PROUDHON'S TEACHING
1.--GENERAL
1. Pierre-Joseph Proudhon was born at Besancon in 1809. At first he
followed the occupation of a printer there and in other cities. In 1838
a stipend of the Academy of Besancon enabled him to go to Paris for
scientific studies. In 1843 he took a mercantile position at Lyons. In
1847 he gave it up and moved to Paris.
Here, in the years from 1848 to 1850, Proudhon published several
periodicals, one after the other. In 1848 he became a member of the
National Assembly. In 1849 he founded a People's Bank. Soon after this
he was condemned to three years' imprisonment for an offence against the
press laws, and served his time without having to interrupt his activity
as an author.
In 1852 Proudhon was released from prison. He remained in Paris till, in
1858, he was again condemned to three years' imprisonment for an offence
against the press laws. He fled and settled in Brussels. In 1860 he was
pardoned, and returned to France. Thenceforth he lived at Passy. He died
there in 1865.
Proudhon published many books and other writings, especially in the
fields of jurisprudence, political economy, and politics.
2. Of special importance for Proudhon's teaching about law, the State,
and property are, among the writings before 1848, the book "_Qu'est-ce
que la propriete? ou recherches sur le principe du droit et du
gouvernement_" (1840) and the two-volume work "_Systeme des
contradictions economiques, ou philosophie de la misere_" (1846); among
the writings from 1848 to 1851 the "_Confessions d'un revolutionnaire_"
(1849) and the "_Idee generale de la revolution au XIXe siecle_" (1851);
and lastly, among the writings after 1851, the three-volume work "_De la
justice dans la revolution et dans l'Eglise, nouveaux principes de
philosophie pratique_" (1858) and the book "_Du principe federatif et de
la necessite de reconstituer le parti de la revolution_" (1863).[125]
Proudhon's teaching regarding law, the State, and property underwent
changes in minor points, but remained the same in its essentials; the
opinion that it changed also in essentials is caused by Proudhon's
arbitrary and varying use of language. Since no history of the evolution
of Proudhon's teaching can be given here, I shall present, so far as
concerns such minor points, only the teaching of 1848-51, in which years
Proudhon developed his views with especial clearness and did especially
forcible work for them.
3. Proudhon calls his teaching about law, the State, and property
"Anarchism." "'What form of government shall we prefer?' 'Can you ask?'
replies one of my younger readers without doubt; 'you are a Republican.'
'Republican, yes; but this word makes nothing definite. _Res publica_ is
"the public thing"; now, whoever wants the public thing, under whatever
form of government, may call himself a Republican. Even kings are
Republicans.' 'Well, you are a Democrat.' 'No.' 'What? can you be a
Monarchist?' 'No.' 'A Constitutionalist?' 'I should hope not.' 'You are
an Aristocrat then?' 'Not a bit.' 'You want a mixed government, then?'
'Still less.' 'What are you then?' 'I am an Anarchist.'"[126]
2.--BASIS
_According to Proudhon the supreme law for us is justice._
What is justice? "Justice is respect, spontaneously felt and mutually
guaranteed, for human dignity, in whatever person and under whatever
circumstances we find it compromised, and to whatever risk its defence
may expose us."[127]
"I ought to respect my neighbor, and make others respect him, as myself;
such is the law of my conscience. In consideration of what do I owe him
this respect? In consideration of his strength, his talent, his wealth?
No, what chance gives is not what makes the human person worthy of
respect. In consideration of the respect which he in turn pays to me?
No, justice assumes reciprocity of respect, but does not wait for it. It
asserts and wills respect for human dignity even in an enemy, which
causes the existence of _laws of war_; even in the murderer whom we kill
as having fallen from his manhood, which causes the existence of _penal
laws_. It is not the gifts of nature or the advantages of fortune that
make me respect my neighbor; it is not his ox, his ass, or his
maid-servant, as the decalogue says; it is not even the welfare that he
owes to me as I owe mine to him; it is his manhood."[128]
"Justice is at once a reality and an idea."[129] "Justice is a faculty
of the soul, the foremost of all, that which constitutes a social being.
