PROUDHON
If Stirner combats Feuerbach, the "immortal" Proudhon imitates Kant.
"What Kant did some sixty years ago for religion, what he did earlier
for certainty of certainties; what others before him had attempted to do
for happiness or supreme good, the 'Voice of the People' proposes to do
for the Government," pompously declares "the father of Anarchism." Let
us examine his methods and their results.
According to Proudhon, before Kant, the believer and the philosopher
moved "by an irresistible impulse," asked themselves, "What is God?"
They then asked themselves "Which, of all religions, is the best?" "In
fact, if there does exist a Being superior to Humanity, there must also
exist a system of the relations between this Being and Humanity. What
then is this system? The search for the best religion is the second step
that the human mind takes in reason and in faith. Kant gave up these
insoluble questions. He no longer asked himself what is God, and which
is the best religion, he set about explaining the origin and development
of the Idea of God; he undertook to work out the biography of this
idea." And the results he attained were as great as they were
unexpected. "What we seek, what we see, in God, as Malebranche said ...
is our own Ideal, the pure essence of Humanity.... The human soul does
not become conscious of its Ego through premeditated contemplation, as
the psychologists put it; the soul perceives something outside itself,
as if it were a different Being face to face with itself, and it is this
inverted image which it calls God. Thus morality, justice, order, law,
are no longer things revealed from above, imposed upon our free will by
a so-called Creator, unknown and ununderstandable; they are things that
are proper and essential to us as our faculties and our organs, as our
flesh and our blood. In two words religion and society are synonymous
terms, man is as sacred to himself as if he were God."
Belief in authority is as primitive, as universal as belief in God.
Whenever men are grouped together in societies there is authority, the
beginning of a government. From time immemorial men have asked
themselves, What is authority? Which is the best form of government? And
replies to these questions have been sought for in vain. There are as
many governments as there are religions, as many political theories as
systems of philosophy. Is there any way of putting an end to this
interminable and barren controversy? Any means of escape from this
_impasse_! Assuredly! We have only to follow the example of Kant. We
have only to ask ourselves whence comes this idea of authority, of
government? We have only to get all the information we can upon the
legitimacy of the political idea. Once safe on this ground and the
question solves itself with extraordinary ease.
"Like religion, government is a manifestation of social spontaneity, a
preparation of humanity for a higher condition."
"What humanity seeks in religion and calls God, is itself." "What the
citizen seeks in Government and calls king, emperor, or president, is
again himself, is liberty." "Outside humanity there is no God; the
theological concept has no meaning:--outside liberty no government, the
political concept has no value."
So much for the "biography" of the political idea. Once grasped it must
enlighten us upon the question as to which is the best form of
government.
"The best form of government, like the most perfect of religions, taken
in a literal sense, is a contradictory idea. The problem is not to
discover how we shall be best governed, but how we shall be most free.
Liberty commensurate and identical with Order,--this is the only reality
of government and politics. How shall this absolute liberty, synonymous
with order, be brought about? We shall be taught this by the analysis of
the various formulas of authority. For all the rest we no more admit the
governing of man by man than the exploitation of man by man."[16]
We have now climbed to the topmost heights of Proudhon's political
philosophy. It is from this that the fresh and vivifying stream of his
Anarchist thought flows. Before we follow the somewhat tortuous course
of this stream let us glance back at the way we have climbed.
We fancied we were following Kant. We were mistaken. In his "Critique of
Pure Reason" Kant has demonstrated the impossibility of proving the
existence of God, because everything outside experience must escape us
absolutely. In his "Critique of Practical Reason" Kant admitted the
existence of God in the name of morality. But he has never declared that
God was a topsy-turvy image of our own soul. What Proudhon attributes to
Kant, indubitably belongs to Feuerbach. Thus it is in the footsteps of
the latter that we have been treading, while roughly tracing out the
"biography" of the political Idea. So that Proudhon brings us back to
the very starting point of our most unsentimental journey with Stirner.
No matter. Let us once more return to the reasoning of Feuerbach.
It is only itself that humanity seeks in religion. It is only himself,
it is liberty that the citizen seeks in Government.... Then the very
essence of the citizen is liberty? Let us assume this is true, but let
us also note that our French "Kant" has done nothing, absolutely
nothing, to prove the "legitimacy" of such an "Idea." Nor is this all.
