Introduction: General Idea of the Revolution in the 21st Century

Introduction: General Idea of the Revolution in the 21^st Century

“But then came Proudhon: the son of a peasant, and, by his works and instinct, a hundred times more revolutionary than all the doctrinaire and bourgeois Socialists, he equipped himself with a critical point of view, as ruthless as it was profound and penetrating, in order to destroy all their systems. Opposing liberty to authority, he boldly proclaimed himself an Anarchist by way of setting forth his ideas in contradistinction to those of the State Socialists.” Michael Bakunin[1]

In 1840, two short expressions, a mere seven words, transformed socialist politics forever. One, only four words long, put a name to a tendency within the working class movement: “I am an Anarchist.” The other, only three words long, presented a critique and a protest against inequality which still rings: “Property is Theft!”

Their author, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (1809-1865), was a self-educated son of a peasant family and his work, What Is Property?, ensured he became one of the leading socialist thinkers of the nineteenth century. From his works and activity, the libertarian [2] movement was born: that form of socialism based on “the denial of Government and of Property.”[3] It would be no exaggeration to state that if you do not consider property as “theft” and “despotism” and oppose it along with the state then you are not a libertarian. As George Woodcock summarised:

“What is Property? embraces the core of nineteenth century anarchism... all the rest of later anarchism is there, spoken or implied: the conception of a free society united by association, of workers controlling the means of production. Later Proudhon was to elaborate other aspects: the working class political struggle as a thing of its own, federalism and decentralism as a means of re-shaping society, the commune and the industrial association as the important units of human intercourse, the end of frontiers and nations. But What is Property?... remains the foundation on which the whole edifice of nineteenth century anarchist theory was to be constructed.”[4]

Michael Bakunin, who considered the “illustrious and heroic socialist”[5] as a friend, proclaimed that “Proudhon is the master of us all.”[6] For Peter Kropotkin, the leading theoretician of communist-anarchism of his day, Proudhon laid “the foundations of Anarchism”[7] and became a socialist after reading his work. Benjamin Tucker, America’s foremost individualist anarchist thinker, considered Proudhon as both “the father of the Anarchistic school of socialism” and “the Anarchist par excellence.”[8] Alexander Herzen, leading populist thinker and father of Russian socialism, praised Proudhon’s “powerful and vigorous thought” and stated his “works constitute a revolution in the history not only of socialism but also French logic.”[9] Leo Tolstoy greatly admired and was heavily influenced by Proudhon, considering his “property is theft” as “an absolute truth” which would “survive as long as humanity.”[10] For leading anarcho-syndicalist thinker Rudolf Rocker, Proudhon was “one of the most intellectually gifted and certainly the most many-sided writer of whom modern socialism can boast.”[11]

Historian Robert Tomes notes that Proudhon was “the greatest intellectual influence on French socialism” whose “ideas had durable influence on the working-class elite”[12] while Julian P. W. Archer considered him “the pre-eminent socialist of mid-nineteenth century France.”[13] Sharif Gemie recounts that for many workers in France “Proudhon was the living symbol of working class self-emancipation.”[14] His ideas “anticipated all those later movements in France which, like the revolutionary syndicalists during the late nineteenth century and the students of 1968, demanded l’autogestion ouvrière. Their joint demand was that the economy be controlled neither by private enterprise nor by the state (whether democratic or totalitarian), but by the producers.”[15] Even Friedrich Engels had to admit that Proudhon had “a preponderating place among the French Socialists of his epoch.”[16]

The aim of this anthology is to show why Proudhon influenced so many radicals and revolutionaries, why Proudhon should be read today. His work marks the beginning of anarchism as a named socio-economic theory and the libertarian ideas Proudhon championed (such as anti-statism, anti-capitalism, self-management, possession, socialisation, communal-economic federalism, decentralisation, and so forth) are as important today as they were in the 19^th century.

Proudhon’s Ideas

Anarchism did not spring ready-made from Proudhon’s head in 1840. Nor, for that matter, did Proudhon’s own ideas! This is to be expected: he was breaking new ground in terms of theory, creating the foundations upon which other anarchists would build.

His ideas developed and evolved as he thought through the implications of his previous insights. Certain ideas mentioned in passing in earlier works (such as workers’ self-management) come to the fore later, while others (such as federalism) are discussed years after What Is Property?. His ideas also reflected, developed and changed with the social and political context (most notably, the 1848 revolution and its aftermath). However, “contrary to persistent legend, Proudhon was not the egregious eccentric who continually contradicted himself... Proudhon had a consistent vision of society and its need... which revolves around his desire to instil a federal arrangement of workers’ associations and to instil a public regard for republican virtue.”[17]

Regardless of the attempts by both the propertarian right and the authoritarian left to reduce it simply to opposition to the state, anarchism has always presented a critique of state and property as well as other forms of oppression.[18] All are interrelated and cannot be separated without making a mockery of libertarian analysis and history:

“Capital... in the political field is analogous to government... The economic idea of capitalism, the politics of government or of authority, and the theological idea of the Church are three identical ideas, linked in various ways. To attack one of them is equivalent to attacking all of them... What capital does to labour, and the State to liberty, the Church does to the spirit. This trinity of absolutism is as baneful in practice as it is in philosophy. The most effective means for oppressing the people would be simultaneously to enslave its body, its will and its reason.”[19]

Proudhon’s two key economic ideas are free credit and workers associations. To quote economist John Kenneth Galbraith’s excellent summary:

“Scholars have regularly assigned Proudhon a position of importance in the history of socialism, syndicalism and anarchism but not in the history of economic theory. It is a distinction without merit. Two ideas of influence can be found in the modern residue of Proudhon’s theories. One is the belief, perhaps the instinct, that there is a certain moral superiority in the institution of the co-operative. Or the worker-owned plant. When farmers unite to supply themselves with fertilisers, oil or other farm supplies, and consumers to provide themselves with groceries, the ideas of Proudhon are heard in praise. So also when steel workers come together to take over and run a senescent mill... And Proudhon is one among many parents of the continuing faith in monetary magic – of the belief that great reforms can be accomplished by hitherto undiscovered designs for financial or monetary innovation or manipulation.”[20]

In terms of politics, his vision was one of federations of self-governing communities. He repeatedly stressed the importance of decentralisation and autonomy to ensure effective liberty for the people. “Among these liberties,” Proudhon argued, “one of the most important is that of the commune.” A country “by its federations, by municipal and provincial independence... attested its local liberties, corollary and complement of the liberty of the citizen. Without the liberty of the commune, the individual is only half free, the feudal yoke is only half broken, public right is equivocal, public integrity is comprised.”[21]

This socio-economic vision he called “mutualism,” a term Proudhon did not invent.[22] The workers organisations in Lyon, where Proudhon stayed in 1843, were described as mutuel­lisme and mutuelliste in the 1830s. There is “close similarity between the associational ideal of Proudhon... and the program of the Lyon Mutualists” and it is “likely that Proudhon was able to articulate his positive program more coherently because of the example of the silk workers of Lyon. The socialist ideal that he championed was already being realised, to a certain extent, by such workers.”[23]

In short, Proudhon “was working actively to replace capitalist statism with an anti-state socialism in which workers manage their own affairs without exploitation or subordination by a ‘revolution from below.’”[24]

On Property

Proudhon’s analysis of property was seminal. The distinction he made between use rights and property rights, possession and property, laid the ground for both libertarian and Marxist communist perspectives. It also underlay his analysis of exploitation and his vision of a libertarian society. Even Marx admitted its power:

“Proudhon makes a critical investigation – the first resolute, ruthless, and at the same time scientific investigation – of the basis of political economy, private property. This is the great scientific advance he made, an advance which revolutionises political economy and for the first time makes a real science of political economy possible.”[25]

Proudhon’s critique rested on two key concepts. Firstly, property allowed the owner to exploit its user (“property is theft”[26]). Secondly, that property created authoritarian and oppressive social relationships between the two (“property is despotism”). These are interrelated, as it is the relations of oppression that property creates which allows exploitation to happen and the appropriation of our common heritage by the few gives the rest little alternative but to agree to such domination and let the owner appropriate the fruits of their labour.

Proudhon’s genius and the power of his critique was that he took all the defences of, and apologies for, property and showed that, logically, they could be used to attack that institution. By treating them as absolute and universal as its apologists treated property itself, he showed that they undermined property rather than supported it.[27]

To claims that property was a natural right, he explained that the essence of such rights was their universality and that private property ensured that this right could not be extended to all. To those who argued that property was required to secure liberty, Proudhon rightly objected that “if the liberty of man is sacred, it is equally sacred in all individuals; that, if it needs property for its objective action, that is, for its life, the appropriation of material is equally necessary for all.”[28] To claims that labour created property, he noted that most people have no property to labour on and the product of such labour was owned by capitalists and landlords rather than the workers who created it. As for occupancy, he argued that most owners do not occupy all the property they own while those who do use and occupy it do not own it.

Proudhon showed that the defenders of property had to choose between self-interest and principle, between hypocrisy and logic. If it is right for the initial appropriation of resources to be made (by whatever preferred rationale) then, by that very same reason, it is right for others in the same and subsequent generations to abolish private property in favour of a system which respects the liberty of all rather than a few (“If the right of life is equal, the right of labour is equal, and so is the right of occupancy.”) This means that “those who do not possess today are proprietors by the same title as those who do possess; but instead of inferring therefrom that property should be shared by all, I demand, in the name of general security, its entire abolition.”[29]

For Proudhon, the notion that workers are free when capitalism forces them to seek employment was demonstrably false. He was well aware that in such circumstances property “violates equality by the rights of exclusion and increase, and freedom by despotism.” It has “perfect identity with robbery” and the worker “has sold and surrendered his liberty” to the proprietor. Anarchy was “the absence of a master, of a sovereign” while proprietor was “synonymous” with “sovereign” for he “imposes his will as law, and suffers neither contradiction nor control.” Thus “property is despotism” as “each proprietor is sovereign lord within the sphere of his property”[30] and so freedom and property were incompatible:

“The civilised labourer who bakes a loaf that he may eat a slice of bread, who builds a palace that he may sleep in a stable, who weaves rich fabrics that he may dress in rags, who produces every thing that he may dispense with every thing, — is not free. His employer, not becoming his associate in the exchange of salaries or services which takes place between them, is his enemy.”[31]

Hence the pressing need, if we really seek liberty for all, to abolish property and the authoritarian social relationships it generates. With wage-workers and tenants, property is “the right to use [something] by his neighbour’s labour” and so resulted in “the exploitation of man by man” for to “live as a proprietor, or to consume without producing, it is necessary, then, to live upon the labour of another.”[32]

On Exploitation

Proudhon’s aim “was to rescue the working masses from capitalist exploitation.”[33] However, his analysis of exploitation has been misunderstood and, in the case of Marxists, distorted. J.E. King’s summary is sadly typical:

“Marx’s main priority was to confront those ‘utopian’ socialists (especially... Proudhon in France) who saw inequality of exchange as the only source of exploitation, and believed that the establishment of equal exchange in isolation from changes in production relations was sufficient in itself to eliminate all sources of income other than the performance of labour... [Marx proved that] exploitation in production was sufficient to explain the existence of non-wage incomes.”[34]

Yet anyone familiar with Proudhon’s ideas would know that he was well aware that exploitation occurred at the point of production. Like Marx, but long before him, Proudhon argued that workers produced more value than they received in wages:

“Whoever labours becomes a proprietor... And when I say proprietor, I do not mean simply (as do our hypocritical economists) proprietor of his allowance, his salary, his wages, – I mean proprietor of the value he creates, and by which the master alone profits... The labourer retains, even after he has received his wages, a natural right in the thing he has produced.”[35]

Property meant “another shall perform the labour while [the proprietor] receives the product.” Thus the “free worker produces ten; for me, thinks the proprietor, he will produce twelve” and thus to “satisfy property, the labourer must first produce beyond his needs.”[36] This is why “property is theft!”[37] Proudhon linked rising inequality to the hierarchical relationship of the capitalist workplace:

“I have shown the contractor, at the birth of industry, negotiating on equal terms with his comrades, who have since become his workmen. It is plain, in fact, that this original equality was bound to disappear through the advantageous position of the master and the dependence of the wage-workers.”[38]

Thus unequal exchange did not explain exploitation, rather the hierarchical relationship produced by wage-labour does. This can be seen from another key aspect of Proudhon’s analysis, what he termed “collective force.” This was “[o]ne of the reasons Proudhon gave for rejecting ‘property’ [and] was to become an important motif of subsequent socialist thought”, namely that “collective endeavours produced an additional value” which was “unjustly appropriated by the proprietaire.”[39] To quote Proudhon:

“It is an economic power of which I was, I believe, the first to accentuate the importance, in my first memoir upon Property [in 1840]. A hundred men, uniting or combining their forces, produce, in certain cases, not a hundred times, but two hundred, three hundred, a thousand times as much. This is what I have called collective force. I even drew from this an argument... that it is not sufficient to pay merely the wages of a given number of workmen, in order to acquire their product legitimately; that they must be paid twice, thrice or ten times their wages, or an equivalent service rendered to each one of them.”[40]

Proudhon’s “position that property is theft locates a fundamental antagonism between producers and owners at the heart of modern society. If the direct producers are the sole source of social value which the owners of capital are expropriating, then exploitation must be the root cause of... inequality.” He “located the ‘power to produce without working’ at the heart of the system’s exploitation and difficulties very early, anticipating what Marx and Engels were later to call the appropriation of surplus value.”[41]

So even a basic awareness of Proudhon’s ideas would be sufficient to recognise as nonsense Marxist claims that he thought exploitation “did not occur in the labour process” and so “must come from outside of the commercial or capitalist relations, through force and fraud” or that Marx “had a very different analysis which located exploitation at the very heart of the capitalist production process.”[42] Proudhon thought exploitation was inherent in wage-labour and occurred at the point of production.[43] Unsurprisingly, he sought a solution there.

On Association

Given an analysis of property that showed that it produced exploitation (“theft”) and oppression (“despotism”), the question of how to end it arises. There are two options: Either abolish collective labour and return to small-scale production or find a new form of economic organisation which ensures that collective labour is neither exploited nor oppressed.

The notion that Proudhon advocated the first solution, a return to pre-capitalist forms of economy, is sadly all too common. Beginning with Marx, this notion has been vigorously propagated by Marxists with Engels in 1891 proclaiming Proudhon “the socialist of the small peasant or master craftsman.”[44] The reality is different:

“On this issue, it is necessary to emphasise that, contrary to the general image given in the secondary literature, Proudhon was not hostile to large industry. Clearly, he objected to many aspects of what these large enterprises had introduced into society... But he was not opposed in principle to large-scale production. What he desired was to humanise such production, to socialise it so that the worker would not be the mere appendage to a machine. Such a humanisation of large industries would result, according to Proudhon, from the introduction of strong workers’ associations. These associations would enable the workers to determine jointly by election how the enterprise was to be directed and operated on a day-to-day basis.”[45]

To quote Proudhon: “Large industry and high culture come to us by big monopoly and big property: it is necessary in the future to make them rise from the association.”[46] He did not ignore the economic conditions around him, including industrialisation, and noted in 1851, of a population of 36 million, 24 million were peasants and 6 million were artisans. The remaining 6 million included wage-workers for whom “workmen’s associations” would be essential as “a protest against the wage system,” the “denial of the rule of capitalists” and for “the management of large instruments of labour.”[47] Rather than seeking to turn back the clock, Proudhon was simply reflecting and incorporating the aspirations of all workers in his society – an extremely sensible position to take.[48]

This support for workers’ self-management of production was raised in 1840 at the same time Proudhon proclaimed himself an anarchist. As “every industry needs... leaders, instructors, superintendents” they “must be chosen from the labourers by the labourers themselves, and must fulfil the conditions of eligibility” for “all accumulated capital being social property, no one can be its exclusive proprietor.”[49]

In subsequent works Proudhon expanded upon this core libertarian position of “the complete emancipation of the workers... the abolition of the wage worker”[50] by self-management (“In democratising us,” he argued, “revolution has launched us on the path of industrial democracy”[51]). Co-operatives[52] ended the exploitation and oppression of wage-labour as “every individual employed in the association” has “an undivided share in the property of the company,” “all positions are elective, and the by-laws subject to the approval of the members” and “the collective force, which is a product of the community, ceases to be a source of profit to a small number of managers and speculators: It becomes the property of all the workers.”[53]

“Mutuality, reciprocity exists,” Proudhon stressed, “when all the workers in an industry, instead of working for an entrepreneur who pays them and keeps their products, work for one another and thus collaborate in the making of a common product whose profits they share amongst themselves. Extend the principle of reciprocity as uniting the work of every group, to the Workers’ Societies as units, and you have created a form of civilisation which from all points of view – political, economic and aesthetic – is radically different from all earlier civilisations.” In short: “All associated and all free”[54]

Thus “the means of production should be publicly owned, production itself should be organised by workers companies.”[55] As Daniel Guérin summarised:

“Proudhon and Bakunin were ‘collectivists,’ which is to say they declared themselves without equivocation in favour of the common exploitation, not by the State but by associated workers of the large-scale means of production and of the public services. Proudhon has been quite wrongly presented as an exclusive enthusiast of private property.”[56]

It is important to stress that Proudhon’s ideas on association as part of the solution of the social question were not invented by him. Rather, he generalised and developed what working class people were already doing.[57] As Proudhon put it in 1848, “the proof” of his mutualist ideas lay in the “current practice, revolutionary practice” of “those labour associations... which have spontaneously... been formed in Paris and Lyon.”[58] These hopes were well justified as the “evidence is strong that both worker participation in management and profit sharing tend to enhance productivity and that worker-run enterprises often are more productive than their capitalist counterparts.”[59]

Finally, a few words on why this fundamental position of Proudhon is not better known, indeed (at best) ignored or (at worse) denied by some commentators on his ideas. This is because state socialists like Louis Blanc advocated forms of association which Proudhon rejected as just as oppressive and exploitative as capitalism: what Proudhon termed “the principle of Association.” Blanc came “under attack by Proudhon for eliminating all competition, and for fostering state centralisation of initiative and direction at the expense of local and corporative powers and intermediate associations. But the term association could also refer to the mutualist associations that Proudhon favoured, that is, those initiated and controlled from below.”[60] If Blanc advocated Association, Proudhon supported associations. This is an important distinction lost on some.

On Credit

While Proudhon’s views of workers associations are often overlooked, the same cannot be said of his views on credit. For some reform of credit was all he advocated! However, for Proudhon, the socialisation and democratisation of credit was seen as one of the key means of reforming capitalism out of existence and of producing a self-employed society of artisans, farmers and co-operatives.

The People’s Bank “embodies the financial and economic aspects of modern democracy, that is, the sovereignty of the People, and of the republican motto, Liberty, Equality, Fraternity.” Like the desired workplace associations, it also had a democratic nature with a “committee of thirty representatives” seeing “to the management of the Bank” and “chosen by the General Meeting” made up of “nominees of the general body of associates” (“elected according to industrial categories and in proportion to the number... there are in each category.”)[61]

Proudhon rightly mocked the notion that interest was a payment for abstinence[62] noting, in his exchange with the laissez-faire economist Frédéric Bastiat, that the capitalist lends “because he has no use for it himself, being sufficiently provided with capital without it.” There is no sacrifice and so “it is society's duty to procure Gratuitous Credit for all; that, failing to do this, it will not be a society, but a conspiracy of Capitalists against Workers, a compact for purposes of robbery and murder.”[63] The obvious correctness of this analysis is reflected in Keynes’ admission that interest “rewards no genuine sacrifice, any more than does the rent of land. The owner of capital can obtain interest because capital is scarce, just as the owner of land can obtain rent because land is scarce. But whilst there may be intrinsic reasons for the scarcity of land, there are no intrinsic reasons for the scarcity of capital.”[64]

As is clear from his exchange with Bastiat, Proudhon took care to base his arguments not on abstract ideology but on the actual practices he saw around him. He was well aware that banks issued credit and so increased the money supply in response to market demand. As such, he was an early exponent of the endogenous theory of the money supply.[65] His argument against metallic money was rooted in the fact that this legacy of the past ensured that interest remained as the supply of money, while dynamic due to credit creation, was ultimately limited by the available gold and silver deposits monopolised by capitalist banks.

In other words, Proudhon was pointing out that a money economy, one with an extensive banking and credit system, operates in a fundamentally different way than the barter economy assumed by most economics (then and now). He recognised that income from property violated the axiom that products exchanged for products. As interest rates within capitalism did not reflect any real cost and credit creation by banks violated any notion that they reflected savings, these facts suggested that interest could be eliminated as it was already an arbitrary value.

The availability of cheap credit would, Proudhon hoped, lead to the end of landlordism and capitalism. Artisans would not be crushed by interest payments and so be able to survive on the market, proletarians would be able to buy their own workplaces and peasants would be able buy their land. To aid this process he also recommended that the state decree that all rent should be turned into part-payment for the property used and workers’ associations run public works.

While these notions are generally dismissed as utopian, the reality is somewhat different. As Proudhon’s ideas were shaped by the society he lived in, one where the bulk of the working class were artisans and peasants, the notion of free credit provided by mutual banks as the means of securing working class people access to the means of production was perfectly feasible. Today, economies world-wide manage to work without having money tied to specie. Proudhon’s desire “to abolish the royalty of gold”[66] was no mere utopian dream – capitalism itself has done so.

Perhaps this correspondence between Proudhon’s ideas on money and modern practice is not so surprising. Keynes’ desire for “the euthanasia of the rentier, and, consequently, the euthanasia of the cumulative oppressive power of the capitalist to exploit the scarcity-value of capital”[67] has distinctly Proudhonian elements to it while he praised Proudhon’s follower Silvio Gesell.[68] Sadly, only the economist Dudley Dillard’s essay “Keynes and Proudhon”[69] addresses any overlap between the two thinkers and even this is incomplete (it fails to discuss Proudhon’s ideas on co-operatives and falsely suggests that his critique of capitalism was limited to finance capital[70]). Another area of overlap was their shared concern over reducing uncertainty in the market and stabilising the economy (by the state, in the case of Keynes, by mutualist associations for Proudhon). Both, needless to say, under-estimated the power of rentier interests as well as their willingness to wither away…

This abolition of gold-backed money has not lead to the other reforms Proudhon had hoped for. This is unsurprising, as this policy has been implemented to keep capitalism going and not as a wider reform strategy as expounded by the Frenchman.[71] So while the banks may issue credit and central banks accommodate it with non-specie money, they are still capitalist enterprises working within a capitalist environment – they have not been turned into a People’s Bank. Interest was not abolished nor was there a social movement, as in the 19^th century, aiming to create workers’ associations. Nationalisation, not socialisation, was the preferred social reform of the post-World War II years.

The notion that a mutual bank should fund investment is also hardly utopian. The stock market is not the means by which capital is actually raised within capitalism and is largely of symbolic value (the overwhelming bulk of transactions are in shares of existing firms). Small and medium sized firms are hardly inefficient because they lack equity shares. Moreover, there is good reason to think that the stock market hinders economic efficiency by generating a perverse set of incentives and “the signals emitted by the stock market are either irrelevant or harmful to real economic activity.” As “the stock market itself counts little or nothing as a source of finance,” shareholders “have no useful role.” Moreover, if the experience of capitalism is anything to go by, mutual banks will also reduce the business cycle for those countries in which banks provide more outside finance than markets have “greater growth in and stability of investment over time than the market-centred ones.”[72]

All of which confirms Proudhon’s arguments for mutual credit and attacks on rentiers. There is no need for capital markets in a system based on mutual banks and networks of co-operatives. New investments would be financed partly from internal funds (i.e., retained income) and partly from external loans from mutual banks.

The standard argument against mutual credit is that it would simply generate inflation. This misunderstands the nature of money and inflation in a capitalist economy. The notion that inflation is caused simply by there being too much money chasing too few goods and that the state simply needs to stop printing money to control it was proven completely false by the Monetarist experiments of Thatcher and Reagan. Not only could the state not control the money supply, changes in it were not reflected in subsequent changes in inflation.[73]

In a real capitalist economy credit is offered based on an analysis of whether the bank thinks it will get it back.[74] In a mutualist economy, credit will likewise be extended to those whom the bank thinks will increase the amount of goods and services available.[75] The People’s Bank would not just print money and hand it out in the streets,[76] it would ration credit and aim to fund investment in the real economy. This would create money and lead to debt but it adds to the goods and services in the economy as well as the capacity to service that debt. Moreover, the reduction of interest to zero would ensure more people repaid their loans as servicing debt would be easier.[77]

Finally, John Ehrenberg’s assertion that 1848 saw a “subtle and important shift” in Proudhon’s ideas is simply untenable. He asserts that whereas Proudhon “formerly placed primary importance on the organisation of work, he was now thinking of the organisation of credit and exchange; where he had previously made an attempt to articulate the needs of the proletariat, he was now demanding help for the petty bourgeois.”[78] Yet “the organisation of credit” in Proudhon’s eyes did not exclude “the organisation of labour.” If anything, Proudhon’s arguments for workers associations and against wage-labour became more, not less, pronounced! Proudhon started to discuss “the organisation of credit” more because it reflected a shift from goals to means, from critique to practical attempts to solve the social question in the revolution of 1848.

Proudhon’s letter to Louis Blanc in April 1848 suggested that “the Exchange Bank is the organisation of labour’s greatest asset” and allowed “the new form of society to be defined and created among the workers.”[79] Another, written two days later, reiterated this point: “To organise credit and circulation is to increase production, to determine the new shapes of industrial society.”[80] His second election manifesto of 1848 argued that workers “have organised credit among themselves” and “labour associations” have grasped “spontaneously” that the “organisation of credit and organisation of labour amount to one and the same.” By organising both, the workers “would soon have wrested alienated capital back again, through their organisation and competition.”[81] This was reiterated in a letter to socialist Pierre Leroux in December 1849, with credit being seen as the means to form workers’ associations.[82]

Moreover, the necessity to differentiate his ideas from other socialists who advocated “the organisation of labour” (such as Louis Blanc) must also have played its part in Proudhon’s use of “the organisation of credit.” Given his opposition to centralised state-based systems of labour organisation it made little sense to use the same expression to describe his vision of a self-managed and decentralised socialism.

On the State

Proudhon subjected the state to withering criticism. For some, this has become the defining aspect of his theories (not to mention anarchism in general). This false. This opposition to the state flowed naturally from the critique of property and so anarchist anti-statism cannot be abstracted from its anti-capitalism. While recognising that the state and its bureaucracy had exploitative and oppressive interests of its own, he analysed its role as an instrument of class rule:

“In a society based on the principle of inequality of conditions, government, whatever it is, feudal, theocratic, bourgeois, imperial, is reduced, in last analysis, to a system of insurance for the class which exploits and owns against that which is exploited and owns nothing.”[83]

He repeatedly pointed to its function of “protecting the nobility and upper class against the lower classes.”[84] This analysis was consistent throughout his political career. In 1846 he had argued that the state “finds itself inevitably enchained to capital and directed against the proletariat.”[85]

So what was the state? For Proudhon, the state was a body above society, it was “the EXTERNAL constitution of the social power” by which the people delegate “its power and sovereignty” and so “does not govern itself; now one individual, now several, by a title either elective or hereditary, are charged with governing it, with managing its affairs, with negotiating and compromising in its name.” Anarchists “deny government and the State, because we affirm that which the founders of States have never believed in, the personality and autonomy of the masses.” Ultimately, “the only way to organise democratic government is to abolish government.”[86]

His attacks on “Direct Legislation” and “Direct Government” in General Idea of the Revolution refer to using elections and referenda in a centralised state on a national scale rather than decentralised communal self-government. For Proudhon democracy could not be limited to a nation as one unit periodically picking its rulers (“nothing resembles a monarchy more than a république unitaire”[87]). Its real meaning was much deeper: “politicians, whatever their colours, are insurmountably repelled by anarchy which they construe as disorder: as if democracy could be achieved other than by distribution of authority and as if the true meaning of the word ‘democracy’ was not dismissal of government.”[88]

Given this analysis, it becomes unsurprising that Proudhon did not seek political power to reform society. This was confirmed when, for a period, he was elected to the National Assembly in 1848: “As soon as I set foot in the parliamentary Sinai, I ceased to be in touch with the masses; because I was absorbed by my legislative work, I entirely lost sight of the current events... One must have lived in that isolator which is called a National Assembly to realise how the men who are most completely ignorant of the state of the country are almost always those who represent it.” There was “ignorance of daily facts” and “fear of the people” (“the sickness of all those who belong to authority”) for “the people, for those in power, are the enemy.”[89]

Real change must come from “outside the sphere of parliamentarism, as sterile as it is absorbing.”[90] Unsurprisingly, then, the “social revolution is seriously compromised if it comes through a political revolution”[91] and “to be in politics was to wash one’s hands in shit.”[92]

Thus, rather than having some idealistic opposition to the state,[93] Proudhon viewed it as an instrument of class rule which could not be captured for social reform. As David Berry suggests, “repeated evidence of the willingness of supposedly progressive republican bourgeoisie to resort to violent repression of the working classes had led Proudhon, like many of his class and generation, to lose faith in politics and the state and to put the emphasis on working-class autonomy and on the question of socio-economic organisation. For Proudhon and the mutualists, the lessons of the workers’ uprising of 1830 and 1848 were that the powers of the state were merely another aspect of the powers of capital, and both were to be resisted equally strongly.”[94]

On State Socialism

Like other libertarians, Proudhon was extremely critical of state socialist schemes which he opposed just as much as he did capitalism: “The entire animus of his opposition to what he termed ‘community’ was to avoid the central ownership of property and the central control of economic and social decision-making.”[95]

He particularly attacked the ideas of Jacobin socialist Louis Blanc whose Organisation of Work argued that social ills resulted from competition and they could be solved by eliminating it. “The Government”, argued Blanc, “should be regarded as the supreme director of production, and invested with great strength to accomplish its task.” The government would “raise a loan” to create social workplaces, “provide” them “with Statues” which “would have the force and form of laws” and “regulate the hierarchy of workers” (after the first year “the hierarchy would be appointed on the elective principle” by the workers in the associations). Capitalists would “receive interest for their capital” while workers would keep the remaining income. They would “destroy competition” by “availing itself of competition” as their higher efficiency would force capitalist firms to become social workplaces.[96]

Proudhon objected to this scheme on many levels. Blanc appealed “to the state for its silent partnership; that is, he gets down on his knees before the capitalists and recognises the sovereignty of monopoly.” As it was run by the state, the system of workshops would hardly be libertarian as “hierarchy would result from the elective principle... as in constitutional politics... Who will make the law? The government.”[97] This was because of the perspective of state socialists:

“As you cannot conceive of society without hierarchy, you have made yourselves the apostles of authority; worshippers of power, you think only of strengthening it and muzzling liberty; your favourite maxim is that the welfare of the people must be achieved in spite of the people; instead of proceeding to social reform by the extermination of power and politics, you insist on a reconstruction of power and politics.”[98]

Proudhon questioned whether any regime based on “from each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs” could avoid conflict due to individuals and society disagreeing over what these were. This would result in either oppression (“What difference is there then between fraternity and the wage system?”) or the society’s “end from lack of associates.”[99] He was also doubtful that state monopolies could efficiently allocate resources.[100] Ultimately, the problem was that reform by means of the state violated basic socialist principles:

“M. Blanc is never tired of appealing to authority, and socialism loudly declares itself anarchistic; M. Blanc places power above society, and socialism tends to subordinate it to society; M. Blanc makes social life descend from above, and socialism maintains that it springs up and grows from below; M. Blanc runs after politics, and socialism is in quest of science. No more hypocrisy, let me say to M. Blanc: you desire neither Catholicism nor monarchy nor nobility, but you must have a God, a religion, a dictatorship, a censorship, a hierarchy, distinctions, and ranks. For my part, I deny your God, your authority, your sovereignty, your judicial State, and all your representative mystifications.”[101]

Proudhon continually stressed that state control of the means of production was a danger to the liberty of the worker and simply the continuation of capitalism with the state as the new boss. He rejected the call of “certain utopians” that “the Government seize trade, industry and agriculture, to add them to its attributes and to make the French nation a nation of wage-workers.”[102] Nationalisation would simply be “more wage slavery.”[103]

The net result of state socialism would be “a compact democracy, seemingly rooted in dictatorship of the masses, but wherein the masses merely have the opportunity to consolidate universal slavery in accordance with formulas and guide-lines borrowed from the former absolutism”: “Indivisibility of power”; “Voracious centralisation”; “Systematic demolition of all individual, corporative and local thought, these being deemed sources of discord”; and “Inquisitorial policing.”[104]

Proudhon’s fears on the inefficiency of state socialism and that it would be little more than state capitalist tyranny became all too real under Leninism. His prediction that reformist socialism would simply postpone the abolition of exploitation indefinitely while paying capitalists interest and dividends was also proven all too correct (as can be seen with the British Labour Party’s post-war nationalisations).

Proudhon’s polemics against state socialists have often been taken to suggest that he considered his mutualism as non-socialist (this is often generalised into anarchism as well, with a contrast often being made between it and the wider socialist movement). Occasionally (most notably in System of Economic Contradictions) Proudhon used the term “socialism” to solely describe the state socialist schemes he opposed.[105] Usually, however, he described himself as a socialist[106] and publicly embraced the Red Flag at the start of the 1848 revolution,[107] considering it “the federal standard of humanity, the symbol of universal fraternity” signifying the “Abolition of the proletariat and of servitude” and “Equality of political rights: universal suffrage.”[108]

Socialism, for Proudhon, was “the final term, the complete expression of the Republic.”[109] So although he criticised both centralised democracy and state socialism, he still considered himself a democrat and socialist: “We are also democracy and socialism; we may at times laugh at both the names and the personnel, but what those words cover and what those people stand for belong to us also; we must be careful of them!”[110] Proudhon stated the obvious: “Modern Socialism was not founded as a sect or church; it has seen a number of different schools.”[111] Like Bakunin and Kropotkin, he argued against state socialism and called for a decentralised, self-managed, federal, bottom-up socialism: anarchism.

On Transition

While Proudhon repeatedly called himself a revolutionary and urged a “revolution from below”, he also rejected violence and insurrection. While later anarchists like Bakunin and Kropotkin embraced the class struggle, including strikes, unions and revolts, Proudhon opposed such means and preferred peaceful reform: “through Political Economy we must turn the theory of Property against Property in such a way as to create... liberty.”[112]

Unsurprisingly, as he considered the state as being dominated by capital, the “problem before the labouring classes... consists not in capturing, but in subduing both power and monopoly, – that is, in generating from the bowels of the people, from the depths of labour, a greater authority, a more potent fact, which shall envelop capital and the state and subjugate them.” For, “to combat and reduce power, to put it in its proper place in society, it is of no use to change the holders of power or introduce some variation into its workings: an agricultural and industrial combination must be found by means of which power, today the ruler of society, shall become its slave.”[113]

The 1848 revolution gave Proudhon the chance to implement this strategy. On May 4^th he “propose[d] that a provisional committee be set up to orchestrate exchange, credit and commerce amongst the workers” and this would “liaise with similar committees” elsewhere in France. This would be “a body representative of the proletariat..., a state within the state, in opposition to the bourgeois representatives.” He urged that “a new society be founded in the centre of the old society” by the working class for “the government can do nothing for you. But you can do everything for yourselves”[114]

Proudhon also pointed to the clubs, directly democratic neighbourhood associations grouped around political tendencies, seeing them “as the beginning for a true popular democracy, sensitive to the needs of the people.”[115] As Peter Henry Aman describes it, a “newspaper close to the club movement, Proudhon’s Le Représentant du Peuple, suggested a division of labour between clubs and National Assembly... By shedding light on social questions, the daily club discussions would prepare the National Assembly’s legislative debates as ‘the indispensable corollary.’ This flattering vision of a dual power, with clubs representing ‘the poorest and most numerous parts of the population,’ apparently proved seductive.”[116] In 1849 Proudhon argued that clubs “had to be organised. The organisation of popular societies was the fulcrum of democracy, the corner-stone of the republican order.” These were “the one institution that democratic authorities should have respected, and not just respected but also fostered and organised.”[117] As Daniel Guérin summarised, “in the midst of the 1848 Revolution”, Proudhon “sketched out a minimum libertarian program: progressive reduction in the power of the State, parallel development of the power of the people from below, through what he called clubs” which today we “would call councils.”[118]

These organisations would be the means of exercising popular pressure and influence onto the state to force it into implementing appropriate reforms for government “can only turn into something and do the work of the revolution insofar as it will be so invited, provoked or compelled by some power outside of itself that seizes the initiative and sets things rolling.”[119] This would be combined with the creation of organisations for mutual credit and production in order to create the framework by which capitalism and the state would disappear. Proudhon “believed fervently... in the salvation of working men, by their own efforts, through economic and social action alone” and “advocated, and to a considerable extent inspired, the undercutting of this terrain [of the state] from without by means of autonomous working-class associations.”[120] He hoped that the “proletariat, gradually dejacobinised” would seek “its share not only of direct suffrage in the affairs of society but of direct action.”[121]

Over a decade later Proudhon noted that in 1848 he had “called upon the state to intervene in establishing” various “major public utilities” but “once the state had completed its task of creation” then these should not be left in its hands.[122] Rather than “fatten certain contractors,” the state should create “a new kind of property” by “granting the privilege of running” public utilities “to responsible companies, not of capitalists, but of workmen.” Municipalities and their federations would take the initiative in setting up public works but actual control would rest with workers’ co-operatives for “it becomes necessary for the workers to form themselves into democratic societies, with equal conditions for all members, on pain of a relapse into feudalism.”[123] As he summarised in his notebooks:

“the abolition of the State is the last term of a series, which consists of an incessant diminution, by political and administrative simplification the number of public functionaries and to put into the care of responsible workers societies the works and services confided to the state.”[124]

Thus “the most decisive result of the Revolution is, after having organised labour and property, to do away with political centralisation, in a word, with the State.”[125]

This may, for some, appear as a contradiction in Proudhon’s ideas for, as an anarchist, he was against the state. This would be a superficial analysis as it confuses short-term reforms and long-term social transformation. Moreover, anarchism is not purely anti-state. It is also anti-capitalist and so advocating capitalist banking or the privatisation of utilities and industries would be anti-anarchist. Proudhon was not advocating nationalisation (or state socialism). He simply considered limited state action to create the correct environment to allow co-operatives to flourish and to run public services and utilities as being more consistent with libertarian goals than supporting wage-labour by turning more parts of the economy over to the capitalist class.