But it is more than a faculty; it is an idea, it indicates a relation,
an equation. As a faculty it may be developed; this development is what
constitutes the education of humanity. As an equation it presents
nothing antinomic; it is absolute and immutable like every law, and,
like every law, very intelligible."[130]
Justice is for us the supreme law. "Justice is the inviolable yardstick
of all human actions."[131] "By it the facts of social life, by nature
indeterminate and contradictory, become susceptible of definition and
arrangement."[132]
"Justice is the central star which governs societies, the pole about
which the political world revolves, the principle and rule of all
transactions. Nothing is done among men that is not in the name of
_right_; nothing without invoking justice. Justice is not the work of
the law; on the contrary, the law is never anything but a declaration
and application of what is _just_."[132] "Suppose a society where
justice is outranked, however little, by another principle, say
religion; or in which certain individuals are regarded more highly, by
however little, than others; I say that, justice being virtually
annulled, it is inevitable that the society will perish sooner or
later.[133]
"It is the privilege of justice that the faith which it inspires is
unshakable, and that it cannot be dogmatically denied or rejected. All
peoples invoke it; reasons of State, even while they violate it, profess
to be based on it; religion exists only for it; skepticism dissembles
before it; irony has power only in its name; crime and hypocrisy do it
homage. [If liberty is not an empty phrase, it acts only in the service
of right; even when it rebels against right, at bottom it does not curse
it.]"[134] "All the most rational teachings of human wisdom about
justice are summed up in this famous adage: _Do to others what you would
have done to you; Do not to others what you would not have done to
you._"[135]
3.--LAW
I. _In the name of justice Proudhon rejects, not law indeed, but almost
all individual legal norms, and the State laws in particular._
The State makes laws, and "as many laws as the interests which it meets
with; and, since interests are innumerable, the legislation-machine must
work uninterruptedly. Laws and ordinances fall like hail on the poor
populace. After a while the political soil will be covered with a layer
of paper, and all the geologists will have to do will be to list it,
under the name of _papyraceous formation_, among the epochs of the
earth's history. The Convention, in three years one month and four days,
issued eleven thousand six hundred laws and decrees; the Constituent and
Legislative Assemblies had produced hardly less; the empire and the
later governments have wrought as industriously. At present the
'_Bulletin des Lois_' contains, they say, more than fifty thousand; if
our representatives did their duty this enormous figure would soon be
doubled. Do you believe that the populace, or the government itself, can
keep its sanity in this labyrinth?"[136]
"But what am I saying? Laws for him who thinks for himself, and is
responsible only for his own acts! laws for him who would be free, and
feels himself destined to become free! I am ready to make terms, but I
will have no laws; I acknowledge none; I protest against every order
which an ostensibly necessary authority shall please to impose on my
free will. Laws! we know what they are and what they are worth. Cobwebs
for the powerful and the rich, chains which no steel can break for the
little and the poor, fishers' nets in the hands of the government."[137]
"You say they shall make _few_ laws, make them _simple_, make them
_good_. But it is impossible. Must not government adjust all interests,
decide all disputes? Now interests are by the nature of society
innumerable, relationships infinitely variable and mobile; how is it
possible that only a few laws should be made? how can they be simple?
how can the best law escape soon being detestable?"[138]
II. _Justice requires that only one legal norm be in force: to wit, the
norm that contracts must be lived up to._
"What do we mean by a _contract_? A contract, says the civil code, art.
1101, is an agreement whereby one or more persons bind themselves to one
or more others to do or not to do something."[139] "That I may remain
free, that I may be subjected to no law but my own, and that I may
govern myself, the edifice of society must be rebuilt upon the idea of
CONTRACT."[140] "We must start with the idea of contract as the dominant
idea of politics."[141] This norm, that contracts must be lived up to,
is to be based not only on its justice, but at the same time on the fact
that among men who live together there prevails a will to enforce the
keeping of contracts, if necessary, with violence;[142] so it is to be
not only a commandment of morality, but also a legal norm.
"Several of your fellow-men have agreed to treat each other with good
faith and fair play,--that is, to respect those rules of action which
the nature of things points out to them as being alone capable of
assuring to them, in the fullest measure, prosperity, safety, and peace.
Are you willing to join their league? to form a part of their society?
Do you promise to respect the honor, the liberty, the goods, of your
brothers? Do you promise never to appropriate to yourself, neither by
violence, by fraud, by usury, nor by speculation, another's product or
possession? Do you promise never to lie and deceive, neither in court,
in trade, nor in any of your dealings? You are free to accept or to
refuse.
"If you refuse, you form a part of the society of savages. Having left
the fellowship of the human race, you come under suspicion. Nothing
protects you. At the least insult anybody you meet may knock you down,
without incurring any other charge than that of cruelty to animals.
