The First French Communists: The Conspiracy of the Equals.

 Babeuf (1764–1797), a journalist and commissioner of land deeds in Picardy, came to Paris in 1790, and imbibed the heady revolutionary atmosphere. By 1793, Babeuf was committed to economic equality and communism. Two years later, he founded the secret Conspiracy of the Equals, organizing around his new journal, The Tribune of the People. The Tribune, like Lenin’s Iskra a century later, was used to set a coherent line for his cadre as well as for his public followers. As James Billington writes, Babeuf’s Tribune “was the first journal in history to be the legal arm of an extralegal revolutionary conspiracy.”

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2024/06/murray-n-rothbard/the-first-french-communists-the-conspiracy-of-the-equals/