In the grim days of the Second Empire, when the hopes and self-activity of 1848 appeared to be crushed, Proudhon suggested encouraging investors to fund co-operatives rather than capitalist companies, seeking to encourage the industrial democracy he wished to replace the industrial feudalism of capitalism by means of the institutions of capitalism itself. In return for funds, the capitalists would receive dividends until such time as the initial loan was repaid and then the company would revert into a proper co-operative (i.e., one owned as well as operated by its workers).[126] So the optimism produced by February revolution that drove his more obviously anarchist works that climaxed in 1851’s General Idea of the Revolution gave way more cautious reforms. Significantly, in the 1860s, “Proudhon’s renewed interest in socialism was precipitated... by the renewed activity of workers themselves.”[127]

So, in general, Proudhon placed his hopes for introducing socialism in alternative institutions created by working class people themselves and “insisted that the revolution could only come from below, through the action of the workers themselves.”[128] Joining the government to achieve that goal was, for Proudhon, contradictory and unlikely to work. The state was a centralised, top-down structure and so unable to take into account the real needs of society:

“experience testifies and philosophy demonstrates... that any revolution, to be effective, must be spontaneous and emanate, not from the heads of the authorities but from the bowels of the people: that government is reactionary rather than revolutionary: that it could not have any expertise in revolutions, given that society, to which that secret is alone revealed, does not show itself through legislative decree but rather through the spontaneity of its manifestations: that, ultimately, the only connection between government and labour is that labour, in organising itself, has the abrogation of government as its mission.”[129]

This suggested a bottom-up approach, socialism from below rather than a socialism imposed by the state:

“The Revolution from above is the intervention of power in everything; it is the absolutist initiative of the State, the pure governmentalism of... Louis Blanc. The Revolution from above is the negation of collective activity, of popular spontaneity... What serious and lasting Revolution was not made from below, by the people? How did the Revolution of 1789 come about? How was that of February made? The Revolution from above has never been other than the oppression of the wills of those below.”[130]

Ultimately: “No authority is compatible with the principle of mutuality, but no authority can help bring about reform. For all authority is antithetical to equality and justice.”[131]

Proudhon’s overarching perspective was to avoid violence and so as well as encouraging working class self-activity he also sought to persuade the capitalist class that social reform, as well as benefiting the working class, would also benefit them in terms of a general improved standard of living and freedom and so they had no reason to oppose it.[132] The bourgeoisie were not convinced and after the experience of the Second Republic his calls upon them ceased. Instead, he completely directed his hopes for reform towards the activities of working class people themselves, in their ability to act for themselves and build just and free associations and federations. This perspective was hardly new, though. As he put it in 1842’s Warning to Proprietors:

“Workers, labourers, men of the people, whoever you may be, the initiative of reform is yours. It is you who will accomplish that synthesis of social composition which will be the masterpiece of creation, and you alone can accomplish it.”[133]

For “revolutionary power... is no longer in the government or the National Assembly, it is in you. Only the people, acting directly, without intermediaries, can bring about the economic revolution.”[134] It was Proudhon “who first drew to the attention of the wider public of Europe the fact that socialism would henceforward become identified, not with the plans of utopian dreamers, but with the concrete and daily struggles of the working class.”[135] It is this vision which was taken up and expanded upon by subsequent generations of libertarians.

As he refused to suggest that socialists should take state power themselves but, instead, organise outside political structures to create a socialist society Proudhon’s various schemes of social change, while reformist, were ultimately anarchistic in nature. This became clear in his final work, The Political Capacity of the Working Classes, where he advocated a radical separation of the working class from bourgeois institutions, urging that they should organise themselves autonomously and reject all participation in bourgeois politics.[136] Such an alliance between the proletariat, artisans and peasantry (the plural working classes of the title[137]) would replace the bourgeois regime with a mutualist one as the workers became increasingly conscious of themselves as a class and of their growing political capacity. This perspective “is nothing less than the dispute which would later split Marxists from anarchists, and... socialists from syndicalists.”[138]

On Mutualist Society

In place of capitalism and the state, Proudhon suggested a socio-economic federal system, a decentralised federation of self-managed associations.[139]

This federation’s delegates would be mandated and subject to recall by their electors: “we can follow [our deputies] step by step in their legislative acts and their votes; we shall make them transmit our arguments and our documents; we shall indicate our will to them, and when we are discontented, we will revoke them... the mandatory instruction [mandat imperatif], permanent revocability, are the most immediate, undeniable, consequences of the electoral principle. It is the inevitable program of all democracy.”[140] Moreover, the “legislative power is not distinguished from the executive power.”[141]

This system would be based on free association and would reject the “unity that tends to absorb the sovereignty of the villages, cantons, and provinces, into a central authority. Leave to each its sentiments, its affections, its beliefs, its languages and its customs” “The first effect of centralisation,” Proudhon stressed, “is to bring about the disappearance, in the diverse localities of the country, of all types of indigenous character; while one imagines that by this means to exalt the political life among the masses, one in fact destroys it... The fusion that is to say the annihilation, of particular nationalities where citizens live and distinguish themselves, into an abstract nationality where one can neither breathe nor recognise oneself: there is unity.”[142]

He based his federalism on functional groups, in both society and economy. As his discussion of “collective force” in “Petit Catéchisme Politique” shows,[143] Proudhon was no individualist. He was well aware that groups were greater than the sum of their parts and viewed federalism as the best means of allowing this potential to be generated and expressed. Only that could ensure a meaningful democracy (what anarchists call self-management) rather than the current system of centralised, statist, democracy in which people elect their rulers every 4 years. Thus “universal suffrage provides us,… in an embryonic state, with the complete system of future society. If it is reduced to the people nominating a few hundred deputies who have no initiative... social sovereignty becomes a mere fiction and the Revolution is strangled at birth.”[144] By contrast, his mutualist society was fundamentally democratic:

“We have, then, not an abstract sovereignty of the people, as in the Constitution of 1793 and subsequent constitutions, or as in Rousseau’s Social Contract, but an effective sovereignty of the working, reigning, governing masses... how could it be otherwise if they are in charge of the whole economic system including labour, capital, credit, property and wealth?”[145]

Initially, Proudhon focused on economic federalism. In his Programme révolutionnaire of early 1848 he “had spoken of organising society into democratically controlled groups of workers and professionals. These would form a congress which would determine how to deal with those issues of a national scope beyond the competency of any one category.”[146] However, three years later, in General Idea of the Revolution, he placed communes at the heart of his agricultural reforms as well as for public works. After 1852 he became more explicit, adding a geographical federalism to economic federalism. The two cannot be considered in isolation:

“Proudhon placed socioeconomic relations on as high a level (or higher) than political ones. Proudhon’s... federalism... was to apply to all public dimensions of society. A just society required the autonomy of workshops and of communes: advancement on one level alone had little chance of success. Without political federalism, he warned, economic federalism would be politically impotent... Workers’ associations would be ineffective in a political environment which encouraged meddling by the central administration. Conversely, without economic mutualism, political federalism would remain impotent and precarious... and would degenerate back into centralism. In short, it was necessary that federalism be both professional and regional, both social and political.”[147]

There were three alternatives: capitalism (“monopoly and what follows”), state socialism (“exploitation by the State”) or “a solution based on equality, – in other words, the organisation of labour, which involves the negation of political economy and the end of property.”[148] Rejecting the first two, Proudhon favoured socialisation,[149] genuine common-ownership and free access of the means of production and land.[150] The “land is indispensable to our existence, consequently a common thing, consequently insusceptible of appropriation” and “all capital, whether material or mental, being the result of collective labour, is, in consequence, collective property”[151] Self-managed workers’ associations would run industry. In short:

“Under the law of association, transmission of wealth does not apply to the instruments of labour, so cannot become a cause of inequality... We are socialists... under universal association, ownership of the land and of the instruments of labour is social ownership... We want the mines, canals, railways handed over to democratically organised workers’ associations... We want these associations to be models for agriculture, industry and trade, the pioneering core of that vast federation of companies and societies, joined together in the common bond of the democratic and social Republic.”[152]

Against property, Proudhon argued for possession. This meant free access to the resources required to live and the inability to bar access to resources you claimed to own but did not use. Those who used a resource (land, tools, dwelling, workplace) should control both it and the product of their labour. Such possession allowed people to live and prosper and was the cornerstone of liberty. Whether on the land or in industry, Proudhon’s aim was to create a society of “possessors without masters.”[153]

Only self-governing producers associations could be the basis for a society in which concentration of political, economic and social power can be avoided and individual freedom protected: “Because the right to live and to develop oneself fully is equal for all, inequality of conditions is an obstacle to the exercise of this right.”[154]

So “political right had to be buttressed by economic right” for if society became “divided into two classes, one of landlords, capitalists, and entrepreneurs, the other of wage-earning proletarians” then “the political order will still be unstable.” To avoid this outcome an “agro-industrial federation” was required which would “provide reciprocal security in commerce and industry” and “protect the citizens... from capitalist and financial exploitation.” In this way, the agro-industrial federation “will tend to foster increasing equality... through mutualism in credit and insurance... guaranteeing the right to work and to education, and an organisation of work which allows each labourer to become a skilled worker and an artist, each wage-earner to become his own master.” Mutualism recognises that “industries are sisters” and so “should therefore federate, not in order to be absorbed and confused together, but in order to guarantee mutually the conditions of common prosperity, upon which no one has exclusive claim.”[155]

The empirical evidence for economic federalism is supportive of it. In negative terms, it is clear that isolated co-operatives dependent on funding from capitalist banks find it hard to survive and grow. In positive terms, it is no co-incidence that the Mondragon co-operative complex in the Basque region of Spain has a credit union and mutual support networks between its co-operatives and is by far the most successful co-operative system in the world. Other successful clusters of co-operation within capitalism also have support networks.[156] Clear evidence for Proudhon’s argument that all industries are related and need to support each other.

Proudhon was an early advocate of what is now termed market socialism – an economy of competing co-operatives and self-employed workers. Some incorrectly argue that market socialism is not socialist.[157] Donny Gluckstein, for instance, suggests with casual abandon that Proudhon’s ideas are “easily recognisable as the precursor of neo-liberal economics today” but “were located in a different context and so took a far more radical form when adopted by the male artisan class.”[158]

Such claims are premised on a basic misunderstanding, namely that markets equate to capitalism. Yet this hides the key defining feature of capitalism: wage-labour.[159] Thus capitalism is uniquely marked by wage-labour, not markets (which pre-date it by centuries) and so it is possible to support markets while being a socialist. In a mutualist society, based on workers’ self-management and socialisation, wage-labour would not exist. Rather workers would be seeking out democratic associations to join and, once a member, have the same rights and duties as others within it.[160] In short, as K. Steven Vincent argues, “Proudhon consistently advanced a program of industrial democracy which would return control and direction of the economy to the workers. And he envisaged such a socialist program to be possible only within the framework of a society which encouraged just social relationships and which structured itself on federal lines.”[161]

It is also fair to ponder when has an advocate of neo-liberal economics ever argued that the idol of laissez-faire capitalism, the law of supply and demand, was a “deceitful law... suitable only for assuring the victory of the strong over the weak, of those who own property over those who own nothing”?[162] Or denounced capitalist firms because they result in the worker being “subordinated, exploited: his permanent condition is one of obedience” and so people are related as “subordinates and superiors” with “two... castes of masters and wage-workers, which is repugnant to a free and democratic society” and urged co-operatives to replace them?[163] Or suggested that we “shall never have real workingmen’s associations until the government learns that public services should neither be operated by itself or handed over to private stock companies; but should be leased on contract to organised and responsible companies of workers”?[164] Nor would an ideologue of laissez-faire capitalism be happy with an agro-industrial federation nor would they advocate regulation of markets:

“The advocates of mutualism are as familiar as anyone with the laws of supply and demand and they will be careful not to infringe them. Detailed and frequently reviewed statistics, precise information about needs and living standards, an honest breakdown of cost prices... the fixing after amicable discussion of a maximum and minimum profit margin, taking into account the risks involved, the organising of regulating societies; these things, roughly speaking, constitute all the measures by which they hope to regulate the market.”[165]

Finally, what neo-liberal would proclaim: “What is the capitalist? Everything! What should he be? Nothing!”?[166] Or that “I belong to the Party of Work against the party of Capital”?[167]

In fact, Proudhon had nothing but contempt for the neo-liberals of his time and they for him.[168] He recognised the class basis of mainstream economic ideology: “Political economy, as taught by MM. Say, Rossi, Blanqui, Wolovski, Chevalier, etc., is only the economy of the property-owners, and its application to society inevitably and organically gives birth to misery.”[169] In short: “The enemies of society are Economists.”[170] Claims that Proudhon was a propertarian or a supporter of neo-liberalism simply misunderstand both capitalism and Proudhon’s ideas.

Unsurprisingly, then, Bakunin wrote of Proudhon’s “socialism, based on individual and collective liberty and upon the spontaneous action of free associations.”[171] Proudhon is placed firmly into the socialist tradition due to his support for workers associations and his belief that “socialism is... the elimination of misery, the abolition of capitalism and of wage-labour, the transformation of property, the decentralisation of government, the organisation of universal suffrage, the effective and direct sovereignty of the workers, the equilibrium of economic forces, the substitution of the contractual regime for the legal regime, etc.”[172] In opposition to various schemes of state socialism and communism, Proudhon argued for a decentralised and federal market socialism based on workers’ self-management of production and community self-government.

Proudhon’s legacy

As would be expected of the leading French socialist of his time, Proudhon’s impact continued long after his death in 1865. Most immediately was the growth of the International Working Men’s Association founded by his followers and the application of many of his ideas by the Paris Commune.[173] His most important contribution to politics was laying the foundations for all the subsequent schools of anarchism.

Another key legacy is his consistent vision of socialism as being rooted in workers’ self-management. Dorothy W. Douglas correctly notes that “the co-operative movement... syndicalism... guild socialism... all bear traces of the kind of self-governing industrial life to which Proudhon looked forward.”[174] This vision was expressed within the First International by both the mutualists and the collectivists around Bakunin. While later eclipsed by schemes of nationalisation, the bankruptcy of such “state capitalism” (to use Kropotkin’s term) has re-enforced the validity of Proudhon’s arguments. Indeed, as Daniel Guérin suggested, when Marxists advocate self-management they “have been reverting... unwittingly and in an unspoken way to the Proudhon school” for “anarchism, ever since Proudhon, has acted as the advocate of... self-management.”[175] No other socialist thinker of his time so consistently advocated workers’ self-management of production or placed it at the core of his socialism.

This is not to say that Proudhon was without flaws, for he had many. He was not consistently libertarian in his ideas, tactics and language. His personal bigotries are disgusting and few modern anarchists would tolerate them.[176] He made some bad decisions and occasionally ranted in his private notebooks (where the worst of his anti-Semitism was expressed). We could go on but to concentrate on these aspects of Proudhon’s thought would be to paint a selective, and so false, picture of his ideas and influence. Anarchists seek Proudhon’s legacy in those aspects of his ideas that are consistent with the goal of human liberation, not those when he did not rise to the ideals he so eloquently advocated. This is what we discuss here, the positive impact of a lifetime fighting for justice, equality and liberty.

International Workingmen’s Association

The International Workingmen’s Association (IWMA) is usually associated with Marx. In fact, it was created by British trade unionists and “French mutualist workingmen, who in turn were direct followers of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon” (“Contrary to stubborn legend, Karl Marx was not one of its actual founders”).[177] The negotiations that lead to its founding began in 1862 when the mutualists (including Henri-Louis Tolain and Eugene Varlin[178]) visited the London International Exhibition.[179]

Like Proudhon, his followers in the IWMA thought workers “should be striving for the abolition of salaried labour and capitalist enterprise” by means of co-operatives for the “manager/employer (patron) was a superfluous element in the production process who was able to deny the worker just compensation for his labour merely by possessing the capital that paid for the workshop, tools, and materials.”[180] The French Internationalists were “strongly hostile to centralisation. They were federalists, intent on building up working-class organisations on a local basis and then federating the local federations. The free France they looked forward to was to be a country made up of locally autonomous communes, freely federated for common purposes which required action over larger areas... In this sense they were Anarchists.”[181] Thus in 1866 the International officially adopted the Red Flag as its symbol, confirming Proudhon’s declaration that “the red flag represents the final revolution... The red flag is the federal standard of humanity!”[182]

Given their role in setting up the International, the mutualists dominated the agenda in its first years. According to the standard, usually Marxist or Marxist-influenced, accounts of the International this initial domination by the mutualists was eclipsed by the rise of a collectivist current (usually identified with Marxism). This is not entirely true. Yes, the Basel Congress of 1869 saw the success of a collectivist motion which was opposed by Tolain and some of his fellow French Internationalists, but this was a debate on the specific issue of agricultural collectivisation rather than a rejection of mutualism as such:

“The endorsement of collectivism by the International at the Basel Congress might appear to be a rejection of the French position on co-operatives. Actually, it was not, for collectivism as it was defined by its proponents meant simply the end of private ownership of agricultural land. Lumped together with this was usually the demand for common ownership of mines and railways.”[183]

Thus it was “not a debate over co-operative production in favour of some other model” but rather concerned its extension to agriculture. At the Geneva Congress of 1866 the French mutualists “persuaded the Congress to agree by unanimous vote that there was a higher goal – the suppression of ‘salaried status’ – which... could be done only through co-operatives.” At the Lausanne Congress of 1867, the mutualists around Tolain “acknowledged the necessity of public ownership of canals, roads, and mines” and there was “unanimous accord” on public ownership of “the means of transportation and exchange of goods.” This was Proudhon’s position as well. The proponents of collectivisation at the Lausanne Congress wanted to “extend Tolain’s ideas to all property.”[184]

While the resolution on collectivisation “represents the final decisive defeat of the strict Proudhonist element which, centred in Paris, had dominated in France and had drawn the parameters of the debates at the International’s congresses in the beginning,”[185] this did not automatically mean the end of Proudhonian influences in the International. After all, the main leader of the “collectivist” position was César De Paepe, a self-proclaimed Mutualist and follower of Proudhon. As such, the debate was fundamentally one between followers of Proudhon, not between mutualists and Marxists, and the 1869 resolution was consistent with Proudhon’s ideas. This can be seen from the fact that resolution itself was remarkably Proudhonian in nature, with it urging the collectivisation of roads, canals, railways, mines, quarries, collieries and forests, and these to be “ceded to ‘workers’ companies’ which would guarantee the ‘mutual rights’ of workers and would sell their goods or services at cost.” The land would “be turned over to ‘agricultural companies’ (i.e., agricultural workers) with the same guarantees as those required of the ‘workers’ companies’”[186] De Paepe himself clarified the issue: “Collective property would belong to society as a whole, but would be conceded to associations of workers. The State would be no more than a federation of various groups of workers.”[187]

Given that Proudhon had advocated workers’ companies to run publically owned industries as well as arguing the land was common property and be transferred to communes, the resolution was not the rejection of Proudhon’s ideas that many assume. In fact, it can be considered a logical fusion of his arguments on land ownership and workers’ associations. As Daniel Guérin notes, “in the congresses of the First International the libertarian idea of self-management prevailed over the statist concept.”[188] Moreover, at Basel Congress of 1869 “Bakunin emerged as the main champion of collectivism.”[189] As Kropotkin suggested:

“As to his economical conceptions, Bakunin described himself, in common with his Federalist comrades of the International (César De Paepe, James Guillaume, Schwitzguébel), a ‘collectivist anarchist’... a state of things in which all necessaries for production are owned in common by the labour groups and the free communes, while the ways of retribution of labour, communist or otherwise, would be settled by each group for itself.”[190]

So the rise of the collectivists in the IWMA does not represent a defeat for Proudhon’s ideas. Rather, it reflected their development by debates between socialists heavily influenced by the anarchist. This is obscured by the fact that Proudhon’s ideas on workers’ associations are not well known today. Once this is understood, it is easy to see that it was in the IWMA that Proudhon’s mutualist ideas evolved into collectivist and then communist anarchism.

The main areas of change centred on means (reform versus revolution) and the need for strikes, unions and other forms of collective working class direct action and organisation rather than the goal of a federated, associated, self-managed socialist society. As G.D.H. Cole perceptively writes, Varlin “had at bottom a great deal more in common with Proudhon than with Marx” and had a “Syndicalist outlook.”[191] Like Bakunin, Varlin argued that unions have “the enormous advantage of making people accustomed to group life and thus preparing them for a more extended social organisation. They accustom people not only to get along with one another and to understand one another, but also to organise themselves, to discuss, and to reason from a collective perspective.” Again, like Bakunin, Varlin argued that unions also “form the natural elements of the social edifice of the future; it is they who can be easily transformed into producers associations; it is they who can make the social ingredients and the organisation of production work.”[192]

Thus, by 1868 “a transition from mutualism to ‘antistatist’ or ‘antiauthoritarian collectivism’ had began.”[193] This is to be expected. Just as Proudhon developed his ideas in the face of changing circumstances and working class self-activity, so working class people influenced by his ideas developed and changed what they took from Proudhon in light of their own circumstances. However, the core ideas of anti-statism and anti-capitalism remained and so these changes must be viewed as a development of Proudhon’s ideas rather than something completely new or alien to them. Thus the revolutionary anarchism which grew within the IWMA had distinct similarities to that of Proudhon’s reformist kind, even if it diverges on some issues.

The Paris Commune

By 1871, the transition from reformist mutualism to revolutionary collectivism as the predominant tendency within anarchism was near complete. Then came the Paris Commune. With its ideas on decentralised federations of communes and workers’ associations, the Commune applied Proudhon’s ideas on a grand scale and, in the process, inspired generations of socialists. Sadly, this revolt, Proudhon’s greatest legacy, has been appropriated by Marxism thanks to Marx’s passionate defence of the revolt and his and Engels systematic downplaying of its obvious Proudhonian themes.

In reality, while many perspectives were raised in the revolt, what positive themes it expressed were taken from Proudhon as many Communards “were influenced by Proudhon’s advocacy of autonomous economic organisation and decentralised self-government.” Thus the Commune reflected “a distinctly French variant of socialism, strongly influenced by Proudhon and to a lesser extent by the Russian anarchist Bakunin, which advocated destroying oppressive state structures by devolving power to local democratic communities (federalism) and abolishing exploitation by decentralising economic control to workers’ co-operative associations – ‘Its apostles are workers, its Christ was Proudhon,’ proclaimed Courbet.”[194]

So it is that we find the Paris section of the IWMA in 1870 arguing along very Proudhonian lines that “we must accomplish the Democratic and Social Revolution.” The aim was “the establishment of a new social order; the elimination of classes, the abolition of employers and of the proletariat, the establishment of universal co-operation based upon equality and justice.” Thus “it is necessary, citizens, to eliminate wage labour, the last form of servitude,” “implement the principles of justice in social relationships” and ensure the “distribution of what is produced by labour, based upon the principles of the value of the work and a mutualist organisation of services.” “Has it not always been evident”, they asked, “that the art of governing peoples has been the art of exploiting them?”[195]

As Paul Avrich suggested, the “influence of Proudhon – unquestionably greater than that of Marx – was reflected in the title of ‘Federals’ by which the Communards were known.” The Commune’s “social composition... was a mixture of workers and professionals, of tradesmen and artisans... its thrust was overwhelmingly decentralist and libertarian,” its ideal society was “a direct democracy of councils, clubs, and communes, an anti-authoritarian commonwealth in which workers, artisans, and peasants might live in peace and contentment, with full economic and political liberty organised from below.”[196] “[I]n reality,” Thomas concedes, “the Commune owed precious little to Marxism and a great deal more, ironically enough, to the Proudhonists, who had proved themselves thorns in Marx’s side during the first four years of the International’s existence.”[197]

This Proudhonian influence on the Paris Commune was expressed in two main ways: politically in the vision of a France of federated communes; economically in the vision of a socialist society based on workers’ associations.

Politically, Proudhon “had stressed the commune as the fundamental unit of democratic sovereignty”[198] as well as their federation. All this was reflected in the Commune. Indeed, the “rough sketch of national organisation which the Commune had no time to develop”[199] which Marx praised but did not quote was written by a follower of Proudhon and was “strongly federalist in tone, and it has a marked proudhonian flavour.”[200]

Marx also praised the Communal Council being composed of delegates who would be “at any time revocable and bound by the mandat imperatif (formal instructions) of his constituents” and the fact that it was a “working, not a parliamentary, body, executive and legislative at the same time” This, he averred, was “the political form at last discovered under which to work out the economical emancipation of labour.”[201] Yet this was not a novel “discovery” as Proudhon had consistently raised these ideas since the 1848 revolution:

“It is up to the National Assembly, through organisation of its committees, to exercise executive power, just the way it exercises legislative power... Besides universal suffrage and as a consequence of universal suffrage, we want implementation of the binding mandate. Politicians balk at it! Which means that in their eyes, the people, in electing representatives, do not appoint mandatories but rather abjure their sovereignty! That is assuredly not socialism: it is not even democracy.”[202]

During the Commune anarchist James Guillaume pointed out the obvious: “the Paris Revolution is federalist... in the sense given it years ago by the great socialist, Proudhon.” It is “above all the negation of the nation and the State.”[203] It is hard not to concur with K.J. Kenafick:

“the programme [the Commune] set out is... the system of Federalism, which Bakunin had been advocating for years, and which had first been enunciated by Proudhon. The Proudhonists... exercised considerable influence in the Commune. This ‘political form’ was therefore not ‘at last’ discovered; it had been discovered years ago; and now it was proven to be correct by the very fact that in the crisis the Paris workers adopted it... as being the form most suitable to express working class aspirations.”[204]

Economically, the same can be said. Echoing Proudhon’s calls for workers’ companies, the Communards considered that “the worker-directed workshop... very soon would become the universal mode of production.”[205] A meeting of the Mechanics Union and the Association of Metal Workers argued that “our economic emancipation... can only be obtained through the formation of workers’ associations, which alone can transform our position from that of wage earners to that of associates.” They instructed their delegates to the Commune’s Commission on Labour Organisation to aim for the “abolition of the exploitation of man by man, the last vestige of slavery” by means of the “organisation of labour in mutual associations with collective and inalienable capital.” A group of foundry workers wrote that it was “exploitation that we seek to abolish through the right of workers to their work and to form federated producer co-operatives. Their formation would be a great step forward... towards... the federation of peoples.”[206]

Marx praised the efforts made within the Paris Commune to create co-operatives, so “transforming the means of production, land and capital... into mere instruments of free and associated labour.” He argued “what else... would it be but... Communism?”[207] Well, it could be mutualism and Proudhon’s vision of an agro-industrial federation. Had not Varlin, in March 1870, argued that co-operatives were “actively preparing the bases for the future society”? Had he not, like Proudhon, warned that “placing everything in the hands of a highly centralised, authoritarian state... would set up a hierarchic structure from top to bottom of the labour process”? Had he not, like Proudhon, suggested that “the only alternative is for workers themselves to have the free disposition and possession of the tools of production... through co-operative association”?[208]

Engels in 1891 painted a picture of Proudhon being opposed to association (except for large-scale industry) and stated that “to combine all these associations in one great union” was “the direct opposite of the Proudhon doctrine” and so the Commune was its “grave”.[209] Yet, as he most certainly was aware, Proudhon had publicly called for economic federation. In 1863, he termed it the “agro-industrial federation” and fifteen years earlier he had demanded an economy based on a “vast federation” of “democratically organised workers’ associations”[210] so making true his 1846 statement that “to unfold the system of economical contradictions is to lay the foundations of universal association.”[211]

Elsewhere, Engels argued that the “economic measures” of the Commune were driven not by “principles” but by “simple, practical needs.” This meant that “the confiscation of shut-down factories and workshops and handing them over to workers’ associations” had been “not at all in accordance with the spirit of Proudhonism but certainly in accordance with the spirit of German scientific socialism.”[212] This seems unlikely, given Proudhon’s well known and long-standing advocacy of co-operatives as well as Marx’s comment in 1866 that in France the workers (“especially those in Paris”) “are, without realising it [!], strongly implicated in the garbage of the past” and that the “Parisian gentlemen had their heads stuffed full of the most vacuous Proudhonist clichés.”[213] Given that the Communist Manifesto stressed state ownership and failed to mention co-operatives, the claim that the Commune had acted in its spirit seems a tad optimistic particularly as this decision “bore the mark of the French socialist tradition, which envisaged workers’ co-operative association, not state ownership, as the solution to ‘the social question.’”[214]

The obvious influence of Proudhon in the Commune’s socio-economic vision has been obscured by Marxist revisionism. These links with Proudhon are hardly surprising as “men sympathetic to Proudhon’s ideas were conspicuously present” in the revolt.[215] This is not to suggest that the Paris Commune unfolded precisely as Proudhon would have wished (Bakunin and Kropotkin analysed it and drew conclusions from its failings[216]). However, it is clear that the Commune’s vision of a federated self-managed society and economy owes much to Proudhon’s tireless advocacy of such ideas. As Bakunin suggested, Marx and Engels “proclaim[ing] that [the Commune’s] programme and purpose were their own” flew “in face of the simplest logic” and was “a truly farcical change of costume.”[217]

Anarchism

Proudhon’s lasting legacy is his contribution to anarchism. It is little wonder that he has been termed “the father of anarchism” for while anarchism has evolved since Proudhon’s time it still bases itself on the themes first expounded in a systematic way by the Frenchman. Indeed, it is hard to imagine anarchism without Proudhon.

While Proudhon may not have been the first thinker to suggest a stateless and classless society, he was the first to call himself an anarchist and to influence a movement of that name. This is not to suggest that libertarian ideas and movements had not existed before Proudhon[218] nor that anarchistic ideas did not develop spontaneously after 1840 but these were not a coherent, named, articulate theory. While anarchism does not have to be identical to Proudhon’s specific ideas and proposals, it does have to be consistent with the main thrust of his ideas – in other words, anti-state and anti-capitalism. Thus collectivist anarchism built on Proudhon, as did communist-anarchism, anarcho-syndicalism and individualist anarchism. While none of these later developments were identical to Proudhon’s mutualism – each stressed different aspects of his ideas, developing some, changing others – the links and evolution remain clear.

Proudhon straddles both wings of the anarchist movement, social and individualist although the former took more of his vision of libertarian socialism.[219] Perhaps this division was inevitable considering Proudhon’s ideas. He was, after all, an advocate of both competition and association, against both capitalism and communism, a reformist who talked constantly of revolution. Suffice to say, though, both wings considered themselves, as did Proudhon, part of the wider socialist movement and hoped to see the end of capitalism while disagreeing on how to do so and the exact nature of a free society. Whether Proudhon would have agreed with Tucker or Kropotkin is a moot point (probably not!) but he would have recognised elements of his ideas in both.

Individualist Anarchism

Proudhon’s ideas found a welcome home in North America where “his impact was greater than has been commonly supposed”, with his “views given wide publicity” in “the years preceding the Civil War.”[220] This makes sense, given that (like France) the USA was going through the process of industrialisation and proletarianisation with the state intervening in the economy (as it always has) to foster capitalist property rights and social relationships. Radicals in America, facing the same transformation as Proudhon’s France, took up his ideas and propagated them.

While Josiah Warren had independently advocated certain ideas usually associated with Proudhon, the first study of Proudhon’s work was Charles A. Dana’s Proudhon and His “Bank of the People” in 1849 followed by William B. Greene’s translations from Proudhon’s Organisation du Crédit et de la Circulation et Solution du Problème Social his 1850 Mutual Banking. Greene was president of the Massachusetts Labour Union and was active in the French-speaking section of the IWMA in Boston although, unlike Proudhon, he “championed the cause of women’s rights.”[221]

For Greene there was “no device of the political economists so infernal as the one which ranks labour as a commodity, varying in value according to supply and demand... To speak of labour as merchandise is treason; for such speech denies the true dignity of man... Where labour is merchandise in fact... there man is merchandise also, whether in England or South Carolina.” The alternative was the “triple formula of practical mutualism”: “the associated workshop” for production, the “protective union store” for consumption and “the Mutual Bank” for exchange. All three were required, for “the Associated Workshop cannot exist for a single day without the Mutual Bank and the Protective Union Store.” The “Associated Workshop ought to be an organisation of personal credit. For what is its aim and purpose? Is it not the emancipation of the labourer from all dependence upon capital and capitalists?”[222]

Benjamin Tucker took up Greene’s work and translated substantial material by Proudhon into English including numerous articles, What is Property? and volume one of System of Economic Contradictions. In 1881, he proclaimed that his new journal, Liberty, was “brought into existence as a direct consequence of the teachings of Proudhon” and “lives principally to emphasise and spread them.”[223] Proudhon’s maxim from the 1848 revolution that “Liberty, Not the Daughter but the Mother of Order” adorned its masthead. Like Proudhon, his aim was the “emancipation of the workingman from his present slavery to capital.”[224]

To achieve this, Tucker looked to Proudhon as well as the radical ideas and movements of his own country. He took Proudhon’s reformism, his “occupancy and use” critique of land-ownership, elimination of interest by mutual banking, opposition to the state and defence of competition and markets. Somewhat ironically, while Tucker is often portrayed as being Proudhon’s disciple he ignored many of the French anarchist’s key ideas. Workers’ associations and co-operative production, the agro-industrial federation, communes and their federation find no echo in Tucker, nor did Proudhon’s opposition to wage-labour. Somewhat ironically it was Tucker’s arch-foe in the movement, the communist-anarchist Johann Most, who echoed the French anarchist on most issues.

Other individualist anarchists were closer to Proudhon’s concerns. Dyer Lum “drew from the French anarchist Proudhon... a radical critique of classical political economy and... a set of positive reforms in land tenure and banking... Proudhon paralleled the native labour reform tradition in several ways. Besides suggesting reforms in land and money, Proudhon urged producer cooperation.” As with Proudhon’s, a key element of “Lum’s anarchism was his mutualist economics, an analysis of ‘wage slavery’ and a set of reforms that would ‘abolish the wage system.’”[225] Other individualist anarchists joined Lum in opposing wage-labour.[226]

While individualist anarchism dominated the movement in America before and immediately after the Civil War, by the 1880s the displacement of reformist by revolutionary forms of anarchism which had occurred in Europe was repeated in America. While the repression after the Haymarket police riot in 1886 hindered this, “[b]y the turn of the century, the anarchist movement in America had become predominantly communist in orientation.”[227] While individualist anarchism never totally disappeared, to this day it remains very much the minority trend in American anarchism.

Revolutionary Anarchism

Even a cursory glance at revolutionary anarchism shows the debt it has to Proudhon. Bakunin, unsurprisingly, considered his own ideas as “Proudhonism widely developed and pushed right to these, its final consequences.”[228] Proudhon’s critique of property, state and capitalism, his analysis of exploitation being rooted in wage-labour, his advocacy of a decentralised and federal system of communes and workers’ associations, his support for workers’ self-management of production, his call for working class autonomy and self-activity as the means of transforming society from below, all these (and more) were taken up and developed by collectivist, communist and syndicalist anarchists.