"If you swear to the league, on the contrary, you form a part of the
society of free men. All your brothers enter into an engagement with
you, promising you fidelity, friendship, help, service, commerce. In
case of infraction on their part or on yours, through negligence, hot
blood, or evil intent, you are responsible to one another, for the
damage and also for the scandal and insecurity which you have caused;
this responsibility may extend, according to the seriousness of the
perjury or the repetition of the crime, as far as to excommunication and
death."[143]
4.--THE STATE
I. Since Proudhon approves only the single legal norm that contracts
must be lived up to, he can sanction only a single legal relation, that
of parties to a contract. Hence he must necessarily reject the State;
for it is established by particular legal norms, and, as an involuntary
legal relation, it binds even those who have not entered into any
contract at all. _Proudhon does accordingly reject the State
absolutely, without any spatial or temporal limitation; he even regards
it as a legal relation which offends against justice to an unusual
degree._
"The government of man by man is slavery."[144] "Whoever lays his hand
on me to govern me is a usurper and a tyrant; I declare him my
enemy."[145] "In a given society the authority of man over man is in
inverse ratio to the intellectual development which this society has
attained, and the probable duration of this authority may be calculated
from the more or less general desire for a true--that is, a
scientific--government."[146]
"Royalty is never legitimate. Neither heredity, election, universal
suffrage, the excellence of the sovereign, nor the consecration of
religion and time, makes royalty legitimate. In whatever form it may
appear, monarchical, oligarchic, democratic,--royalty, or the government
of man by man, is illegal and absurd."[147] Democracy in particular "is
nothing but a constitutional arbitrary power succeeding another
constitutional arbitrary power; it has no scientific value, and we must
see in it only a preparation for the REPUBLIC, one and
indivisible."[148]
"Authority was no sooner begun on earth than it became the object of
universal competition. Authority, Government, Power, State,--these words
all denote the same thing,--each man sees in it the means of oppressing
and exploiting his fellows. Absolutists, doctrinaires, demagogues, and
socialists, turned their eyes incessantly to authority as their sole
cynosure."[149] "All parties without exception, in so far as they seek
for power, are varieties of absolutism; and there will be no liberty for
citizens, no order for societies, no union among workingmen, till in the
political catechism the renunciation of authority shall have replaced
faith in authority. _No more parties, no more authority, absolute
liberty of man and citizen_,--there, in three words, is my political and
social confession of faith."[150]
II. _Justice demands, in place of the State, a social human life on the
basis of the legal norm that contracts must be lived up to._ Proudhon
calls this social life "anarchy"[151] and later "federation"[152] also.
1. After the abrogation of the State, men are still to live together in
society. As early as 1841 Proudhon says that the point is "to discover a
system of absolute equality, in which all present institutions, minus
property or the sum of the abuses of property, might not only find a
place, but be themselves means to equality; individual liberty, the
division of powers, the cabinet, the jury, the administrative and
judiciary organization."[153]
But men are not to be kept together in society by any supreme authority,
but only by the legally binding force of contract. "When I bargain for
any object with one or more of my fellow-citizens, it is clear that
then my will alone is my law; it is I myself who, in fulfilling my
obligation, am my government. If then I could make that contract with
all, which I do make with some; if all could renew it with each other;
if every group of citizens, commune, canton, department, corporation,
company, etc., formed by such a contract and considered as a moral
person, could then, always on the same terms, treat with each of the
other groups and with all, it would be exactly as if my will was
repeated _ad infinitum_. I should be sure that the law thus made on all
points that concern the republic, on the various motions of millions of
persons, would never be anything but my law; and, if this new order of
things was called government, that this government would be mine. The
_regime of contracts_, substituted for the _regime of laws_, would
constitute the true government of man and of the citizen, the true
sovereignty of the people, the REPUBLIC."[154]
"The Republic is the organization by which, all opinions and all
activities remaining free, the People, by the very divergence of
opinions and of wills, thinks and acts as a single man. In the Republic
every citizen, in doing what he wishes and nothing but what he wishes,
participates directly in legislation and government, just as he
participates in the production and circulation of wealth. There every
citizen is king; for he has plenary power, he reigns and governs. The
Republic is a positive anarchy. It is neither liberty subjected TO
order, as in the constitutional monarchy, nor liberty imprisoned IN
order, as the provisional government would have it. It is liberty
delivered from all its hobbles, superstition, prejudice, sophism,
speculation, authority; it is mutual liberty, not self-limiting liberty;
liberty, not the daughter but the MOTHER of order."[155]
2. Anarchy may easily seem to us "the acme of disorder and the
expression of chaos. They say that when a Parisian burgher of the
seventeenth century once heard that in Venice there was no king, the
good man could not get over his astonishment, and thought he should die
of laughing. Such is our prejudice."[156] As against this, Proudhon
draws a picture of how men's life in society under anarchy might perhaps
shape itself in detail, to execute the functions now belonging to the
State.
He begins with an example. "For many centuries the spiritual power has
been separated, within traditional limits, from the temporal power. [But
there has never been a complete separation, and therefore, to the great
detriment of the church's authority and of believers, centralization has
never been sufficient.] There would be a complete separation if the
temporal power not only did not concern itself with the celebration of
mysteries, the administration of sacraments, the government of parishes,
etc., but did not intervene in the nomination of bishops either. There
would ensue a greater centralization, and consequently a more regular
government, if in each parish the people had the right to choose for
themselves their vicars and curates, or to have none at all; if in each
diocese the priests elected their bishop; if the assembly of bishops,
or a primate of the Gauls, had sole charge of the regulation of
religious affairs, theological instruction, and worship. By this
separation the clergy would cease to be, in the hands of political
power, an instrument of tyranny over the people; and by this application
of universal suffrage the ecclesiastical government, centralized in
itself, receiving its inspirations from the people and not from the
government or the pope, would be in constant harmony with the needs of
society and with the moral and intellectual condition of the citizens.
