High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Sylvain Maréchal (15 August 1750 ? 18 January 1803) was a French essayist, poet, philosopher, and, as a political theorist, precursor of utopian socialism and communism (his views on a Golden age society are occasionally described also as utopian anarchism). Maréchal was also the editor of the newspaper Révolutions de Paris. Born in Paris as the son of a wine merchant, he studied jurisprudence and became a lawyer in the capital. At the age of 20, he published Bergeries, a collection of idylls, successful enough to ensure his employment at the Collège Mazirin as an aide-librarian. Maréchal was an admirer of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Voltaire, Claude Adrien Helvétius, and Denis Diderot, and associated with deist and atheist authors.