Just as Proudhon had pointed to the directly democratic clubs of the 1848 Revolution and co-operatives as key institutions of a free society, so Bakunin viewed communes and unions in the same light while, in addition to these, Kropotkin pointed to the directly democratic “sections” of the Great French Revolution. As with Proudhon, the revolutionary anarchists argued that political and social change must occur at the same time. Like Proudhon, they saw the future free society as a dual federation of social and economic organisations. For Kropotkin “the form that the Social Revolution must take” was “the independent Commune” and their federations along with “a parallel triumph of the people in the economic field” based on “associations of men and women who would work on the land, in the factories, in the mines, and so on” and so become “themselves the managers of production.”[229] For Bakunin, “socialism is federalist” and “true federalism, the political organisation of socialism, will be attained only” when “popular grass-roots institutions” like “communes, industrial and agricultural associations” are “organised in progressive stages from the bottom up.”[230] The links with Proudhon’s ideas, particularly the agro-industrial federation, are all too clear.

Revolutionary anarchism bases itself on Proudhon’s distinction between property and possession.[231] It shares his vision of an economy based on socialisation of the means of production, use rights and workers’ association. Kropotkin’s co-founder of the newspaper Freedom, Charlotte M. Wilson, made the link clear:

“Proudhon’s famous dictum, ‘Property is theft’, is the key to the equally famous enigma... ‘From each according to his capacities, to each according to his needs’... as long as land and capital are un-appropriated, the workers are free, and that, when these have a master, the workers also are slaves... Anarchism proposes, therefore, – 1. That usufruct of instruments of production – land included – should be free to all workers, or groups of workers. 2. That the workers should group themselves, and arrange their work as their reason and inclination prompt... 3. That the necessary connections between the various industries and branches of trade should be managed on the same voluntary principle.”[232]

Revolutionary anarchism nevertheless differed from that of Proudhon in three areas.

First, its proponents rejected Proudhon’s support for patriarchy in the family as being inconsistent with the libertarian principles he advocated against capitalism and the state.[233] This was an obvious self-contradiction, which anarchists have critiqued by means of the very principles Proudhon himself used to criticise the state and capitalism. Joseph Déjacque, for example, wrote a critique of Proudhon’s sexist views in 1857, urging him to renounce “this gender aristocracy that would bind us to the old regime.”[234] André Léo, a feminist libertarian and future Communard, pointed out the obvious contradiction in 1869: “These so-called lovers of liberty, if they are unable to take part in the direction of the state, at least they will be able to have a little monarchy for their personal use, each in his own home... Order in the family without hierarchy seems impossible to them – well then, what about in the state?”[235]

Second, they rejected Proudhon’s reformism and transformed his call for a “revolution from below” into a literal support for a social revolution (insurrections, general strikes and other activities which reflect the popular understanding of “revolution”). Bakunin, while “convinced that the co-operative will be the preponderant form of social organisation in the future” and could “hardly oppose” their creation under capitalism, argued that Proudhon’s hope for gradual change by means of mutual banking and the higher efficiency of workers’ co-operatives was unlikely to be realised as it did “not take into account the vast advantage that the bourgeoisie enjoys against the proletariat through its monopoly on wealth, science, and secular custom, as well as through the approval – overt or covert but always active – of States and through the whole organisation of modern society. The fight is too unequal for success reasonably to be expected.”[236] Thus capitalism “does not fear the competition of workers’ associations – neither consumers’, producers’, nor mutual credit associations – for the simple reason that workers’ organisations, left to their own resources, will never be able to accumulate sufficiently strong aggregations of capital capable of waging an effective struggle against bourgeois capital.”[237]

Having found reformism insufficient, the revolutionary anarchists stressed the need for what would now be termed a syndicalist approach to social change.[238] Rather than seeing workers co-operatives and mutual banks as the focus for social transformation, unions came to be seen as the means of both fighting capitalism and replacing it. They took Proudhon’s dual-power strategy from 1848 and applied it in the labour movement with the long term aim of smashing the state and replacing it with these organs of popular power.[239]

Third, they rejected Proudhon’s anti-communism and advocated distribution according to need rather than deed. That is, the extension of the critique of wage-labour into opposition to the wages-system.[240]

The rationale behind this change was straightforward. As Kropotkin explained, “this system of remuneration for work done” was contradictory and unjust. Not only do deeds not correlate with needs (most obviously, children, the ill and elderly cannot be expected to work as much as others) it was also “evident that a society cannot be based on two absolutely opposed principles, two principles that contradict one another continually.” How can labour-money be advocated “when we admit that houses, fields, and factories will no longer be private property, and that they will belong to the commune or the nation?” Abolition of property in the means of production cannot co-exist with property in the products of labour created by their use. This suggested that, to be consistent, anarchists must pass from mutualism and collectivism to communism, distribution according to need rather than deed.[241] Most anarchists then, and now, concurred.

Ultimately, though, Proudhon and the likes of Bakunin and Kropotkin had more in common than differences. His ideas were the foundation upon which revolutionary anarchism was built. Bakunin “reaped the harvest sown by Proudhon – the father of anarchism – filtering, enriching and surpassing it”[242] and “Proudhon’s thought found a strong echo in revolutionary syndicalism.”[243]

Finally, it should be noted that revolutionary anarchism developed independently from Proudhon’s mutualism in at least three cases. Joseph Déjacque drew libertarian communist conclusions from Proudhon’s work in the 1850s. Bakunin developed Proudhon’s ideas in a similar direction after 1864 while Eugene Varlin “seems to have moved independently towards his collectivist position.”[244] So while Bakunin’s ideas were quickly adopted by working class militants familiar with Proudhon across Europe, even without him Proudhon’s legacy was evolving in the direction of revolutionary collectivism in the 1860s. Indeed, it could be argued that Bakunin and his ideas became so influential in the IWMA because he was part of a general development within Internationalist circles which he simply helped.

Conclusion

Proudhon’s influence was significant during the nineteenth century. Sadly, his ideas are not acknowledged as much as they should be given their impact and how they laid the basis for modern anarchism.

Anarchists, though, are not Proudhonists, Bakuninists, Kropotkinites, or whoever-ists. We reject the idea of calling ourselves after individuals. However, we can and do acknowledge the contributions of outstanding thinkers and activists, people who contribute to the commonwealth of ideas which is anarchism. Seen in this light, Proudhon (for all his faults) should be remembered as the person who laid the foundations of anarchism. His libertarian socialism, his critique of capitalism and the state, his federalism, advocacy of self-management and change from below, defined what anarchism is.

In terms of his critique of capitalism, most of it holds up well. Workers are still exploited at the point of production and this can only be stopped by abolishing wage-labour. Landlords are still parasites, interest still bleeds dry those subject to it. Capitalism has proven itself to be the efficient machine for increasing inequality by exploiting the many that Proudhon analysed. As far as his anti-statism goes, his analysis of the state as an instrument of minority class rule still rings true as does his insights that centralised structures result in rule by the few and are simply not reflexive of, nor accountable to, the public in any meaningful way. His denunciations of executive power and the unitaire State as a new form of royalty have been confirmed time and time again. His critique of State socialism, his prediction that it would be just another form of wage-labour with the state replacing the boss, has been more than confirmed, not to mention his fear that it would become little more than a dictatorship by a party rather than a genuine worker democracy.

While we should not slavishly copy Proudhon’s ideas, we can take what is useful and, like Bakunin, Kropotkin and others, develop them further in order to inspire social change in the 21^st century. His vision of a decentralised, self-managed, federal socialist society and economy has obvious relevance today. Centralised political and economic systems have been tried and failed. His continued emphasis on working class autonomy and self-emancipation, of building the new world in the heart of the old, are core libertarian principles.

Proudhon wrote that “the twentieth century will open the age of federations, or else humanity will undergo another purgatory of a thousand years.”[245] The 20^th century, with its centralised states, neo-liberalism and nationalistic irrationalities, reached depths of destruction and misery suggested by purgatory. We can only hope that it is the 21^st century that inaugurates the libertarian age Proudhon hoped for.

Iain McKay

www.anarchistfaq.org.uk [47]

End Notes

[1] The Political Philosophy of Bakunin (New York: Free Press, 1953), 278

[2] Sadly, it is necessary to explain what we mean by “libertarian” as this term has been appropriated by the free-market capitalist right. Socialist use of libertarian dates from 1858 when it was first used by  communist-anarchist Joseph Déjacque as a synonym for anarchist for his paper La Libertaire, Journal du Mouvement Social. This usage became more commonplace in the 1880s and 1895 saw leading anarchists Sébastien Faure and Louise Michel publish La Libertaire in France. (Max Nettlau, A Short History of Anarchism [London: Freedom Press, 1995], 75-6, 145, 162) By the end of the 19^th century libertarian was used as an alternative for anarchist internationally. The right-wing appropriation of the term dates from the 1950s and, in wider society, from the 1970s. Given that property is at its root and, significantly, property always trumps liberty in that ideology, anarchists suggest a far more accurate term would be “propertarian” (See my “150 Years of Libertarian” [48], Freedom 69: 23-24 [2008]). We will use the term libertarian in its original, correct, usage as an alternative for anti-state socialist.

[3] Proudhon, General Idea of the Revolution in the Nineteenth Century (London: Pluto Press, 1989), 100

[4] “On Proudhon’s ‘What is Property?’” (The Raven 31 [Autumn 1995]), 21

[5] The Basic Bakunin: Writings 1869-1871 (Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books, 1992), Robert M. Cutler (ed.), 105

[6] quoted in George Woodcock, Anarchism: A History of Libertarian Ideas and Movements (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1986), 127

[7] “Modern Science and Anarchism” in Evolution and Environment (Montréal: Black Rose, 1995), 27

[8] Instead of a Book: By a Man Too Busy to Write One (New York: Haskell House Publishers, 1969), 391

[9] My Past and Thoughts: The Memoirs of Alexander Herzen (Berkeley, California: University of California Press, 1982), 416, 417

[10] quoted in Jack Hayward, After the French Revolution: Six Critics of Democracy and Nationalism (Hemel Hempstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1991), 213

[11] Anarcho-Syndicalism: Theory and Practice (Edinburgh/Oakland: AK Press, 2004), 4-5

[12] The Paris Commune 1871 (Harlow/New York: Addison Wesley Longman, 1999), 91, 73

[13] The First International in France, 1864-1872: Its Origins, Theories, and Impact (Lanham/Oxford: University Press of America, Inc, 1997), 23

[14] French Revolutions, 1815-1914: An Introduction (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1999), 196

[15] K. Steven Vincent, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and the Rise of French Republican Socialism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984), 165

[16] “Preface”, Karl Marx, The Poverty of Philosophy (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1995), 9

[17] Vincent, 3-4

[18] This can be seen from Proudhon’s defining work of 1840, entitled What Is Property? not What Is the State?

[19] quoted in Nettlau, 43-44

[20] A History of Economics: The Past As The Present (London: Hamilton , 1987), 99

[21] quoted in Vincent, 212-3

[22] Mutualism was first used by Fourier, the French utopian socialist, in 1822 while “mutualist” was coined by a follower of Robert Owen in America four years later. (Arthur E. Bestor, Jr., “The Evolution of the Socialist Vocabulary”, Journal of the History of Ideas 9:3 [1948]: 272-3). Proudhon first used the term in 1846’s System of Economic Contradictions.

[23] Vincent, 164

[24] Hayward, 191

[25] Marx-Engels Collected Works, 4: 32 (MECW). Moreover: “Not only does Proudhon write in the interest of the proletarians, he is himself a proletarian, an ouvrier. His work is a scientific manifesto of the French proletariat.” (41)

[26] Louis Blanc’s claim, repeated by Marx, that Proudhon took this phrase from J.P. Brissot de Warville, a Girondin during the Great French Revolution, is thoroughly debunked by Robert L. Hoffman (Revolutionary Justice: The Social and Political Theory of P-J Proudhon [Urbana: University of Illinois, 1969], 46-48)

[27] In addition, following the best traditions of French rationalism Proudhon also tried to prove that it was contradictory (and so “impossible”).

[28] What Is Property? (London: William Reeves Bookseller Ltd., 1969), 84-5

[29] What is Property?, 77, 66

[30] What is Property?, 251, 130, 264, 266, 259, 267

[31] What is Property?, 142

[32] What is Property?, 395, 129, 293

[33] Selected Writings of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (London: MacMillan, 1969), Stewart Edwards (ed.), 80 (SW)

[34] “Value and Exploitation: Some Recent Debates,” Classical and Marxian Political Economy: Essays In Honour of Ronald L. Meek (London: Macmillan Press, 1982), Ian Bradley and Michael Howard (eds.), 180. Ironically, Marx was not above invoking unequal exchange to explain exploitation: “Capital is concentrated social force, while the workman has only to dispose of his working force. The contract between capital and labour can therefore never be struck on equitable terms, equitable even in the sense of a society which places the ownership of the material means of life and labour on one side and the vital productive energies on the opposite side.” (The First International and After: Political Writings Volume 3 [London: Penguin Books, 1992], 91)

[35] What is Property?, 123-4

[36] What is Property?, 98, 184-5

[37] Compare this to Engels’ explanation that the “value of the labour-power, and the value which that labour-power creates in the labour-process, are two different magnitudes” and so if “the labourer each day costs the owner of money the value of the product of six hours’ labour” and works twelve, he “hands over” to the capitalist “each day the value of the product of twelve hours’ labour.” The difference in favour of the owner is “unpaid surplus-labour, a surplus-product.” He gushes that the “solution of this problem was the most epoch-making achievement of Marx’s work. It spread the clear light of day through economic domains in which socialists no less than bourgeois economists previously groped in utter darkness. Scientific socialism dates from the discovery of this solution and has been built up around it.” (MECW 25: 189-90)

[38] System of Economical Contradictions (Boston: Benjamin Tucker, 1888), 202

[39] Vincent, 64-5

[40] General Idea of the Revolution , 81-2.

[41] John Ehrenberg, Proudhon and His Age (New York: Humanity Books, 1996), 56, 55

[42] Donny Gluckstein, The Paris Commune: A Revolutionary Democracy (London: Bookmarks, 2006), 72. Gluckstein does, implicitly, acknowledge Proudhon’s real position by noting that big capitalists “could be excluded from commodity production through mutualism, or workers’ co-operatives.” (75) If Proudhon really thought that exploitation did not occur within the workplace then why did he advocate co-operatives? Why did he consistently argue for the abolition of wage labour?

[43] This is not to suggest that Proudhon thought that exploitation only occurred in the workplace. Far from it! His analysis of rent and interest showed that it did, and could, occur when workers’ were not toiling for bosses. Usury can exist in non-capitalist economies. However, to suggest that Proudhon argued that exploitation did not happen in production is to make a travesty of his thought.

[44] The Marx-Engels Reader (London: W.W. Norton & Co, 1978), 2nd Edition, 626

[45] Vincent, 156

[46] quoted in Vincent, 156

[47] General Idea of the Revolution, 97-8

[48] Donny Gluckstein asserts that “Proudhon wanted to return society to an earlier golden age” after admitting that, in 1871, “[o]lder forms of production predominated” and conceding “the prevalence of artisans and handicraft production” in France! (73, 69) How you “return” to something that dominates your surroundings is not explained.

[49] What is Property?, 137, 130

[50] quoted in Vincent, 222

[51] Selected Writings, 63

[52] Proudhon called these worker-managed firms various names including workers associations, workers companies and corporations. The latter should not be confused with modern corporations but rather referenced the producer organisations in medieval France (i.e., like a Guild in Britain).

[53] General Idea of the Revolution, 222-3.

[54] quoted in Martin Buber, Paths in Utopia (London: RKP, 1949), 29-30

[55] Hayward, 201

[56] “From Proudhon to Bakunin”, The Radical Papers (Montréal: Black Rose, 1987), Dimitrios I. Roussopoulos (ed.), 32

[57] “Associationism” was born during the waves of strikes and protests in the 1830s, with co-operatives being seen by many workers as a method of emancipation from wage labour.

[58] No Gods, No Masters: An Anthology of Anarchism (Edinburgh/Oakland: AK Press, 1005), 75

[59] David Schweickart, Against Capitalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 100. For a fuller discussion of co-operatives see section I.3 [49] of An Anarchist FAQ.

[60] Vincent, 224-5

[61] Selected Writings, 75, 79

[62] This mutated into a “waiting” theory although the argument is identical. The economist Alfred Marshall who popularised the change in terminology did so as the rich obviously did not abstain from anything. (see section C.2.7 [50] of An Anarchist FAQ)

[63] Oeuvres Complètes (Lacroix edition) 19: 197, 219

[64] The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (London: MacMillan Press, 1974), 376

[65] An endogenous money supply analysis recognises that money arises from within the economy in response to its needs rather than being determined from outside by the state or gold. So the emergence of bank notes, fractional reserve banking and credit was a spontaneous process, not planned or imposed by the state, but rather came from the profit needs of banks which, in turn, reflected the real needs of the economy. This analysis is championed by the post-Keynesian school today.

[66] Oeuvres Complètes 6: 90

[67] Keynes, 376

[68] Gesell produced “an anti-Marxian socialism” which the “future will learn more from” than Marx. (Keynes, 355)

[69] The Journal of Economic History 2: 1 (1942).

[70] Libertarian Marxist Paul Mattick noted in passing that Keynes shared the Frenchman’s “attack upon the payment of interest” and wished to see the end of the rentier. Mattick, however, acknowledged that Keynes did not subscribe to Proudhon’s desire to use free credit to fund “independent producers and workers’ syndicates” as a means create an economic system “without exploitation.” (Marx and Keynes: The Limits of the Mixed Economy [London: Merlin Press, 1971], 5-6)

[71] “Proudhon viewed monetary reforms in the context of the institution of producers’ associations” and so he “was not promoting a simple ‘bankism’, but rather advancing this as one element in a larger social transformation.” (Vincent, 172-3). As such it was misleading for Marx to suggest in 1865 that “to consider interest-bearing capital as the principal form of capital, and to wish to make of a particular application of credit – the pretended abolition of the rate of interest – to think to make that the basis of the social transformation – that was indeed a petty chandler’s fantasy.” Proudhon’s perspective was wider than this. It is ironic, though, to read Marx admit that there was “no doubt, there is indeed evidence to show, that the development of credit... might... serve, in certain political and economic conditions, to accelerate the emancipation of the working class.” (The Poverty of Philosophy, 200-1)

[72] Doug Henwood, Wall Street: How It Works and For Whom (London: Verso, 1998), 292, 174-5

[73] See section C.8.3 [51] of An Anarchist FAQ

[74] In a capitalist economy, with banks seeking profits, there is a systemic pressure on them to get caught up in waves of lending euphoria during upswings. This leads to periodic periods of financial fragility which, in turn, lead to crisis (see section C.8 [52] of An Anarchist FAQ) Similarly, loans are generally made to capitalist firms and their need for profits adds an extra level of uncertainty and fragility, also provoking crisis. Such forces would be lacking in a mutualist system based on labour-income.

[75] “Since money as well as other merchandise is subject to the law of proportionality, if its quantity increases and if at the same time other products do not increase in proportion, money loses it value, and nothing, in the last analysis, is added to the social wealth” (Oeuvres Complètes 5: 89)

[76] To explain how the state printing money ended up in people’s pockets and so caused inflation Milton Friedman, founder of Monetarism, imagined government helicopters dropping money from the skies. . .

[77] See section G.3.6 [53] of An Anarchist FAQ. A useful post-Keynesian introduction and analysis of banking and interest can be found in Hugh Stretton’s Economics: A New Introduction (London: Pluto Press, 2000).

[78] Ehrenberg, 88

[79] Correspondance 2: 307, 308

[80] Correspondance 6: 372

[81] No Gods, No Masters, 75

[82] Correspondance 14: 295

[83] Oeuvres Complètes 21: 121

[84] General Idea of the Revolution, 286

[85] System of Economical Contradictions, 399. Which makes a mockery of Engels claims that Proudhon had, in 1851, appropriated, without acknowledgement, Marx’s ideas as his own. In a letter to Marx, Engels proclaimed that he was “convinced” that the Frenchman had read The Communist Manifesto and Marx’s The Class Struggles in France as “our premises on the decisive historical initiative of material production, class struggle, etc., largely adopted”: “A number of points were indubitably lifted from them – e.g., that a gouvernement is nothing but the power of one class to repress the other, and will disappear with the disappearance of the contradictions between classes.” (MECW 38: 434-5). In reality, Proudhon had concluded that the state was an instrument of class power long before Marxism was invented.

[86] Oeuvres Complètes 19: 11, 12, 15

[87] quoted in Vincent, 211

[88] No Gods, No Masters, 57

[89] quoted in George Woodcock, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon: A Biography (Montréal: Black Rose, 1987), 129 (Proudhon)

[90] General Idea of the Revolution, 45-6

[91] quoted in Woodcock, Proudhon, 75

[92] quoted in Vincent, 208

[93] As suggested by Marx in “Political Indifferentism” (MECW 23: 392-7)

[94] A History of the French Anarchist Movement, 1917-1945 (Westport: Greenwood Press, 2002), 16

[95] Vincent, 141. Proudhon usually termed such systems community (la communauté) or communism and had in mind such socialists as Henri de Saint-Simon, Charles Fourier, Robert Owen, Louis Blanc and Pierre Leroux. These are usually termed, following Marx, Utopian Socialists and generally thought of socialism as being organised around (usually highly regulated and hierarchical) communities or implemented by means of the state.

[96] Revolution from 1789 to 1906 (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1962), P.W. Postgate (ed.), 186-7

[97] System of Economical Contradictions, 313, 269

[98] System of Economical Contradictions, 397

[99] General Idea of the Revolution, 96-7

[100] “How much does [a product] sold by the [state] administration cost? How much is it worth? You can answer the first of these questions: you need only call at the first... shop you see. But you can tell me nothing about the second, because you have no standard of comparison and are forbidden to verify by experiment ... business, made into a monopoly, necessarily costs society more than it brings in.” (System of Economical Contradictions, 232-3)

[101] System of Economical Contradictions, 263

[102] Oeuvres Complètes 6: 12

[103] No Gods, No Masters, 77-8

[104] No Gods, No Masters, 125

[105] “As critic, having sought social laws through the negation of property, I belong to socialist protest... In seeking to achieve practical improvements, I repudiate socialism with all my strength.” (quoted in Hayward, 183).

[106] “I am a socialist.” (Selected Writings, 195) He also considered his critique of property as a “socialist polemic.” (Oeuvres Complètes 20: 50)

[107] Oeuvres Complètes 6: 20-1

[108] Carnets (Paris: Marcel Riviere, 1968) 3: 289

[109] quoted in Vincent, 189

[110] quoted in Henri de Lubac, The Un-Marxian Socialist: A Study of Proudhon (New York: Octagon Books, 1978), 29-30

[111] Selected Writings, 177

[112] Selected Writings, 151

[113] System of Economical Contradictions, 398, 397

[114] Oeuvres Complètes 17: 25

[115] Gemie, 129

[116] Revolution and Mass Democracy: The Paris Club Movement in 1848 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975), 200-1

[117] No Gods, No Masters, 63

[118] Anarchism: From Theory to Practice (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1970), 152-3. Proudhon “demanded that a network of proletarian committees – Soviets, we might say – should be constituted to fight” the National Assembly. (Postgate, 205)

[119] Oeuvres Complètes 17: 28. Interestingly, given Proudhon’s opposition to economic strikes, during his discussion of “legal resistance” to oppressive governments in Chapter XVIII of Confessions of a Revolutionary he pointed to when the plebs walked out of Rome during their struggle with the aristocratic patricians in 494 B.C. In effect a general strike it left the patricians rulers of an empty city. He was sure that if this were repeated centralisation would soon be replaced by federalism.

[120] Paul Thomas, Karl Marx and the Anarchists (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul plc, 1985), 177-8

[121] quoted in Hayward, 201

[122] The Principle of Federation (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1980), 46

[123] General Idea of the Revolution, 151, 276-7

[124] Carnets 3: 293

[125] General Idea of the Revolution, 286

[126] Letter to Villiaumé, 24th January 1856 (Correspondance 7: 8-21)

[127] Vincent, 220

[128] Vincent, 157

[129] No Gods, No Masters, 67

[130] quoted in Woodcock, Proudhon, 143

[131] quoted in Alan Ritter, The Political Thought Of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969), 163

[132] See, for example, “Résumé de la Question Sociale” (Oeuvres Complètes 17: 29-30)

[133] quoted in Woodcock, Proudhon, 64

[134] quoted in Hayward, 186

[135] George Woodcock, Anarchism and Anarchists: Essays (Kingston, Ontario: Quarry Press, 1992), 150

[136] Proudhon’s arguments for electoral abstention can be found in his lengthy 1864 “Letter to Workers” (No Gods, No Masters, 110-122)

[137] “Proudhon always wished to separate the haute bourgeoisie from the petite bourgeoisie, and to reconcile the latter with salaried workers... all the works have the same fundamental message: cooperation between the proletariat and the petite bourgeoisie (or ‘middle-class’), exclusion of the haute bourgeoisie of propriétaires-capitalistes-entrepreneurs.” (Vincent, 293)

[138] Vincent, 222

[139] “If political right is inherent in man and citizen, consequently if suffrage ought to be direct, the same right is inherent as well, so much the more so, for each corporation [see note 52], for each commune or city, and the suffrage in each of these groups, ought to be equally direct.” (quoted in Vincent, 219)

[140] Oeuvres Complètes 6: 58. “My opinion is that the mandate should be imperative and at any moment revocable.” (Carnets 3: 45)

[141] Oeuvres Complètes 22: 125

[142] quoted in Vincent, 211, 219

[143] De La Justice dans La Révolution et dans L’Église, 4^th Study.

[144] Selected Writings, 123

[145] Selected Writings, 116-7

[146] Vincent, 210. Specifically: “it is when the representative of the people will be the expression of organised labour that the people will have a true representation... Outside of that, one had nothing but deception, impotence, waste, corruption, despotism.” Moreover: “The State, in a well organised society, must be reduced... to nothing.” (Oeuvres Complètes 17: 73)

[147] Vincent, 216

[148] System of Economical Contradictions, 253

[149] This should not be confused with nationalisation. See section I.3.3 [54] of An Anarchist FAQ.

[150] As Proudhon stressed in a letter to Pierre Leroux: “it does not follow at all... that I want to see individual ownership and non-organisation of the instruments of labour endure for all eternity. I have never penned nor uttered any such thing: and have argued the opposite a hundred times over.” (Correspondance, 14: 293)

[151] What is Property?, 107, 153

[152] Oeuvres Complètes 17: 188-9

[153] What is Property?, 167

[154] quoted in Ehrenberg, 48-9

[155] Principle of Federation, 67, 70-1, 72

[156] One argument against co-operatives is that they do not allow the diversification of risk (all the worker’s eggs are placed in one basket). Ignoring the obvious point that most workers today do not own shares and are dependent on their job to survive, this objection can be addressed, as David Ellerman points out, by means of “the horizontal association or grouping of enterprises to pool their business risk. The Mondragon co-operatives are associated together in a number of regional groups that pool their profits in varying degrees. Instead of a worker diversifying his or her capital in six companies, six companies partially pool their profits in a group or federation and accomplish the same risk-reduction purpose without transferable equity capital.” Thus “risk-pooling in federations of co-operatives” ensure that “transferable equity capital is not necessary to obtain risk diversification in the flow of annual worker income.” (The Democratic Worker-Owned Firm: A New Model for East and West [Boston, Mass.: Unwin Hyman, 1990], 104)

[157] Leninist David McNally talks of the “anarcho-socialist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon” and how Marx combated “Proudhonian socialism” before concluding that it was “non-socialism” because it has “wage-labour and exploitation.” (Against the Market: Political Economy, Market Socialism and the Marxist Critique [London: Verso, 1993], 139, 169). As Justin Schwartz correctly points out, “McNally is right that even in market socialism, market forces rule workers’ lives” and this is “a serious objection” however “it is not tantamount to capitalism or to wage labour” and it “does not have exploitation in Marx’s sense (i.e., wrongful expropriation of surplus by non-producers).” (The American Political Science Review 88: 4 [1994]: 982)

[158] Gluckstein, 72. Interestingly, various Marxists have suggested, but never proven, that neo-classical economics was a response to Marx. This not only ignores the earlier socialists who utilised classical economics to attack capitalism, it also ignores the awkward fact that Léon Walras, one of the founders of that economic theology, wrote a book attacking Proudhon in 1860.

[159] Engels stressed that the “object of production – to produce commodities – does not import to the instrument the character of capital” as the “production of commodities is one of the preconditions for the existence of capital... as long as the producer sells only what he himself produces, he is not a capitalist; he becomes so only from the moment he makes use of his instrument to exploit the wage labour of others.” (MECW 47: 179-80) In this he was merely echoing Marx (Capital: A Critique of Political Economy [London: Penguin Books, 1976] 1: 270-3, 875, 949-50)

[160] As Ellerman explains, the democratic workplace “is a social community, a community of work rather than a community of residence. It is a republic, or res publica of the workplace. The ultimate governance rights are assigned as personal rights... to the people who work in the firm... This analysis shows how a firm can be socialised and yet remain ‘private’ in the sense of not being government-owned.” In such an economy “the labour market would not exist” as labour would “always be the residual claimant.” “There would be a job market in the sense of people looking for firms they could join but it would not be a labour market in the sense of the selling of labour in the employment contract.” (76, 91)

[161] Vincent, 230

[162] quoted in Ritter, 121

[163] General Idea of the Revolution, 215-216

[164] quoted in Dorothy W. Douglas, “Proudhon: A Prophet of 1848: Part II”, The American Journal of Sociology 35: 1 (1929): 45

[165] Selected Writings, 70

[166] As added to the banner of Le Représentant du Peuple in August 1848, joining “What is the Producer? Nothing. What should he be? Everything!” (quoted in Woodcock, Proudhon, 136, 123)

[167] quoted in Hayward, 172

[168] “The school of Say,” Proudhon argued, was “the chief focus of counter-revolution” and “has for ten years past seemed to exist only to protect and applaud the execrable work of the monopolists of money and necessities, deepening more and more the obscurity of a science [economics] naturally difficult and full of complications.” (General Idea of the Revolution, 225) All of which seems sadly too applicable today!

[169] quoted in de Lubac, 190. Not to mention their role as apologists for the system: “Capitalistic exploitation, despised by the ancients, who certainly were better informed on this subject than we, for they saw it in its origin, was thus established: it was reserved for our century to supply it with defenders and advocates.” (Oeuvres Complètes 19: 236)

[170] Carnets 3: 209. Proudhon would not have been surprised that neo-classical economics turned political economy into little more than a public relations exercise for the rentier classes he criticised: capitalists, landlords and bankers. It was largely to counter such telling criticisms of their unearned wealth that economics was limited to mathematically expounding on unrealistic assumptions that are so blatantly self-serving to the status quo.

[171] Michael Bakunin: Selected Writings (London: Jonathan Cape, 1973), 100

[172] quoted in Ehrenberg, 111

[173] There is some irony in knowing that Marx eclipsed Proudhon thanks to these two developments that were dominated by Proudhon’s own followers.

[174] Douglas, 54

[175] “Anarchism Reconsidered”, Anarchism: A Documentary History of Libertarian Ideas (Montréal: Black Rose Books, 2009), Vol. 2, Robert Graham (ed.), 280

[176] Namely, racism and sexism. While he did place his defence of the patriarchal family at the core of his ideas, they are in direct contradiction to his own libertarian and egalitarian ideas. In terms of racism, he sometimes reflected the less-than-enlightened assumptions and prejudices of the nineteenth century. While this does appear in his public work, such outbursts are both rare and asides (usually an extremely infrequent passing anti-Semitic remark or caricature). In short, “racism was never the basis of Proudhon’s political thinking” (Gemie, 200-1) and “anti-Semitism formed no part of Proudhon’s revolutionary programme.” (Robert Graham, “Introduction”, General Idea of the Revolution, xxxvi) To quote Proudhon: “There will no longer be nationality, no longer fatherland, in the political sense of the words: they will mean only places of birth. Man, of whatever race or colour he may be, is an inhabitant of the universe; citizenship is everywhere an acquired right.” (General Idea of the Revolution, 283)

[177] Woodcock, Anarchism and Anarchists, 75. Marx fortuitously turned up to the founding meeting in 1864 after being invited by some German socialist exiles. The IWMA did not become “Marxist” until the gerrymandered Hague Congress of 1872 approved the expulsion of Bakunin and imposed the necessity of “political action” (i.e., standing for elections to capture political power) upon the organisation. It promptly collapsed, although the libertarian sections (such as Belgium, Spain and Italy) successfully organised their own IWMA congresses until 1877.

[178] According to Archer, “the philosophical structure of Tolain’s address derived” from Proudhon while the “preponderance of organisers and members of the International in France were Proudhonist.” (23) Varlin was “an autodidact bookbinder, labour organiser and leading Proudhonist member of the International.” (Tomes, 81)

[179] Woodcock, Anarchism, 198-9

[180] Archer, 45

[181] G.D.H. Cole, A History Of Socialist Thought (London: Macmillan, 1961), Vol. 2, 140

[182] quoted in Hayward, 246. Proudhon had “predicted in March 1848 the internationalism of the Red Flag.” (Hayward, 246)

[183] Archer, xxi

[184] Archer, xxi, 69, 101. As an example of the ambiguity of words used at the time, public ownership was to be achieved by means of the state, although the “state” was defined as a “collectivity of individuals” with “no interests apart from society.” (quoted in Archer, 101)

[185] Archer, 171

[186] Archer, 128

[187] quoted in Guérin, Anarchism, 47. At the Brussels Congress, De Paepe had “reminded Tolain and other opponents of collective property that they were in favour of collectivising mines, railroads, and canals.” (Archer, 127)

[188] Anarchism, 47

[189] Archer, 170

[190] Anarchism and Anarchist Communism (London: Freedom Press, 1987), 16-7

[191] Cole, 168

[192] quoted in Archer, 196

[193] Berry, 17

[194] Tomes, 84, 117-8. Gustave Courbet was one of France’s most famous painters, one of the Commune’s leading members and Proudhon’s close friend.

[195] The Paris Commune of 1871: The View From the Left (London: Cape, 1972), Eugene Schulkind (ed.), 68-9. The “socialism of the Commune was almost exclusively the work of individuals with close ties to the International.” (Archer, 258)

[196] Anarchist Portraits (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988), 232, 231

[197] Thomas, 194

[198] Tomes, 73

[199] The Marx-Engels Reader, 633

[200] Vincent, 232. It “might have been written by Proudhon himself.” (Woodcock, Proudhon, 276)

[201] The Marx-Engels Reader, 633, 632, 635

[202] No Gods, No Masters, 78-9. Proudhon raised similar demands in his pamphlet Democracy earlier that year while Bakunin had been advocating mandated and recallable delegates to federal social organisations for some time before 1871. (No Gods, No Masters, 181-2)

[203] Schulkind (ed.), 191

[204] Michael Bakunin and Karl Marx (Melbourne: A. Maller, 1948), 212-3

[205] Archer, 260

[206] Schulkind (ed.), 164, 167

[207] The Marx-Engels Reader, 635

[208] Schulkind (ed.), 63-4

[209] The Marx-Engels Reader, 626

[210] No Gods, No Masters, 78

[211] System of Economical Contradictions, p. 132

[212] MECW 23: 370

[213] MECW 42: 326

[214] Tomes, 93

[215] Vincent, 232

[216] Discussion of this important issue is outside the scope of this introduction. Those interested in the anarchist analysis and critique of the Paris Commune, and of Marxist accounts of it, can consult my article “The Paris Commune,Marxism and Anarchism” [55] (Anarcho-Syndicalist Review 50 [2008])

[217] Michael Bakunin: Selected Writings, 261

[218] Proudhon drew on such movements and ideas, such as the mutualist ideas of the French workers, particularly those in Lyon, as well as libertarian tendencies in the Great French Revolution.

[219] As such mutualism must be considered as one of the four main forms of social anarchism alongside collectivism, communism and syndicalism (see section A.3.2 [56] of An Anarchist FAQ).

[220] Avrich, 137

[221] Avrich, 140, 139

[222] Mutual Banking (West Brookfield: O. S. Cooke, 1850), 49-50, 37, 34

[223] quoted in Avrich, 141

[224] Instead of a Book, 323

[225] Frank H. Brooks, “Ideology, Strategy, and Organization: Dyer Lum and the American Anarchist Movement”, Labor History 34: 1 (1993): 72, 71

[226] See section G.1.3 [57] of An Anarchist FAQ. Sections G.4.1 [58] and G.4.2 [59] discuss the contradictions in supporting wage labour while opposing political authority and supporting “occupancy and use.”

[227] Paul Avrich, Anarchist Voices: An Oral History of Anarchism in America (Edinburgh/Oakland: AK Press, 2005), 5

[228] Michael Bakunin: Selected Writings, 198.