We must, then, in order to return to truth, organic, political,
economic, or social (for here all these are one), first, abolish the
constitutional cumulation by taking from the State the nomination of the
bishops, and definitively separating the spiritual from the temporal;
second, centralize the church in itself by a system of graded elections;
third, give to the ecclesiastical power, as we do to all the other
powers in the State, the vote of the citizens as a basis. By this system
what to-day is GOVERNMENT will no longer be anything but
_administration_; all France is centralized, so far as concerns
ecclesiastical functions; the country, by the mere fact of its electoral
initiative, governs itself in matters of eternal life as well as in
those of this world. And one may already see that if it were possible to
organize the entire country in temporal matters on the same bases, the
most perfect order and the most vigorous centralization would exist
without there being anything of what we to-day call constituted
authority or government."[157]
Proudhon gives a second example in judicial authority. "The judicial
functions, by their different specialties, their hierarchy, [their
permanent tenure of office,] their convergence under a single
departmental head, show an unequivocal tendency to separation and
centralization. But they are in no way dependent on those who are under
their jurisdiction; they are all at the disposal of the executive power,
which is appointed by the people once in four years with authority that
cannot be diminished; they are subordinated not to the country by
election, but to the government, president or prince, by appointment. It
follows that those who are under the jurisdiction of a court are given
over to their 'natural' judges just as are parishioners to their vicars;
that the people belong to the magistrate like an inheritance; that the
litigant is the judge's, not the judge the litigant's. Apply universal
suffrage and graded election to the judicial as well as the
ecclesiastical functions; suppress the permanent tenure of office, which
is an alienation of the electoral right; take away from the State all
action, all influence, on the judicial body; let this body, separately
centralized in itself, no longer depend on any but the people,--and, in
the first place, you will have deprived power of its mightiest
instrument of tyranny; you will have made justice a principle of liberty
as well as of order. And, unless you suppose that the people, from whom
all powers should spring by universal suffrage, is in contradiction with
itself,--that what it wants in religion it does not want in
justice,--you are assured that the separation of powers can beget no
conflict; you may boldly lay it down as a principle that _separation_
and _equilibrium_ are henceforth synonymous."[158]
Then Proudhon goes on to the army, the customhouses, the public
departments of agriculture and commerce, public works, public education,
and finance; for each of these administrations he demands independence
and centralization on the basis of general suffrage.[159]
"That a nation may manifest itself in its unity, it must be centralized
in its religion, centralized in its justice, centralized in its army,
centralized in its agriculture, industry, and commerce, centralized in
its finances,--in a word, centralized in all its functions and
faculties; the centralization must work from the bottom to the top, from
the circumference to the centre; all the functions must be independent
and severally self-governing.
"Would you then make this invisible unity perceptible by a special
organ, preserve the image of the old government? Group these different
administrations by their heads; you have your cabinet, your _executive_,
which can then very well do without a Council of State.
"Set up above all this a grand jury, legislature, or national assembly,
appointed directly by the whole country, and charged not with appointing
the cabinet officers,--they have their investiture from their particular
constituents,--but with auditing the accounts, making the laws, settling
the budget, deciding controversies between the administrations, all
after having heard the reports of the Public Department, or Department
of the Interior, to which the whole government will thenceforth be
reduced; and you will have a centralization the stronger the more you
multiply its foci, a responsibility the more real the more clear-cut is
the separation between the powers; you have a constitution at once
political and social."[160]
5.--PROPERTY
I. Since Proudhon sanctions only the one legal norm that contracts must
be kept, he can approve only one legal relation, that between
contracting parties. Hence he must necessarily reject property as well
as the State, since it is established by particular legal norms, and, as
an involuntary legal relation, binds even such as have in no way entered
into a contract. _And he does reject property[161] absolutely, without
any spatial or temporal limitation; nay, it even appears to him to be a
legal relation which is particularly repugnant to justice._
"According to its definition, property is the right of using and
abusing; that is to say, it is the absolute, irresponsible domain of man
over his person and his goods. If property ceased to be the right to
abuse, it would cease to be property. Has not the proprietor the right
to give his goods to whomever he will, to let his neighbor burn without
crying fire, to oppose the public good, to squander his patrimony, to
exploit the laborer and hold him to ransom, to produce bad goods and
sell them badly? Can he be judicially constrained to use his property
well? can he be disturbed in the abuse of it? What am I saying? Is not
property, precisely because it is full of abuse, the most sacred thing
in the world for the legislator? Can one conceive of a property whose
use the police power should determine, whose abuse it should repress? Is
it not clear, in fine, that if one undertook to introduce justice into
property, one would destroy property, just as the law, by introducing
propriety into concubinage, destroyed concubinage?"[162]
"Men steal: first, by violence on the highway; second, alone or in a
band; third, by burglary; fourth, by embezzlement; fifth, by fraudulent
bankruptcy; sixth, by forgery; seventh, by counterfeiting. Eighth, by
pocket-picking; ninth, by swindling; tenth, by breach of trust;
eleventh, by gambling and lotteries.--Twelfth, by usury. Thirteenth, by
rent-taking.--Fourteenth, by commerce, when the profits are more than
fair wages for the trader's work.--Fifteenth, by selling one's own
product at a profit, and by accepting a sinecure or a fat salary."[163]
"In theft such as the laws forbid, force and fraud are employed alone
and openly; in authorized theft they are disguised under a produced
utility, which they use as a device for plundering their victim. The
direct use of violence and force was early and unanimously rejected; no
nation has yet reached the point of delivering itself from theft when
united with talent, labor, and possession."[164] In this sense property