What is this liberty which we are assuming to be the essence of the
citizen? Is it political liberty which ought in the nature of things to
be the main object of his attention? Not a bit of it! To assume this
would be to make of the "citizen" an "authoritarian" democrat.
It is the _absolute liberty of the individual_, which is at the same
time _commensurate and identical with_ Order, that our citizen seeks in
Government. In other words, it is the Anarchism of Proudhon which is the
essence of the "citizen." It is impossible to make a more pleasing
discovery, but the "biography" of this discovery gives us pause. We have
been trying to demolish every argument in favour of the Idea of
Authority, as Kant demolished every proof of the existence of God. To
attain this end we have--imitating Feuerbach to some extent, according
to whom man adored his own Being in God--assumed that it is liberty
which the citizen seeks in Government. And as to liberty we have in a
trice transformed this into "absolute" liberty, into Anarchist liberty.
Eins, zwei, drei; Geschwindigkeit ist keine Hexerei![17]
Since the "citizen" only seeks "absolute" liberty in Government the
State is nothing but a fiction ("this fiction of a superior person,
called the 'State'"), and all those formulas of government for which
people and citizens have been cutting one another's throats for the last
sixty centuries, are but the "phantasmagoria of our brain, which it
would be the first duty of free reason to relegate to the museums and
libraries." Which is another charming discovery made _en passant_. So
that the political history of humanity has, "for sixty centuries," had
no other motive power than a phantasmagoria of our brain!
To say that man adores in God his own essence is to indicate the
_origin_ of religion, but it is not to work out its "biography." To
write the biography of religion is to write its history, explaining the
evolution of this essence of man which found expression in it. Feuerbach
did not do this--could not do it. Proudhon, trying to imitate Feuerbach,
was very far from recognising the insufficiency of his point of view.
All Proudhon has done is to take Feuerbach for Kant, and to ape his
Kant-Feuerbach in a most pitiful manner. Having heard that Divinity was
but a fiction, he concluded that the State is also a figment: since God
does not exist, how can the State exist? Proudhon wished to combat the
State and began by declaring it non-existent. And the readers of the
"Voix du Peuple" applauded, and the opponents of M. Proudhon were
alarmed at the profundity of his philosophy! Truly a tragi-comedy!
It is hardly necessary for modern readers to add that in taking the
State for a fiction we make it altogether impossible to understand its
"essence" or to explain its historical evolution. And this was what
happened to Proudhon.
"In every society I distinguish two kinds of constitution," says he;
"the one which I call _social_, the other which is its _political_
constitution; the first innate in humanity, liberal, necessary, its
development consisting above all in weakening, and gradually eliminating
the second, which is essentially factitious, restrictive, and
transitory. The social constitution is nothing but the equilibration of
interests based upon free contract and the organisation of the economic
forces, which, generally speaking, are labour, division of labour,
collective force, competition, commerce, money, machinery, credit,
property, equality in transactions, reciprocity of guarantees, etc. The
principle of the political constitution is authority. Its forms are:
distinction of classes, separation of powers, administrative
centralisation, the judicial hierarchy, the representation of
sovereignty by elections, etc. The political constitution was conceived
and gradually completed in the interest of order, for want of a social
constitution, the rules and principles of which could only be discovered
as a result of long experience, and are even to-day the object of
Socialist controversy. These two constitutions, as it is easy to see,
are by nature absolutely different and even incompatible: but as it is
the fate of the political constitution to constantly call forth and
produce the social constitution something of the latter enters into the
former, which, soon becoming inadequate, appears contradictory and
odious, is forced from concession to concession to its final
abrogation."[18]
The social constitution is innate in humanity, necessary. Yet it could
only be discovered as the result of long experience, and for want of it
humanity had to invent the political constitution. Is not this an
entirely Utopian conception of human nature, and of the social
organisation peculiar to it? Are we not coming back to the standpoint of
Morelly who said that humanity in the course of its history has always
been "outside nature?" No--there is no need to come back to this
standpoint, for with Proudhon we have never, for a single instant, got
away from it. While looking down upon the Utopians searching after "the
best form of government," Proudhon does not by any means censure the
Utopian point of view. He only scoffs at the small perspicacity of men
who did not divine that the best political organisation is the absence
of all political organisation, is the social organisation, proper to
human nature, necessary, immanent in humanity.