[229] “Modern Science and Anarchism”, 74, 78

[230] Bakunin on Anarchism, 2^nd edition (Montréal: Black Rose, 1980), 402

[231] As do other forms of socialism. This can be seen from libertarian communist William Morris who classed the French anarchist as “the most noteworthy figure” of a group of “Socialist thinkers who serve as a kind of link between the Utopians and the school of... scientific Socialists.” As far as his critique of property went, Morris argued that in What is Property?, Proudhon’s “position is that of a Communist pure and simple.” (Political Writings: Contributions to Justice and Commonweal 1883-1890 [Bristol: Thoemmes Press, 1994], 569-70)

[232] Anarchist Essays (London: Freedom Press, 2000), 20-1

[233] While firmly supporting the patriarchal family, Proudhon also stressed that he did “not mistake the family for the model of society” as he considered it “the rudiment of royalty” while “the model of civil society is the fraternal association.” (No Gods, No Masters, 79)

[234] “On Being Human”, Anarchism: A Documentary History of Libertarian Ideas, Volume 1: From Anarchy to Anarchism (300CE-1939) (Montréal: Black Rose Books, 2005) Robert Graham (ed.), 68-71

[235] quoted in Carolyn J. Eichner, “‘Vive La Commune!’ Feminism, Socialism, and Revolutionary Revival in the Aftermath of the 1871 Paris Commune”, Journal of Women’s History 15: 2 (2003): 75

[236] The Basic Bakunin, 153, 152

[237] The Political Philosophy of Bakunin, 293. Even a large co-operative sector would be unlikely to reform society. As Emma Goldman noted, after reading Proudhon’s General Idea in the light of the Spanish Revolution had Proudhon’s had been accurate then” the collectivisation of the economy after the start of the civil war “should have weakened the republican government, but as a matter of fact it has not.” It only gave the state “a breathing space so that they could reorganise their forces and become the dead weight of the Revolution.” (Vision on Fire [Edinburgh/Oakland: AK Press, 2006], 275)

[238] see section H.2.8 [60] of An Anarchist FAQ.

[239] “As early as the 1860’s and 1870’s, the followers of Proudhon and Bakunin in the First International were proposing the formation of workers’ councils designed both as a weapon of class struggle against capitalists and as the structural basis of the future libertarian society.” (Paul Avrich, The Russian Anarchists [Edinburgh/Oakland: AK Press, 2005], 73) Echoing Proudhon, leading syndicalist Fernand Pelloutier argued that the aim was “to constitute within the bourgeois State a veritable socialist (economic and anarchic) State.” (quoted in Jeremy Jennings, Syndicalism in France: A Study of Ideas [London: Macmillan, 1990], 22). The IWW’s “we are building a new world in the shell of the old” has obvious similarities to Proudhon’s 1848 call that “a new society be founded in the centre of the old society.” (Oeuvres Complètes 17:25)

[240] Proudhon’s anti-communism is well known but there are different schools of communism, just as there are different schools of socialism. As Kropotkin argued “before and in 1848, the theory [of communism] was put forward in such a shape as to fully account for Proudhon’s distrust as to its effect upon liberty. The old idea of Communism was the idea of monastic communities under the severe rule of elders or of men of science for directing priests. The last vestiges of liberty and of individual energy would be destroyed, if humanity ever had to go through such a communism.” (Act for Yourselves [London: Freedom Press, 1988], 98) This is not to suggest that Proudhon would have agreed with communist-anarchism (after all, he rejected Joseph Déjacque’s communistic interpretation of his ideas) merely that Proudhon’s opposition to state communism does not mean that anarchists cannot be libertarian communists. This was the position often taken by the American Individualist Anarchists around Tucker, with him in the lead. However, as discussed in section G.2.1 [61] of An Anarchist FAQ, they also regularly admitted that voluntary communism was compatible with anarchism making their strident anti-communism both contradictory and needlessly sectarian.

[241] The Conquest of Bread (Edinburgh/Oakland: AK Press, 2008), 189, 191, 188

[242] Guérin, “From Proudhon to Bakunin”, 33

[243] Vincent, 232.

[244] Woodcock, Anarchism, 239. Significantly, when Bakunin met him at the International’s Basel Congress and, “once the program of the Alliance was explained to” him, Varlin said he “shared the same ideas and agreed to co-ordinate with their revolutionary plans.” (Archer, 186)

[245] quoted in Hayward, 211

PROUDHON: A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

PROUDHON: A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

Pierre-Joseph Proudhon was born on 15^th of January 1809 in the town of Besançon in Franche-Comté, a province in the east of France bordering the Jura region of Switzerland. Almost unique for his time, he was a major socialist thinker who was working class and he declared that his aim was to work “for the complete liberation of [his] brothers and comrades.”[1] He lived in a period of massive social and economic change. The industrialisation of France was beginning (its full flowering came in the 1860s), he grew up surrounded by those who had taken part in the Revolution of 1789, experienced the July Revolution of 1830 and saw the birth of the French labour and socialist movements in the 1830s. All these influenced his ideas.

After a brief period at the college in Besancon he was forced to leave school before completing his baccalaureate in order to support his family. In 1828 he became a working compositor; later he rose to be a corrector for the press. The following year he met utopian socialist Charles Fourier when supervising the printing of his Le Nouveau Monde Industriel et Sociétaire. Having several discussions with Fourier, he later recounted that for “six whole weeks” he was “the captive of this bizarre genius.”[2] While rejecting Fourier’s utopian visions of perfect and regulated communities in favour of a “scientific socialism,”[3] he had a lasting influence as can be seen in many of Proudhon’s works.

The turning point in Proudhon’s life came when, in 1838, he was awarded a scholarship to study in Paris by the Besançon Academy. The following year saw him write the treatise On The Utility of Sunday Observance from the Viewpoints of Public Hygiene, Morality and Civic and Family Relations. However, 1840 saw him produce the work that ensured his lasting fame: What is Property? An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government. This work was to encapsulate the core themes of his life’s work – liberty, social justice, the iniquities of capitalist property rights, the epochal importance of socialism and his theory of anarchism. It caused a sensation and Proudhon was soon recognised as a leading light of the French, indeed international, socialist movement. It also resulted in the public prosecutor sending a recommendation to the Minister of Justice that a case be launched against him. Fortunately for Proudhon, leading economist Jérome-Adolphe Blanqui was approached by the Minister over the book’s seditious nature. Blanqui had been assigned the book to review and while disagreeing with it, declared it was a philosophical work which would appeal only to “high intelligences and cultivated minds.”[4] This verdict was accepted and Proudhon was spared prosecution.

What is Property? was quickly followed by two more works. In 1841 he wrote his Second Memoir on property (Letter to M. Blanqui) were he developed his ideas in a reply to comments made by Blanqui. His Third Memoir (Warning to Proprietors) was published in 1842 and answered criticisms by a follower of Fourier. This work was seized by the Besançon public prosecutor and Proudhon was charged with “1, Attacking Property; 2, Troubling the public peace by exciting mistrust or hatred of the citizens against one or more persons; 3, Exciting hatred and mistrust of the King’s Government; 4, Outrage to the Catholic religion.”[5] Proclaiming his work too hard to follow and not wishing to imprison someone due to misunderstanding their ideas, the jury refused to convict Proudhon.

His next major work was published in the following year. On the Creation of Order in Humanity adapted Fourier’s “serial method” and was an attempt to develop a comprehensive social science premised on Fourier’s anti-rationalist social theory and Auguste Comte’s philosophy of history. He later admitted that this work was not successful, but it discussed a set of themes he was to return to again and again. Proudhon also moved to Lyons, serving for several years as an office manager for a water transport firm. This allowed him to travel and he frequently stayed in Paris, where Marx, Bakunin, and Herzen visited him to discuss ideas. In Lyons, he became part of the flourishing radical scene and met with its revolutionary silk-weavers who called themselves Mutualists and argued for a form of associational socialism based on producer co-operatives and credit unions. They had a significant influence on Proudhon, reflected by “his preoccupation at this period with the idea of an association of workers.”[6] These influences and thoughts were publicly expressed in 1846 with the publication of the two volume System of Economic Contradictions, or The Philosophy of Misery in which he proclaimed his own ideas mutualism.

In October 1847 Proudhon settled in Paris again, hoping to start a newspaper. When the 1848 Revolution broke out, he helped build barricades and set the type for the first republican proclamation. A group of workers, fresh from the barricades and still armed with muskets, visited Proudhon and asked that he resume his plan to publish a newspaper. He agreed and Le Répresentant du Peuple (The Representative of the People) was born, its masthead proclaiming “What is the producer? Nothing! What should he be? Everything!”[7] This was the first of four newspapers Proudhon edited during the revolution, all with “People” in their name and all suppressed by the state.[8]

Fearing, rightly, that the Republicans had “made a revolution without an idea”[9] Proudhon used his articles to comment on events, criticise the policies of the government and stress the need to go beyond mere political reform as this could never solve problems whose roots were primarily economic. Socio-economic change was essential.[10] His first major works after the revolution included an analysis of its causes and meaning and a critique of (statist) democracy, subsequently published as Solution of the Social Problem. These were quickly followed by the Organisation of Credit and Circulation in which he argued that a Bank of Exchange was required to both solve the economic problems facing France and secure the end of capitalism.

However, it was the various incarnations of his newspapers that Proudhon made his greatest impact on the public and by the end of 1848 he was being read by 40,000 mostly working-class readers.[11] These articles present a libertarian, albeit reformist,[12] analysis of the revolution and how to solve its problems. This clarified his own ideas, as it forced him to present positive ideas to change society for the better, as well as enriching anarchist theory for later libertarians to build upon.

In April 1848 he stood as a candidate in the elections for the Constituent Assembly with his name appearing on the ballots in Paris, Lyon, Besançon, and Lille. He proclaimed in his election manifesto that he regarded “Property is theft!” as “the greatest truth of the century” and that “the negation of property is necessary for the abolition of misery, for the emancipation of the proletariat.”[13] Unsuccessful, he was not deterred and ran in the complementary elections held on June 4^th and was duly elected.[14] He later recalled:

When I think of everything that I have said, written and published over these past ten years regarding the State’s role in society, bringing the authorities to heel and government’s disqualification from revolution, I am tempted to believe that my election in June 1848 was the result of some incomprehension on the part of the people… I may have appeared momentarily to the society which I take for my judge and the authorities with whom I want no truck, as a formidable agitator.[15]

Following the June Days, Proudhon’s paper was temporarily suppressed when he demanded immediate economic relief for the working class and appealed directly to the National Guard for support. Viewed by conservatives as a leading member of the left, his proposals for reform were condemned on the floor of the assembly by Adolphe Thiers. Proudhon responded on July 31^st with a three-and-a-half-hour speech that stressed “social liquidation” was needed and that the end of property was the real meaning of the revolution. He was defiant in the face of hecklers: “When I say WE, I identify myself with the proletariat; when I say YOU, I identify you with the bourgeois class.”[16] Only one representative, a socialist worker from Lyons, supported Proudhon and a motion of censure was passed (with socialists like Louis Blanc and Pierre Leroux voting for it). Even Marx had to (grudgingly) admit that “his attitude in the National Assembly merits nothing but praise.”[17]

When La Représentant du Peuple was allowed to reappear in August and “What is the capitalist? Everything! What should he be? Nothing!” was added to its masthead.[18] The repression did not dull its social criticism, with Proudhon on fine ironic form with the searing The Malthusians attacking bourgeois hypocrisy and laissez-faire capitalism. It was soon, however, completely suppressed, but Proudhon himself could not be prosecuted because he enjoyed parliamentary immunity.

In October 1848, Proudhon gave a Toast to the Revolution at a banquet in Paris. He spoke on the successive manifestation of justice in human life (what he termed a “permanent revolution”) before concluding that revolutionary power lay not with the government, but in the people. Only the people, acting themselves, could achieve social transformation. That month also saw the launch of Le Peuple (The People) in which Proudhon argued that the creation of a strong executive elected directly by the people was monarchical and reactionary. Initially, he advocated abstaining in the Presidential election but then supported the candidacy of socialist François-Vincent Raspail. Proudhon’s election manifesto was serialised in Le Peuple and is a succinct summation of his socio-economic ideas. Very successful, the newspaper turned from a weekly to a daily at the end of November.[19]

A few days later, Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte won the Presidential election in a surprise landslide. Proudhon had strenuously opposed Louis-Napoléon before the election and redoubled his criticism afterwards. He accurately predicted on the 22^nd of December 1848 that Louis-Napoléon would produce a “monarchical restoration” and “organise the crusade of the exploiters against the exploited.”[20] As well as continued journalism, Proudhon tried to create a bank of exchange, now called the Bank of the People. Organised in early 1849 with the participation of workers previously associated with the Luxembourg Commission, it soon had over ten thousand adherents (mostly workers) but its assets were meagre and so was essentially stillborn.

Faced with Proudhon’s attacks and attempts at socialist reform, the conservative government responded by getting the assembly to lift Proudhon’s immunity from prosecution. Charged with sedition, he was sentenced in March 1849 to three years in prison and fined 3,000 Francs. Proudhon liquidated his Bank of the People, ostensibly to prevent it from falling into the hands of the authorities, and went into hiding (although he still wrote articles for Le Peuple). On June 5^th he was finally caught and imprisoned in Sainte-Pélagie.

During his three years in prison he founded and wrote for two newspapers (with the assistance of Alexander Herzen), wrote four books, married Euphrasie Piégard and fathered a child.[21] Two of the books written in prison became classic works of libertarian thought while his polemics with leading representatives of the statist left and laissez-faire right showed the weaknesses of both. Clearly, he spent his time as a political prisoner well.

The first book to appear was Confessions of a Revolutionary (1849), Proudhon’s personal account of the 1848 revolution and its lessons. It argued that social revolution could not be achieved by means of the state, a structure incapable of being revolutionised or utilised for social transformation. He stressed how his own experiences as a politician confirmed his previous arguments on the impossibility of implementing social reform from above by means of the state. Only a revolution “from below” could achieve change. Then, during the winter of 1849, Proudhon participated in two polemics in La Voix du Peuple (The Voice of the People). The first was an exchange of letters with laissez-faire economist Frédéric Bastiat on the justice of usury. It was subsequently published as a pamphlet entitled Interest and Principal (1850). The second was with Blanc and Leroux over the nature of socialism, revolution and the state, clarifying the differences between the two schools of socialism – libertarian and state.

The next book written in prison was General Idea of the Revolution in the Nineteenth Century (1851). This summarised Proudhon’s ideas on social, economic and political transformation and was his solution to the problems and contradictions of capitalism he had raised in the 1840s, “the scientific and positive conclusion which System of [Economic] Contradictions was only the preamble.”[22] Broken into seven studies, with a striking epilogue, it sketched his ideas both on the nature of a free socio-economic order, how to create it and the need for anarchy – self-managed social and economic associations bound by free agreements.

Just as Proudhon had warned, Louis-Napoléon seized power in a coup d’état on 2^nd December 1851 to remain head of state. As Proudhon was already a prisoner, he avoided the repression inflicted upon the left by the new regime. He was outraged by the brutality of the army, but the lack of popular resistance to the coup and its subsequent approval by an overwhelming majority in a referendum profoundly disillusioned Proudhon.

The third book was published shortly after Proudhon’s release from prison in July 1852. Pointing to the regime’s popular support, The Social Revolution Demonstrated by the Coup d'État of Second of December 1851 tried to make the best of a bad situation. Calling the coup “the act of a highway robber,” he stressed that he was “opposed to dictatorship and any type of coup d'État” and was “repelled by dictatorship,” considering it “a theocratic and barbarous institution, in every case a menace to liberty.” Having “defended universal suffrage,” he did “not ask that it be repressed” but rather “that it be organised, and that it lives.” Although recognising Louis-Napoléon’s support in the bourgeoisie, Proudhon urged him to use the mandate of the referendum to implement economic and political reforms. The choice was either “anarchy or Caesarism… there is no middle course… you are caught between the Emperor and the Social Republic!”[23] Perhaps unsurprisingly, Louis-Napoléon chose not to abolish his own power and, after another referendum, proclaimed himself Emperor on 2^nd December 1852.

The fourth book, Philosophy of Progress (1853), was more theoretical in nature and comprised of the two lengthy letters sent from prison in 1851. While having little to do with the Revolutions of 1848 or even politics in general, it proved too much for the Imperial Censors. While not banned, the police declared that allowing publication did not guarantee that Proudhon would not be prosecuted. Finally published in Belgium, the police did ban its import into France.

French publishers consistently refused to handle his new works. His next major book, initially published anonymously, was the Stock Exchange Speculator’s Manual (1853). Its title hid a subversive message – the abolition of wage-labour, the end of the capitalist company and the advocacy of producer and consumer associations. Originally written as a source of much needed income for his family, it took until the enlarged 3^rd edition of 1856 before Proudhon put his name on it.

Then came the publication of his magus opus, the massive Justice in the Revolution and in the Church, (1858). This work is divided into twelve studies, on a host of subjects, each relating to the social origin of justice in that area. Arguing against religious claims of revelatory justice and philosophical ideas about rationalism, Proudhon argued that justice in areas of philosophy, work, the state, education, and so on, can be determined by the correspondence of social utility, conscience and historical “immanence.” His conclusions range from the radical (“The land to those who cultivate it”; “Capital to those who use it”; “The product to the producer”[24]) to the conservative (patriarchy, marriage and women). The book sold exceptionally well considering it was nearly 2000 pages, but hopes for a second edition were foiled when the police seized the remaining copies and Proudhon was charged by the authorities two days after publication for attacking religion, law, morality and (ironically) the family.

To avoid jail, Proudhon and his family left in July 1858 for indefinite exile in Belgium. There, his focus turned almost exclusively to foreign affairs and in 1861 War and Peace[25] was published. A much misrepresented book, this work continued themes developed in Justice and sought to discover how war as a historical process shaped norms of social justice as well as to understand the nature and causes of war in order to end it. In the first volume Proudhon extolled the virtues of war in pre-industrial society before denouncing it as barbaric and antiquated in an age where indiscriminate killing was becoming the norm as war was increasingly industrialised. Proudhon argued that war could now be ended because “the Revolution made the public conscience the only interpreter of right, the only judge of the material world and the only sovereign, which constitutes true democracy and marked the end of priesthood and militarism.” Moreover, war was rooted in inequality and “whatever the officially declared reasons” it existed only “for exploitation and property” and “until the constitution of economic right, between nations as well as between individuals, war does not have any other function on earth.” Given this, radical economic reform was required and “[o]nly the toiling masses are able to put an end to war, by creating economic equilibrium, which presupposes a radical revolution in ideas and morals.” It concluded: “HUMANITY DOES NOT WANT ANY MORE WAR.”[26]

Proudhon returned to Paris in September 1862, taking advantage of a general amnesty. This marked a renewed involvement in French politics and in 1863 he began a campaign urging the casting of blank ballots as a protest against the Second Empire. That year also saw the publication of The Federative Principle in which he discussed the necessity of a federal social structure as the best alternative to centralised states as well as the required economic reforms needed to maintain a just social order. An “agricultural-industrial federation” would complement and support the federation of communes and stop the degeneration of both the economic and political systems into inequality and tyranny.

In 1864, Henri Tolain published what was to become known as the Manifesto of the Sixty. It demanded social reforms and urged standing working class candidates in elections to achieve them. A group of workers wrote to Proudhon, asking his thoughts on this development and in a lengthy Letter to Workers he replied that while overjoyed by these public stirrings of the workers’ movement, he was critical of their electoral stand. With his health deteriorating,[27] he composed his last work The Political Capacity of the Working Class to address the issues raised. His political testament, it summarised his views after 25 years of fighting for socialism. He presented a mutualist analysis of economics, federalism, association, and a host of other issues and urged workers and peasants to reject all participation in bourgeois politics in favour of creating their own self-managed organisations. By so doing, they would become conscious of themselves as a class and their ability to replace the bourgeois regime with a mutualist one based on his three great loves – freedom, equality and justice.

Proudhon died in his wife’s arms on January 19^th 1865 and is buried in Montparnasse cemetery, Paris.[28] Thousands followed the casket and thronged the cemetery, saying a final goodbye to one of the greatest socialist thinkers the world has ever seen.

End Notes

[1] quoted in Hayward, 172           

[2] quoted in Woodcock, Proudhon, 13

[3] What is Property?, 264. Critiques of utopianism played a large role in System of Economic Contradictions.

[4] quoted in Woodcock, 55

[5] Woodcock, 66

[6] Woodcock, 74

[7] Woodcock, 123

[8] La Représentant du Peuple (February to August 1848); Le Peuple (September 1848 to June 1849); La Voix du Peuple (September 1849 to May 1850); Le Peuple de 1850 (June to October 1850).

[9] quoted in Woodcock, 119

[10] “Never modest concerning his abilities, Proudhon wrote in his notebooks that the Revolution was doomed without his help.” (Vincent, p. 169)

[11] Ehrenberg, 103

[12] As Proudhon himself recognised in 1850, he was a “man of polemics, not of the barricades.” (quoted in Vincent, 169)

[13] Oeuvres Complètes,  17: 45

[14] “Most of the votes for Proudhon were cast in working-class districts of Paris – a fact which stands in contrast to the claims of some Marxists, who have said he was representative only of the petite bourgeoisie.” (Hoffman, 136)

[15] No Gods, No Masters, 68

[16] quoted in Vincent, 186

[17] The Poverty of Philosophy, 200

[18] Woodcock, 136

[19] Ehrenberg, 122

[20] quoted in Vincent, 189

[21] He rejected a Church wedding: “When the Pope becomes a social democrat I will allow him to bless my marriage.” (quoted in Hayward, 207) The first of three daughters: Catherine, Marcelle and Stephanie. Sadly, Marcelle died of cholera in the summer of 1854 aged two.

[22] Correspondance, 3: 377

[23] December 2, 1851: Contemporary Writings on the coup d'état of Louis Napoleon (Garden City, N.J.; Doubleday, 1972), John B. Halsted (ed.), 253, 276, 283, 261, 307

[24] Oeuvres Complètes, 22: 264. These are possible because labour is “reconciled by its free nature with capital and property, from which wage-labour banished it, [and so] cannot cause a distinction of classes.” This “makes society, as well as [economic] science, safe from any contradiction.”

[25] Pacifist thinker Leo Tolstoy was so impressed by this work he borrowed its title for his own masterpiece.

[26] Oeuvres Complètes 14: 327, 272, 300, 330

[27] In fact, he dictated its last chapters as he lay in bed dying

[28] Second division, near the Lenoir alley, in the tomb of the Proudhon family.

On Terminology

On Terminology

In terms of the language he used, Proudhon was by no means consistent. Thus we have the strange sight of the first self-proclaimed anarchist often using “anarchy” in the sense of chaos. Then there is the use of the terms property and the state, both of which Proudhon used to describe aspects of the current system which he opposed and the desired future he hoped for.

After 1850, Proudhon started to increasingly use the term “property” to describe the possession he desired. This climaxed in the posthumously published Theory of Property[1] in which he apparently proclaimed his whole-hearted support for “property.” Proudhon’s enemies seized on this but a close reading, as Woodcock demonstrates, finds no such thing:

Much has been made of this essay in an attempt to show that it represents a retreat from Proudhon’s original radicalism. Fundamentally, it does not... What Proudhon does is to change his definition of property... he is thinking, not of the usurial property he condemned in his earlier works, but of the property that guarantees the independence of the peasant and artisan... Because of his changes in definition, Proudhon appears more conservative, but the alterations are not radical, since he continues to uphold the basic right of the producer to control his land or his workshop.[2]

This can easily been seen when Proudhon re-iterated his opposition to ownership of land:

I quite agree that the man who first ploughed up the land should receive compensation for his labour. What I cannot accept, regarding land, is that the work put in gives a right to ownership of what has been worked on.[3]

Workers associations continued to play a key role in his theory (with workplaces becoming “little republics of workingmen”[4]). The only difference, as Stewart Edwards notes, was that “Proudhon came to consider that liberty could be guaranteed only if property ownership was not subject to any limitation save that of size.”[5] Proudhon stressed that property “must be spread and consolidated... more equally.” This was because he was still aware of its oppressive nature, arguing that it was “an absolutism within an absolutism,” and “by nature autocratic.” Its “politics could be summed up in a single word,” namely “exploitation.” “Simple justice,” he stressed, “requires that equal division of land shall not only operate at the outset. If there is to be no abuse, it must be maintained from generation to generation.”[6]

Resources were seen as being divided equally throughout a free society, which would be without concentrations and inequalities of wealth and the economic power, exploitation and oppression that they produced. The Proudhon of the 1860s was not so different from the firebrand radical of 1840. This can be seen when he wrote that his works of the 1840s contained “the mutualist and federative theory of property” in his last book, The Political Capacity of the Working Classes.[7]

Then there is his use of the term “state” and “government” to describe both the current centralised and top-down regime he opposed as well as the decentralised, bottom-up federation of the social organisation of the future. While these terms were used as synonyms for “social organisation” their use can only bred confusion so raising the possibility that he moved from libertarian to liberal socialism.

Thus we find him discussing States within a confederation while maintaining that “the federal system is the contrary of hierarchy or administrative and governmental centralisation” and that “a confederation is not exactly a state... What is called federal authority, finally, is no longer a government; it is an agency created... for the joint execution of certain functions.”[8] His aim was “to found an order of things wherein the principle of the sovereignty of the people, of man and of the citizen, would be implemented to the letter” and “where every member” of a society, “retaining his independence and continuing to act as sovereign, would be self-governing.” Social organisation “would concern itself solely with collective matters; where as a consequence, there would be certain common matters but no centralisation.” He suggests that “under the democratic constitution... the political and the economic are... one and the same system... based upon a single principle, mutuality... and form this vast humanitarian organism of which nothing previously could give the idea”: “is this not the system of the old society turned upside down… ?” he asks.[9] If so, then why suggest that this new “humanitarian organism” is made up of states as well as communes and confederations?

The confusions that this would provoke are obvious and, unsurprisingly, later anarchists have been more consistent in what they described as a state. Not all forms of social organisation can be equated to the State and more appropriate words are needed to describe a fundamentally new form of socio-political institution.[10]

Moreover, Proudhon saw anarchy as a long term goal and advocated appropriate means to achieve it.[11] If we remember that Proudhon sometimes referred to anarchy as a form of government[12] we should not construe his extensive discussion of governments and governmental forms as a rejection of anarchist ideas. Even during his most anarchistic phase in 1849 he suggested that “as the negation of property implies that of authority, I immediately deduced from my definition this no less paradoxical corollary: that the authentic form of government is anarchy.”[13] It should also be remembered that in the 1850s and 1860s Proudhon was, bar a period of exile in Belgium, writing under the watchful eyes of the censors of the Second Empire and so, perhaps, toned down some of his language as a result. Similarly, the reactionary atmosphere of the period and lack of social protest may have played their part (as can be seen from the return to radicalism shown by The Political Capacity of the Working Classes written in response to the stirrings of the labour movement in the early 1860s).

Then there is “democracy”, a concept Proudhon eviscerated in his seminal 1848 article of the same name but later he was more than happy to proclaim that the “federative, mutualist republican sentiment” will “bring about the victory of Worker Democracy right around the world.”[14] A close reading shows that his main opposition to democracy in 1848 was that it was, paradoxically, not democratic enough as it referred to the Jacobin notion that the whole nation as one body should elect a government. However, within a decentralised system it was a case of providing “a little philosophy of universal suffrage, in which I show that this great principle of democracy is a corollary of the federal principle or nothing.”[15]

This changing terminology and ambiguous use of terms like government, state, property and so forth can cause problems when interpreting Proudhon. This is not to suggest that he is inconsistent or self-contradictory. In spite of changing from “possession” to “property” between 1840 and 1860 what Proudhon actually advocated was remarkably consistent.[16] This caveat should be borne in mind when reading Proudhon and these ambiguities in terminology should be taken into consideration when evaluating his ideas.

End Notes

[1] This was prepared by J.A. Langlois, his old friend and follower, and others from the notes Proudhon had been working on during the three last years of his life. Except for the first chapter, it was not completed by Proudhon.

[2] Woodcock, Proudhon, 239-40. Ironically, Proudhon recognised the confusion this would cause in 1841: “it is proper to call different things by different names, if we keep the name ‘property’ for [individual possession], we must call [the domain of property] robbery, repine, brigandage. If, on the contrary, we reserve the name ‘property’ for the latter, we must designate the former by the term possession or some other equivalent; otherwise we should be troubled with an unpleasant synonym.” (What is Property?, 373)

[3] Selected Writings, 129

[4] quoted in Douglas, 45

[5] Selected Writings, 33

[6] Selected Writings, 133, 141, 140, 134, 129

[7] De la Capacité Politique des Classes Ouvrières (Paris: Lacroix, 1868), 142

[8] Principle of Federation, 41, 40-1

[9] Graham (ed.), Vol. 1, 74-5

[10] “The anarchists soon saw... that it was rather dangerous for them to use the same word as the authoritarians while giving it a quite different meaning. They felt that a new concept called for a new word and that the use of the old term could be dangerously ambiguous; so they ceased to give the name ‘State’ to the social collective of the future.” (Guérin, Anarchism, 60-1). While, for some, this may appear to be purely a case of semantics, anarchists would reply that it just shows intellectual confusion to use the same name to describe things that are fundamentally organised in different ways and for different purposes. See section H.2.1 [62] of AFAQ.

[11] As he put it in the 1860s, “centuries will pass before that ideal may be attained” but he wished to “grow unceasingly nearer to that end, and it is thus that I uphold the principle of federation.” (quoted in Woodcock, Proudhon, 249)

[12] Anarchy is one of “four forms of government”, government “of each by each” and the phrase “anarchic government” was not “impossible” nor “the idea absurd.” (Principle of Federation, 8-9, 11).

[13] No Gods, No Masters, 46

[14] Graham (ed.), Vol. 1, 77

[15] quoted in Woodcock, Proudhon, 251

[16] The peasants “desired to own the property they worked” and Proudhon was “quite content to call such ownership ‘proprietary.’” Before ownership limited to what was necessary to earn a living was termed “possession” while “property” was “reserved for onerous seigniorial types of ownership. Proudhon was now perfectly happy to consider possession a form of property. There was a change in terminology, but there was no change in position.” (Vincent, 195)

Proudhon and Marx

PROUDHON AND MARX

No discussion of Proudhon would be complete without mentioning Marx particularly as Marx’s discussions of Proudhon’s ideas “span almost the entirety of his career”[17] The first public work on Marxism, The Poverty of Philosophy, was directed against Proudhon while jabs at him surface in Capital, Theories of Surplus Value and throughout his correspondence. For most Marxists (and even some anarchists) all they know of Proudhon has been gathered from Marx and Engels.

Suffice to say, the accounts of Marx and Engels are highly distorted and almost always charged with scorn.[18] This is unsurprising given that they considered Proudhon as their main theoretical competitor within the socialist movement. Indeed, at the start of the Franco-Prussian war Marx wrote that the French needed “a good hiding” and that a German victory would “shift the centre of gravity of West European labour movements from France to Germany” which would “mean the predominance of our theory over Proudhon’s.”[19]

Be that as it may, and regardless of the misrepresentations that Marx inflicted on Proudhon, it is also fair to say that he developed many of the themes he appropriated from Proudhon (“One of Marx’s most important teachers and the one who laid the foundations for his subsequent development.”[20]). As Marx suggested:

Proudhon’s treatise Qu’est-ce que la propriété? is the criticism of political economy from the standpoint of political economy... Proudhon’s treatise will therefore be scientifically superseded by a criticism of political economy, including Proudhon’s conception of political economy. This work became possible only owing to the work of Proudhon himself.[21]

Marx may well have done this, but in so doing he distorted Proudhon’s ideas and claimed many of his insights as his own. To set the record straight is not a call for Marx to be rejected in favour of Proudhon, it is a call for an honest appraisal of both.

The awkward fact is that many key aspects of Marxism were first suggested by Proudhon. For Benjamin Tucker “the tendency and consequences of capitalistic production... were demonstrated to the world time and time again during the twenty years preceding the publication of ‘Das Kapital’” by Proudhon, as were “the historical persistence of class struggles in successive manifestations.” “Call Marx, then, the father of State socialism, if you will,” Tucker argued, “but we dispute his paternity of the general principles of economy on which all schools of socialism agree.”[22] Moreover “Proudhon propounded and proved [the theory of surplus value] long before Marx advanced it.”[23]

Tucker had a point. It was Proudhon, not Marx, who first proclaimed the need for a “scientific socialism.”[24] It was Proudhon who first located surplus value production within the workplace, recognising that the worker was hired by a capitalist who then appropriates their product in return for a less than equivalent amount of wages. Marx, a mere 27 years later, agreed that “property turns out to be the right, on the part of the capitalist, to appropriate the unpaid labour of others or its product, and the impossibility, on the part of the worker, of appropriating his own product” as “the product belongs to the capitalist and not to the worker.”[25] He also repeated Proudhon’s analysis of “collective force” again without acknowledgement.[26] In The Holy Family he was more forthcoming:

Proudhon was the first to draw attention to the fact that the sum of the wages of the individual workers, even if each individual labour be paid for completely, does not pay for the collective power objectified in its product, that therefore the worker is not paid as a part of the collective labour power.[27]

Marx mocked that Proudhon “might perhaps have discovered that this right [of free competition] (with capital R) exists only in the Economic Manuals written by the Brothers Ignoramus of bourgeois political economy, in which manuals are contained such pearls as this: ‘Property is the fruit of labour’ (‘of the labour’, they neglect to add, ‘of others’).”[28] This would be the same Proudhon who proclaimed, three decades before, that “Property is the right to enjoy and dispose of another’s goods, – the fruit of another’s labour”?[29] He also ridiculed Proudhon for the axiom that “all labour must leave a surplus” by stating he “attempts to explain this fact” in capitalist production “by reference to some mysterious natural attribute of labour.” Yet Marx points to the “peculiar property” of labour that results in “the value of the labour-power” being “less than the value created by its use during that time”[30] which sounds remarkably like Proudhon’s axiom.

Little wonder Rudolf Rocker argued that we find “the theory of surplus value, that grand ‘scientific discovery’ of which our Marxists are so proud of, in the writings of Proudhon.”[31]

Comparing Proudhon’s critique of property with Marx’s we discover that “Communism deprives no man of the power to appropriate the products of society; all that it does is to deprive him of the power to subjugate the labour of others by means of such appropriation.”[32] Which echoes Proudhon’s argument that possession does not allow the appropriation of the means of life (land and workplaces) as these should be held in common.

Much the same can be said of the co-operative movement. For Marx it was “one of the transforming forces of the present society based upon class antagonism. Its great merit is to practically show, that the present pauperising, and despotic system of the subordination of labour to capital can be superseded by the republican and beneficent system of the association of free and equal producers.”[33] In the 1880s, Engels suggested as a reform the putting of public works and state-owned land into the hands of workers’ co-operatives rather than capitalists. Neither he nor Marx “ever doubted that, in the course of transition to a wholly communist economy, widespread use would have to be made of co-operative management as an intermediate stage” although “initially” the State “retains ownership of the means of production.”[34] That these echoed earlier comments by Proudhon goes without saying.

