Socialists trace their founding lineage from Babeuf’s 1795 conspiracy through Blanqui to Lenin

Evidence

Students of socialism generally argue that the socialist tradition that would come to be closely identified with an industrial proletariat begins in 1795 with the Conspiracy of Equals in which François-Noel (Gracchus) Babeuf was so prominent. … Babeuf’s Conspiracy continued to be regarded by revolutionary Socialists, and is to-day regarded by Communists, as the first plain manifestation of the proletariat in revolutionary action, proclaiming from afar the new revolution which was destined to complete the work begun in 1789. … Lichtheim, quite naturally, makes an identical remark before proceeding to the declaration of a direct legacy from Babeuf to Lenin: Babeuf and his associates appear as the precursors of nineteenth-century radicals like Blanqui and, at a remove, of the Russian revolutionary Populists of the 1860s and 1870s whose heritage was subsequently assumed by the Bolsheviks. — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 301

Categorization

• QUESTION: Robinson flags Lichtheim’s lineage as ‘problematic’ — worth chasing what exactly he finds wrong with the Babeuf-to-Bolshevik genealogy as the chapter develops.