The Blanqui reader

"Louis Auguste Blanqui (1805-1881) was one of the most important and controversial figures in nineteenth-century French revolutionary politics, and he played a major role in all of the great upheavals that punctuated his life--the insurrections of 1830, 1848 and 1870-1871. Adamant that a just and egalitarian society can only be established by revolutionary means, he recognised that no revolution can succeed if it fails to overcome the coercive resources of the state, and no revolutionary government can endure if it betrays the principles that alone earn and deserve mass support. This is the first collection of Blanqui's political writings ever published in English, and it includes new and complete translations of his best known texts: Instructions for an armed uprising and Eternity by the atars"--