Marx argued that credit system presents “the means for the gradual extension of co-operative enterprises on a more or less national scale” and so the “development of credit” has “the latent abolition of capital ownership contained within it.” It “constitutes the form of transition to a new mode of production” and “there can be no doubt that the credit system will serve as a powerful lever in the course of transition from the capitalist mode of production to the mode of production of associated labour.”[35] Proudhon would hardly have disagreed. For Marx, abolishing interest and interest-bearing capital “means the abolition of capital and of capitalist production itself.”[36] For Proudhon, “reduction of interest rates to vanishing point is itself a revolutionary act, because it is destructive of capitalism.”[37]

Marx asserted that “Proudhon has failed to understand” that “economic forms” and “the social relations corresponding to them” are “transitory and historical,” thinking that “the bourgeois form of production” and “bourgeois relations” were “eternal.”[38] Yet Proudhon explicitly argued that the “present form” of organising labour “is inadequate and transitory.”[39] Hence the need to “organise industry, associate labourers and their functions.” Association “is the annihilation of property” and this “non-appropriation of the instruments of production” would be based on “the equality of associates.”[40]

Marx ignored this. He commented upon Proudhon’s exchange with Bastiat many times and in all of them overlooked that Proudhon was discussing a post-capitalist economy. Proudhon was well aware that under capitalism “a worker, without property, without capital, without work, is hired by [the capitalist], who gives him employment and takes his product” and his wages fail to equal the price of the commodities he creates. “In mutualist society”, however, “the two functions” of worker and capitalist “become equal and inseparable in the person of every worker” and so he “alone profits by his products” (and the “surplus” he creates).[41] So much for Marx’s assertion that this exchange showed Proudhon “want[ed] to preserve wage-labour and thus the basis of capital.”[42] As he acknowledged elsewhere, when “the direct producer” is “the possessor of his own means of production” then he is “a non-capitalist producer.” This is “a form of production that does not correspond to the capitalist mode of production” even if “he produces his product as a commodity.”[43]

Marx usually argued that Proudhon was “the scientific exponent of the French petty bourgeoisie, which is a real merit since the petty bourgeoisie will be an integral part of all impeding social revolutions”[44] and wrote The Philosophy of Poverty accordingly. Yet when it comes to Proudhon, Marx never expressed Capital’s clear distinction between commodity production and capitalism and presents him as advocating wage-labour. Proudhon explicitly did not and argued that while interest was justified in previous societies, it was not in a mutualist one and lambasted Bastiat for refusing to envision anything other than capitalism – a refusal Marx shared in this instance. So when Marx interpreted Proudhon as defending “the productive capitalist in contrast to the lending capitalist” and argued that ending interest “in no way affects the value of the hats, but simply the distribution of the surplus-value already contained in the hats among different people”[45] he utterly missed the point. Marx did, once, vaguely recognise this:

In order that it should be impossible for commodities and money to become capital and therefore be lent as capital in posse [in potential but not in actuality], they must not confront wage-labour. If they are... not to confront it as commodities and money... labour itself is not to become a commodity... this is only possible where the workers are the owners of their means of production... Mr. Proudhon’s hatters do not appear to be capitalists but journeymen.[46]

Precisely, Herr Marx, precisely…

So Marx, like Proudhon before him, differentiated between possession and private property and argued that co-operatives should replace capitalist firms. Both recognised that capitalism was but a transitory form of economy due to be replaced (as it replaced feudalism) with a new one based on associated rather than wage labour. While their specific solutions may have differed (with Proudhon aiming for a market economy consisting of artisans, farmers and co-operatives while Marx aimed, after a lengthy transition period, for centrally planned communism) their analysis of capitalism and private property were identical. Understandably, given the parallels, Marx was keen to hide them.

In terms of politics, Marx also repeated Proudhon. When Marx placed “the emancipation of the working classes must be conquered by the working classes themselves”[47] in the statues of the IWMA, the mutualist delegates must have remembered Proudhon’s exhortation from 1848 that “the proletariat must emancipate itself without the help of the government.”[48]

Both argued that the state was an instrument of class rule, Proudhon in 1846 and Marx a year later in reply to that work.[49] Then there is Proudhon’s call for a dual-power within the state in early 1848 and support for the clubs which Marx subsequently echoed in 1850 in an address to the Communist League.[50] With the Paris Commune of 1871, this appropriation became wholesale. Marx eulogised the political vision of the Communards without once mentioning that their decentralised, bottom-up system based on federations of mandated and recallable delegates who combined executive and legislative powers had been publicly urged by Proudhon since 1848.

Not bad for someone dismissed as an advocate of “Conservative, or bourgeois, socialism”![51] Of course, all this could be just a coincidence and just a case of great minds thinking alike – with one coming to the same conclusions a few years after the other expressed them in print…

The Poverty of Philosophy

Given all this, we can see the point of Proudhon’s comment, scribbled as a marginal note in his copy of Marx’s The Poverty of Philosophy, that “what Marx’s book really means is that he is sorry that everywhere I have thought the way he does, and said so before he did. Any determined reader can see that it is Marx who, having read me, regrets thinking like me. What a man!” And it is to that book which we need to turn, as no account of Proudhon’s ideas would be complete without a discussion of what the Frenchman proclaimed “a tissue of vulgarity, of calumny, of falsification and of plagiarism” written by “the tapeworm of socialism.”[52]

The Poverty of Philosophy[53] was written in reply to Proudhon’s System of Economic Contradictions. What to make of it?

First, it must be remembered that this work is not really about Proudhon but Marx. Proudhon’s fame is used to get people to read the work of an unknown radical thinker and for that thinker to expound his ideas on various subjects. Second, it is a hatchet-job of epic proportions – although as few Marxists bother to read Proudhon as Marx has pronounced judgment on him, they would not know that and so they contribute to “the perpetuation of a spiteful distortion of his thought” produced by Marx’s “desire to denigrate” his “strongest competitors.”[54]

While, undoubtedly, Marx makes some valid criticisms of Proudhon, the book is full of distortions. His aim was to dismiss Proudhon as being the ideologist of the petit-bourgeois[55] and he obviously thought all means were applicable to achieve that goal. So we find Marx arbitrarily arranging quotations from Proudhon’s book, often out of context and even tampered with, to confirm his own views. This allows him to impute to Proudhon ideas the Frenchman did not hold (often explicitly rejects!) in order to attack him. Marx even suggests that his own opinion is the opposite of Proudhon’s when, in fact, he is simply repeating the Frenchman’s thoughts. He takes the Frenchman’s sarcastic comments at face value, his metaphors and abstractions literally.[56] And, above all else, Marx seeks to ridicule him.[57]

Here we address a few of the many distortions Marx inflicted on Proudhon and see how his criticism has faired.[58]

Marx quotes Proudhon as stating that the economists “have very well explained the double character of value; but what they have not set out with equal clearness is its contradictory nature” and then goes on to state that, for Proudhon, the economists “have neither seen nor known, either the opposition or the contradiction” between use-value and exchange-value. (37-8) Marx then quotes three economists expounding on this contradiction. Except Proudhon had not suggested that economists had “neither seen nor known” this, but that they had “not set out with equal clearness” this contradiction. Presumably Marx hoped that readers would be distracted by his witticism to notice that he had lambasted Proudhon for something he had not actually said. Nor did Proudhon “say that J.B. Say was the first to recognise ‘that in the division of labour the same cause which produces good engenders evil.’” (140) Rather Proudhon wrote that “Say goes so far as to recognise that in the division of labour the same cause which produces the good engenders the evil.”[59] Which makes the subsequent quoting of economists showing that Say was not the first to recognise this fact misleading.

Marx repeatedly accused Proudhon of advocating ideas which he rejected in his book. We find Proudhon discussing the suggestion of an economist, M. Blanqui, who argued for “an increase of wages resulting from the co-partnership, or at least from the interest in the business, which he confers upon the labourers.” Proudhon then asked: “What, then, is the value to the labourer of a participation in the profits?” He replied by providing an example of a mill, whose profit amounts to “annual dividend of twenty thousand francs.” If this were divided by the number of employees and “by three hundred, the number of working days, I find an increase... of eighteen centimes, just a morsel of bread.” He concluded that this would be “a poor prospect to offer the working class.”[60] All of which makes this comment by Marx incredulous and misleading:

If then, in theory, it suffices to interpret, as M. Proudhon does, the formula of the surplus of labour in the sense of equality without taking account of the actual relations of production, it must suffice, in practice, to make among the workers an equal distribution of wealth without changing anything in the actual conditions of production. This distribution would not assure a great degree of comfort to each of the participants. (109-10)

Moreover Proudhon was well aware of the actual relations of production. He indicated that with “machinery and the workshop, divine right – that is, the principle of authority – makes its entrance into political economy. Capital... Property... are, in economic language, the various names of... Power, Authority.” Thus, under capitalism, the workplace has a “hierarchical organisation.”[61] He was well aware of the oppressive nature of wage labour. As Proudhon argued in volume 2 of Système des Contradictions Économiques:

Do you know what it is to be a wage-worker? It is to labour under a master, watchful for his prejudices even more than for his orders... It is to have no mind of your own... to know no stimulus save your daily bread and the fear of losing your job.

The wage-worker is a man to whom the property owner who hires him says: What you have to make is none of your business; you do not control it.[62]

Which raises the question of what Marx had in mind if not those relations within the workplace? Proudhon was well aware that exploitation occurred there as workers had “parted with their liberty” and “have sold their arms” to a boss who appropriated their product and “collective force.”[63] To suggest that Proudhon was blind to what happened in production under capitalism is false.

Then there is the perennial Marxist assertion that Proudhon wished to return to pre-industrial forms of economy.[64] Marx suggests “[t]hose who, like Sismondi, would return to the just proportion of production, while conserving the existing bases of society, are reactionary, since, to be consistent, they must also desire to re-establish all the other conditions of past times.” (73) Yet Proudhon explicitly rejected such an option, using almost the same words as Marx did.[65] Unsurprisingly, given that Proudhon argued that workers’ co-operatives were essential to ensure the application of large-scale technology.

Marx then goes on to argue that either you have “just proportions of past centuries, with the means of production of our epoch, in which case you are at once a reactionary and a utopian” or “you have progress without anarchy: In which case, in order to conserve productive forces, you must abandon individual exchanges.” (73) This comes from the extreme technological determinism Marx expounds:

The social relations are intimately attached to the productive forces. In acquiring new productive forces men change their mode of production; and in changing their mode of production, their manner of gaining a living, they change all their social relations. The windmill gives you society with the feudal lord; the steam-mill, society with the industrial capitalist. (119)

This is nonsense, with Marx himself subsequently acknowledging that co-operatives show “[b]y deed instead of by argument” that “production on a large scale... may be carried on without the existence of a class of masters employing a class of hands.”[66] In them “the opposition between capital and labour is abolished,” they are “a new mode of production” which “develops and is formed naturally out of the old.”[67] So the steam-mill can be run without the industrial capitalist, by a workers association. Which was precisely what Proudhon did advocate:

it is necessary to destroy or modify the predominance of capital over labour, to change the relations between employer and worker, to solve, in a word, the antinomy of division and that of machinery; it is necessary to ORGANISE LABOUR.[68]

Marx’s comments were related to his dismissal of Proudhon’s “constituted value” which he asserted was incompatible with an advanced economy. Commodities “produced in such proportions that they can be sold at an honest price” was “only possible in the epoch in which the means of production were limited, and in which exchange only took place within very narrow limits.” (72-3) Yet Proudhon has had the last laugh for, as capitalism has developed, the market price of goods has been replaced to a large degree with administered prices. Empirical research has concluded that a significant proportion of goods have prices based on mark-up, normal cost and target rate of return pricing procedures and “the existence of stable, administered market prices implies that the markets in which they exist are not organised like auction markets or like the early retail markets and oriental bazaars” as imagined in mainstream economic ideology.[69] Proudhon’s notion of an economy based on the “just price”, one which reflects costs, has become more possible over time rather than less as Marx had asserted.

Another area where Marx’s critique has proven to be lacking was his argument in favour of central planning. Given the actual experience of planned economies, it is amusing to read him suggest that “[i]f the division of labour in a modern factory, were taken as a model to be applied to an entire society, the best organised for the production of wealth would be incontestably that which had but one single master distributing the work, according to a regulation arranged beforehand, to the various members of the community.” (147) In reality, such a centralised system would be, and was, swamped by the task of gathering and processing the information required to plan well. Proudhon’s decentralised system would be the best organised simply because it can access and communicate the necessary information to make informed decisions on what, when and how to produce goods.[70]

The core of Marx’s critique rested on a massive confusion of commodity production (the market) and capitalism. Yet in 1867 he was clear that wage-labour was the necessary pre-condition for capitalism, not commodity production, as “the means of production and subsistence, while they remain the property of the immediate producer, are not capital. They only become capital under circumstances in which they serve at the same time as means of exploitation of, and domination over, the worker.” When the producer owns his “conditions of labour” and “employs that labour to enrich himself instead of the capitalist” then it is an economic system “diametrically opposed” to capitalism.[71]

While Proudhon was in favour of commodity production, he was against wage-labour, that is labour as a commodity. Yet this did not stop Marx asserting that in Proudhon’s system labour was “itself a commodity.” (55) Marx did let that awkward fact slip into his diatribe:

[Proudhon] has a misgiving that it is to make of the minimum wage the natural and normal price of direct labour, that it is to accept the existing state of society. So, to escape from this fatal consequence he performs a volte-face and pretends that labour is not a commodity, that it could not have a value... He forgets that his whole system rests on the labour commodity, on labour which is trafficked, bought and sold, exchanged for products... He forgets all. (62-3)

Or, conversely, Marx remembers that Proudhon’s whole system rests on abolishing labour as a commodity…

In short, the future Marx, with his comments on artisan production and co-operative workplaces, shows how wrong he was in 1847 to assert against Proudhon that the “mode of exchange of products depends upon the mode of production... Individual exchange also corresponds to a determined method production, which itself corresponds to the antagonism of classes. Thus there is no individual exchange without the antagonism of classes.” (84)

This is not the only area in which the Marx of 1847 is in direct contradiction to his more mature future self. Marx proclaims against Proudhon that “relative value, measured by labour-time, is fatally the formula of the modern slavery of the worker. Instead of being, as M. Proudhon would have it, the ‘revolutionary theory’ of the emancipation of the proletariat.” (55) Come 1875, Marx-the-older proclaims in his Critique of the Gotha Programme the use of labour-notes in the period of transition to communism.[72]

Key aspects of Marx’s later analysis of capitalism can be found in Proudhon’s work. Marx mocks the suggestion that labour “is said to have value, not as merchandise itself, but in view of the values supposed to be contained in it potentially. The value of labour is a figurative expression, an anticipation of effect from cause” which “becomes a reality through its product.”[73] Marx argues:

All the reasonings of M. Proudhon confine themselves to this: We do not purchase labour as an instrument of immediate consumption. No, we buy it as an instrument of production... Merely as a commodity labour is worth nothing and produces nothing. M. Proudhon might as well have said that there are no commodities in existence at all, seeing that every commodity is only acquired for some use and never merely as a commodity. (62)

Marx-the-older, however, argued that the “purchaser of labour-power consumes it by setting the seller of it to work” and so “becomes in actuality what previously he only was potentially,” a worker who produces “a specific article.”[74] Thus Proudhon “anticipated an idea that Marx was to develop as one of the key elements in the concept of labour power, viz. that as a commodity, labour produces nothing and it exists independently of and prior to the exercise of its potential to produce value as active labour.”[75] Marx-the-older used this insight to argue that labour-power “is purchased for the production of commodities which contain more labour than [is] paid for” and so “surplus-value is nothing but objectified surplus labour.”[76] In this he repeated Proudhon who argued that non-labour incomes are “but the materialisation of the aphorism, All labour should leave an excess.” As “all value is born of labour” it meant “that no wealth has its origin in privilege” and so “labour alone is the source of revenue among men.”[77] Thus profit, interest and rent came from the capitalist appropriating the surplus-labour and collective force of workers:

the worker... create[s], on top of his subsistence, a capital always greater. Under the regime of property, the surplus of labour, essentially collective, passes entirely, like the revenue, to the proprietor: now, between that disguised appropriation and the fraudulent usurpation of a communal good, where is the difference?

The consequence of that usurpation is that the worker, whose share of the collective product is constantly confiscated by the entrepreneur, is always on his uppers, while the capitalist is always in profit... and that political economy, that upholds and advocates that regime, is the theory of theft.[78]

This analysis of exploitation occurring in production feeds into Proudhon’s few tantalising glimpses of his vision of a free society.[79] Thus we discover that as “all labour must leave a surplus, all wages [must] be equal to product.” To achieve this, the workplace must be democratic for “[b]y virtue of the principle of collective force, labourers are the equals and associates of their leaders” and to ensure “that association may be real, he who participates in it must do so” as “an active factor” with “a deliberative voice in the council” with everything “regulated in accordance with equality.” These “conditions are precisely those of the organisation of labour.” This requires free access and so all workers “straightway enjoy the rights and prerogatives of associates and even managers” when they join a workplace. This would ensure “equality of fortunes, voluntary and free association, universal solidarity, material comfort and luxury, and public order without prisons, courts, police, or hangmen.”[80]

Needless to say, Marx ignores all this. Once acknowledged, it is incredulous to assert that Proudhon “borrows from the economists the necessity of eternal relations” and to end its troubles society has “only to eliminate all the ill-sounding terms. Let it change the language” and that such “activities form an essential part of the argument of M. Proudhon.” (137, 61) In reality, Proudhon denounced “the radical vice of political economy” of “affirming as a definitive state a transitory condition – namely, the division of society into patricians and proletaires.” He noted that the “period through which we are now passing” is “distinguished by a special characteristic: WAGE-LABOUR.”[81] His arguments for socialisation and self-management prove that he sought to end bourgeois relations within production. As Marx-the-older admitted, capital’s “existence” is “by no means given with the mere circulation of money and commodities.” This “new epoch” in social production requires the proprietor finding “in the market” the worker “as seller of his own labour-power.”[82] So “if one eliminates the capitalists, the means of production cease to be capital”[83] and when “the workers are themselves in possession of their respective means of production and exchange their commodities with one another” then these commodities “would not be products of capital.”[84]

This is not to suggest that Marx’s diatribe did not make some valid points. Far from it. Revolutionary anarchists would agree with Marx on unions being “a rampart for the workers in their struggle with the capitalists” and that “the determination of value by labour time, that is to say the formula which M. Proudhon has given us as the regenerating formula of the future, is... only the scientific expression of the economic relations of existing society”. (187, 74) Such valid points should not blind us to the distortions that work contains, distortions which ultimately undermine Marx’s case.

Significantly, while Marx’s 1847 work has become considered by Marxists as a key document in the development of his ideas, at the time its impact was null. Proudhon remained one of Europe’s foremost socialist thinkers and Marx’s attack “sank into obscurity” and “by 1864 his name meant nothing to the new generation of working-class leaders” in France.[85] It is only after the eclipse of Proudhon by social democracy that it became better known. It undoubtedly helped that, unlike when it was written, few would have read Proudhon’s two volumes.

Proudhon carefully read and annotated his copy of The Poverty of Philosophy. Sadly a family crisis followed swiftly by the outbreak of the February Revolution of 1848 stopped a reply being written. Proudhon, rightly, thought social transformation more pressing than bothering with an obscure German communist. That he never did so is one of the great lost opportunities of socialism as it would have clarified some of the issues raised by Marx and allowed Proudhon to extend his critique of state socialism to Marxism.

Finally, given how many people think Marx was extremely witty in reversing the sub-title of Proudhon’s book, it should be pointed out that even in this he was plagiarising Proudhon:

Modern philosophers, after collecting and classifying their annals, have been led by the nature of their labours to deal also with history: then it was that they saw, not without surprise, that the history of philosophy was the same thing at bottom as the philosophy of history.[86]

All in all, it is hard not to disagree with Edward Hyams summation: “since [The Poverty of Philosophy] no good Marxists have had to think about Proudhon. They have what is mother’s milk to them, an ex cathedra judgement.”[87]

End Notes

[17] Thomas, 193

[18] In response to a comment in Marx’s “Political Indifferentism” on Proudhon’s attitude to strikes even the editor of a collection of Marx’s works had to state “[t]o give Proudhon his due, he was not so much justifying the actions of the French authorities as exposing the ‘contradictions’ he saw as an inevitable evil of the present social order.” (The First International, 330)

[19] Marx-Engels Collected Works 44: 3-4

[20] Rudolf Rocker, “Marx and Anarchism”, The Poverty of Statism (Orkney: Cienfuegos Press, 1981), Albert Meltzer (ed.), 77

[21] Marx-Engels Collected Works 4: 31

[22] Liberty 35 (1883): 2

[23] Liberty 92 (1887): 1

[24] What is Property?, 264

[25] Capital 1: 730-1

[26] Capital 1: 451. Engels in one of his many introductions to Capital notes that “passages from economic writers are quoted in order to indicate when, where and by whom a certain proposition was for the first time clearly enunciated.” (111) Clearly Marx could not bring himself to acknowledge that Proudhon had first formulated this part of his critique of capitalism.

[27] Marx-Engels Collected Works 4: 52

[28] The First International, 331

[29] What is Property?, 171

[30] Capital 1: 1011-2, 270, 731

[31] “Marx and Anarchism”, 77

[32] Marx-Engels Reader, 486

[33] The First International, 90

[34] Marx-Engels Collected Works 47: 239, 389

[35] Capital: A Critique of Political Economy (London: Penguin Books, 1981) 3: 571-2, 572, 743

[36] Theories of Surplus Value (London: Lawrence and Wishart , 1972) 3: 472

[37] quoted in Edward Hyams, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon: His Revolutionary Life, Mind and Works (London: John Murray, 1979), 188

[38] Marx-Engels Collected Works 38: 97, 103

[39] System of Economical Contradictions, 55

[40] What is Property?, 310, 363, 372, 365

[41] Oeuvres Complètes 19: 295, 305

[42] Theories of Surplus Value 3: 525

[43] Capital 3: 735, 1015

[44] Marx-Engels Collected Works 38: 105

[45] Capital 3: 467

[46] Theories of Surplus Value 3:525-6

[47] The First International, 82

[48] quoted in Woodcock, Proudhon, 125. The expression “the emancipation of the working class is the task of the working class itself” was first used by the remarkable socialist-feminist Flora Tristan in 1843. (Mattick, 333)

[49] Although Marx, unlike Proudhon, repeatedly stated that universal suffrage gave the working class political power and so could be used to capture the state. See section H.3.10 [63] of An Anarchist FAQ.

[50] Marx-Engels Reader, 507-8.

[51] Marx-Engels Reader, 496

[52] quoted in Thomas, 211

[53] All quotes unless indicated otherwise are from this work.

[54] Vincent, 230

[55] “He wished to soar as a man of science above the bourgeoisie and the proletarians; he is only the petty bourgeois, tossed about constantly between capital and labour, between political economy and communism.” (137) If Marx embodied proletarian socialism, regardless of whether the proletariat knew this or not, then Proudhon must, by definition, represent another class. Given the starting assumption, what other conclusion could flow?

[56] Thus we find Marx ignoring Proudhon’s analysis of classes in capitalism in favour of this assertion: “What... is this Prometheus resuscitated by M. Proudhon? It is society, it is the social relations based on the antagonism of classes... Efface these relations and you have extinguished the whole of society, and your Prometheus is nothing more than a phantom.” (109) It is almost redundant to note that Proudhon analysed the class nature of capitalist society in System of Economic Contradictions. His discussion of machinery, for example, shows that he was well aware that capitalists introduce it to increase their profits at the expense of the workers.

[57] Somewhat ironically, Marx himself has suffered from being subject to the approach he inflicted on Proudhon. Just as Marx mocked Proudhon for his high-level of abstraction when the Frenchman used the notion of a consuming and producing Prometheus to illustrate some of his points, so the German has been subject to similar abuse by bourgeois economists for his high level abstractions in Volume 1 of Capital which they stress are unrealistic. Poetic Justice, some would say.

[58] We have taken the liberty of adding footnotes to the extracts of System of Economic Contradictions [5] we provide to show what Marx claimed and what Proudhon actually wrote.

[59] System of Economical Contradictions,  134

[60] System of Economical Contradictions,  145

[61] System of Economical Contradictions,  203-4

[62] Oeuvres Complètes 5: 230-1. So much for the assertion by Marxist Paul Thomas that “Proudhon had no real conception of alienation in the labour process.” (243)

[63] System of Economical Contradictions,  301-2

[64] “M. Proudhon has not got beyond the ideal of the petty bourgeois. And in order to realise this ideal he thinks of nothing better than to bring us back to the companion, or at most the master, workman of the Middle Ages.” (157)

[65] “M. de Sismondi, like all men of patriarchal ideas, would like the division of labour, with machinery and manufactures, to be abandoned, and each family to return to the system of primitive indivision, – that is, to each one by himself, each one for himself, in the most literal meaning of the words. That would be to retrograde; it is impossible.” (System of Economical Contradictions,  206)

[66] The First International, 79

[67] Capital 3: 571

[68] System of Economical Contradictions,  244

[69] Frederic S. Lee, Post Keynesian Price Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 212

[70] See section I.1.2 [64] of An Anarchist FAQ.

[71] Capital 1: 938, 931

[72] Discussing communism as “it emerges from capitalist society” Marx argued that “the individual producer... receives a certificate from society that he has furnished such-and-such an amount of labour” and “draws from the social stock of means of consumption as much as the same amount of labour cost.” So (“obviously”!) “the same principle prevails as that which regulates the exchange of commodities, as far as this is exchange of equal values. Content and form are changed” as “nothing can pass to the ownership of individuals, except individual means of consumption” (Marx-Engels Reader, 529-30)

[73] System of Economical Contradictions,  101

[74] Capital 1: 283

[75] Allen Oakley, Marx’s Critique of Political Economy: intellectual sources and evolution, 1844 to 1860 Vol. 1, (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1984), 118

[76] Capital 1: 769, 325

[77] System of Economical Contradictions, 56-7

[78] Oeuvres Complètes 5:246-7

[79] While Marx suggests that Proudhon’s work was presenting a panacea to society’s ills, it was primarily a work of critique: “We will reserve this subject [the organisation of labour] for the time when, the theory of economic contradictions being finished, we shall have found in their general equation the programme of association, which we shall then publish in contrast with the practice and conceptions of our predecessors.” (System of Economical Contradictions,  311)

[80] System of Economical Contradictions, 340, 411, 312, 307, 37

[81] System of Economical Contradictions, 67, 198 (translation corrected)

[82] Capital 1: 274

[83] Theories of Surplus Value 3: 296

[84] Capital 3: 276

[85] Archer, 50

[86] System of Economical Contradictions,  171

[87] Hyams, 92

Further Reading

Further Reading

Sadly, very little of Proudhon’s voluminous writings has been translated into English. Benjamin Tucker translated the First and Second Memoirs of What is Property? [65] and volume 1 of System of Economic Contradictions [66] and both are available on-line. He also translated numerous other shorter pieces. The First Memoir of What is Property? in a new translation is also available from Cambridge University Press. General Idea of the Revolution in the Nineteenth Century was translated in 1923 by John Beverley Robinson (available on-line [67]). The First Part and chapter one of the Second Part of Du Principe Fédératif was translated by Richard Vernon under the title The Principle of Federation. Other selections (mostly related to his Bank of Exchange, extracts from his exchange with Bastiat and a few parts of volume 2 of System of Economic Contradictions) have appeared in Clarence L. Swartz’s Proudhon’s Solution to the Social Question. Selected Writings of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon edited by Stewart Edwards has a comprehensive selection of short extracts on various subjects.

Most anthologies of anarchism have selections from Proudhon’s works. George Woodcock’s The Anarchist Reader has a few short extracts, while Daniel Guérin’s essential No Gods, No Masters: An Anthology of Anarchism has a comprehensive section on Proudhon. Robert Graham’s excellent anthology Anarchism: A Documentary History of Libertarian Ideas, Volume 1: From Anarchy to Anarchism (300CE-1939) has selections from Proudhon’s major works.

The best introduction to Proudhon’s ideas is K. Steven Vincent’s Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and the Rise of French Republican Socialism, which places his ideas within the context of the wider working class and socialist movements.[88] George Woodcock’s Pierre-Joseph Proudhon: A Biography is the best available and is essential reading. Other studies include Robert L. Hoffman’s Revolutionary Justice: The Social and Political Theory of P-J Proudhon, Alan Ritter’s The Political Thought of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and Pierre-Joseph Proudhon: His Revolution Life, Mind and Works by Edward Hyman. J. Hampden Jackson’s Marx, Proudhon and European socialism is a good short overview of the Proudhon’s life, ideas and influence. Henri de Lubac’s The Un-Marxian Socialist: A Study of Proudhon is more concerned about Proudhon’s relationship with Christianity. Political Economy From Below: Economic Thought in Communitarian Anarchism, 1840-1914 by Rob Knowles presents a useful extended discussion of Proudhon’s economic ideas.

Shorter accounts of Proudhon and his ideas include Robert Graham’s excellent introduction to the 1989 Pluto Press edition of General Idea. Jack Hayward has a comprehensive chapter entitled “Proudhon and Libertarian Socialism” in his After the French Revolution: Six Critics of Democracy and Nationalism. Martin Buber’s Paths in Utopia contains a useful account of Proudhon’s ideas. Other useful short pieces on Proudhon include George Woodcock’s “Pierre-Joseph Proudhon; An Appreciation” (in the anthology Anarchism and Anarchists) and “On Proudhon’s ‘What is Property?’” (The Raven 31). Daniel Guérin’s “From Proudhon to Bakunin” (The Radical Papers, Dimitrios I. Roussopoulos (ed.)) is a good introduction to the links between the French Anarchist and revolutionary anarchism. Charles A. Dana’s Proudhon and his “Bank of the People” is a contemporary (1849) account of his economic ideas.

George Woodcock’s Anarchism: A History of Libertarian Ideas and Movements and Peter Marshall’s Demanding the Impossible: A History of Anarchism, both have chapters on Proudhon’s life and ideas. Daniel Guérin’s Anarchism: From Theory to Practice is an excellent short introduction to anarchism which places Proudhon, with Bakunin, at its centre. Max Nettlau’s A Short History of Anarchism should also be consulted.

For those Marxists keen to read a generally accurate and sympathetic account of Proudhon, albeit one still rooted in Marxist dogmas and dubious assumptions, then John Ehrenberg’s Proudhon and His Age would be of interest.[89]

End Notes

[88] It is only marred by Vincent considering anarchism as being incompatible with social organisation and, as such, Proudhon’s theory “conflicts with the traditional concept of anarchism” and so he was not an anarchist in the “popular meaning”! (269, 234)

[89] For a short critique of Ehrenberg’s Marxist assumptions, see K. Steven Vincent’s review (The American Historical Review 102: 4 [1997]).

Acknowledgements

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Shawn Wilbur, Paul Sharkey, Ian Harvey, Martin Walker, James Bar Bowen, Nathalie Colibert, Jesse Cohn, John Duda and Barry Marshall for their kindness in translating so much. Without their work, this anthology would be impoverished. I must also thank Shawn for his suggestions and toleration in replying to a constant stream of emails asking questions, clarifications and opinions on a whole host of issues for this work. A special note of thanks for Jesse who helped me work out two particularly puzzling translation issues. Lastly, I would like to thank Nicholas Evans and Alex Prichard for their useful comments on my introduction.

In addition, I would like to thank Robert Graham for providing me with the full version of Chapter XV of The Political Capacity of the Working Classes which had previously appeared in an edited form in volume 1 of his anthology Anarchism: A Documentary History of Libertarian Ideas.

Finally, I would like to thank my partner for her knowledge, experience and patience in answering my numerous questions on issues related to translating from French.

A note on the texts

A note on the texts

The texts are presented in chronological order, so that readers can get a feel for how Proudhon’s ideas and ways of expressing himself changed over time. We have aimed to present newly translated material in full and have edited those which are available in English already. Any edits are indicated by bracketed ellipses and any additions are surrounded by brackets. We have tried to reproduce Proudhon’s own stresses and capitalisations.

For those interested in reading the full versions of the material we present here, then please visit Shawn Wilbur’s New Proudhon Library (www.proudhonlibrary.org [68]). A complete translation of The Philosophy of Progress is there, along with other material.

This is but a small part of Proudhon’s works and there are many key works, such as Confessions of a Revolutionary and The Political Capacity of the Working Classes, which should be made available to the English-speaking world in full. This anthology should hopefully show why such a task would be worthwhile. For those interested in such a project, please visit the translation project at Collective Reason (www.collectivereason.org [69]).

Lastly, the material in this book will be available on-line at www.property-is-theft.org [70]. We plan to add new translations as and when they become available as well as supplementary material on Proudhon. In addition, the site will have links to complete versions of works we have provided extracts from.

A note on the translations

A note on the translations

All the texts have been translated in British English rather than American English.

In addition, certain parts of previous translations have been corrected to bring their meaning more in line with the original French (as such consistently translating “salariat” as wage-labour or wage-worker, “entrepreneur” rather than “contractor”, etc.), popular usage (such as replacing Tucker’s “property is robbery” with “property is theft”), or to bring them up-to-date (such as “worker” rather than “labourer”). Workman, working men, etc., have been changed to worker, workers, etc. This is because they sound antiquated, are unnecessarily gendered in English and using workman simply reflects the unthinking cultural sexism of translators from previous generations. In addition, it reads better and fits in with the new translations which render it as worker. We have used the original “Commune” in the translation of General Idea of the Revolution while words Tucker did not translate, like proletaire, have been translated.

Finally, I have revised and edited all the translations and, as a consequence, I take full responsibility for any errors that may occur in the texts.

Chapter I: Method Pursued In This Work — The Idea of a Revolution

Chapter I: Method Pursued In This Work — The Idea of a Revolution

If I were asked to answer the following question: What is slavery? and I should answer in one word, It is murder, my meaning would be understood at once. No extended argument would be required to show that the power to take from a man his thought, his will, his personality, is a power of life and death; and that to enslave a man is to kill him. Why, then, to this other question: What is property? may I not likewise answer, It is theft, without the certainty of being misunderstood; the second proposition being no other than a transformation of the first?

I undertake to discuss the vital principle of our government and our institutions, property: I am in my right. I may be mistaken in the conclusion which shall result from my investigations: I am in my right. I think best to place the last thought of my book first: still am I in my right.

Such an author teaches that property is a civil right, born of occupation and sanctioned by law; another maintains that it is a natural right, originating in labour, — and both of these doctrines, totally opposed as they may seem, are encouraged and applauded. I contend that neither labour, nor occupation, nor law, can create property; that it is an effect without a cause: am I censurable?

But murmurs arise!

Property is theft! That is the war-cry of ’93! That is the signal of revolutions!

Reader, calm yourself: I am no agent of discord, no firebrand of sedition. I anticipate history by a few days; I disclose a truth whose development we may try in vain to arrest; I write the preamble of our future constitution. This proposition which seems to you blasphemous — Property is theft — would, if our prejudices allowed us to consider it, be recognised as the lightning-rod to shield us from the coming thunderbolt; but too many interests stand in the way!... Alas! philosophy will not change the course of events: destiny will fulfil itself regardless of prophecy. Besides, must not justice be done and our education be finished?

[...]

We must ascertain whether the ideas of despotism, civil inequality and property, are in harmony with the primitive notion of justice, and necessarily follow from it, — assuming various forms according to the condition, position, and relation of persons; or whether they are not rather the illegitimate result of a confusion of different things, a fatal association of ideas. And since justice deals especially with the questions of government, the condition of persons, and the possession of things, we must ascertain under what conditions, judging by universal opinion and the progress of the human mind, government is just, the condition of citizens is just, and the possession of things is just; then, striking out every thing which fails to meet these conditions, the result will at once tell us what legitimate government is, what the legitimate condition of citizens is, and what the legitimate possession of things is; and finally, as the last result of the analysis, what justice is.

Is the authority of man over man just?

Everybody answers, “No; the authority of man is only the authority of the law, which ought to be justice and truth.” The private will counts for nothing in government, which consists, first, in discovering truth and justice in order to make the law; and, second, in superintending the execution of this law. I do not now inquire whether our constitutional form of government satisfies these conditions; whether, for example, the will of the ministry never influences the declaration and interpretation of the law; or whether our deputies, in their debates, are more intent on conquering by argument than by force of numbers: it is enough for me that my definition of a good government is allowed to be correct. This idea is exact. Yet we see that nothing seems more just to the Oriental nations than the despotism of their sovereigns; that, with the ancients and in the opinion of the philosophers themselves, slavery was just; that in the middle ages the nobles, the priests, and the bishops felt justified in holding slaves; that Louis XIV thought that he was right when he said, “The State! I am the State”; and that Napoléon deemed it a crime for the State to oppose his will. The idea of justice, then, applied to sovereignty and government, has not always been what it is to-day; it has gone on developing and shaping itself by degrees, until it has arrived at its present state. But has it reached its last phase? I think not: only, as the last obstacle to be overcome arises from the institution of property which we have kept intact, in order to finish the reform in government and consummate the revolution, this very institution we must attack.

Is political and civil inequality just?

Some say yes; others no. To the first I would reply that, when the people abolished all privileges of birth and caste, they did it, in all probability, because it was for their advantage; why then do they favour the privileges of fortune more than those of rank and race? Because, say they, political inequality is a result of property and without property society is impossible: thus the question just raised becomes a question of property. To the second I content myself with this remark: If you wish to enjoy political equality, abolish property; otherwise, why do you complain?

Is property just?

Everybody answers without hesitation, “Yes, property is just.” I say everybody, for up to the present time no one who thoroughly understood the meaning of his words has answered no. For it is no easy thing to reply understandingly to such a question; only time and experience can furnish an answer. Now, this answer is given; it is for us to understand it. I undertake to prove it.

We are to proceed with the demonstration in the following order:

I. We dispute not at all, we refute nobody, we deny nothing; we accept as sound all the arguments alleged in favour of property, and confine ourselves to a search for its principle, in order that we may then ascertain whether this principle is faithfully expressed by property. In fact, property being defensible on no ground save that of justice, the idea, or at least the intention, of justice must of necessity underlie all the arguments that have been made in defence of property; and, as on the other hand the right of property is only exercised over those things which can be appreciated by the senses, justice, secretly objectifying itself, so to speak, must take the shape of an algebraic formula.