is "theft,"[165] "the exploitation of the weak by the strong,"[166]
"contrary to right,"[167] "the suicide of society."[168]
II. _Justice demands, in place of property, a distribution of goods
based on the legal norm that contracts must be lived up to._
Proudhon calls that portion of goods which is assigned to the individual
by contract, "property." In 1840 he had demanded that individual
possession be substituted for property; with this one change evil would
disappear from the earth.[169] But in 1841 he is already explaining that
by property he means only its abuses;[170] nay, he even then describes
as necessary the creation of an immediately applicable social system in
which the rights of barter and sale, of direct and collateral
inheritance, of primogeniture and bequest, should find their place.[171]
In 1846 he says, "Some day transformed property will be an idea
positive, complete, social, and true; a property which will abolish the
old property and will become equally effective and beneficent for
all."[172] In 1848 he is declaring that "property, as to its principle
or substance, which is human personality, must never perish; it must
remain in man's heart as a perpetual stimulus to labor, as the
antagonist whose absence would cause labor to fall into idleness and
death."[173]
And in 1850 he announces: "What I sought for as far back as 1840, in
defining property, what I am wanting now, is not a destruction; I have
said it till I am tired. That would have been to fall with Rousseau,
Plato, Louis Blanc himself, and all the adversaries of property, into
_Communism_, against which I protest with all my might; what I ask for
property is a BALANCE,"[174]--that is, "justice."[175]
In all these pronouncements property means nothing else than that
portion of goods which falls to the individual on the basis of
contracts, on which society is to be built up.[176] The property which
Proudhon sanctions cannot be a special legal relation, but only a
possible part of the substance of the one legal relation which he
approves, the relation of contract. It can afford no protection against
a group of men whose extent is determined by legal norms, but only
against a group of men who have mutually secured a certain portion of
goods to each other by contract. Proudhon, therefore, is here using the
word "property" in an inexact sense; in the strict sense it can denote
only a portion of goods set apart in an involuntary legal relation by
particular legal norms.
Accordingly, when in the name of justice Proudhon demands a certain
distribution of property, this means nothing more than that the
contracts on which society is to be built should make a certain sort of
provision with respect to the distribution of goods. And the way in
which they should determine it is this: that every man is to have the
product of his labor.
"Let us conceive of wealth as a mass whose elements are held together
permanently by a chemical force, and into which new elements incessantly
enter and combine in different proportions, but according to a definite
law: value is the proportion (the measure) in which each of these
elements forms a part of the whole."[177] "I suppose, therefore, a force
which combines the elements of wealth in definite proportions and makes
of them a homogeneous whole."[178] "This force is LABOR. It is labor,
labor alone, that produces all the elements of wealth and combines them,
to the last molecule, according to a variable but definite law of
proportionality."[179] "Every product is a representative sign of
labor."[180]
"Every product can consequently be exchanged for another."[181] "If then
the tailor, in return for furnishing the value of one day of his work,
consumes ten times the weaver's day, it is as if the weaver gave ten
days of his life for one day of the tailor's. This is precisely what
occurs when a peasant pays a lawyer twelve francs for a document that it
costs one hour to draw up; and this inequality, this iniquity in
exchange, is the mightiest cause of poverty. Every error in commutative
justice is an immolation of the laborer, a transfusion of a man's blood
into another man's body."[182]
"What I demand with respect to property is a BALANCE. It is not for
nothing that the genius of nations has equipped Justice with this
instrument of precision. Justice applied to economy is in fact nothing
but a perpetual balance; or, to express myself still more precisely,
justice as regards the distribution of goods is nothing but the
obligation which rests upon every citizen and every State, in their
business relations, to conform to that law of equilibrium which
manifests itself everywhere in economy, and whose violation, accidental
or voluntary, is the fundamental principle of poverty."[183]
2. That every man should enjoy the product of his labor is possible only
through reciprocity, according to Proudhon; therefore he calls his
doctrine "the theory of _mutuality_ or of the _mutuum_."[184]
"RECIPROCITY is expressed in the precept, 'Do to others what you would
have done to you,' a precept which political economy has translated into
its celebrated formula, 'Products exchange for products.' Now the evil
which is devouring us results from the fact that the law of reciprocity
is unrecognized, violated. The remedy consists altogether in the
promulgation of this law. The organization of our mutual and reciprocal
relations is the whole of social science."[185]
And so Proudhon, in the solemn declaration which he prefixed to the
constitution of the People's Bank when he first published it, gives the
following assurance: "I protest that in criticising property, or rather
the whole body of institutions of which property is the pivot, I never
meant either to attack the individual rights recognized by previous
laws, or to dispute the legitimacy of acquired possessions, or to
instigate an arbitrary distribution of goods, or to put an obstacle in
the way of the free and regular acquisition of properties by bargain and
sale; or even to prohibit or suppress by sovereign decree land-rent and
interest on capital. I think that all these manifestations of human
activity should remain free and optional for all; I would admit no other
modifications, restrictions, or suppressions of them than naturally and
necessarily result from the universalization of the principle of
reciprocity and of the law of synthesis which I propound. This is my
last will and testament. I allow only him to suspect its sincerity, who
could tell a lie in the moment of death."[186]
6.--REALIZATION
_The change which justice calls for is to come about in this way, that
those men who have recognized the truth are to convince others how
necessary the change is for the sake of justice, and that hereby,
spontaneously, law is to transform itself, the State and property to
drop away, and the new condition to appear._ The new condition will
appear "as soon as the idea is popularized";[187] that it may appear, we
must "popularize the idea."[188]
I. Nothing is requisite but to convince men that justice commands the
change.