The nature of this social constitution is absolutely different from, and
even incompatible with, that of the political constitution. Nevertheless
it is the fate of the political constitution to constantly call forth
and produce the social constitution. This is tremendously confusing! Yet
one might get out of the difficulty by assuming that what Proudhon meant
to say was that the political constitutions act upon the evolution of
the social constitution. But then we are inevitably met by the question.
Is not the political constitution in its turn rooted--as even Guizot
admitted--in the social constitution of a country? According to our
author _no_; the more emphatically _no_, that the social organisation,
the true and only one, is only a thing of the future, for want of which
poor humanity has "invented" the political constitution. Moreover, the
"Political Constitution" of Proudhon covers an immense domain, embracing
even "class distinctions," and therefore "non-organised" property,
property as it ought not to be, property as it is to-day. And since the
whole of this political constitution has been invented as a mere
stop-gap until the advent of the anarchist organisation of society, it
is evident that all human history must have been one huge blunder. The
State is no longer exactly a fiction as Proudhon maintained in 1848;
"the governmental formulas" for which people and citizens have been
cutting one another's throats for sixty centuries are no longer a "mere
phantasmagoria of our brain," as the same Proudhon believed at this
same period; but these formulas, like the State itself, like every
political constitution, are but the product of human ignorance, the
mother of all fictions and phantasmagorias. At bottom it is always the
same. The main point is that Anarchist ("social") organisation could
only be discovered as the result of "many experiences." The reader will
see how much this is to be regretted.
The political constitution has an unquestionable influence upon the
social organisation; at any rate it calls it forth, for such is its
"fate" as revealed by Proudhon, master of Kantian philosophy and social
organisation. The most logical conclusion to be drawn therefrom is that
the partisans of social organisation must make use of the political
constitution in order to attain their end. But logical as this deduction
is, it is not to the taste of our author. For him it is but a
phantasmagoria of our brain. To make use of the political constitution
is to offer a burnt offering to the terrible god of authority, to take
part in the struggle of parties. Proudhon will have none of this. "No
more parties," he says; "no more authority, absolute liberty of the man
and the citizen--in three words, such is our political and social
profession of faith."[19]
Every class-struggle is a political struggle. Whosoever repudiates the
political struggle by this very act, gives up all part and lot in the
class-struggle. And so it was with Proudhon. From the beginning of the
Revolution of 1848 he preached the reconciliation of classes. Here
_e.g._, is a passage from the Circular which he addressed to his
electors in Doubs, which is dated 3rd April of this same year: "The
social question is there; you cannot escape from it. To solve it we must
have men who combine extreme Radicalism of mind with extreme
Conservatism of mind. Workers, hold out your hands to your employers;
and you, employers, do not deliberately repulse the advances of those
who were your wage-earners."
The man whom Proudhon believed to combine this extreme Radicalism of
mind with extreme Conservatism of mind, was himself--P. J. Proudhon.
There was, on the one hand, at the bottom of this belief, a "fiction,"
common to all Utopians who imagine they can rise above classes and their
struggles, and naïvely think that the whole of the future history of
humanity will be confined to the peaceful propagation of their new
gospel. On the other hand, this tendency to combine Radicalism and
Conservatism shows conclusively the very "essence" of the "Father of
Anarchy."
Proudhon was the most typical representative of petty bourgeois
socialism. Now the "fate" of the petty bourgeois--in so far as he does
not adopt the proletarian standpoint--is to constantly oscillate between
Radicalism and Conservatism. To make more understandable what we have
said, we must bear in mind what the plan of social organisation
propounded by Proudhon was.
