1
Intelligence
Revolutions must take place in the mind before they can be carried out in the streets.1
Across his writings, Blanqui consistently affirms intelligence as the central source of emancipation and education as the decisive site of sociopolitical struggle. From his very first texts in the early 1830s he declares that education is âmost holy and sacredâ, for it âmakes the man and the citizenâ.2 Around twenty years later he repeats that, since âman is an intelligenceâ,3 âeducation is a force, a power, the power that governs the worldâ.4 A further twenty years after that he is no less insistent that âthe instrument that frees us is not our arm but our brain, and the brain lives only through education. An attack on this guardian mother of thought is an attack on the thinking being itself; it is a social crimeâ.5
Human thought and consciousness, for Blanqui, are ultimately determinant of sociopolitical arrangements. Enlightened instruction and the â politically decisive â intelligence and reason it alone confers are thus crucial components of his project. Blanquiâs voluntarism is, to be sure, conceived in the strictest terms as conscious volition. Political subjectivity presupposes intellectual consciousness. Individual enlightenment is the essential precondition of both collective voluntary action and collective political power. The implications this has for Blanquiâs wider enterprise, and for its reconsideration today, necessarily demands our attention and careful consideration.
In this first chapter, then, we must go right to the heart of Blanquiâs theory, establishing the foundational role of intelligence and the manner in which it underpins his conception of politics. Through reconstructing this core element of Blanquiâs thinking, a task that will require a certain amount of descriptive exposition and extensive quotation, my aim is to provide a basis from which to analyse in greater depth his project as a whole in subsequent chapters.
Revolution of the intellect
Blanquiâs dualism
Blanquiâs project is broadly underpinned by a dualism according to which nature and its governing laws are separate from human thought, activity and volition. âThe word âlawâ only means something in the domain of natureâ, he writes, in direct opposition to the âutopianâ socialism of Saint-Simon and Fourier and its conflation of natural and human laws. âWhoever speaks of âlawâ speaks of an invariable, immanent and fatal rule â something that is incompatible with intelligence and will.â There is no such thing as political, social or economic laws, for in the human realm there is only âcaprice and arbitrariness ⌠phenomena that vary according to human whims and passionsâ.6 Unlike the natural or cosmological realm, the human realm is not defined by cumulative progress and perpetual evolution. Unlike the natural or cosmological realm, the human realm is contingent; it is open to movement and change, to chance and possibility, to reason and volition. So crucial is this dualism â it would underpin Eternity by the Stars, most notably â that elsewhere it finds expression in a characteristically economical aphorism:
Appeals to historical necessity, economic imperative or divine authority are thus rejected as a matter of course. Blanqui indeed opposes any philosophy that might âreduce man to a puppet whose strings are pulled by Godâ, to âa marionette manipulated in the wingsâ8 by a supposedly objective force, be it Providence or the market. That is not to say, however, that humans and human activity are strictly independent from and completely undetermined by the material world. Humanity is certainly constrained by impersonal natural forces but not absolutely. As Blanqui explains,
How, then, are we to understand the open and contingent realm of humankind, with its constituent battle of wills, interests and ideas, as distinct from the immutable realm of nature and natural laws? How can humans work towards their own âprogressive improvementâ and development? How does this inform Blanquiâs conception of political action and social change?
Mankind is thought
âMankind is thought,â Blanqui states; âwithout thought mankind is nothing.â10 Humans and animals, to be sure, share the physical capacity and manual dexterity to build and craft. Blanqui notes how the masterly skill, geometric precision and exacting calculations of birdsâ nests, beesâ honeycomb and spidersâ webs emulate if not surpass humansâ ability to manipulate material. Hence, what define humanity first and foremost are its cerebral, not manual, capacities. Thought and ideas alone are what make mankind.11
At a social level Blanqui takes this assumption to its logical conclusion. âIt is philosophy that governs the world,â he writes. âAll other sciences only affect how a society is run by modifying or reforming its philosophy.â Since âevery society that has existed on earth has been governed by a philosophyâ, it follows that âit is the difference in philosophies that determines the difference in social organisationsâ.12 In direct contrast to the basic tenets of Marxism, which maintains that âneither legal relations nor political forms could be comprehended whether by themselves or on the basis of a so-called general development of the human mind, but that on the contrary they originate in the material conditions of lifeâ,13 Blanqui believes that the âlife of a people is not in the works of its hands, but in what it thinks. Material life is nothing but a reflection of this thinkingâ.14 Here lies the foundational gesture of Blanquiâs project, the implications of which are felt across all his actions and writings. Let us therefore reflect on this point a little further before moving on.
Comparison with Marx is indeed particularly instructive here.15 Consider the well-known passages from the âPreface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economyâ (1859), which outline the fundamental assumptions behind the historical materialist view of history:
It is this last sentence above all that establishes a clear divide between Marxâs materialism and Blanquiâs idealism. Where for Marx âthe anatomy of civil society has to be sought in political economyâ,17 for Blanqui it is âideas alone that make man what he isâ,18 both individually and collectively. Ideas and consciousness condition material life, not vice versa. Ideas and consciousness, Blanqui argues, determine political institutions, economic relations and the overall social existence of humankind. It follows that sociopolitical change occurs through philosophical change, for âthe political manifestation of a people will always be the reflection of the ideas it has been showered withâ,19 and âsince 1789 the idea alone has been proletariansâ strength and salvationâ.20
With these claims, we already begin to uncover some of the fundamental limitations of Blanquiâs thinking. Insofar as humanity and society are defined principally by their cognitive capacities and collective consciousness, the failure therein to understand and explain the productive forces and social relations that underpin the established order will prevent Blanqui from fully comprehending the objective realities that, while not ultimately determinant, certainly shape the circumstances and processes of political action and social transformation. It will leave Blanqui unable to explain historical change outside the realm of ideas, unable to formulate a militant political project that is properly grounded in the specific, material conditions of its exercise.
âMen make their own history, but they do not make it as they please,â Marx once famously wrote; âthey do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances existing already.â21 Although, as we shall see in the following...