By this method of investigation, we soon see that every argument which has been invented in behalf of property, whatever it may be, always and of necessity leads to equality; that is, to the negation of property.

The first part covers two chapters: one treating of occupation, the foundation of our right; the other, of labour and talent, considered as causes of property and social inequality.

The first of these chapters will prove that the right of occupation obstructs property; the second that the right of labour destroys it.

II. Property, then, being of necessity conceived as existing only in connection with equality, it remains to find out why, in spite of this necessity of logic, equality does not exist. This new investigation also covers two chapters: in the first, considering the fact of property in itself, we inquire whether this fact is real, whether it exists, whether it is possible; for it would imply a contradiction, were these two opposite forms of society, equality and inequality, both possible. Then we discover, singularly enough, that property may indeed manifest itself accidentally; but that, as an institution and principle, it is mathematically impossible. So that the axiom of the school — ab actu ad posse valet consecutio: from the actual to the possible the inference is good — is given the lie as far as property is concerned.

Finally, in the last chapter, calling psychology to our aid, and probing man’s nature to the bottom, we shall disclose the principle of justice — its formula and character; we shall state with precision the organic law of society; we shall explain the origin of property, the causes of its establishment, its long life, and its approaching death; we shall definitively establish its identity with theft. And, after having shown that these three prejudices — the sovereignty of man, the inequality of conditions, and property — are one and the same; that they may be taken for each other, and are reciprocally convertible, — we shall have no trouble in inferring therefrom, by the principle of contradiction, the basis of government and right. There our investigations will end, reserving the right to continue them in future works.

[...]

Chapter II: Property Considered as a Natural Right

Chapter II: Property Considered as a Natural Right

Occupation and civil law as efficient bases of property.

Definitions

The Roman law defined property as the right to use and abuse one’s own within the limits of the law — jus utendi et abutendi re sua, guatenus juris ratio patitur. A justification of the word abuse has been attempted, on the ground that it signifies, not senseless and immoral abuse, but only absolute domain. Vain distinction! invented as an excuse for property, and powerless against the frenzy of possession, which it neither prevents nor represses. The proprietor may, if he chooses, allow his crops to rot under foot, sow his field with salt, milk his cows on the sand, change his vineyard into a desert, and use his vegetable-garden as a park: do these things constitute abuse, or not? In the matter of property, use and abuse are necessarily indistinguishable.

According to the Declaration of Rights, published as a preface to the Constitution of ’93, property is “the right to enjoy and dispose at will of one’s goods, one’s income, and the fruit of one’s labour and industry.”

Code Napoléon, article 544: “Property is the right to enjoy and dispose of things in the most absolute manner, provided we do not overstep the limits prescribed by the laws and regulations.”

These two definitions do not differ from that of the Roman law: all give the proprietor an absolute right over a thing; and as for the restriction imposed by the code — provided we do not overstep the limits prescribed by the laws and regulations — its object is not to limit property, but to prevent the domain of one proprietor from interfering with that of another. That is a confirmation of the principle, not a limitation of it.

There are different kinds of property: 1. Property pure and simple, the dominant and seigniorial power over a thing; or, as they term it, naked property. 2. Possession. “Possession,” says Duranton, “is a matter of fact, not of right.” Toullier: “Property is a right, a legal power; possession is a fact.” The tenant, the farmer, the commandité, the usufructuary, are possessors; the owner who lets and lends for use, the heir who is to come into possession on the death of a usufructuary, are proprietors. If I may venture the comparison: a lover is a possessor, a husband is a proprietor.[1]

This double definition of property — domain and possession — is of the highest importance; and it must be clearly understood, in order to comprehend what is to follow.

From the distinction between possession and property arise two sorts of rights: the jus in re, the right in a thing, the right by which I may reclaim the property which I have acquired, in whatever hands I find it; and the jus ad rem, the right to a thing, which gives me a claim to become a proprietor. Thus the right of the partners to a marriage over each other’s person is the jus in re; that of two who are betrothed is only the jus ad rem. In the first, possession and property are united; the second includes only naked property. With me who, as a worker, have a right to the possession of the products of Nature and my own industry, — and who, as a proletarian, enjoy none of them, — it is by virtue of the jus ad rem that I demand admittance to the jus in re.

This distinction between the jus in re and the jus ad rem is the basis of the famous distinction between possessoire and pétitoire, — actual categories of jurisprudence, the whole of which is included within their vast boundaries. Pétitoire refers to every thing relating to property; possessoire to that relating to possession. In writing this memoir against property, I bring against universal society an action pétitoire: I prove that those who do not possess to-day are proprietors by the same title as those who do possess; but, instead of inferring therefrom that property should be shared by all, I demand, in the name of general security, its entire abolition. If I fail to win my case, there is nothing left for us (the proletarian class and myself) but to cut our throats: we can ask nothing more from the justice of nations; for, as the code of procedure (art. 26) tells us in its energetic style, the plaintiff who has been non-suited in an action pétitoire, is debarred thereby from bringing an action possessoire. If, on the contrary, I gain the case, we must then commence an action possessoire, that we may be reinstated in the enjoyment of the wealth of which we are deprived by property. I hope that we shall not be forced to that extremity; but these two actions cannot be prosecuted at once, such a course being prohibited by the same code of procedure.

Before going to the heart of the question, it will not be useless to offer a few preliminary remarks.

§1 Property as a Natural Right

The Declaration of Rights has placed property in its list of the natural and inalienable rights of man, four in all: liberty, equality, property, security. What rule did the legislators of ’93 follow in compiling this list? None. They laid down principles, just as they discussed sovereignty and the laws; from a general point of view, and according to their own opinion. They did every thing in their own blind way.

If we can believe Toullier: “The absolute rights can be reduced to three: security, liberty, property.” Equality is eliminated by the Rennes professor; why? Is it because liberty implies it, or because property prohibits it? On this point the author of Droit Civil Expliqué is silent: it has not even occurred to him that the matter is under discussion.

Nevertheless, if we compare these three or four rights with each other, we find that property bears no resemblance whatever to the others; that for the majority of citizens it exists only potentially, and as a dormant faculty without exercise; that for the others, who do enjoy it, it is susceptible of certain transactions and modifications which do not harmonise with the idea of a natural right; that, in practice, governments, tribunals, and laws do not respect it; and finally that everybody, spontaneously and with one voice, regards it as chimerical.

Liberty is inviolable. I can neither sell nor alienate my liberty; every contract, every condition of a contract, which has in view the alienation or suspension of liberty, is null: the slave, when he plants his foot upon the soil of liberty, at that moment becomes a free man. When society seizes a malefactor and deprives him of his liberty, it is a case of legitimate defence: whoever violates the social compact by the commission of a crime declares himself a public enemy; in attacking the liberty of others, he compels them to take away his own. Liberty is the original condition of man; to renounce liberty is to renounce the nature of man: after that, how could we perform the acts of man?

[...]

To sum up: liberty is an absolute right, because it is to man what impenetrability is to matter, — a sine qua non of existence; equality is an absolute right, because without equality there is no society; security is an absolute right, because in the eyes of every man his own liberty and life are as precious as another’s. These three rights are absolute; that is, susceptible of neither increase nor diminution; because in society each associate receives as much as he gives, — liberty for liberty, equality for equality, security for security, body for body, soul for soul, in life and in death.

But property, in its derivative sense, and by the definitions of law, is a right outside of society; for it is clear that, if the wealth of each was social wealth, the conditions would be equal for all, and it would be a contradiction to say: property is a man’s right to dispose at will of social property. Then if we are associated for the sake of liberty, equality, and security, we are not associated for the sake of property; then if property is a natural right, this natural right is not social, but anti-social. Property and society are utterly irreconcilable institutions. It is as impossible to associate two proprietors as to join two magnets by their opposite poles. Either society must perish, or it must destroy property.

If property is a natural, absolute, imprescriptible, and inalienable right, why, in all ages, has there been so much speculation as to its origin? — for this is one of its distinguishing characteristics. The origin of a natural right! Good God! who ever inquired into the origin of the rights of liberty, security, or equality? They exist by the same right that we exist; they are born with us, they live and die with us. With property it is very different, indeed. By law, property can exist without a proprietor, like a quality without a subject. It exists for the human being who as yet is not, and for the octogenarian who is no more. And yet, in spite of these wonderful prerogatives which savour of the eternal and the infinite, they have never found the origin of property; the doctors still disagree. On one point only are they in harmony: namely, that the validity of the right of property depends upon the authenticity of its origin. But this harmony is their condemnation. Why have they acknowledged the right before settling the question of origin?

[...]

§2 Occupation, as the Title to Property

[...]

The right of occupation, or of the first occupant, is that which results from the actual, physical, real possession of a thing. I occupy a piece of land; the presumption is, that I am the proprietor, until the contrary is proved. We know that originally such a right cannot be legitimate unless it is reciprocal; the jurists say as much.

Cicero compares the earth to a vast theatre: Quemadmodum theatrum cum commune sit, recte tamen dici potest ejus esse eum locum quem quisque occuparit.

This passage is all that ancient philosophy has to say about the origin of property.

The theatre, says Cicero, is common to all; nevertheless, the place that each one occupies is called his own; that is, it is a place possessed, not a place appropriated. This comparison annihilates property; moreover, it implies equality. Can I, in a theatre, occupy at the same time one place in the pit, another in the boxes, and a third in the gallery? Not unless I have three bodies, like Geryon, or can exist in different places at the same time, as is related of the magician Apollonius.

According to Cicero, no one has a right to more than he needs: such is the true interpretation of his famous axiom — suum quidque cujusque sit, to each one that which belongs to him — an axiom that has been strangely applied. That which belongs to each is not that which each may possess, but that which each has a right to possess. Now, what have we a right to possess? That which is required for our labour and consumption; Cicero’s comparison of the earth to a theatre proves it. According to that, each one may take what place he will, may beautify and adorn it, if he can; it is allowable: but he must never allow himself to overstep the limit which separates him from another. The doctrine of Cicero leads directly to equality; for, occupation being pure toleration, if the toleration is mutual (and it cannot be otherwise) the possessions are equal.

[...]

Reid writes as follows:

“The right of property is not innate, but acquired. It is not grounded upon the constitution of man, but upon his actions. Writers on jurisprudence have explained its origin in a manner that may satisfy every man of common understanding.

“The earth is given to men in common for the purposes of life, by the bounty of Heaven. But to divide it, and appropriate one part of its produce to one, another part to another, must be the work of men who have power and understanding given them, by which every man may accommodate himself, without hurt to any other.

“This common right of every man to what the earth produces, before it be occupied and appropriated by others, was, by ancient moralists, very properly compared to the right which every citizen had to the public theatre, where every man that came might occupy an empty seat, and thereby acquire a right to it while the entertainment lasted; but no man had a right to dispossess another.

“The earth is a great theatre, furnished by the Almighty, with perfect wisdom and goodness, for the entertainment and employment of all mankind. Here every man has a right to accommodate himself as a spectator, and to perform his part as an actor; but without hurt to others.”

Consequences of Reid’s doctrine.

1. That the portion which each one appropriates may wrong no one, it must be equal to the quotient of the total amount of property to be shared, divided by the number of those who are to share it;

2. The number of places being of necessity equal at all times to that of the spectators, no spectator can occupy two places, nor can any actor play several parts;

3. Whenever a spectator comes in or goes out, the places of all contract or enlarge correspondingly: for, says Reid, “the right of property is not innate, but acquired;” consequently, it is not absolute; consequently, the occupancy on which it is based, being a conditional fact, cannot endow this right with a stability which it does not possess itself. This seems to have been the thought of the Edinburgh professor when he added:

“A right to life implies a right to the necessary means of life; and that justice, which forbids the taking away the life of an innocent man, forbids no less the taking from him the necessary means of life. He has the same right to defend the one as the other. To hinder another man’s innocent labour, or to deprive him of the fruit of it, is an injustice of the same kind, and has the same effect as to put him in fetters or in prison, and is equally a just object of resentment.”

Thus the chief of the Scotch school, without considering at all the inequality of skill or labour, posits a priori the equality of the means of labour, abandoning thereafter to each worker the care of his own person, after the eternal axiom: whoso does well, shall fare well.

The philosopher Reid is lacking, not in knowledge of the principle, but in courage to pursue it to its ultimate. If the right of life is equal, the right of labour is equal, and so is the right of occupancy. Would it not be criminal, were some islanders to repulse, in the name of property, the unfortunate victims of a shipwreck struggling to reach the shore? The very idea of such cruelty sickens the imagination. The proprietor, like Robinson Crusoe on his island, wards off with pike and musket the proletarian washed overboard by the wave of civilisation, and seeking to gain a foothold upon the rocks of property. “Give me work!” cries he with all his might to the proprietor: “don’t drive me away, I will work for you at any price.” “I do not need your services,” replies the proprietor, showing the end of his pike or the barrel of his gun. “Lower my rent at least.” “I need my income to live upon.” “How can I pay you, when I can get no work?” “That is your business.” Then the unfortunate proletarian abandons himself to the waves; or, if he attempts to land upon the shore of property, the proprietor takes aim, and kills him.

[...]

Shameful equivocation, not justified by the necessity for generalisation! The word property has two meanings: 1. It designates the quality which makes a thing what it is; the attribute which is peculiar to it, and especially distinguishes it. We use it in this sense when we say the properties of the triangle or of numbers; the property of the magnet, &c. 2. It expresses the right of absolute control over a thing by a free and intelligent being. It is used in this sense by writers on jurisprudence. Thus, in the phrase, iron acquires the property of a magnet, the word property does not convey the same idea that it does in this one: I have acquired this magnet as my property. To tell a poor man that he has property because he has arms and legs, — that the hunger from which he suffers, and his power to sleep in the open air are his property, — is to play upon words, and to add insult to injury.

[...]

In fact, to become a proprietor, in M. Cousin’s opinion, one must take possession by occupation and labour. I maintain that the element of time must be considered also; for if the first occupants have occupied every thing, what are the new comers to do? What will become of them, having an instrument with which to work, but no material to work upon? Must they devour each other? A terrible extremity, unforeseen by philosophical prudence; for the reason that great geniuses neglect little things.

Notice also that M. Cousin says that neither occupation nor labour, taken separately, can legitimate the right of property; and that it is born only from the union of the two. This is one of M. Cousin’s eclectic turns, which he, more than any one else, should take pains to avoid. Instead of proceeding by the method of analysis, comparison, elimination, and reduction (the only means of discovering the truth amid the various forms of thought and whimsical opinions), he jumbles all systems together, and then, declaring each both right and wrong, exclaims: “There you have the truth.”

But, adhering to my promise, I will not refute him. I will only prove, by all the arguments with which he justifies the right of property, the principle of equality which kills it. As I have already said, my sole intent is this: to show at the bottom of all these positions that inevitable major, equality; hoping hereafter to show that the principle of property vitiates the very elements of economical, moral, and governmental science, thus leading it in the wrong direction.

Well, is it not true, from M. Cousin’s point of view, that, if the liberty of man is sacred, it is equally sacred in all individuals; that, if it needs property for its objective action, that is, for its life, the appropriation of material is equally necessary for all; that, if I wish to be respected in my right of appropriation, I must respect others in theirs; and, consequently, that though, in the sphere of the infinite, a person’s power of appropriation is limited only by himself, in the sphere of the finite this same power is limited by the mathematical relation between the number of persons and the space which they occupy? Does it not follow that if one individual cannot prevent another — his fellow-man — from appropriating an amount of material equal to his own, no more can he prevent individuals yet to come; because, while individuality passes away, universality persists, and eternal laws cannot be determined by a partial view of their manifestations? Must we not conclude, therefore, that whenever a person is born, the others must crowd closer together; and, by reciprocity of obligation, that if the new comer is afterwards to become an heir, the right of succession does not give him the right of accumulation, but only the right of choice?

I have followed M. Cousin so far as to imitate his style, and I am ashamed of it. Do we need such high-sounding terms, such sonorous phrases, to say such simple things? Man needs to labour in order to live; consequently, he needs tools to work with and materials to work upon. His need to produce constitutes his right to produce. Now, this right is guaranteed him by his fellows, with whom he makes an agreement to that effect. One hundred thousand men settle in a large country like France with no inhabitants: each man has a right to 1/100,000 of the land. If the number of possessors increases, each one’s portion diminishes in consequence; so that, if the number of inhabitants rises to thirty-four millions, each one will have a right only to 1/34,000,000. Now, so regulate the police system and the government, labour, exchange, inheritance, &c., that the means of labour shall be shared by all equally, and that each individual shall be free; and then society will be perfect.

[...]

§3 Civil Law as the Foundation and Sanction of Property

Pothier seems to think that property, like royalty, exists by divine right. He traces back its origin to God himself — ab Jove principium. He begins in this way:

“God is the absolute ruler of the universe and all that it contains: Domini est terra et plenitudo ejus, orbis et universi qui habitant in eo. For the human race he has created the earth and all its creatures, and has given it a control over them subordinate only to his own. ‘Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands; thou hast put all things under his feet,’ says the Psalmist. God accompanied this gift with these words, addressed to our first parents after the creation: ‘Be fruitful, and multiply and replenish the earth,’ etc.”

After this magnificent introduction, who would refuse to believe the human race to be an immense family living in brotherly union, and under the protection of a venerable father? But, heavens! are brothers enemies? Are fathers unnatural, and children prodigal?

God gave the earth to the human race: why then have I received none? He has put all things under my feet, — and I have not where to lay my head! Multiply, he tells us through his interpreter, Pothier. Ah, learned Pothier! that is as easy to do as to say; but you must give moss to the bird for its nest.

“The human race having multiplied, men divided among themselves the earth and most of the things upon it; that which fell to each, from that time exclusively belonged to him. That was the origin of the right of property.”

Say, rather, the right of possession. Men lived in a state of communism; whether positive or negative it matters little. Then there was no property, not even private possession. The genesis and growth of possession gradually forcing people to labour for their support, they agreed either formally or tacitly, — it makes no difference which, — that the worker should be sole proprietor of the fruit of his labour; that is, they simply declared the fact that thereafter none could live without working. It necessarily followed that, to obtain equality of products, there must be equality of labour; and that, to obtain equality of labour, there must be equality of facilities for labour. Whoever without labour got possession, by force or by strategy, of another’s means of subsistence, destroyed equality, and placed himself above or outside of the law. Whoever monopolised the means of production on the ground of greater industry, also destroyed equality. Equality being then the expression of right, whoever violated it was unjust.

Thus, labour gives birth to private possession; the right in a thing — jus in re. But in what thing? Evidently in the product, not in the soil. So the Arabs have always understood it; and so, according to Caesar and Tacitus, the Germans formerly held. “The Arabs,” says M. de Sismondi, “who admit a man’s property in the flocks which he has raised, do not refuse the crop to him who planted the seed; but they do not see why another, his equal, should not have a right to plant in his turn. The inequality which results from the pretended right of the first occupant seems to them to be based on no principle of justice; and when all the land falls into the hands of a certain number of inhabitants, there results a monopoly in their favour against the rest of the nation, to which they do not wish to submit.”

Well, they have shared the land. I admit that therefrom results a more powerful organisation of labour; and that this method of distribution, fixed and durable, is advantageous to production: but how could this division give to each a transferable right of property in a thing to which all had an inalienable right of possession? In the terms of jurisprudence, this metamorphosis from possessor to proprietor is legally impossible; it implies in the jurisdiction of the courts the union of possessoire and pétitoire; and the mutual concessions of those who share the land are nothing less than traffic in natural rights. The original cultivators of the land, who were also the original makers of the law, were not as learned as our legislators, I admit; and had they been, they could not have done worse: they did not foresee the consequences of the transformation of the right of private possession into the right of absolute property. But why have not those, who in later times have established the distinction between jus in re and jus ad rem, applied it to the principle of property itself?

Let me call the attention of the writers on jurisprudence to their own maxims.

The right of property, provided it can have a cause, can have but one — Dominium non potest nisi ex una causa contingere. I can possess by several titles; I can become proprietor by only one — Non ut ex pluribus causis idem nobis deberi potest, ita ex pluribus causis idem potest nostrum esse.[2] The field which I have cleared, which I cultivate, on which I have built my house, which supports myself, my family, and my livestock, I can possess: 1^st As the original occupant; 2^nd As a worker; 3^rd By virtue of the social contract which assigns it to me as my share. But none of these titles confer upon me the right of property. For, if I attempt to base it upon occupancy, society can reply, “I am the original occupant.” If I appeal to my labour, it will say, “It is only on that condition that you possess.” If I speak of agreements, it will respond, “These agreements establish only your right of use.” Such, however, are the only titles which proprietors advance. They never have been able to discover any others. Indeed, every right — it is Pothier who says it — supposes a producing cause in the person who enjoys it; but in man who lives and dies, in this son of earth who passes away like a shadow, there exists, with respect to external things, only titles of possession, not one title of property. Why, then, has society recognised a right injurious to itself, where there is no producing cause? Why, in according possession, has it also conceded property? Why has the law sanctioned this abuse of power?

[...]

To satisfy the husbandman, it was sufficient to guarantee him possession of his crop; admit even that he should have been protected in his right of occupation of land, as long as he remained its cultivator. That was all that he had a right to expect; that was all that the advance of civilisation demanded. But property, property! the right of escheat [droit d’aubaine] over lands which one neither occupies nor cultivates, — who had authority to grant it? who pretended to have it?

[...]

The authority of the human race is of no effect as evidence in favour of the right of property, because this right, resting of necessity upon equality, contradicts its principle; the decision of the religions which have sanctioned it is of no effect, because in all ages the priest has submitted to the prince, and the gods have always spoken as the politicians desired; the social advantages, attributed to property, cannot be cited in its behalf, because they all spring from the principle of equality of possession.

What means, then, this dithyramb upon property?

“The right of property is the most important of human institutions.”...

Yes; as monarchy is the most glorious.

“The original cause of man’s prosperity upon earth.”

Because justice was supposed to be its principle.

“Property became the legitimate end of his ambition, the hope of his existence, the shelter of his family; in a word, the corner-stone of the domestic dwelling, of communities, and of the political State.”

Possession alone produced all that.

“Eternal principle —”

Property is eternal, like every negation, —

“Of all social and civil institutions.”

For that reason, every institution and every law based on property will perish.

“It is a boon as precious as liberty.”

For the rich proprietor.

“In fact, the cause of the cultivation of the habitable earth.”

If the cultivator ceased to be a tenant, would the land be worse cared for?

“The guarantee and the morality of labour.”

Under the regime of property, labour is not a condition, but a privilege.

“The application of justice.”

What is justice without equality of fortunes? A balance with false weights.

“All morality, —”

A famished stomach knows no morality, —

“All public order, —”

Certainly, the preservation of property, —

“Rest on the right of property.”[3]

Corner-stone of all which is, stumbling-block of all which ought to be, — such is property.

To sum up and conclude:

Not only does occupation lead to equality, it prevents property. For, since every man, from the fact of his existence, has the right of occupation, and, in order to live, must have material for cultivation on which he may labour; and since, on the other hand, the number of occupants varies continually with the births and deaths, — it follows that the quantity of material which each worker may claim varies with the number of occupants; consequently, that occupation is always subordinate to population. Finally, that, inasmuch as possession, in right, can never remain fixed, it is impossible, in fact, that it can ever become property.

Every occupant is, then, necessarily a possessor or usufructuary, — a function which excludes proprietorship. Now, this is the right of the usufructuary: he is responsible for the thing entrusted to him; he must use it in conformity with general utility, with a view to its preservation and development; he has no power to transform it, to diminish it, or to change its nature; he cannot so divide the usufruct that another shall perform the labour while he receives the product. In a word, the usufructuary is under the supervision of society, submitted to the condition of labour and the law of equality.

Thus is annihilated the Roman definition of property — the right of use and abuse — an immorality born of violence, the most monstrous pretension that the civil laws ever sanctioned. Man receives his usufruct from the hands of society, which alone is the permanent possessor. The individual passes away, society is deathless.

What a profound disgust fills my soul while discussing such simple truths! Do we doubt these things to-day? Will it be necessary to again take arms for their triumph? And can force, in default of reason, alone introduce them into our laws?

All have an equal right of occupancy.

The amount occupied being measured, not by the will, but by the variable conditions of space and number, property cannot exist.

This no code has ever expressed; this no constitution can admit! These are axioms which the civil law and the law of nations deny!...

But I hear the exclamations of the partisans of another system: “Labour, labour! that is the basis of property!”

Reader, do not be deceived. This new basis of property is worse than the first, and I shall soon have to ask your pardon for having demonstrated things clearer, and refuted pretensions more unjust, than any which we have yet considered.

End Notes

[1] An arresting observation in light of Proudhon’s patriarchal conceptions of marriage and family. (Editor)

[2] Quoting from the collection of Roman legal writings, Digest of Justinian. (Editor)

[3] Giraud, Investigations into the Right of Property among the Romans.

Chapter III: Labour As The Efficient Cause Of The Domain Of Property

Chapter III: Labour As The Efficient Cause Of The Domain Of Property

Nearly all the modern writers on jurisprudence, taking their cue from the economists, have abandoned the theory of first occupancy as a too dangerous one, and have adopted that which regards property as born of labour. In this they are deluded; they reason in a circle. To labour it is necessary to occupy, says M. Cousin.

[...]

I have asserted that the system which bases property upon labour implies, no less than that which bases it upon occupation, the equality of fortunes; and the reader must be impatient to learn how I propose to deduce this law of equality from the inequality of skill and faculties: directly his curiosity shall be satisfied. But it is proper that I should call his attention for a moment to this remarkable feature of the process; to wit, the substitution of labour for occupation as the principle of property; and that I should pass rapidly in review some of the prejudices to which proprietors are accustomed to appeal, which legislation has sanctioned, and which the system of labour completely overthrows.

Reader, were you ever present at the examination of a criminal? Have you watched his tricks, his turns, his evasions, his distinctions, his equivocations? Beaten, all his assertions overthrown, pursued like a fallow deer by the inexorable judge, tracked from hypothesis to hypothesis, — he makes a statement, he corrects it, retracts it, contradicts it, he exhausts all the tricks of dialectics, more subtle, more ingenious a thousand times than he who invented the seventy-two forms of the syllogism. So acts the proprietor when called upon to defend his right. At first he refuses to reply, he exclaims, he threatens, he defies; then, forced to accept the discussion, he arms himself with chicanery, he surrounds himself with formidable artillery, — crossing his fire, opposing one by one and all together occupation, possession, limitation, covenants, immemorial custom, and universal consent. Conquered on this ground, the proprietor, like a wounded boar, turns on his pursuers. “I have done more than occupy,” he cries with terrible emotion; “I have laboured, produced, improved, transformed, created. This house, these fields, these trees are the work of my hands; I changed these brambles into a vineyard, and this bush into a fig-tree; and to-day I reap the harvest of my labours. I have enriched the soil with my sweat; I have paid those men who, had they not had the work which I gave them, would have died of hunger. No one shared with me the trouble and expense; no one shall share with me the benefits.”

You have laboured, proprietor! why then do you speak of original occupancy? What, were you not sure of your right, or did you hope to deceive men, and make justice an illusion? Make haste, then, to acquaint us with your mode of defence, for the judgement will be final; and you know it to be a question of restitution.

You have laboured! but what is there in common between the labour which duty compels you to perform, and the appropriation of things in which there is a common interest? Do you not know that domain over the soil, like that over air and light, cannot be lost by prescription?

You have laboured! have you never made others labour? Why, then, have they lost in labouring for you what you have gained in not labouring for them?

You have laboured! very well; but let us see the results of your labour. We will count, weigh, and measure them. It will be the judgement of Balthasar; for I swear by balance, level, and square, that if you have appropriated another’s labour in any way whatsoever, you shall restore it every stroke.

Thus, the principle of occupation is abandoned; no longer is it said, “The land belongs to him who first gets possession of it.” Property, forced into its first entrenchment, repudiates its old adage; justice, ashamed, retracts her maxims, and sorrow lowers her bandage over her blushing cheeks. And it was but yesterday that this progress in social philosophy began: fifty centuries required for the extirpation of a lie! During this lamentable period, how many usurpations have been sanctioned, how many invasions glorified, how many conquests celebrated! The absent dispossessed, the poor banished, the hungry excluded by wealth, which is so ready and bold in action! Jealousies and wars, incendiarism and bloodshed, among the nations! But henceforth, thanks to the age and its spirit, it is to be admitted that the earth is not a prize to be won in a race; in the absence of any other obstacle, there is a place for everybody under the sun. Each one may harness his goat to the barn, drive his cattle to pasture, sow a corner of a field, and bake his bread by his own fireside.

But, no; each one cannot do these things. I hear it proclaimed on all sides, “Glory to labour and industry! to each according to his capacity; to each capacity according to its results!” And I see three-fourths of the human race again despoiled, the labour of a few being a scourge to the labour of the rest.

“The problem is solved,” exclaims M. Hennequin. “Property, the daughter of labour, can be enjoyed at present and in the future only under the protection of the laws. It has its origin in natural law; it derives its power from civil law; and from the union of these two ideas, labour and protection, positive legislation results.”...

Ah! The problem is solved! Property is the daughter of labour! What, then, is the right of accession, and the right of succession, and the right of donation, &c., if not the right to become a proprietor by simple occupancy? What are your laws concerning the age of majority, emancipation, guardianship, and interdiction, if not the various conditions by which he who is already a worker gains or loses the right of occupancy; that is, property?

Being unable, at this time, to enter upon a detailed discussion of the Code, I shall content myself with examining the three arguments oftenest resorted to in support of property. 1. Appropriation, or the formation of property by possession; 2. The consent of mankind; 3. Prescription. I shall then inquire into the effects of labour upon the relative condition of the workers and upon property.

§1 The Land cannot be Appropriated

“It would seem that lands capable of cultivation ought to be regarded as natural wealth, since they are not of human creation, but Nature’s gratuitous gift to man; but inasmuch as this wealth is not fugitive, like the air and water, — inasmuch as a field is a fixed and limited space which certain men have been able to appropriate, to the exclusion of all others who in their turn have consented to this appropriation, — the land, which was a natural and gratuitous gift, has become social wealth, for the use of which we ought to pay.” — Say: Political Economy

Was I wrong in saying, at the beginning of this chapter, that the economists are the very worst authorities in matters of legislation and philosophy? It is the father of this class of men who clearly states the question, How can the supplies of Nature, the wealth created by Providence, become private property? and who replies by so gross an equivocation that we scarcely know which the author lacks, sense or honesty. What, I ask, has the fixed and solid nature of the earth to do with the right of appropriation? I can understand that a thing limited and stationary, like the land, offers greater chances for appropriation than the water or the sunshine; that it is easier to exercise the right of domain over the soil than over the atmosphere: but we are not dealing with the difficulty of the thing, and Say confounds the right with the possibility. We do not ask why the earth has been appropriated to a greater extent than the sea and the air; we want to know by what right man has appropriated wealth which he did not create, and which nature gave to him gratuitously.

Say, then, did not solve the question which he asked. But if he had solved it, if the explanation which he has given us were as satisfactory as it is illogical, we should know no better than before who has a right to exact payment for the use of the soil, of this wealth which is not man’s handiwork. Who is entitled to the rent of the land? The producer of the land, without doubt. Who made the land? God. Then, proprietor, retire!

But the creator of the land does not sell it: he gives it; and, in giving it, he is no respecter of persons. Why, then, are some of his children regarded as legitimate, while others are treated as bastards? If the equality of shares was an original right, why is the inequality of conditions a posthumous right?

Say gives us to understand that if the air and the water were not of a FUGITIVE nature, they would have been appropriated. Let me observe in passing that this is more than an hypothesis; it is a reality. Men have appropriated the air and the water, I will not say as often as they could, but as often as they have been allowed to.

The Portuguese, having discovered the route to India by the Cape of Good Hope, pretended to have the sole right to that route; and Grotius, consulted in regard to this matter by the Dutch who refused to recognise this right, wrote expressly for this occasion his treatise on the “Freedom of the Seas,” to prove that the sea is not liable to appropriation.

The right to hunt and fish used always to be confined to lords and proprietors; to-day it is leased by the government and communes to whoever can pay the license-fee and the rent. To regulate hunting and fishing is an excellent idea, but to make it a subject of sale is to create a monopoly of air and water.

What is a passport? A universal recommendation of the traveller’s person; a certificate of security for himself and his property. The treasury, whose nature it is to spoil the best things, has made the passport a means of espionage and a tax. Is not this a sale of the right to travel?

Finally, it is permissible neither to draw water from a spring situated in another’s grounds without the permission of the proprietor, because by the right of accession the spring belongs to the possessor of the soil, if there is no other claim; nor to pass a day on his premises without paying a tax; nor to look at a court, a garden, or an orchard, without the consent of the proprietor; nor to stroll in a park or an enclosure against the owner’s will: every one is allowed to shut himself up and to fence himself in. All these prohibitions are so many positive interdictions, not only of the land, but of the air and water. We who belong to the proletarian class: property excommunicates us! Terra, et aqua, et aere, et igne interdicti sumus.

Men could not appropriate the most fixed of all the elements without appropriating the three others; since, by French and Roman law, property in the surface carries with it property from zenith to nadir — Cujus est solum, ejus est usque ad caelum. Now, if the use of water, air, and fire excludes property, so does the use of the soil. This chain of reasoning seems to have been presented by M. Ch. Comte, in his Treatise on Property, chap. 5.

“If a man should be deprived of air for a few moments only, he would cease to exist, and a partial deprivation would cause him severe suffering; a partial or complete deprivation of food would produce like effects upon him though less suddenly; it would be the same, at least in certain climates! were he deprived of all clothing and shelter... To sustain life, then, man needs continually to appropriate many different things. But these things do not exist in like proportions. Some, such as the light of the stars, the atmosphere of the earth, the water composing the seas and oceans, exist in such large quantities that men cannot perceive any sensible increase or diminution; each one can appropriate as much as his needs require without detracting from the enjoyment of others, without causing them the least harm. Things of this sort are, so to speak, the common property of the human race; the only duty imposed upon each individual in this regard is that of infringing not at all upon the rights of others.”

Let us complete the argument of M. Ch. Comte. A man who should be prohibited from walking in the highways, from resting in the fields, from taking shelter in caves, from lighting fires, from picking berries, from gathering herbs and boiling them in a bit of baked clay, — such a man could not live. Consequently the earth — like water, air, and light — is a primary object of necessity which each has a right to use freely, without infringing another’s right. Why, then, is the earth appropriated? M. Ch. Comte’s reply is a curious one. Say pretends that it is because it is not fugitive; M. Ch. Comte assures us that it is because it is not infinite. The land is limited in amount. Then, according to M. Ch. Comte, it ought to be appropriated. It would seem, on the contrary, that he ought to say, Then it ought not to be appropriated. For, no matter how large a quantity of air or light anyone appropriates, no one is damaged thereby; there always remains enough for all. With the soil, it is very different. Lay hold who will, or who can, of the sun’s rays, the passing breeze, or the sea’s billows; he has my consent, and my pardon for his bad intentions. But let any living man dare to change his right of territorial possession into the right of property, and I will declare war upon him, and wage it to the death!

M.Ch. Comte’s argument disproves his position. “Among the things necessary to the preservation of life,” he says, “there are some which exist in such large quantities that they are inexhaustible; others which exist in lesser quantities, and can satisfy the wants of only a certain number of persons. The former are called common, the latter private.”

This reasoning is not strictly logical. Water, air, and light are common things, not because they are inexhaustible, but because they are indispensable; and so indispensable that for that very reason Nature has created them in quantities almost infinite, in order that their plentifulness might prevent their appropriation. Likewise the land is indispensable to our existence, — consequently a common thing, consequently unsusceptible of appropriation; but land is much scarcer than the other elements, therefore its use must be regulated, not for the profit of a few, but in the interest and for the security of all.

In a word, equality of rights is proved by equality of needs. Now, equality of rights, in the case of a commodity which is limited in amount, can be realised only by equality of possession. An agrarian law underlies M. Ch. Comte’s arguments.

From whatever point we view this question of property — provided we go to the bottom of it — we reach equality. I will not insist farther on the distinction between things which can, and things which cannot, be appropriated. On this point, economists and legists talk worse than nonsense. The Civil Code, after having defined property, says nothing about susceptibility of appropriation; and if it speaks of things which are in the market, it always does so without enumerating or describing them. However, light is not wanting. There are some few maxims such as these: Ad reges potestas omnium pertinet, ad singulos proprietas; Omnia rex imperio possidet, singula dominio. Social sovereignty opposed to private property! — might not that be called a prophecy of equality, a republican oracle? Examples crowd upon us: once the possessions of the church, the estates of the crown, the fiefs of the nobility were inalienable and imprescriptible. If, instead of abolishing this privilege, the Constituent had extended it to every individual; if it had declared that the right of labour, like liberty, can never be forfeited, — at that moment the revolution would have been consummated, and we could now devote ourselves to improvement in other directions.