Our author shall tell us himself. It goes without saying that we shall
not escape a more or less authentic interpretation of Kant. "Thus the
line we propose to follow in dealing with the political question and in
preparing the materials for a constitution will be the same as that we
have followed hitherto in dealing with the social question." The _Voix
du Peuple_ while completing the work of its predecessors, the two
earlier journals, will follow faithfully in their footsteps.[20] What
did we say in these two publications, one after the other of which fell
beneath the blows of the reaction and the state of siege? We did not
ask, as our precursors and colleagues had done, Which is the best system
of community? The best organisation of property? Or again: Which is the
better, property or the community? The theory of St. Simon or that of
Fourier? The system of Louis Blanc or that of Cabet? Following the
example of Kant we stated the question thus: "How is it that man
possesses? How is property acquired? How lost? What is the law of its
evolution and transformation? Whither does it tend? What does it want?
What, in fine, does it represent?... Then how is it that man labours?
How is the comparison of products instituted? By what means is
circulation carried out in society? Under what conditions? According to
what laws?" And the conclusion arrived at by this monograph of property
was this: Property indicates function or attribution; community;
reciprocity of action; usury ever decreasing, the identity of labour and
capital (_sic!_). In order to set free and to realise all these terms,
until now hidden beneath the old symbols of property, what must be done?
The workers must guarantee one another labour and a market; and to this
end must accept as money their reciprocal pledges. Good! To-day we say
that political liberty, like industrial liberty, will result for us from
our mutual guarantees. It is by guaranteeing one another liberty that we
shall get rid of this government, whose destiny is to symbolise the
republican motto: _Liberty_, _Equality_, _Fraternity_, while leaving it
to our intelligence to bring about the realisation of this. Now, what is
the formula of this political and liberal guarantee? At present
universal suffrage; later on free contract.... Economic and social
reform through the mutual guarantee of credit; political reform through
the inter-action of individual liberties; such is the programme of the
"_Voix du Peuple_."[21] We may add to this that it is not very difficult
to write the "biography" of this programme.
In a society of producers of commodities, the exchange of commodities is
carried out according to the labour socially necessary for their
production. Labour is the source and the measure of their
exchange-value. Nothing could seem more "just" than this to any man
imbued with the ideas engendered by a society of producers of
commodities. Unfortunately this "justice" is no more "eternal" than
anything else here below. The development of the production of
commodities necessarily brings in its train the transformation of the
greater part of society into proletarians, possessing nothing but their
labour-power, and of the other part into capitalists, who, buying this
power, the only commodity of the proletarians, turn it into a source of
wealth for themselves. In working for the capitalists the proletarian
produces the income of his exploiter, at the same time as his own
poverty, his own social subjection. Is not this sufficiently unjust? The
partisan of the rights of the producer of commodities deplores the lot
of the proletarians; he thunders against capital. But at the same time
he thunders against the revolutionary tendencies of the proletarians who
speak of expropriating the exploiter and of a communistic organisation
of production. Communism is unjust, it is the most odious tyranny. What
wants organising is not _production_ but _exchange_, he assures us. But
how organise exchange? That is easy enough, and what is daily going on
before our eyes may serve to show us the way. Labour is the source and
the measure of the _value_ of commodities. But is the _price_ of
commodities always determined by their value? Do not prices continually
vary according to the rarity or abundance of these commodities? The
value of a commodity and its price are two different things; and this is
the misfortune, the great misfortune of all of us poor, honest folk, who
only want justice, and only ask for our own. To solve the social
question, therefore we must put a stop to the _arbitrariness of prices_,
and to the anomaly of value (Proudhon's own expressions). And in order
to do this we must "constitute" value; _i.e._, see that every producer
shall always, in exchange for his commodity, receive exactly what it
costs. Then will private property not only cease to be theft, it will
become the most adequate expression of justice. To constitute value is
to constitute small private property, and small private property once
constituted, everything will be justice and happiness in a world now so
full of misery and injustice. And it is no good for proletarians to
object, they have no means of production: by guaranteeing themselves
_credit gratis_, all who want to work will, as by the touch of a magic
wand, have everything necessary for production.
Small property and small parcelled-out production, its economic basis,
was always the dream of Proudhon. The huge modern mechanical workshop
always inspired him with profound aversion. He says that labour, like
love, flies from society. No doubt there are some industries--Proudhon
instances railways--in which _association_ is essential. In these, the
isolated producer must make way for "companies of workers." But the
exception only proves the rule.[22] Small private property must be the
basis of "social organization."
