Enragés

Les Enragés (literally "the Enraged Ones") were a loose amalgam of radicals active during the French Revolution. Politically they stood to the left of the Jacobins. Represented by Jacques Roux, Théophile Leclerc, Jean Varlet and others, they believed that liberty for all meant more than mere constitutional rights. Roux once said that "liberty is no more than an empty shell when one class is allowed to condemn another to starvation and no measures taken against them".^{[citation needed]}

The demands of the enragés included:

• Price controls on grain
• The assignat as the only legal tender
• Repression of counterrevolutionary activity
• A progressive income tax

They were supported by the sans-culottes^{[citation needed]}. To the left of the Montagnards, the enragés were fought against by Maximilien de Robespierre and reemerged as the group of Hébertistes. Their ideas were taken up and developed by Babeuf and his associates.

Other groups

Another group styling itself les enragés emerged in France in 1968 among students at Nanterre University. They were heavily influenced by the Situationists and would go on to be one of the leading groups in the May 1968 French insurrection.^{[citation needed]}

References

• Daniel Guérin: Class struggle in the first French republic : bourgeois and bras-nus 1793-1795, London: Pluto Press, 1977

• René Viénet: "Enragés and Situationists in the Occupation Movement, France, May'68" , New York: Automedia 1992 ISBN 0-936756-79-9, London: Rebel Press 1992, ISBN 0-946061-05-4

See also

Pierre-Antoine Antonelle