# Blanquists — The Conquest of Bread character guide

> Blanquists in The Conquest of Bread by Peter Kropotkin.

**Role:** supporting

**Also known as:** the Jacobins, Jacobins

**First appearance:** 0001-the-conquest-of-bread

## Snapshot

The heirs of Jacobin insurrection, conspirators who would seize power for the people and, Kropotkin suspects, keep it.

## Who they are

The Blanquists, also called Jacobins, embody the tradition of the centralized revolutionary coup, a small disciplined band acting on behalf of the masses. Kropotkin's quarrel with them is strategic and temperamental: their faith in seizing the state clashes with his conviction that emancipation must be the work of everyone, not a vanguard. Their presence in the argument clarifies what anarchism is not, sharpening the case for a revolution that dissolves authority rather than inherits it.

## Relationships

### [Robespierre](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_conquest_of_bread_se/characters/robespierre)

_psychological_

Blanquists, as revolutionary conspirators, looked to Robespierre as a historical model for insurrectionary dictatorship.

## In the story

### [Expropriation](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_conquest_of_bread_se/chapters/ii)

Listed among the various revolutionary factions (Jacobins, Blanquists) that waste time in wordy warfare instead of addressing practical needs.

### [I](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_conquest_of_bread_se/chapters/i)

Referenced as 'the Jacobins' who dominated revolutionary governments and focused on political issues.

### [VI](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_conquest_of_bread_se/chapters/vi)

Referenced as Jacobins whose Utopian methods of coercion failed during the French Revolution.

## Links

- HTML: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_conquest_of_bread_se/characters/blanquists
- Book: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_conquest_of_bread_se
- All characters: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_conquest_of_bread_se/characters