Small private property is tending to disappear. The desire not merely to
preserve it, but to transform it into the basis of a new social
organisation is extreme conservatism. The desire at the same time to put
an end to "the exploitation of man by man," to the wage-system, is
assuredly to combine with the most conservative the most radical
aspirations.
We have no desire here to criticise this petty bourgeois Utopia. This
criticism has already been undertaken by a master hand in the works of
Marx: "La Misère de la Philosophie," and "Zur Kritik der Politischen
Oekonomie." We will only observe the following:--
The only bond that unites the producers of commodities upon the domain
of economics is exchange. From the juridical point of view, exchange
appears as the relation between two wills. The relation of these two
wills is expressed in the "contract." The production of commodities duly
"constituted" is therefore the reign of "absolute" individual liberty.
By finding myself bound through a contract that obliges me to do such
and such a thing, I do not renounce my liberty. I simply use it to enter
into relations with my neighbours. But at the same time this contract
is the regulator of my liberty. In fulfilling a duty that I have freely
laid upon myself when signing the contract, I render justice to the
rights of others. It is thus that "absolute" liberty becomes
"commensurate with order." Apply this conception of the contract to the
"political constitution" and you have "Anarchy."
"The idea of the contract excludes that of government. What
characterises the contract, reciprocal convention, is that by virtue of
this convention the liberty and well-being of man are increased, while
by the institution of authority both are necessarily decreased....
Contract is thus essentially synallagmatic; it lays upon the contracting
parties no other obligation than that which results from their personal
promise of reciprocal pledges; it is subject to no external authority;
it alone lays down a law common to both parties, and it can be carried
out only through their own initiative. If the contract is already this
in its most general acceptation and in its daily practice, what will the
social contract be--that contract which is meant to bind together all
the members of a nation by the same interest? The social contract is the
supreme act by which every citizen pledges to society his love, his
intellect, his labour, his service, his products, his possessions, in
exchange for the affection, the ideas, the labour, products, service,
and possessions of his fellows; the measure of right for each one being
always determined by the extent of his own contribution, and the amount
recoverable being in accordance with what has been given.... The social
contract must be freely discussed, individually consented to, signed
_manu propriâ_, by all who participate in it. If its discussion were
prevented, curtailed or burked; if consent to it were filched; if the
signature were given to a blank document in pure confidence, without a
reading of the articles and their preliminary explanation; or even if,
like the military oath, it were all predetermined and enforced, then the
social contract would be nothing but a conspiracy against the liberty
and well-being of the most ignorant, the most weak, and most numerous
individuals, a systematic spoliation, against which every means of
resistance or even of reprisal might become a right and a duty.... The
social contract is of the essence of the reciprocal contract; not only
does it leave the signer the whole of his possessions; it adds to his
property; it does not encroach upon his labour; it only affects
exchange.... Such, according to the definitions of right and universal
practice, must be the social contract."[23]
Once it is admitted as an incontestable fundamental principle that the
contract is "the only moral bond that can be accepted by free and equal
human beings" nothing is easier than a "radical" criticism of the
"political constitution." Suppose we have to do with justice and the
penal law, for example? Well, Proudhon would ask you by virtue of what
contract society arrogates to itself the right to punish criminals.
"Where there is no compact there can be, so far as any external tribunal
is concerned, neither crime nor misdemeanour. The law is the expression
of the sovereignty of the people; that is, or I am altogether mistaken,
the social contract and the personal pledge of the man and the citizen.