§2 Universal Consent no Justification of Property

In the extract from Say, quoted above, it is not clear whether the author means to base the right of property on the stationary character of the soil, or on the consent which he thinks all men have granted to this appropriation. His language is such that it may mean either of these things, or both at once; which entitles us to assume that the author intended to say, “The right of property resulting originally from the exercise of the will, the stability of the soil permitted it to be applied to the land, and universal consent has since sanctioned this application.”

However that may be, can men legitimate property by mutual consent? I say, no. Such a contract, though drafted by Grotius, Montesquieu, and J.-J. Rousseau, though signed by the whole human race, would be null in the eyes of justice, and an act to enforce it would be illegal. Man can no more give up labour than liberty. Now, to recognise the right of territorial property is to give up labour, since it is to relinquish the means of labour; it is to traffic in a natural right, and divest ourselves of manhood.

But I wish that this consent, of which so much is made, had been given, either tacitly or formally. What would have been the result? Evidently, the surrenders would have been reciprocal; no right would have been abandoned without the receipt of an equivalent in exchange. We thus come back to equality again, — the sine qua non of appropriation; so that, after having justified property by universal consent, that is, by equality, we are obliged to justify the inequality of conditions by property. Never shall we extricate ourselves from this dilemma. Indeed, if, in the terms of the social compact, property has equality for its condition, at the moment when equality ceases to exist, the compact is broken and all property becomes usurpation. We gain nothing, then, by this pretended consent of mankind.

§3 Prescription Gives No Title to Property

The right of property was the origin of evil on the earth, the first link in the long chain of crimes and misfortunes which the human race has endured since its birth. The delusion of prescription is the fatal charm thrown over the intellect, the death sentence breathed into the conscience, to arrest man’s progress towards truth, and bolster up the worship of error.

The Code defines prescription thus: “The process of gaining and losing through the lapse of time.” In applying this definition to ideas and beliefs, we may use the word prescription to denote the everlasting prejudice in favour of old superstitions, whatever be their object; the opposition, often furious and bloody, with which new light has always been received, and which makes the sage a martyr. Not a principle, not a discovery, not a generous thought but has met, at its entrance into the world, with a formidable barrier of preconceived opinions, seeming like a conspiracy of all old prejudices. Prescriptions against reason, prescriptions against facts, prescriptions against every truth hitherto unknown, — that is the sum and substance of the statu quo philosophy, the watchword of conservatives throughout the centuries.

When the evangelical reform was broached to the world, there was prescription in favour of violence, debauchery, and selfishness; when Galileo, Descartes, Pascal, and their disciples reconstructed philosophy and the sciences, there was prescription in favour of the Aristotelian philosophy; when our fathers of ’89 demanded liberty and equality, there was prescription in favour of tyranny and privilege. “There always have been proprietors and there always will be”: it is with this profound utterance, the final effort of selfishness dying in its last ditch, that the friends of social inequality hope to repel the attacks of their adversaries; thinking undoubtedly that ideas, like property, can be lost by prescription.

[...]

In order to confine myself to the civil prescription of which the Code speaks, I shall refrain from beginning a discussion upon this worn-out objection brought forward by proprietors; it would be too tiresome and declamatory. Everybody knows that there are rights which cannot be prescribed; and, as for those things which can be gained through the lapse of time, no one is ignorant of the fact that prescription requires certain conditions, the omission of one of which renders it null. If it is true, for example, that the proprietor’s possession has been civil, public, peaceable, and uninterrupted, it is none the less true that it is not based on a just title; since the only titles which it can show — occupation and labour — prove as much for the proletarian who demands, as for the proprietor who defends. Further, this possession is dishonest, since it is founded on a violation of right, which prevents prescription, according to the saying of St. Paul — Nunquam in usucapionibus juris error possessori prodest. The violation of right lies either in the fact that the holder possesses as proprietor, while he should possess only as usufructuary; or in the fact that he has purchased a thing which no one had a right to transfer or sell.

Another reason why prescription cannot be adduced in favour of property (a reason borrowed from jurisprudence) is that the right to possess real estate is a part of a universal right which has never been totally destroyed even at the most critical periods; and the proletarian, in order to regain the power to exercise it fully, has only to prove that he has always exercised it in part.

He, for example, who has the universal right to possess, give, exchange, loan, let, sell, transform, or destroy a thing, preserves the integrity of this right by the sole act of loaning, though he has never shown his authority in any other manner. Likewise we shall see that equality of possessions, equality of rights, liberty, will, personality, are so many identical expressions of one and the same idea, — the right of preservation and development; in a word, the right of life, against which there can be no prescription until the human race has vanished from the face of the earth.

Finally, as to the time required for prescription, it would be superfluous to show that the right of property in general cannot be acquired by simple possession for ten, twenty, a hundred, a thousand, or one hundred thousand years; and that, so long as there exists a human head capable of understanding and combating the right of property, this right will never be prescribed. For principles of jurisprudence and axioms of reason are different from accidental and contingent facts. One man’s possession can prescribe against another man’s possession; but just as the possessor cannot prescribe against himself, so reason has always the faculty of change and reformation. Past error is not binding on the future. Reason is always the same eternal force. The institution of property, the work of ignorant reason, may be abrogated by a more enlightened reason. Consequently, property cannot be established by prescription. This is so certain and so true, that on it rests the maxim that in the matter of prescription a violation of right goes for nothing.

[...]

I ask, then, in the first place, how possession can become property by the lapse of time? Continue possession as long as you wish, continue it for years and for centuries, you never can give duration — which of itself creates nothing, changes nothing, modifies nothing — the power to change the usufructuary into a proprietor. Let the civil law secure against chance-comers the honest possessor who has held his position for many years, — that only confirms a right already respected; and prescription, applied in this way, simply means that possession which has continued for twenty, thirty, or a hundred years shall be retained by the occupant. But when the law declares that the lapse of time changes possessor into proprietor, it supposes that a right can be created without a producing cause; it unwarrantably alters the character of the subject; it legislates on a matter not open to legislation; it exceeds its own powers. Public order and private security ask only that possession shall be protected. Why has the law created property? Prescription was simply security for the future; why has the law made it a matter of privilege?

[...]

“Where is the man,” [Grotius] says, “with so unchristian a soul that, for a trifle, he would perpetuate the trespass of a possessor, which would inevitably be the result if he did not consent to abandon his right?” By the Eternal! I am that man. Though a million proprietors should burn for it in hell, I lay the blame on them for depriving me of my portion of this world’s goods. To this powerful consideration Grotius rejoins, that it is better to abandon a disputed right than to go to law, disturb the peace of nations, and stir up the flames of civil war. I accept, if you wish it, this argument, provided you indemnify me. But if this indemnity is refused me, what do I, a proletarian, care for the tranquillity and security of the rich? I care as little for public order as for the proprietor’s safety. I ask to live a worker; otherwise I will die a warrior.

Whichever way we turn, we shall come to the conclusion that prescription is a contradiction of property; or rather that prescription and property are two forms of the same principle, but two forms which serve to correct each other; and ancient and modern jurisprudence did not make the least of its blunders in pretending to reconcile them. Indeed, if we see in the institution of property only a desire to secure to each individual his share of the soil and his right to labour; in the distinction between naked property and possession only an asylum for absentees, orphans, and all who do not know, or cannot maintain, their rights; in prescription only a means, either of defence against unjust pretensions and encroachments, or of settlement of the differences caused by the removal of possessors, — we shall recognise in these various forms of human justice the spontaneous efforts of the mind to come to the aid of the social instinct; we shall see in this protection of all rights the sentiment of equality, a constant levelling tendency. And, looking deeper, we shall find in the very exaggeration of these principles the confirmation of our doctrine; because, if equality of conditions and universal association are not soon realised, it will be owing to the obstacle thrown for the time in the way of the common sense of the people by the stupidity of legislators and judges; and also to the fact that, while society in its original state was illuminated with a flash of truth, the early speculations of its leaders could bring forth nothing but darkness.

[...]

§4 Labour: That Labour Has No Inherent Power to Appropriate Natural Wealth

We shall show by the maxims of political economy and law, that is, by the authorities recognised by property, —

1. That labour has no inherent power to appropriate natural wealth.

2. That, if we admit that labour has this power, we are led directly to equality of property, — whatever the kind of labour, however scarce the product, or unequal the ability of the workers.

3. That, in the order of justice, labour destroys property.

Following the example of our opponents, and that we may leave no obstacles in the path, let us examine the question in the strongest possible light.

M.Ch. Comte says, in his Treatise on Property: —

“France, considered as a nation, has a territory which is her own.”

France, as an individuality, possesses a territory which she cultivates; it is not her property. Nations are related to each other as individuals are: they are commoners and workers; it is an abuse of language to call them proprietors. The right of use and abuse belongs no more to nations than to men; and the time will come when a war waged for the purpose of checking a nation in its abuse of the soil will be regarded as a holy war.

Thus, M. Ch. Comte — who undertakes to explain how property comes into existence, and who starts with the supposition that a nation is a proprietor — falls into that error known as begging the question; a mistake which vitiates his whole argument.

If the reader thinks it is pushing logic too far to question a nation’s right of property in the territory which it possesses, I will simply remind him of the fact that at all ages the results of the fictitious right of national property have been pretensions to suzerainty, tributes, monarchical privileges, statute-labour, quotas of men and money, supplies of merchandise, etc.; ending finally in refusals to pay taxes, insurrections, wars, and depopulations.

“Scattered through this territory are extended tracts of land, which have not been converted into individual property. These lands, which consist mainly of forests, belong to the whole population, and the government, which receives the revenues, uses or ought to use them in the interest of all.”

Ought to use is well said: a lie is avoided thereby.

“Let them be offered for sale....”

Why offered for sale? Who has a right to sell them? Even were the nation proprietor, can the generation of to-day dispossess the generation of to-morrow? The nation, in its function of usufructuary, possesses them; the government rules, superintends, and protects them. If it also granted lands, it could grant only their use; it has no right to sell them or transfer them in any way whatever. Not being a proprietor, how can it transmit property?

“Suppose some industrious man buys a portion, a large swamp for example. This would be no usurpation, since the public would receive the exact value through the hands of the government, and would be as rich after the sale as before.”

How ridiculous! What! because a prodigal, imprudent, incompetent official sells the State’s possessions, while I, a ward of the State, — I who have neither an advisory nor a deliberative voice in the State councils, — while I am allowed to make no opposition to the sale, this sale is right and legal! The guardians of the nation waste its substance, and it has no redress! I have received, you tell me, through the hands of the government my share of the proceeds of the sale: but, in the first place, I did not wish to sell; and, had I wished to, I could not have sold. I had not the right. And then I do not see that I am benefited by the sale. My guardians have dressed up some soldiers, repaired an old fortress, erected in their pride some costly but worthless monument, — then they have exploded some fireworks and set up a greased pole! What does all that amount to in comparison with my loss?

The purchaser draws boundaries, fences himself in, and says, “This is mine; each one by himself, each one for himself.” Here, then, is a piece of land upon which, henceforth, no one has a right to step, save the proprietor and his friends; which can benefit nobody, save the proprietor and his servants. Let these sales multiply, and soon the people — who have been neither able nor willing to sell, and who have received none of the proceeds of the sale — will have nowhere to rest, no place of shelter, no ground to till. They will die of hunger at the proprietor’s door, on the edge of that property which was their birthright; and the proprietor, watching them die, will exclaim, “So perish idlers and vagrants!”

To reconcile us to the proprietor’s usurpation, M. Ch. Comte assumes the lands to be of little value at the time of sale.

“The importance of these usurpations should not be exaggerated: they should be measured by the number of men which the occupied land would support, and by the means which it would furnish them.

“It is evident, for instance, that if a piece of land which is worth to-day one thousand francs was worth only five centimes when it was usurped, we really lose only the value of five centimes. A square league of earth would be hardly sufficient to support a savage in distress; to-day it supplies one thousand persons with the means of existence. Nine hundred and ninety-nine parts of this land is the legitimate property of the possessors; only one-thousandth of the value has been usurped.”

A peasant admitted one day, at confession, that he had destroyed a document which declared him a debtor to the amount of three hundred francs. Said the father confessor, –“You must return these three hundred francs.” “No,” replied the peasant, “I will return a penny to pay for the paper.”

M. Ch. Comte’s logic resembles this peasant’s honesty. The soil has not only an integrant and actual value, it has also a potential value, — a value of the future, — which depends on our ability to make it valuable, and to employ it in our work. Destroy a bill of exchange, a promissory note, an annuity deed, — as a paper you destroy almost no value at all; but with this paper you destroy your title, and, in losing your title, you deprive yourself of your goods. Destroy the land, or, what is the same thing, sell it, — you not only transfer one, two, or several crops, but you annihilate all the products that you could derive from it; you and your children and your children’s children.

When M. Ch. Comte, the apostle of property and the eulogist of labour, supposes an alienation of the soil on the part of the government, we must not think that he does so without reason and for no purpose; it is a necessary part of his position. As he rejected the theory of occupancy, and as he knew, moreover, that labour could not constitute the right in the absence of a previous permission to occupy, he was obliged to connect this permission with the authority of the government, which means that property is based upon the sovereignty of the people; in other words, upon universal consent. This theory we have already considered.

To say that property is the daughter of labour, and then to give labour material on which to exercise itself, is, if I am not mistaken, to reason in a circle. Contradictions will result from it.

“A piece of land of a certain size produces food enough to supply a man for one day. If the possessor, through his labour, discovers some method of making it produce enough for two days, he doubles its value. This new value is his work, his creation: it is taken from nobody; it is his property.”

I maintain that the possessor is paid for his trouble and industry in his doubled crop, but that he acquires no right to the land. — “Let the worker have the fruits of his labour.” — Very good; but I do not understand that property in products carries with it property in raw material. Does the skill of the fisherman, who on the same coast can catch more fish than his fellows, make him proprietor of the fishing-grounds? Can the expertness of a hunter ever be regarded as a property-title to a game-forest? The analogy is perfect, — the industrious cultivator finds the reward of his industry in the abundancy and superiority of his crop. If he has made improvements in the soil, he has the possessor’s right of preference. Never, under any circumstances, can he be allowed to claim a property-title to the soil which he cultivates, on the ground of his skill as a cultivator.

[...]

“If men succeed in fertilising land hitherto unproductive, or even death-producing, like certain swamps, they create thereby property in all its completeness.”

What good does it do to magnify an expression, and play with equivocations, as if we expected to change the reality thereby? They create property in all its completeness. You mean that they create a productive capacity which formerly did not exist; but this capacity cannot be created without material to support it. The substance of the soil remains the same; only its qualities and modifications are changed. Man has created every thing — every thing save the material itself. Now, I maintain that this material he can only possess and use, on condition of permanent labour, — granting, for the time being, his right of property in things which he has produced.

This, then, is the first point settled: property in product, if we grant so much, does not carry with it property in the means of production; that seems to me to need no further demonstration. There is no difference between the soldier who possesses his arms, the mason who possesses the materials committed to his care, the fisherman who possesses the water, the hunter who possesses the fields and forests, and the cultivator who possesses the lands: all, if you say so, are proprietors of their products — not one is proprietor of the means of production. The right to product is exclusive — jus in re; the right to means is common — jus ad rem.

§5 That Labour leads to Equality of Property

[Let us] Admit, however, that labour gives a right of property in material.

Why is not this principle universal? Why is the benefit of this pretended law confined to a few and denied to the mass of workers? A philosopher, arguing that all animals sprang up formerly out of the earth warmed by the rays of the sun, almost like mushrooms, on being asked why the earth no longer yielded crops of that nature, replied: “Because it is old, and has lost its fertility.” Has labour, once so fecund, likewise become sterile? Why does the tenant no longer acquire through his labour the land which was formerly acquired by the labour of the proprietor?

“Because,” they say, “it is already appropriated.” That is no answer. A farm yields fifty bushels per hectare; the skill and labour of the tenant double this product: the increase is created by the tenant. Suppose the owner, in a spirit of moderation rarely met with, does not go to the extent of absorbing this product by raising the rent, but allows the cultivator to enjoy the results of his labour; even then justice is not satisfied. The tenant, by improving the land, has imparted a new value to the property; he, therefore, has a right to a part of the property. If the farm was originally worth one hundred thousand francs, and if by the labour of the tenant its value has risen to one hundred and fifty thousand francs, the tenant, who produced this extra value, is the legitimate proprietor of one-third of the farm. M. Ch. Comte could not have pronounced this doctrine false, for it was he who said:

“Men who increase the fertility of the earth are no less useful to their fellow-men, than if they should create new land.”

Why, then, is not this rule applicable to the man who improves the land, as well as to him who clears it? The labour of the former makes the land worth one; that of the latter makes it worth two: both create equal values. Why not accord to both equal property? I defy anyone to refute this argument, without again falling back on the right of first occupancy.

“But,” it will be said, “even if your wish should be granted, property would not be distributed much more evenly than now. Land does not go on increasing in value for ever; after two or three seasons it attains its maximum fertility. That which is added by the agricultural art results rather from the progress of science and the diffusion of knowledge, than from the skill of the cultivator. Consequently, the addition of a few workers to the mass of proprietors would be no argument against property.”

This discussion would, indeed, prove a well-nigh useless one, if our labours culminated in simply extending land-privilege and industrial monopoly; in emancipating only a few hundred workers out of the millions of proletarians. But this also is a misconception of our real thought, and does but prove the general lack of intelligence and logic.

If the worker, who adds to the value of a thing, has a right of property in it, he who maintains this value acquires the same right. For what is maintenance? It is incessant addition, — continuous creation. What is it to cultivate? It is to give the soil its value every year; it is, by annually renewed creation, to prevent the diminution or destruction of the value of a piece of land. Admitting, then, that property is rational and legitimate, — admitting that rent is equitable and just, — I say that he who cultivates acquires property by as good a title as he who clears, or he who improves; and that every time a tenant pays his rent, he obtains a fraction of property in the land entrusted to his care, the denominator of which is equal to the proportion of rent paid. Unless you admit this, you fall into absolutism and tyranny; you recognise class privileges; you sanction slavery.

Whoever labours becomes a proprietor — this is an inevitable deduction from the acknowledged principles of political economy and jurisprudence. And when I say proprietor, I do not mean simply (as do our hypocritical economists) proprietor of his allowance, his salary, his wages, — I mean proprietor of the value which he creates, and by which the master alone profits.

As all this relates to the theory of wages and of the distribution of products, — and as this matter never has been even partially cleared up, — I ask permission to insist on it: this discussion will not be useless to the work in hand. Many persons talk of admitting working-people to a share in the products and profits; but in their minds this participation is pure benevolence: they have never shown — perhaps never suspected — that it was a natural, necessary right, inherent in labour, and inseparable from the function of producer, even in the lowest forms of his work.

This is my proposition: the worker retains, even after he has received his wages, a natural right of property in the thing which he has produced.

I again quote M. Ch. Comte:

“Some workers are employed in draining marshes, in cutting down trees and brushwood, — in a word, in cleaning up the soil. They increase the value, they make the amount of property larger; they are paid for the value which they add in the form of food and daily wages: it then becomes the property of the capitalist.”

The price is not sufficient: the labour of the workers has created a value; now this value is their property. But they have neither sold nor exchanged it; and you, capitalist, you have not earned it. That you should have a partial right to the whole, in return for the materials that you have furnished and the provisions that you have supplied, is perfectly just. You contributed to the production, you ought to share in the enjoyment. But your right does not annihilate that of the workers, who, in spite of you, have been your colleagues in the work of production. Why do you talk of wages? The money with which you pay the wages of the workers remunerates them for only a few years of the perpetual possession which they have abandoned to you. Wages is the cost of the daily maintenance and refreshment of the worker. You are wrong in calling it the price of a sale. The worker has sold nothing; he knows neither his right, nor the extent of the concession which he has made to you, nor the meaning of the contract which you pretend to have made with him. On his side, utter ignorance; on yours, error and surprise, not to say deceit and fraud.

Let us make this clearer by another and more striking example.

No one is ignorant of the difficulties that are met with in the conversion of untilled land into arable and productive land. These difficulties are so great, that usually an isolated man would perish before he could put the soil in a condition to yield him even the most meagre living. To that end are needed the united and combined efforts of society, and all the resources of industry. M. Ch. Comte quotes on this subject numerous and well-authenticated facts, little thinking that he is amassing testimony against his own system.

Let us suppose that a colony of twenty or thirty families establishes itself in a wild district, covered with underbrush and forests; and from which, by agreement, the natives consent to withdraw. Each one of these families possesses a moderate but sufficient amount of capital, of such a nature as a colonist would be apt to choose, — animals, seeds, tools, and a little money and food. The land having been divided, each one settles himself as comfortably as possible, and begins to clear away the portion allotted to him. But after a few weeks of fatigue, such as they never before have known, of inconceivable suffering, of ruinous and almost useless labour, our colonists begin to complain of their trade; their condition seems hard to them; they curse their sad existence.

Suddenly, one of the shrewdest among them kills a pig, cures a part of the meat; and, resolved to sacrifice the rest of his provisions, goes to find his companions in misery. “Friends,” he begins in a very benevolent tone, “how much trouble it costs you to do a little work and live uncomfortably! A fortnight of labour has reduced you to your last extremity!... Let us make an arrangement by which you shall all profit. I offer you provisions and wine: you shall get so much every day; we will work together, and, zounds! my friends, we will be happy and contented!”

Would it be possible for empty stomachs to resist such an invitation? The hungriest of them follow the treacherous tempter. They go to work; the charm of society, emulation, joy, and mutual assistance double their strength; the work can be seen to advance. Singing and laughing, they subdue Nature. In a short time, the soil is thoroughly changed; the mellowed earth waits only for the seed. That done, the proprietor pays his workers, who, on going away, return him their thanks, and grieve that the happy days which they have spent with him are over.

Others follow this example, always with the same success. Then, these installed, the rest disperse, — each one returns to his grubbing. But, while grubbing, it is necessary to live. While they have been clearing away for their neighbour, they have done no clearing for themselves. One year’s seed-time and harvest is already gone. They had calculated that in lending their labour they could not but gain, since they would save their own provisions; and, while living better, would get still more money. False calculation! they have created for another the means wherewith to produce, and have created nothing for themselves. The difficulties of clearing remain the same; their clothing wears out, their provisions give out; soon their purse becomes empty for the profit of the individual for whom they have worked, and who alone can furnish the provisions which they need, since he alone is in a position to produce them. Then, when the poor grubber has exhausted his resources, the man with the provisions (like the wolf in the fable, who scents his victim from afar) again comes forward. One he offers to employ again by the day; from another he offers to buy at a favourable price a piece of his bad land, which is not, and never can be, of any use to him: that is, he uses the labour of one man to cultivate the field of another for his own benefit. So that at the end of twenty years, of thirty individuals originally equal in point of wealth, five or six have become proprietors of the whole district, while the rest have been philanthropically dispossessed!

In this century of bourgeoisie morality, in which I have had the honour to be born, the moral sense is so debased that I should not be at all surprised if I were asked, by many a worthy proprietor, what I see in this that is unjust and illegitimate? Debased creature! galvanised corpse! how can I expect to convince you, if you cannot tell theft when I show it to you? A man, by soft and insinuating words, discovers the secret of taxing others that he may establish himself; then, once enriched by their united efforts, he refuses, on the very conditions which he himself dictated, to advance the well-being of those who made his fortune for him: and you ask how such conduct is fraudulent! Under the pretext that he has paid his workers, that he owes them nothing more, that he has nothing to gain by putting himself at the service of others, while his own occupations claim his attention, — he refuses, I say, to aid others in getting a foothold, as he was aided in getting his own; and when, in the impotence of their isolation, these poor workers are compelled to sell their birthright, he — this ungrateful proprietor, this knavish upstart — stands ready to put the finishing touch to their deprivation and their ruin. And you think that just? Take care!

I read in your startled countenance the reproach of a guilty conscience, much more clearly than the innocent astonishment of involuntary ignorance.

“The capitalist,” they say, “has paid the workers their daily wages.” To be accurate, it must be said that the capitalist has paid as many times one day’s wage as he has employed workers each day, — which is not at all the same thing. For he has paid nothing for that immense power which results from the union and harmony of workers, and the convergence and simultaneousness of their efforts. Two hundred grenadiers stood the obelisk of Luxor upon its base in a few hours; do you suppose that one man could have accomplished the same task in two hundred days? Nevertheless, on the books of the capitalist, the amount of wages paid would have been the same. Well, a desert to prepare for cultivation, a house to build, a factory to run, — all these are obelisks to erect, mountains to move. The smallest fortune, the most insignificant establishment, the setting in motion of the lowest industry, demand the concurrence of so many different kinds of labour and skill, that one man could not possibly execute the whole of them. It is astonishing that the economists never have called attention to this fact. Strike a balance, then, between the capitalist’s receipts and his payments.

[...]

Consequently, when M. Ch. Comte — following out his hypothesis — shows us his capitalist acquiring one after another the products of his employees’ labour, he sinks deeper and deeper into the mire; and, as his argument does not change, our reply of course remains the same.

“Other workers are employed in building: some quarry the stone, others transport it, others cut it, and still others put it in place. Each of them adds a certain value to the material which passes through his hands; and this value, the product of his labour, is his property. He sells it, as fast as he creates it, to the proprietor of the building, who pays him for it in food and wages.”

Divide et impera — divide, and you shall command; divide, and you shall grow rich; divide, and you shall deceive men, you shall daze their minds, you shall mock at justice! Separate workers from each other, perhaps each one’s daily wage exceeds the value of each individual’s product; but that is not the question under consideration. A force of one thousand men working twenty days has been paid the same wages that one would be paid for working fifty-five years; but this force of one thousand has done in twenty days what a single man could not have accomplished, though he had laboured for a million centuries. Is the exchange an equitable one? Once more, no; when you have paid all the individual forces, the collective force still remains to be paid.

Consequently, there remains always a right of collective property which you have not acquired, and which you enjoy unjustly.

Admit that twenty days’ wages suffice to feed, lodge, and clothe this multitude for twenty days: thrown out of employment at the end of that time, what will become of them, if, as fast as they create, they abandon their creations to the proprietors who will soon discharge them? While the proprietor, firm in his position (thanks to the aid of all the workers), dwells in security, and fears no lack of labour or bread, the worker’s only dependence is upon the benevolence of this same proprietor, to whom he has sold and surrendered his liberty. If, then, the proprietor, shielding himself behind his comfort and his rights, refuses to employ the worker, how can the worker live? He has ploughed an excellent field, and cannot sow it; he has built an elegant and commodious house, and cannot live in it; he has produced all, and can enjoy nothing.

Labour leads us to equality. Every step that we take brings us nearer to it; and if workers had equal strength, diligence, and industry, clearly their fortunes would be equal also. Indeed, if, as is pretended, — and as we have admitted, — the worker is proprietor of the value which he creates, it follows:

1. That the worker should acquire at the expense of the idle proprietor;

2. That all production being necessarily collective, the worker is entitled to a share of the products and profits commensurate with his labour;

3. That all accumulated capital being social property, no one can be its exclusive proprietor.

These inferences are unavoidable; these alone would suffice to revolutionise our whole economic system, and change our institutions and our laws. Why do the very persons, who laid down this principle, now refuse to be guided by it? Why do the Says, the Comtes, the Hennequins, and others — after having said that property is born of labour — seek to fix it by occupation and prescription?

But let us leave these sophists to their contradictions and blindness. The good sense of the people will do justice to their equivocations. Let us make haste to enlighten it, and show it the true path. Equality approaches; already between it and us but a short distance intervenes: to-morrow even this distance will have been traversed.

§6 That in Society all Wages are Equal

When the St. Simonians, the Fourierists, and, in general, all who in our day are connected with social economy and reform, inscribe upon their banner, —

“To each according to his capacity, to each capacity according to its results” (St. Simon);

“To each according to his capital, his labour, and his skill” (Fourier), —

they mean — although they do not say so in so many words — that the products of Nature procured by labour and industry are a reward, a palm, a crown offered to all kinds of pre-eminence and superiority. They regard the land as an immense arena in which prizes are contended for, — no longer, it is true, with lances and swords, by force and by treachery; but by acquired wealth, by knowledge, talent, and by virtue itself. In a word, they mean — and everybody agrees with them — that the greatest capacity is entitled to the greatest reward; and, to use the mercantile phraseology, — which has, at least, the merit of being straightforward,—that salaries must be governed by capacity and its results.

[...]

This proposition, taken, as they say, in sensu obvio — in the sense usually attributed to it — is false, absurd, unjust, contradictory, hostile to liberty, friendly to tyranny, anti-social, and was unluckily framed under the express influence of the property idea.

And, first, capital must be crossed off the list of elements which are entitled to a reward. The Fourierists — as far as I have been able to learn from a few of their pamphlets — deny the right of occupancy, and recognise no basis of property save labour. Starting with a like premise, they would have seen — had they reasoned upon the matter — that capital is a source of production to its proprietor only by virtue of the right of occupancy, and that this production is therefore illegitimate. Indeed, if labour is the sole basis of property, I cease to be proprietor of my field as soon as I receive rent for it from another. This we have shown beyond all cavil. It is the same with all capital; so that to put capital in an enterprise, is, by the law’s decision, to exchange it for an equivalent sum in products. [...]

Thus, capital can be exchanged, but cannot be a source of income.

[...]

In labour, two things must be noticed and distinguished: association and available material.

In so far as workers are associated, they are equal; and it involves a contradiction to say that one should be paid more than another. [...]

[...]

But every industry needs — they will add — leaders, instructors, superintendents, &c. Will these be engaged in the general task? No; since their task is to lead, instruct, and superintend. But they must be chosen from the workers by the workers themselves, and must fulfil the conditions of eligibility. It is the same with all public functions, whether of administration or instruction.

Then, article first of the universal constitution will be:

“The limited quantity of available material proves the necessity of dividing the labour among the whole number of workers. The capacity, given to all, of accomplishing a social task, — that is, an equal task, — and the impossibility of paying one worker save in the products of another, justify the equality of wages.”

[...]

Chapter IV: That property is impossible

Chapter IV: That property is impossible.

The last resort of proprietors, — the overwhelming argument whose invincible potency reassures them, — is that, in their opinion, equality of conditions is impossible. “Equality of conditions is a chimera,” they cry with a knowing air; “distribute wealth equally to-day — to-morrow this equality will have vanished.”

To this hackneyed objection, which they repeat everywhere with the most marvellous assurance, they never fail to add the following comment, as a sort Of Glory be to the Father: “If all men were equal, nobody would work.” This anthem is sung with variations.

“If all were masters, nobody would obey.”

“If nobody were rich, who would employ the poor?”

And, “If nobody were poor, who would labour for the rich?”

But let us have done with invective — we have better arguments at our command.

If I show that property itself is impossible — that it is property which is a contradiction, a chimera, a utopia; and if I show it no longer by metaphysics and jurisprudence, but by figures, equations, and calculations, — imagine the fright of the astounded proprietor! And you, reader; what do you think of the retort?

[...]

AXIOM: Property is the Right of Increase [droit d’aubaine] claimed by the Proprietor over any thing which he has stamped as his own.

[...]

Observations: Increase [aubaine] receives different names according to the thing by which it is yielded: if by land, farm-rent; if by houses and furniture, rent; if by life-investments, revenue; if by money, interest; if by exchange, advantage gain, profit (three things which must not be confounded with the wages or legitimate price of labour).

[...]

Property is impossible, because it demands Something for Nothing.

The discussion of this proposition covers the same ground as that of the origin of farm-rent, which is so much debated by the economists. When I read the writings of the greater part of these men, I cannot avoid a feeling of contempt mingled with anger, in view of this mass of nonsense, in which the detestable vies with the absurd. It would be a repetition of the story of the elephant in the moon, were it not for the atrocity of the consequences. To seek a rational and legitimate origin of that which is, and ever must be, only theft, extortion, and plunder—that must be the height of the proprietor’s folly; the last degree of bedevilment into which minds, otherwise judicious, can be thrown by the perversity of selfishness.

“A farmer,” says Say, “is a wheat manufacturer who, among other tools which serve him in modifying the material from which he makes the wheat, employs one large tool, which we call a field. If he is not the proprietor of the field, if he is only a tenant, he pays the proprietor for the productive service of this tool. The tenant is reimbursed by the purchaser, the latter by another, until the product reaches the consumer; who redeems the first payment, plus all the others, by means of which the product has at last come into his hands.”

Let us lay aside the subsequent payments by which the product reaches the consumer, and, for the present, pay attention only to the first one of all, — the rent paid to the proprietor by the tenant. On what ground, we ask, is the proprietor entitled to this rent?

[...]

Buchanan — a commentator on Smith — regarded farm-rent as the result of a monopoly, and maintained that labour alone is productive. Consequently, he thought that, without this monopoly, products would rise in price; and he found no basis for farm-rent save in the civil law. This opinion is a corollary of that which makes the civil law the basis of property. But why has the civil law — which ought to be the written expression of justice — authorised this monopoly? Whoever says monopoly, necessarily excludes justice. Now, to say that farm-rent is a monopoly sanctioned by the law, is to say that injustice is based on justice, — a contradiction in terms.

Say answers Buchanan, that the proprietor is not a monopolist, because a monopolist “is one who does not increase the utility of the merchandise which passes through his hands.”

How much does the proprietor increase the utility of his tenant’s products? Has he ploughed, sowed, reaped, mowed, winnowed, weeded? These are the processes by which the tenant and his employees increase the utility of the material which they consume for the purpose of reproduction.

“The landed proprietor increases the utility of products by means of his implement, the land. This implement receives in one state, and returns in another the materials of which wheat is composed. The action of the land is a chemical process, which so modifies the material that it multiplies it by destroying it. The soil is then a producer of utility; and when it asks its pay in the form of profit, or farm rent, for its proprietor, it at the same time gives something to the consumer in exchange for the amount which the consumer pays it. It gives him a produced utility; and it is the production of this utility which warrants us in calling land productive, as well as labour.”

Let us clear up this matter.

The blacksmith who manufactures for the farmer implements of husbandry, the wheelwright who makes him a cart, the mason who builds his barn, the carpenter, the basket-maker, &c., — all of whom contribute to agricultural production by the tools which they provide, — are producers of utility; consequently, they are entitled to a part of the products.

“Undoubtedly,” says Say; “but the land also is an implement whose service must be paid for, then...”

I admit that the land is an implement; but who made it? Did the proprietor? Did he — by the efficacious virtue of the right of property, by this moral quality infused into the soil — endow it with vigour and fertility? Exactly there lies the monopoly of the proprietor; in the fact that, though he did not make the implement, he asks pay for its use. When the Creator shall present himself and claim farm-rent, we will consider the matter with him; or even when the proprietor — his pretended representative — shall exhibit his power-of-attorney.

“The proprietor’s service,” adds Say, “is easy, I admit.”

It is a frank confession.

“But we cannot disregard it. Without property, one farmer would contend with another for the possession of a field without a proprietor, and the field would remain uncultivated...”

Then the proprietor’s business is to reconcile farmers by robbing them. O logic! O justice! O the marvellous wisdom of economists! The proprietor, if they are right, is like Perrin-Dandin[4] who, when summoned by two travellers to settle a dispute about an oyster, opened it, gobbled it, and said to them:

“The Court awards you each a shell.”

Could anything worse be said of property?

Will Say tell us why the same farmers, who, if there were no proprietors, would contend with each other for possession of the soil, do not contend to-day with the proprietors for this possession? Obviously, because they think them legitimate possessors, and because their respect for even an imaginary right exceeds their avarice. I proved, in Chapter II, that possession is sufficient, without property, to maintain social order. Would it be more difficult, then, to reconcile possessors without masters than tenants controlled by proprietors? Would labouring men, who respect — much to their own detriment — the pretended rights of the idler, violate the natural rights of the producer and the manufacturer? What! if the husbandman forfeited his right to the land as soon as he ceased to occupy it, would he become more covetous? And would the impossibility of demanding increase [aubaine], of taxing another’s labour, be a source of quarrels and law-suits? The economists use singular logic. But we are not yet through. Admit that the proprietor is the legitimate master of the land.

“The land is an instrument of production,” they say. That is true. But when, changing the noun into an adjective, they alter the phrase, thus, “The land is a productive instrument,” they make a wicked blunder.

According to Quesnay and the early economists, all production comes from the land. Smith, Ricardo, and de Tracy, on the contrary, say that labour is the sole agent of production. Say, and most of his successors, teach that BOTH land AND labour AND capital are productive. The latter constitute the eclectic school of political economy. The truth is, that NEITHER land NOR labour NOR capital is productive. Production results from the co-operation of these three equally necessary elements, which, taken separately, are equally sterile.