1. Proudhon rejects all other methods. His doctrine is "in accord with
the constitution and the laws."[189] "Accomplish the Revolution, they
say, and after this everything will be cleared up. As if the Revolution
itself could be accomplished without a leading idea!"[190] "To secure
justice to one's self by bloodshed is an extremity to which the
Californians, gathered since yesterday to seek for gold, may be reduced;
but may the luck of France preserve us from it!"[191]
"Despite the violence which we witness, I do not believe that hereafter
liberty will need to use force to claim its rights and avenge its
wrongs. Reason will serve us better; and patience, like the Revolution,
is invincible."[192]
2. But how shall we convince men, "how popularize the idea, if the
_bourgeoisie_ remains hostile; if the populace, brutalized by servitude,
full of prejudices and bad instincts, remains plunged in indifference;
if the professors, the academicians, the press, are calumniating you; if
the courts are truculent; if the powers that be muffle your voice? Don't
worry. Just as the lack of ideas makes one lose the most promising
games, war against ideas can only push forward the Revolution. Do you
not see already that the _regime_ of authority, of inequality, of
predestination, of eternal salvation, and of reasons of State, is daily
becoming still more intolerable for the well-to-do classes, whose
conscience and reason it tortures, than for the mass, whose stomach
cries out against it?"[193]
3. The most effective means for convincing men, according to Proudhon,
is to present to the people, within the State and without violating its
law, "an example of centralization spontaneous, independent, and
social," thus applying even now the principles of the future
constitution of society.[194] "Rouse that collective action without
which the condition of the people will forever be unhappy and its
efforts powerless. Teach it to produce wealth and order with its own
hands, without the help of the authorities."[195]
Proudhon sought to give such an example by the founding of the People's
Bank.[196]
The People's Bank was to "insure work and prosperity to all producers by
organizing them as beginning and end of production with regard to one
another,--that is, as capitalists and as consumers."[197]
"The People's Bank was to be the property of all the citizens who
accepted its services, who for this purpose furnished money to it if
they thought that it could not yet for some time do without a metallic
basis, and who, in every case, promised it their preference in
discounting paper, and received its notes as cash. Accordingly the
People's Bank, working for the profit of its customers themselves, had
no occasion to take interest for its loans nor to charge a discount on
commercial paper; it had only to take a very slight allowance to cover
salaries and expenses. So credit was GRATUITOUS!--The principle being
realized, the consequences unfolded themselves ad _infinitum_."[198]
"So the People's Bank, giving an example of popular initiative alike in
government and in public economy, which thenceforth were to be
identified in a single synthesis, was becoming for the _proletariat_ at
once the principle and the instrument of their emancipation; it was
creating political and industrial liberty. And, as every philosophy and
every religion is the metaphysical or symbolic expression of social
economy, the People's Bank, changing the material basis of society, was
ushering in the revolution of philosophy and religion; it was thus, at
least, that its founders had conceived of it."[199]
All this can best be made clear by reproducing some provisions from the
constitution of the People's Bank.
Art. 1. By these presents a commercial company is founded under the
name of _Societe de la Banque du Peuple_, consisting of Citizen
Proudhon, here present, and the persons who shall give their assent
to this constitution by becoming stockholders.
Art. 3.... For the present the company will exist as a partnership
in which Citizen Proudhon shall be general partner, and the other
parties concerned shall be limited partners who shall in no case be
responsible for more than the value of their shares.
Art. 5.... The firm name shall be P. J. Proudhon & Co.
Art. 6. Besides the members of the company proper, every citizen is
invited to form a part of the People's Bank as a co-operator. For
this it suffices to assent to the bank's constitution and to accept
its paper.
Art. 7. The People's Bank Company being capable of indefinite
extension, its virtual duration is endless. However, to conform to
the requirements of the law, it fixes its duration at ninety-nine
years, which shall commence on the day of its definitive
organization.
Art. 9.... The People's Bank, having as its _basis_ the essential
gratuitousness of credit and exchange, as its _object_ the
circulation, not the production, of values, and as its _means_ the
mutual consent of producers and consumers, can and should work
without capital.
This end will be reached when the entire mass of producers and
consumers shall have assented to the constitution of the company.
Till then the People's Bank Company, having to conform to
established custom and the requirements of law, and especially in
order more effectively to invite citizens to join it, will provide
itself with capital.