So long as I did not want this law, so long as I have not consented to
it, voted for it, it is not binding upon me, it does not exist. To make
it a precedent before I have recognised it, and to use it against me in
spite of my protests is to make it retroactive, and to violate this very
law itself. Every day you have to reverse a decision because of some
formal error. But there is not a single one of your laws that is not
tainted with nullity, and the most monstrous nullity of all, the very
hypothesis of the law. Soufflard, Lacenaire, all the scoundrels whom you
send to the scaffold turn in their graves and accuse you of judicial
forgery. What answer can you make them?"[24]
If we are dealing with the administration and the police Proudhon sings
the same song of contract and free consent. "Cannot we administer our
goods, keep our accounts, arrange our differences, look after our common
interests at least as well as we can look after our salvation and take
care of our souls?" "What more have we to do with State legislation,
with State justice, with State police, and with State administration
than with State religion?"[25]
As to the Ministry of Finance, "it is evident that its _raison d'être_
is entirely included in that of the other ministries.... Get rid of all
the political harness and you will have no use for an administration
whose sole object is the procuring and distribution of supplies."[26]
This is logical and "radical;" and the more radical, that this formula
of Proudhon's--constituted value, free contract--is a universal one,
easily, and even necessarily applicable to all peoples. "Political
economy is, indeed, like all other sciences; it is of necessity the same
all over the world; it does not depend upon the arrangements of men or
nations, it is subject to no one's caprice. There is no more a Russian,
English, Austrian, Tartar, or Hindoo political economy than there is a
Hungarian, German, or American physics or geometry. Truth is everywhere
equal to itself: Science is the unity of the human race. If science,
therefore, and no longer religion or authority is taken in all countries
as the rule of society, the sovereign arbiter of all interests,
government becomes null and void, the legislators of the whole universe
are in harmony."[27]
But enough of this! The "biography" of what Proudhon called his
programme is now sufficiently clear to us. Economically it is but the
Utopia of a petty bourgeois, who is firmly convinced that the
production of commodities is the most "just" of all possible modes of
production, and who desires to eliminate its bad sides (hence his
"Radicalism") by retaining to all eternity its good sides (hence his
"Conservatism"). Politically the programme is only the application to
public relations of a concept (the "contract") drawn from the domain of
the private right of a society of producers of commodities. "Constituted
value" in economics, the "contract" in politics--these are the whole
scientific "truth" of Proudhon. It is all very well for him to combat
the Utopians; he is a Utopian himself to his finger tips. What
distinguishes him from men like Saint Simon, Fourier, and Robert Owen is
his extreme pettiness and narrowness of mind, his hatred of every really
revolutionary movement and idea.
Proudhon criticised the "political constitution" from the point of view
of private right. He wished to perpetuate private property, and to
destroy that pernicious "fiction" the State, for ever.
Guizot had already said that the political constitution of a country has
its root in the conditions of property existing there. For Proudhon the
political constitution owes its origin only to human ignorance, has only
been "imagined" in default of the "social organisation" at last
"invented" by him, Proudhon, in the year of our Lord so and so. He
judges the political history of mankind like a Utopian. But the Utopian
negation of all reality by no means preserves us from its influence.
Denied upon one page of a Utopian work, it takes its revenge on
another, where it often appears in all its nakedness. Thus Proudhon
"denies" the State. "The State--no, no--I will none of it, even as
servant; I reject all government, even direct government," he cries _ad
nauseam_. But, oh! irony of reality! Do you know how he "invents" the
constitution of value? It is very funny.
The constitution of value is the selling at a fair price, at the cost
price.[28] If a merchant refuses to supply his merchandise at cost price
it is because he is not certain of selling a sufficient quantity to
secure a due return, and further he has no guarantee that he will get
_quid pro quo_ for his purchases. So he must have guarantees. And there
may be "various kinds" of these guarantees. Here is one.
"Let us suppose that the Provisional Government or the Constituent
Assembly ... had seriously wished to help along business, encourage
commerce, industry, agriculture, stop the depreciation of property,
assure work to the workers--it could have been done by guaranteeing,
_e.g._, to the first 10,000 contractors, factory owners, manufacturers,
merchants, etc., in the whole Republic, an interest of 5 per cent. on
the capital, say, on the average, 100,000 francs, that each of them had
embarked in his competitive business. For it is evident that the State"
... Enough! It is evident that the State has forced itself upon
Proudhon, at least "as servant." And it has done this with such
irresistible force that our author ends by surrendering, and solemnly
proclaiming:
"Yes, I say it aloud: the workers' associations of Paris and the
departments hold in their hands the salvation of the people, the future
of the revolution. They can do everything, if they set about it
cleverly. Renewed energy on their part must carry the light into the
dullest minds, and at the election of 1852 [he wrote this in the summer
of 1851] must place on the order of the day, and at the head of it, the
constitution of value."[29]
Thus "No more parties! No politics!" when it is a question of the class
struggle--and "Hurrah for politics! Hurrah for electoral agitation!