Political economy, indeed, treats of the production, distribution, and consumption of wealth or values. But of what values? Of the values produced by human industry; that is, of the changes made in matter by man, that he may appropriate it to his own use, and not at all of Nature’s spontaneous productions. Man’s labour consists in a simple laying on of hands. When he has taken that trouble, he has produced a value. Until then, the salt of the sea, the water of the springs, the grass of the fields, and the trees of the forests are to him as if they were not. The sea, without the fisherman and his line, supplies no fish. The forest, without the wood-cutter and his axe, furnishes neither fuel nor timber. The meadow, without the mower, yields neither hay nor aftermath. Nature is a vast mass of material to be cultivated and converted into products; but Nature produces nothing for herself: in the economical sense, her products, in their relation to man, are not yet products.

Capital, tools, and machinery are likewise unproductive. The hammer and the anvil, without the blacksmith and the iron, do not forge. The mill, without the miller and the grain, does not grind, &c. Bring tools and raw material together; place a plough and some seed on fertile soil; enter a smithy, light the fire, and shut up the shop, — you will produce nothing. The following remark was made by an economist who possessed more good sense than most of his fellows: “Say credits capital with an active part unwarranted by its nature; left to itself, it is an idle tool.” (J. Droz: Political Economy)

Finally, labour and capital together, when unfortunately combined, produce nothing. Plough a sandy desert, beat the water of the rivers, pass type through a sieve, — you will get neither wheat, nor fish, nor books. Your trouble will be as fruitless as was the immense labour of the army of Xerxes; who, as Herodotus says, with his three million soldiers, scourged the Hellespont for twenty-four hours, as a punishment for having broken and scattered the pontoon bridge which the great king had thrown across it.

Tools and capital, land and labour, considered individually and abstractly, are not, literally speaking, productive. The proprietor who asks to be rewarded for the use of a tool, or the productive power of his land, takes for granted, then, that which is radically false; namely, that capital produces by its own effort, — and, in taking pay for this imaginary product, he literally receives something for nothing.

Objection — But if the blacksmith, the wheelwright, all manufacturers in short, have a right to the products in return for the implements which they furnish; and if land is an implement of production, — why does not this implement entitle its proprietor, be his claim real or imaginary, to a portion of the products; as in the case of the manufacturers of ploughs and wagons?

Reply — Here we touch the heart of the question, the mystery of property; which we must clear up, if we would understand anything of the strange effects of the right of increase [droit d’aubaine].

He who manufactures or repairs the farmer’s tools receives the price once, either at the time of delivery, or in several payments; and when this price is once paid to the manufacturer, the tools which he has delivered belong to him no more. Never does he claim double payment for the same tool, or the same job of repairs. If he annually shares in the products of the farmer, it is owing to the fact that he annually makes something for the farmer.

The proprietor, on the contrary, does not yield his implement; eternally he is paid for it, eternally he keeps it.

In fact, the rent received by the proprietor is not intended to defray the expense of maintaining and repairing the implement; this expense is charged to the borrower, and does not concern the proprietor except as he is interested in the preservation of the article. If he takes it upon himself to attend to the repairs, he takes care that the money which he expends for this purpose is repaid.

This rent does not represent the product of the implement, since of itself the implement produces nothing; we have just proved this, and we shall prove it more clearly still by its consequences.

Finally, this rent does not represent the participation of the proprietor in the production; since this participation could consist, like that of the blacksmith and the wheelwright, only in the surrender of the whole or a part of his implement, in which case he would cease to be its proprietor, which would involve a contradiction of the idea of property.

Then, between the proprietor and his tenant there is no exchange either of values or services; then, as our axiom says, farm-rent is real increase, — an extortion based solely upon fraud and violence on the one hand, and weakness and ignorance upon the other. Products, say the economists, are bought only by products. This maxim is property’s condemnation. The proprietor, producing neither by his own labour nor by his implement, and receiving products in exchange for nothing, is either a parasite or a thief. Then, if property can exist only as a right, property is impossible.

Corollaries — 1. The republican constitution of 1793, which defined property as “the right to enjoy the fruit of one’s labour,” was grossly mistaken. It should have said, “Property is the right to enjoy and dispose at will of another’s goods, — the fruit of another’s industry and labour.”

2. Every possessor of lands, houses, furniture, machinery, tools, money, &c., who lends a thing for a price exceeding the cost of repairs (the repairs being charged to the lender, and representing products which he exchanges for other products), is guilty of swindling and extortion. In short, all rent received (nominally as damages, but really as payment for a loan) is an act of property, — of theft.

Historical comment — The tax which a victorious nation levies upon a conquered nation is genuine farm-rent. The seigniorial rights abolished by the Revolution of 1789, — tithes, mortmain, statute-labour, &c., — were different forms of the rights of property; and they who under the titles of nobles, seigneurs, prebendaries, &c. enjoyed these rights, were neither more nor less than proprietors. To defend property to-day is to condemn the Revolution.

[...]

When the ass is too heavily loaded, he lies down; man always moves on. Upon this indomitable courage, the proprietor — well knowing that it exists — bases his hopes of speculation. The free worker produces ten; for me, thinks the proprietor, he will produce twelve.

Indeed, — before consenting to the confiscation of his fields, before bidding farewell to the paternal roof, — the peasant, whose story we have just told, makes a desperate effort; he leases new land; he will sow one-third more; and, taking half of this new product for himself, he will harvest an additional sixth, and thereby pay his rent. What an evil! To add one-sixth to his production, the farmer must add, not one-sixth, but two-sixths to his labour. At such a price, he pays a farm-rent which in God’s eyes he does not owe.

The landlord’s example is followed by the industrialist. The former tills more land, and dispossesses his neighbours; the latter lowers the price of his merchandise, and endeavours to monopolise its manufacture and sale, and to crush out his competitors. To satisfy property, the worker must first produce beyond his needs. Then, he must produce beyond his strength [...]

[...]

If the worker receives for his labour an average of three francs per day, his employer (in order to gain anything beyond his own salary, if only interest on his capital) must sell the day’s labour of his employee, in the form of merchandise, for more than three francs. The worker cannot, then, repurchase that which he has produced for his master. It is thus with all trades whatsoever. The tailor, the hatter, the cabinet-maker, the blacksmith, the tanner, the mason, the jeweller, the printer, the clerk, &c., even to the farmer and wine-grower, cannot repurchase their products; since, producing for a master who in one form or another makes a profit, they are obliged to pay more for their own labour than they get for it.

The labouring people can buy neither the cloth which they weave, nor the furniture which they manufacture, nor the metal which they forge, nor the jewels which they cut, nor the prints which they engrave. They can procure neither the wheat which they plant, nor the wine which they grow, nor the flesh of the animals which they raise. They are allowed neither to dwell in the houses which they build, nor to attend the plays which their labour supports, nor to enjoy the rest which their body requires. And why? Because the right of increase [droit d’aubaine] does not permit these things to be sold at the cost-price, which is all that workers can afford to pay. On the signs of those magnificent warehouses which he in his poverty admires, the worker reads in large letters: “This is thy work, and thou shalt not have it.” Sic vos non vobis!

[...]

If the factory stops running, the manufacturer has to pay interest on his capital the same as before. He naturally tries, then, to continue production by lessening expenses. Then comes the lowering of wages; the introduction of machinery; the employment of women and children to do the work of men; bad workmen, and wretched work. They still produce, because the decreased cost creates a larger market; but they do not produce long, because, the cheapness being due to the quantity and rapidity of production, the productive power tends more than ever to outstrip consumption. It is when workers, whose wages are scarcely sufficient to support them from one day to another, are thrown out of work, that the consequences of the principle of property become most frightful. They have not been able to economise, they have made no savings, they have accumulated no capital whatever to support them even one day more. Today the factory is closed. To-morrow the people starve in the streets. Day after tomorrow they will either die in the hospital, or eat in the jail.

And still new misfortunes come to complicate this terrible situation. In consequence of the cessation of business, and the extreme cheapness of merchandise, the manufacturer finds it impossible to pay the interest on his borrowed capital; whereupon his frightened creditors hasten to withdraw their funds. Production is suspended, and labour comes to a standstill. Then people are astonished to see capital desert commerce, and throw itself upon the Stock Exchange; and I once heard M. Blanqui bitterly lamenting the blind ignorance of capitalists. The cause of this movement of capital is very simple; but for that very reason an economist could not understand it, or rather must not explain it. The cause lies solely in competition.

I mean by competition, not only the rivalry between two parties engaged in the same business, but the general and simultaneous effort of all kinds of business to get ahead of each other. This effort is to-day so strong, that the price of merchandise scarcely covers the cost of production and distribution; so that, the wages of all workers being lessened, nothing remains, not even interest for the capitalists.

The primary cause of commercial and industrial stagnations is, then, interest on capital, — that interest which the ancients with one accord branded with the name of usury, whenever it was paid for the use of money, but which they did not dare to condemn in the forms of house-rent, farm-rent, or profit: as if the nature of the thing lent could ever warrant a charge for the lending; that is, theft.

In proportion to the increase received by the capitalist will be the frequency and intensity of commercial crises, — the first being given, we always can determine the two others; and vice versa. Do you wish to know the regulator of a society? Ascertain the amount of active capital; that is, the capital bearing interest, and the legal rate of this interest. The course of events will be a series of overturns, whose number and violence will be proportional to the activity of capital.

[...]

Property is impossible, because it is powerless against Property.

I. By the third corollary of our axiom, interest tells against the proprietor as well as the stranger. This economic principle is universally admitted. Nothing simpler at first blush; yet, nothing more absurd, more contradictory in terms, or more absolutely impossible.

The manufacturer, it is said, pays himself the rent on his house and capital. he pays himself; that is, he gets paid by the public who buy his products. For, suppose the manufacturer, who seems to make this profit on his property, wishes also to make it on his merchandise, can he then pay himself one franc for that which cost him ninety centimes, and make money by the operation? No: such a transaction would transfer the merchant’s money from his right hand to his left, but without any profit whatever.

Now, that which is true of a single individual trading with himself is true also of the whole business world. Form a chain of ten, fifteen, twenty producers; as many as you wish. If the producer A makes a profit out of the producer B. B’s loss must, according to economic principles, be made up by C, C’s by D; and so on through to Z.

But by whom will Z be paid for the loss caused him by the profit charged by A in the beginning? By the consumer, replies Say. Contemptible equivocation! Is this consumer any other, then, than A, B. C, D, &c., or Z? By whom will Z be paid? If he is paid by A, no one makes a profit; consequently, there is no property. If, on the contrary, Z bears the burden himself, he ceases to be a member of society; since it refuses him the right of property and profit, which it grants to the other associates.

Since, then, a nation, like universal humanity, is a vast industrial association which cannot act outside of itself, it is clear that no man can enrich himself without impoverishing another. For, in order that the right of property, the right of increase [droit d’aubaine], may be respected in the case of A, it must be denied to Z; thus we see how equality of rights, separated from equality of conditions, may be a truth. The iniquity of political economy in this respect is flagrant. “When I, a manufacturer, purchase the labour of a worker, I do not include his wages in the net product of my business; on the contrary, I deduct them. But the worker includes them in his net product...” (Say: Political Economy)

That means that all which the worker gains is net product; but that only that part of the manufacturer’s gains is net product, which remains after deducting his wages. But why is the right of profit confined to the manufacturer? Why is this right, which is at bottom the right of property itself, denied to the worker? In the terms of economic science, the worker is capital. Now, all capital, beyond the cost of its maintenance and repair, must bear interest. This the proprietor takes care to get, both for his capital and for himself. Why is the worker prohibited from charging a like interest for his capital, which is himself?

Property, then, is inequality of rights; for, if it were not inequality of rights, it would be equality of goods, — in other words, it would not exist. Now, the charter guarantees to all equality of rights. Then, by the charter, property is impossible.

II. Is A, the proprietor of an estate, entitled by the fact of his proprietorship to take possession of the field belonging to B. his neighbour? “No,” reply the proprietors; “but what has that to do with the right of property?” That I shall show you by a series of similar propositions.

Has C, a hatter, the right to force D, his neighbour and also a hatter, to close his shop, and cease his business? Not the least in the world.

But C wishes to make a profit of one franc on every hat, while D is content with fifty centimes. It is evident that D’s moderation is injurious to C’s extravagant claims. Has the latter a right to prevent D from selling? Certainly not.

Since D is at liberty to sell his hats fifty centimes cheaper than C if he chooses, C in his turn is free to reduce his price one franc. Now, D is poor, while C is rich; so that at the end of two or three years D is ruined by this intolerable competition, and C has complete control of the market. Can the proprietor D get any redress from the proprietor C? Can he bring a suit against him to recover his business and property? No; for D could have done the same thing, had he been the richer of the two.

On the same ground, the large proprietor A may say to the small proprietor B: “Sell me your field, otherwise you shall not sell your wheat,” — and that without doing him the least wrong, or giving him ground for complaint. So that A can devour B if he likes, for the very reason that A is stronger than B. Consequently, it is not the right of property which enables A and C to rob B and D, but the right of might. By the right of property, neither the two neighbours A and B, nor the two merchants C and D, could harm each other. They could neither dispossess nor destroy one another, nor gain at one another’s expense. The power of invasion lies in superior strength.

But it is superior strength also which enables the manufacturer to reduce the wages of his employees, and the rich merchant and well-stocked proprietor to sell their products for what they please. The manufacturer says to the worker, “You are as free to go elsewhere with your services as I am to receive them. I offer you so much.” The merchant says to the customer, “Take it or leave it; you are master of your money, as I am of my goods. I want so much.” Who will yield? The weaker.

Therefore, without force, property is powerless against property, since without force it has no power to increase [s’accroître par aubaine]; therefore, without force, property is null and void.

[...]

End Notes

[4] Perrin Dandin, a character in François Rabelais’ Third Book. (Editor)

Chapter V: Psychological Exposition of the Idea of Justice

Chapter V:Psychological Exposition of the Idea of Justice

Property is impossible; equality does not exist. We hate the former, and yet wish to possess it; the latter rules all our thoughts, yet we know not how to reach it. Who will explain this profound antagonism between our conscience and our will? Who will point out the causes of this pernicious error, which has become the most sacred principle of justice and society?

I am bold enough to undertake the task, and I hope to succeed.

[...]

When two or more individuals have regularly organised a society, — when the contracts have been agreed upon, drafted, and signed, — there is no difficulty about the future. Everybody knows that when two men associate — for instance — in order to fish, if one of them catches no fish, he is none the less entitled to those caught by his associate. If two merchants form a partnership, while the partnership lasts, the profits and losses are divided between them; since each produces, not for himself, but for the society: when the time of distribution arrives, it is not the producer who is considered, but the associate. That is why the slave, to whom the planter gives straw and rice; and the civilised worker, to whom the capitalist pays a salary which is always too small, — not being associated with their employers, although producing with them, — are disregarded when the product is divided. Thus, the horse who draws our coaches, and the ox who draws our carts produce with us, but are not associated with us; we take their product, but do not share it with them. The animals and workers whom we employ hold the same relation to us. Whatever we do for them, we do, not from a sense of justice, but out of pure benevolence.[5]

But is it possible that we are not all associated? Let us call to mind what was said in the last two chapters, That even though we do not want to be associated, the force of things, the necessity of consumption, the laws of production, and the mathematical principle of exchange combine to associate us. There is but a single exception to this rule, — that of the proprietor, who, producing by his right of increase [droit d’aubaine], is not associated with any one, and consequently is not obliged to share his product with any one; just as no one else is bound to share with him. With the exception of the proprietor, we labour for each other; we can do nothing by ourselves unaided by others, and we continually exchange products and services with each other. If these are not social acts, what are they?

Now, neither a commercial, nor an industrial, nor an agricultural association can be conceived of in the absence of equality; equality is its sine qua non. So that, in all matters which concern this association, to violate society is to violate justice and equality. Apply this principle to humanity at large.

After what has been said, I assume that the reader has sufficient insight to enable him to dispense with any aid of mine.

By this principle, the man who takes possession of a field, and says, “This field is mine,” will not be unjust so long as every one else has an equal right of possession; nor will he be unjust, if, wishing to change his location, he exchanges this field for an equivalent. But if, putting another in his place, he says to him, “Work for me while I rest,” he then becomes unjust, unassociated, unequal. He is a proprietor.

Reciprocally, the sluggard, or the rake, who, without performing any social task, enjoys like others — and often more than others — the products of society, should be proceeded against as a thief and a parasite. We owe it to ourselves to give him nothing; but, since he must live, to put him under supervision, and compel him to labour.

Sociability is the attraction felt by sentient beings for each other. Justice is this same attraction, accompanied by thought and knowledge. But under what general concept, in what category of the understanding, is justice placed? In the category of equal quantities. Hence, the ancient definition of justice — Justum aequale est, injustum inaequale. What is it, then, to practise justice? It is to give equal wealth to each, on condition of equal labour. It is to act socially. Our selfishness may complain; there is no escape from evidence and necessity.

What is the right of occupancy? It is a natural method of dividing the earth, by reducing each worker’s share as fast as new workers present themselves. This right disappears if the public interest requires it; which, being the social interest, is also that of the occupant.

What is the right of labour? It is the right to obtain one’s share of wealth by fulfilling the required conditions. It is the right of society, the right of equality.

Justice, which is the product of the combination of an idea and an instinct, manifests itself in man as soon as he is capable of feeling, and of forming ideas. Consequently, it has been regarded as an innate and original sentiment; but this opinion is logically and chronologically false. But justice, by its composition hybrid — if I may use the term, — justice, born of emotion and intellect combined, seems to me one of the strongest proofs of the unity and simplicity of the ego; the organism being no more capable of producing such a mixture by itself, than are the combined senses of hearing and sight of forming a binary sense, half auditory and half visual.

[...]

When property is abolished, what will be the form of society? Will it be communism?

[...]

Communism — the first expression of the social nature — is the first term of social development, — the thesis; property, the reverse of communism, is the second term, — the antithesis. When we have discovered the third term, the synthesis, we shall have the required solution. Now, this synthesis necessarily results from the correction of the thesis by the antithesis. Therefore it is necessary, by a final examination of their characteristics, to eliminate those features which are hostile to sociability. The union of the two remainders will give us the true form of human association.

[...]

I. I ought not to conceal the fact that property and communism have been considered always the only possible forms of society. This deplorable error has been the life of property. The disadvantages of communism are so obvious that its critics never have needed to employ much eloquence to thoroughly disgust men with it. The irreparability of the injustice which it causes, the violence which it does to attractions and repulsions, the yoke of iron which it fastens upon the will, the moral torture to which it subjects the conscience, the debilitating effect which it has upon society; and, to sum it all up, the pious and stupid uniformity which it enforces upon the free, active, reasoning, unsubmissive personality of man, have shocked common sense, and condemned communism by an irrevocable decree.

The authorities and examples cited in its favour disprove it. The communistic republic of Plato involved slavery; that of Lycurgus employed Helots, whose duty it was to produce for their masters, thus enabling the latter to devote themselves exclusively to athletic sports and to war. Even J. J. Rousseau — confounding communism and equality — has said somewhere that, without slavery, he did not think equality of conditions possible. The communities of the early Church did not last the first century out, and soon degenerated into monasteries. In those of the Jesuits of Paraguay, the condition of the blacks is said by all travellers to be as miserable as that of slaves; and it is a fact that the good Fathers were obliged to surround themselves with ditches and walls to prevent their new converts from escaping. The followers of Babeuf — guided by a lofty horror of property rather than by any definite belief — were ruined by exaggeration of their principles; the St. Simonians, lumping communism and inequality, passed away like a masquerade. The greatest danger to which society is exposed to-day is that of another shipwreck on this rock.

Singularly enough, systematic communism [communauté] — the deliberate negation of property — is conceived under the direct influence of the proprietary prejudice; and property is the basis of all communistic theories.

The members of a community, it is true, have no private property; but the community is proprietor, and proprietor not only of the goods, but of the persons and wills. In consequence of this principle of absolute property, labour, which should be only a condition imposed upon man by Nature, becomes in all communities a human commandment, and therefore odious. Passive obedience, irreconcilable with a reflecting will, is strictly enforced. Fidelity to regulations, which are always defective, however wise they may be thought, allows of no complaint. Life, talent, and all the human faculties are the property of the State, which has the right to use them as it pleases for the common good. Private associations are sternly prohibited, in spite of the likes and dislikes of different natures, because to tolerate them would be to introduce small communities within the large one, and consequently private property; the strong work for the weak, although this ought to be left to benevolence, and not enforced, advised, or enjoined; the industrious work for the lazy, although this is unjust; the clever work for the foolish, although this is absurd; and, finally, man — casting aside his personality, his spontaneity, his genius, and his affections — humbly annihilates himself at the feet of the majestic and inflexible Commune!

Communism is inequality, but not as property is. Property is the exploitation of the weak by the strong. Communism is the exploitation of the strong by the weak. In property, inequality of conditions is the result of force, under whatever name it be disguised: physical and mental force; force of events, chance, fortune; force of accumulated property, &c. In communism, inequality springs from placing mediocrity on a level with excellence. This damaging equation is repellent to the conscience, and causes merit to complain; for, although it may be the duty of the strong to aid the weak, they prefer to do it out of generosity, — they never will endure a comparison. Give them equal opportunities of labour, and equal wages, but never allow their jealousy to be awakened by mutual suspicion of unfaithfulness in the performance of the common task.

Communism is oppression and slavery. Man is very willing to obey the law of duty, serve his country, and oblige his friends; but he wishes to labour when he pleases, where he pleases, and as much as he pleases. He wishes to dispose of his own time, to be governed only by necessity, to choose his friendships, his recreation, and his discipline; to act from judgement, not by command; to sacrifice himself through selfishness, not through servile obligation. Communism is essentially opposed to the free exercise of our faculties, to our noblest desires, to our deepest feelings. Any plan which could be devised for reconciling it with the demands of the individual reason and will would end only in changing the thing while preserving the name. Now, if we are honest truth-seekers, we shall avoid disputes about words.

Thus, communism violates the sovereignty of the conscience, and equality: the first, by restricting spontaneity of mind and heart, and freedom of thought and action; the second, by placing labour and laziness, skill and stupidity, and even vice and virtue on an equality in point of comfort. For the rest, if property is impossible on account of the desire to accumulate, communism would soon become so through the desire to shirk.

II. Property, in its turn, violates equality by the rights of exclusion and increase, and freedom by despotism. The former effect of property having been sufficiently developed in the last three chapters, I will content myself here with establishing by a final comparison, its perfect identity with theft.

[...]

In those forms of theft which are prohibited by law, force and artifice are employed alone and undisguised; in the authorised forms, they conceal themselves within a useful product, which they use as a tool to plunder their victim.

The direct use of violence and stratagem was early and universally condemned; but no nation has yet got rid of that kind of theft which acts through talent, labour, and possession, and which is the source of all the dilemmas of casuistry and the innumerable contradictions of jurisprudence.

[...]

The second effect of property is despotism. Now, since despotism is inseparably connected with the idea of legitimate authority, in explaining the natural causes of the first, the principle of the second will appear.

What is to be the form of government in the future? I hear some of my younger readers reply: “Why, how can you ask such a question? You are a republican.” “A republican! Yes; but that word specifies nothing. Res publica; that is, the public thing. Now, whoever is interested in public affairs — no matter under what form of government — may call himself a republican. Even kings are republicans.” —

“Well! you are a democrat?” — “No.” — “What! you would have a monarchy.” — “No.” — “A constitutionalist?” — “God forbid!” — “You are then an aristocrat?” — “Not at all.” — “You want a mixed government?” — “Still less.” — “What are you, then?” — “I am an anarchist.”

“Oh! I understand you; you speak satirically. This is a hit at the government.” — “By no means. I have just given you my serious and well-considered profession of faith. Although a firm friend of order, I am (in the full force of the term) an anarchist. Listen to me.”

[...]

By means of self-instruction and the acquisition of ideas, man finally acquires the idea of science, — that is, of a system of knowledge in harmony with the reality of things, and inferred from observation. He searches for the science, or the system, of inanimate bodies, — the system of organic bodies, the system of the human mind, and the system of the universe: why should he not also search for the system of society? But, having reached this height, he comprehends that political truth, or the science of politics, exists quite independently of the will of sovereigns, the opinion of majorities, and popular beliefs, — that kings, ministers, magistrates, and nations, as wills, have no connection with the science, and are worthy of no consideration. He comprehends, at the same time, that, if man is born a sociable being, the authority of his father over him ceases on the day when, his mind being formed and his education finished, he becomes the associate of his father; that his true chief and his king is the demonstrated truth; that politics is a science, not a stratagem; and that the function of the legislator is reduced, in the last analysis, to the methodical search for truth.

Thus, in a given society, the authority of man over man is inversely proportional to the stage of intellectual development which that society has reached; and the probable duration of that authority can be calculated from the more or less general desire for a true government, — that is, for a scientific government. And just as the right of force and the right of artifice retreat before the steady advance of justice, and must finally be extinguished in equality, so the sovereignty of the will yields to the sovereignty of the reason, and must at last be lost in scientific socialism. Property and royalty have been crumbling to pieces ever since the world began. As man seeks justice in equality, so society seeks order in anarchy.

Anarchy, — the absence of a master, of a sovereign,[6] — such is the form of government to which we are every day approximating, and which our accustomed habit of taking man for our rule, and his will for law, leads us to regard as the height of disorder and the expression of chaos. The story is told, that a citizen of Paris in the seventeenth century having heard it said that in Venice there was no king, the good man could not recover from his astonishment, and nearly died from laughter at the mere mention of so ridiculous a thing. So strong is our prejudice. As long as we live, we want a chief or chiefs; and at this very moment I hold in my hand a brochure, whose author — a zealous communist — dreams, like a second Marat, of the dictatorship. The most advanced among us are those who wish the greatest possible number of sovereigns, — their most ardent wish is for the royalty of the National Guard. Soon, undoubtedly, some one, jealous of the citizen militia, will say, “Everybody is king.” But, when he has spoken, I will say, in my turn, “Nobody is king; we are, whether we will or no, associated.” Every question of domestic politics must be decided by departmental statistics; every question of foreign politics is an affair of international statistics. The science of government rightly belongs to one of the sections of the Academy of Sciences, whose permanent secretary is necessarily prime minister; and, since every citizen may address a memoir to the Academy, every citizen is a legislator. But, as the opinion of no one is of any value until its truth has been proven, no one can substitute his will for reason, — nobody is king.

All questions of legislation and politics are matters of science, not of opinion. The legislative power belongs only to the reason, methodically recognised and demonstrated. To attribute to any power whatever the right of veto or of sanction, is the last degree of tyranny. Justice and legality are two things as independent of our approval as is mathematical truth. To compel, they need only to be known; to be known, they need only to be considered and studied. What, then, is the nation, if it is not the sovereign, — if it is not the source of the legislative power?

The nation is the guardian of the law — the nation is the executive power. Every citizen may assert: “This is true; that is just;” but his opinion controls no one but himself. That the truth which he proclaims may become a law, it must be recognised. Now, what is it to recognise a law? It is to verify a mathematical or a metaphysical calculation; it is to repeat an experiment, to observe a phenomenon, to establish a fact. Only the nation has the right to say, “Be it known and decreed.”

I confess that this is an overturning of received ideas, and that I seem to be attempting to revolutionise our political system; but I beg the reader to consider that, having begun with a paradox, I must, if I reason correctly, meet with paradoxes at every step, and must end with paradoxes. For the rest, I do not see how the liberty of citizens would be endangered by entrusting to their hands, instead of the pen of the legislator, the sword of the law. The executive power, belonging properly to the will, cannot be confided to too many proxies. That is the true sovereignty of the nation.[7]

The proprietor, the robber, the hero, the sovereign — for all these titles are synonymous — imposes his will as law, and suffers neither contradiction nor control; that is, he pretends to be the legislative and the executive power at once. Accordingly, the substitution of the scientific and true law for the royal will is accomplished only by a terrible struggle; and this constant substitution is, after property, the most potent element in history, the most prolific source of political disturbances. Examples are too numerous and too striking to require enumeration.

Now, property necessarily engenders despotism, — the government of caprice, the reign of libidinous pleasure. That is so clearly the essence of property that, to be convinced of it, one need but remember what it is, and observe what happens around him. Property is the right to use and abuse. If, then, government is economy, — if its object is production and consumption, and the distribution of labour and products, — how is government possible while property exists? And if goods are property, why should not the proprietors be kings, and despotic kings — kings in proportion to their facultes bonitaires? And if each proprietor is sovereign lord within the sphere of his property, absolute king throughout his own domain, how could a government of proprietors be anything but chaos and confusion?

[...]

Then, no government, no public economy, no administration, is possible, which is based upon property.

Communism seeks equality and law. Property, born of the sovereignty of the reason, and the sense of personal merit, wishes above all things independence and proportionality.

But communism, mistaking uniformity for law, and levelism for equality, becomes tyrannical and unjust. Property, by its despotism and encroachments, soon proves itself oppressive and anti-social.

The objects of communism and property are good — their results are bad. And why? Because both are exclusive, and each disregards two elements of society. Communism rejects independence and proportionality; property does not satisfy equality and law.

Now, if we imagine a society based upon these four principles, — equality, law, independence, and proportionality, — we find:

1. That equality, consisting only in equality of conditions, that is, of means, and not in equality of comfort, — which it is the business of the workers to achieve for themselves, when provided with equal means, — in no way violates justice and equity.

2. That law, resulting from the knowledge of facts, and consequently based upon necessity itself, never clashes with independence.

3. That individual independence, or the autonomy of the private reason, originating in the difference in talents and capacities, can exist without danger within the limits of the law.

4. That proportionality, being admitted only in the sphere of intelligence and sentiment, and not as regards material objects, may be observed without violating justice or social equality.

This third form of society, the synthesis of communism and property, we will call liberty.[8]

In determining the nature of liberty, we do not unite communism and property indiscriminately; such a process would be absurd eclecticism. We search by analysis for those elements in each which are true, and in harmony with the laws of Nature and society, disregarding the rest altogether; and the result gives us an adequate expression of the natural form of human society, — in one word, liberty.

Liberty is equality, because liberty exists only in society; and in the absence of equality there is no society.

Liberty is anarchy, because it does not admit the government of the will, but only the authority of the law; that is, of necessity.

Liberty is infinite variety, because it respects all wills within the limits of the law.

Liberty is proportionality, because it allows the utmost latitude to the ambition for merit, and the emulation of glory.

[...]

I have accomplished my task; property is conquered, never again to arise. Wherever this work is read and discussed, there will be deposited the germ of death to property; there, sooner or later, privilege and servitude will disappear, and the despotism of will will give place to the reign of reason. What sophisms, indeed, what prejudices (however obstinate) can stand before the simplicity of the following propositions:

I. Individual possession[9] is the condition of social life; five thousand years of property demonstrate it. Property is the suicide of society. Possession is a right; property is against right. Suppress property while maintaining possession, and, by this simple modification of the principle, you will revolutionise law, government, economy, and institutions; you will drive evil from the face of the earth.

II. All having an equal right of occupancy, possession varies with the number of possessors; property cannot establish itself.

III. The effect of labour being the same for all, property is lost in the common prosperity.

IV. All human labour being the result of collective force, all property becomes, by the same reason, collective and undivided. To speak more exactly, labour destroys property.

V. Every capacity for labour being, like every instrument of labour, an accumulated capital, and a collective property, inequality of wages and fortunes (on the ground of inequality of capacities) is, therefore, injustice and theft.

VI. The necessary conditions of commerce are the liberty of the contracting parties and the equivalence of the products exchanged. Now, value being expressed by the amount of time and outlay which each product costs, and liberty being inviolable, the wages of workers (like their rights and duties) should be equal.

VII. Products are bought only by products. Now, the condition of all exchange being equivalence of products, profit is impossible and unjust. Observe this elementary principle of economy, and pauperism, luxury, oppression, vice, crime, and hunger will disappear from our midst.

VIII. Men are associated by the physical and mathematical law of production, before they are voluntarily associated by choice. Therefore, equality of conditions is demanded by justice; that is, by strict social law: esteem, friendship, gratitude, admiration, all fall within the domain of equitable or proportional law only.

IX. Free association, liberty — whose sole function is to maintain equality in the means of production and equivalence in exchanges — is the only possible, the only just, the only true form of society.

X. Politics is the science of liberty. The government of man by man (under whatever name it be disguised) is oppression. Society finds its highest perfection in the union of order with anarchy.

The old civilisation has run its race; a new sun is rising, and will soon renew the face of the earth. Let the present generation perish, let the old prevaricators die in the desert! the holy earth shall not cover their bones. Young man, exasperated by the corruption of the age, and absorbed in your zeal for justice! — if your country is dear to you, and if you have the interests of humanity at heart, have the courage to espouse the cause of liberty! Cast off your old selfishness, and plunge into the rising flood of popular equality! There your regenerate soul will acquire new life and vigour; your enervated genius will recover unconquerable energy; and your heart, perhaps already withered, will be rejuvenated! Every thing will wear a different look to your illuminated vision; new sentiments will engender new ideas within you; religion, morality, poetry, art, language will appear before you in nobler and fairer forms; and thenceforth, sure of your faith, and thoughtfully enthusiastic, you will hail the dawn of universal regeneration!

And you, sad victims of an odious law! — you, whom a jesting world despoils and outrages! — you, whose labour has always been fruitless, and whose rest has been without hope, — take courage! your tears are numbered! The fathers have sown in affliction, the children shall reap in rejoicings!

O God of liberty! God of equality! Thou who didst place in my heart the sentiment of justice, before my reason could comprehend it, hear my ardent prayer! Thou hast dictated all that I have written; Thou hast shaped my thought; Thou hast directed my studies; Thou hast weaned my mind from curiosity and my heart from attachment, that I might publish Thy truth to the master and the slave. I have spoken with what force and talent Thou hast given me: it is Thine to finish the work. Thou knowest whether I seek my welfare or Thy glory, O God of liberty! Ah! perish my memory, and let humanity be free! Let me see from my obscurity the people at last instructed; let noble teachers enlighten them; let generous spirits guide them! Abridge, if possible, the time of our trial; stifle pride and avarice in equality; annihilate this love of glory which enslaves us; teach these poor children that in the bosom of liberty there are neither heroes nor great men! Inspire the powerful man, the rich man, him whose name my lips shall never pronounce in Thy presence, with a horror of his crimes; let him be the first to apply for admission to the redeemed society; let the promptness of his repentance be the ground of his forgiveness! Then, great and small, wise and foolish, rich and poor, will unite in an ineffable fraternity; and, singing in unison a new hymn, will rebuild Thy altar, O God of liberty and equality!

End Notes

[5] To perform an act of benevolence towards one’s neighbour is called, in Hebrew, to do justice; in Greek, to take compassion or pity (έλεημοσυνή, from which is derived the French aumone); in Latin, to perform an act of love or charity; in French, give alms. We can trace the degradation of this principle through these various expressions: the first signifies duty; the second only sympathy; the third, affection, a matter of choice, not an obligation; the fourth, caprice.

[6] The meaning ordinarily attached to the word “anarchy” is absence of principle, absence of rule; consequently, it has been regarded as synonymous with “disorder.”

[7] If such ideas are ever forced into the minds of the people, it will be by representative government and the tyranny of talkers. Once science, thought, and speech were characterised by the same expression [in Greek, logos]. To designate a thoughtful and a learned man, they said, “a man quick to speak and powerful in discourse.” For a long time, speech has been abstractly distinguished from science and reason. Gradually, this abstraction is becoming realised, as the logicians say, in society; so that we have to-day savants of many kinds who talk but little, and talkers who are not even savants in the science of speech. Thus a philosopher is no longer a savant: he is a talker. Legislators and poets were once profound and sublime characters: now they are talkers. A talker is a sonorous bell, whom the least shock suffices to set in perpetual motion. With the talker, the flow of speech is always directly proportional to the poverty of thought. Talkers govern the world; they stun us, they bore us, they worry us, they suck our blood, and [they] laugh at us. As for the savants, they keep silence: if they wish to say a word, they are cut short. Let them write.

[8] libertas, librare, libratio, libra, — liberty, to liberate, libration, balance (pound [in French, livre]), — words which have a common derivation. Liberty is the balance of rights and duties. To make a man free is to balance him with others, — that is, to put him or their level.

[9] Individual possession is no obstacle to extensive cultivation and unity of exploitation. If I have not spoken of the drawbacks arising from small estates, it is because I thought it useless to repeat what so many others have said, and what by this time all the world must know. But I am surprised that the economists, who have so clearly shown the disadvantages of spade-husbandry, have failed to see that it is caused entirely by property; above all, that they have not perceived that their plan for mobilising the soil is a first step towards the abolition of property.