Art. 10. The capital of the People's Bank shall be five million
francs, divided into shares of five francs each.
... The company shall be definitively organized, and its business
shall begin, when ten thousand shares are taken.
Art. 12. Stock shall be issued only at par. It shall bear no
interest.
Art. 15. The principal businesses of the People's Bank are, 1, to
increase its cash on hand by issuing notes; 2, discounting endorsed
commercial paper; 3, discounting accepted orders (_commandes_) and
bills (_factures_); 4, loans on personal property; 5, loans on
personal security; 6, advances on annuities and collateral
security; 7, payments and collections; 8, advances to productive
and industrial enterprises (_la commande_).
To these departments the People's Bank will add: 9, the functions
of a savings bank and endowment insurance; 10, insurance; 11, safe
deposit vaults; 12, the service of the budget.[200]
Art. 18. In distinction from ordinary bank notes, payable in
_specie_ to some one's _order_, the paper of the People's Bank is
an order for goods, vested with a social character, rendered
perpetual, and is payable at sight by every stockholder and
co-operator in the _products_ or _services_ of his industry or
profession.
Art. 21. Every co-operator agrees to trade by preference, for all
goods which the company can offer him, with the co-operators of the
bank, and to reserve his orders exclusively for his fellow
stockholders and fellow co-operators.
In return, every producer or tradesman co-operating with the bank
agrees to furnish his goods to the other co-operators at a reduced
price.
Art. 62. The People's Bank has its headquarters in Paris.
Its aim is, in the course of time, to establish a branch in every
_arrondissement_ and a correspondent in every commune.
Art. 63. As soon as circumstances permit, the present company shall
be converted into a corporation, since this form allows us to
realize, according to the wish of the founders, the threefold
principle, first, of election; second, of the separation and the
independence of the branches of work; third, of the personal
responsibility of every employee.[201]
II. If once men are convinced that justice commands the change, then
will "despotism fall of itself by its very uselessness."[202] The State
and property disappear, law is transformed, and the new condition of
things begins.
"The Revolution does not act after the fashion of the old governmental,
aristocratic, or dynastic principle. It is Right, the balance of forces,
equality. It has no conquests to pursue, no nations to reduce to
servitude, no frontiers to defend, no fortresses to build, no armies to
feed, no laurels to pluck, no preponderance to maintain. The might of
its economic institutions, the gratuitousness of its credit, the
brilliancy of its thought, are its sufficient means for converting the
universe."[203] "The Revolution has for allies all who suffer oppression
and exploitation; let it appear, and the universe stretches its arms to
it."[204]
"I want the peaceable revolution. I want you to make the very
institutions which I charge you to abolish, and the principles of law
which you will have to complete, serve toward the realization of my
wishes, so that the new society shall appear as the spontaneous,
natural, and necessary development of the old, and that the Revolution,
while abrogating the old order of things, shall nevertheless be the
progress of that order."[205] "When the people, once enlightened
regarding its true interests, declares its will not to reform the
government but to revolutionize society,"[206] then "the dissolution of
government in the economic organism"[207] will follow in a way about
which one can at present only make guesses.[208]
FOOTNOTES:
[125] Not (as stated by Diehl vol. 2 p. 116, Zenker p. 61) 1852.
[126] Proudhon "_Propriete_" p. 295 [212. Bracketed references under
Proudhon are to the collected edition of his "_OEuvres completes_,"
Paris, 1866-83.--The passage quoted above is probably the first case in
history where anybody called himself an Anarchist, though the word had
long been in use as a term of reproach for enemies].
[127] Pr. "_Justice_" 1. 182-3 [1. 224-5].
[128] Pr. "_Justice_" 1. 184-5 [1. 227].
[129] _Ib._ 1. 73 [132? but there he says _must be_, not _is_].
[130] _Ib._ 1. 185 [1. 228].
[131] _Ib._ 1. 195 [1. 235].
[132] _Ib._ 1. 185 [1. 228].
[133] Pr. "_Justice_" 1. 195 [1. 235].
[134] _Ib._ 3. 45 [3. 276, but with the bracketed sentence much
abridged. For the phrase "rebel against right," remember that in French
_right_ and _common law_ are one and the same word].
[135] Pr. "_Propriete_" p. 18 [24-5].
[136] Pr. "_Idee_" 147-8 [136-7]
[137] _Ib._ 149 [138].
[138] Pr. "_Idee_" pp. 149-50 [138].
[139] Pr. "_Principe_" p. 64 [44].
[140] Pr. "_Idee_" p. 235 [215].
[141] Pr. "_Principe_" p. 64 [44].
[142] Pr. "_Idee_" p. 343 [312].
[143] Pr. "_Idee_" pp. 342-3 [311-12].
[144] Pr. "_Confessions_" p. 8 [29].
[145] _Ib._ p. 6 [23].
[146] Pr. "_Propriete_" p. 301 [216].
[147] _Ib._ pp. 298-9 [214].
[148] Pr. "_Solution_" p. 54 [39].
[149] Pr. "_Confessions_" p. 7 [24].
