism and the Paris Commune
In the 1860s Pillot supported the early French trade union movement and is therefore sometimes credited with being a pioneer of French syndicalismSyndicalism
Syndicalism is a type of economic system proposed as a replacement for capitalism and an alternative to state socialism, which uses federations of collectivised trade unions or industrial unions...
, although his role seems to have been minor. He joined the First International, whose French section was then dominated by followers of Proudhon
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon was a French politician, mutualist philosopher and socialist. He was a member of the French Parliament, and he was the first person to call himself an "anarchist". He is considered among the most influential theorists and organisers of anarchism...
. In 1870, with the siege of Paris during the Franco-Prussian War
Franco-Prussian War
The Franco-Prussian War or Franco-German War, often referred to in France as the 1870 War was a conflict between the Second French Empire and the Kingdom of Prussia. Prussia was aided by the North German Confederation, of which it was a member, and the South German states of Baden, Württemberg and...
, Pillot resumed his revolutionary activities. He was a noted orator at the Club of the School of Medicine and was elected to the Council of the Commune as delegate from the first arondissement. In the Paris Commune, Pillot allied himself with the Blanquist and Jacobin factions and voted for the creation of a Committee of Public Safety. He was later accused of being involved in burning the Tuileries palace. On October 31, 1870, he participated in an armed uprising against the Versailles government. He was captured and imprisoned after the uprising. In May of 1872 he was finally tried and sentenced to hard labour for life, but the sentence was commuted to life in prison. Pillot died in the central prison at Melun on June 13, 1877.
Significance
Jean-Jacques Pillot is often grouped with Théodore DézamyThéodore Dézamy
Alexandre Théodore Dézamy was a French socialist, a representative of the Neo-Babouvist tendency in early French communism, along with Albert Laponneraye, Richard Lahautière, Jacques Pillot and others. He was also an early associate of Louis-Auguste Blanqui...
(1805-1850), Richard Lahautière
Richard Lahautière
Auguste-Richard Lahautière was a French socialist, journalist and lawyer. He is commonly grouped with Théodore Dézamy, Albert Laponneraye, Jean-Jacques Pillot and others as belonging to the Neo-Babouvist tendency in French nineteenth-century socialism, which formed a link from the utopian...
(1813-1882), Albert Laponneraye
Albert Laponneraye
Albert Laponneraye was a French republican socialist and a journalist, popular historian, educator and editor of Robespierre's writings. He was a representative of the Neo-Babouvist tendency in the 1840s, along with Richard Lahautière, Jean-Jacques Pillot and others. He combined Jacobin...
(1808-1849) and Jules Gay (1807-1887) as a representative of materialist communism in France and was cited as a forerunner by Karl Marx
Karl Marx
Karl Heinrich Marx was a German philosopher, economist, sociologist, historian, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. His ideas played a significant role in the development of social science and the socialist political movement...
. Pillot was not only a metaphysical materialist but is also credited with a rudimentary class analysis of political conflict. Pillot thus represents one of the links from Babouvism and utopian Jacobin communism to Marxism.
Sources and Links
The Great Soviet Encyclopedia. Moscow, 1979.Billington, J., Fire in the Minds of Men: The Origins of the Revolutionary Faith. New Jersey, 2009 [1980].
Lowell, D.F., 'The French Revolution and the Origins of Socialism: The Case of Early French Socialism.' French History (1992) 6 (2), pp. 185-205.
Garaudy, R., Les Dources françaises du Socialisme scientifique. Paris, 1948.
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Jacques_Pillot