[150] _Ib._ p. 7 [25-6].
[151] Pr. "_Propriete_" p. 301 [216], "_Confessions_" p. 68 [192],
"_Solution_" p. 119 [87].
[152] Pr. "_Principe_" p. 67 [46].--Proudhon's teaching was not, as
asserted by Diehl vol. 2 p. 116, vol. 3 pp. 166-7, and Zenker p. 61,
Anarchism till 1852 and Federalism thenceforward; his Anarchism was
Federalism from the start, only he later gave it the additional name of
Federalism.
[153] Pr. "_Propriete_" pp. XIX-XX [10-11].
[154] Pr. "_Idee_" pp. 235-6 [215-16].
[155] Pr. "_Solution_" p. 119 [87].
[156] Pr. "_Propriete_" pp. 301-2 [216].
[157] Pr. "_Confessions_" p. 65 [180-3; bracketed words a paraphrase.]
[158] Pr. "_Confessions_" pp. 65-6 [183-4, except bracketed words].
[159] _Ib._ pp. 66-8 [185-9].
[160] Pr. "_Confessions_" p. 68 [191-2].
[161] Pfau pp. 227-31, Adler p. 372, Zenker pp. 26, 41, fail to see
this, being influenced by the improper sense in which Proudhon uses the
word "property" for a contractually guaranteed share of goods.
[Eltzbacher's statement, on the other hand, is not so much drawn from
Proudhon himself as deduced from a comparison of Eltzbacher's definition
of property with the statement that Proudhon admits no law but the law
of contract. I do not think this last statement is correct; I think
Proudhon would have his voluntary contractual associations protect their
members in certain definable respects--among others, in the possession
of goods--against those who stood outside the contract as well as
against those within. Then this would be, by Eltzbacher's definitions,
both law and property.]
[162] Pr. "_Contradictions_" 2. 303-4 [2. 237-8].
[163] Pr. "_Propriete_" pp. 285-90 [205-9].
[164] Pr. "_Propriete_" p. 293 [211].
[165] _Ib._ pp. 1-2 [13].
[166] _Ib._ p. 283 [204].
[167] _Ib._ p. 311 [223].
[168] _Ib._ p. 311 [223].
[169] _Ib._ p. 311 [223].
[170] _Ib._ pp. XVIII-XIX [10; consult the passage].
[171] _Ib._ pp. XIX-XX [11].
[172] Pr. "_Contradictions_" 2. 234-5 [2. 184].
[173] Pr. "_Droit_" p. 50 [230].
[174] Pr. "_Justice_" 1. 302-3 [1. 324-5].
[175] _Ib._ 303 [1. 325].
[176] Pr. "_Idee_" p. 235 [215]; "_Principe_" p. 64 [44].
[177] Pr. "_Contradictions_" 1. 51 [1. 74].
[178] _Ib._ 1. 53 [1. 75].
[179] _Ib._ 1. 55. [1. 76-7].
[180] _Ib._ 1. 68 [1. 87].
[181] _Ib._ 1. 68 [1. 87].
[182] _Ib._ 1. 83 [1. 98-9].
[183] Pr. "_Justice_" 1. 302-3 [1. 325].
[184] Pr. "_Contradictions_" 2. 528 [2. 414].
[185] Pr. "_Organisation_" p. 5 [93].
[186] Pr. "_Banque_" pp. 3-4 [260].
[187] Pr. "_Justice_" 1. 515 [2. 133].
[188] _Ib._ 1. 515 [2. 133].
[189] Pr. "_Confessions_" p. 71 [201].
[190] Pr. "_Justice_" 1, 515 [2, 133. Eltzbacher finds the sense "all
will be enlightened" where I translate "everything will be cleared up."
Eltzbacher's view of the sense--that to those who say "Enlightenment
must come by the Revolution" Proudhon replies, "No, the Revolution must
come by enlightenment"--correctly gives the thought brought out in the
context].
[191] Pr. "_Justice_" 1. 466 [2. 90].
[192] _Ib._ 1. 470-71 [2. 94].
[193] _Ib._ 1. 515 [2. 133-4].
[194] Pr. "_Confessions_" p. 69 [196].
[195] _Ib._ p. 72 [203].
[196] _Ib._ p. 69 [196].
[197] _Ib._ p. 69 [196].
[198] _Ib._ pp. 69-70 [197].
[199] Pr. "_Confessions_" p. 70 [197-8].
[200] [French dictionaries leave us somewhat in the lurch as to
commercial usages which differ from the English. Eltzbacher translates
8, "investment as silent partner"; 12, "balancing accounts."]
[201] Pr. "_Banque_" pp. 5-20 [261-77].
[202] Pr. "_Confessions_" p. 72 [202-3].
[203] Pr. "_Justice_" 1. 509 [2. 128-9].
[204] _Ib._ 1. 510 [2. 129].
[205] Pr. "_Idee_" pp. 196-7 [181].
[206] _Ib._ p. 197 [181].
[207] _Ib._ p. 277 [253].
[208] _Ib._ pp. 195, 197 [180-81].