Hurrah for State interference!" when it is a question of realising the
vapid and meagre Utopia of Proudhon!
"_Destruam et ædificabo_," says Proudhon, with the pompous vanity
peculiar to him. But on the other hand--to use the phrase of Figaro--it
is the truest truth of all he has ever uttered in his life. He destroys
and he builds. Only the mystery of his "destruction" reveals itself
completely in his formula, "The Contract solves all problems." The
mystery of his "_ædificatio_" is in the strength of the social and
political bourgeois reality with which he reconciled himself, the more
readily in that he never managed to pluck from it any of its "secrets."
Proudhon will not hear of the State at any price. And yet--apart from
the political propositions such as the constitution of value, with which
he turns to the odious "fiction"--even theoretically he "builds up" the
State as fast as he "destroys" it. What he takes from the "State" he
bestows upon the "communes" and "departments." In the place of one great
State we see built up a number of small states; in the place of one
great "fiction" a mass of little ones. To sum up, "anarchy" resolves
itself into federalism, which among other advantages has that of making
the success of revolutionary movements much more difficult than it is
under a centralised State.[30] So endeth Proudhon's "General Idea of the
Revolution."
It is a curious fact that Saint Simon is the "father" of Proudhon's
anarchy. Saint Simon has said that the end of social organisation is
production, and that, therefore, political science must be reduced to
economics, the "art of governing men" must give way to the art of
"administration of things." He has compared mankind to the individual,
who, obeying his parents in childhood, in his ripe age ends by obeying
no one but himself. Proudhon seized upon this idea and this comparison,
and with the help of the constitution of value, "built up" anarchy. But
Saint Simon, a man of fertile genius, would have been the very first to
be alarmed at what this Socialistic petty bourgeois made of his theory.
Modern scientific Socialism has worked out the theory of Saint Simon
very differently, and while explaining the historical origin of the
State, shows in this very origin, the conditions of the future
disappearance of the State.
"The State was the official representative of society as a whole, the
gathering of it together into a visible embodiment. But it was this only
in so far as it was the State of that class which itself represented,
for the time being, society as a whole; in ancient times the State of
slave-owning citizens; in the middle ages, the feudal lords; in our own
time, the bourgeoisie. When at last it becomes the real representative
of the whole of society, it renders itself unnecessary. As soon as there
is no longer any social class to be held in subjection; as soon as class
rule and the individual struggle for existence based on our present
anarchy in production, with the collisions and excesses arising from
these are removed, nothing more remains to be repressed, and a special
repressive force, a State, is no longer necessary. The first act by
virtue of which the State really constitutes itself the representative
of the whole of society, the taking possession of the means of
production in the name of society, this is, at the same time, its last
independent act as a State. State interference in social relations
becomes, in one domain after another, superfluous, and then dies out of
itself; the government of persons is replaced by the administration of
things, and by the conduct of processes of production. The State is not
'abolished.' _It dies out._"[31]
FOOTNOTES:
[16] For all these quotations see the preface to the third edition of
the "Confessions d'un Révolutionnaire." This preface is simply an
article reprinted from the _Voix du Peuple_, November, 1849. It was not
till 1849 that Proudhon began to "expound" his Anarchist theory. In
1848, _pace_ Kropotkine, he only expounded his theory of exchange, as
anyone can see for himself by reading the sixth volume of his complete
works (Paris, 1868). This "critique" of Democracy, written in March,
1848, did not yet expound his Anarchist theory. This "critique" forms
part of his work, "Solution du Problème Social," and Proudhon proposes
to bring about this solution "without taxes, without loans, without cash
payments, without paper-money, without maximum, without levies, without
bankruptcy, without agrarian laws, without any poor tax, without
national workshops, without association (!), without any participation
or intervention by the State, without any interference with the liberty
of commerce and of industry, without any violation of property," in a
word and above all, without any class war. A truly "immortal" idea and
worthy the admiration of all bourgeois, peace-loving, sentimental, or
bloodthirsty--white, blue, or red!
[17] "One, two, three; legerdemain isn't witchcraft."
[18] "Les Confessions d'un Révolutionnaire." Vol. ix., 1868 edition of
the complete works of Proudhon, pages 166 and 167.
[19] "Confessions," pp. 25-26.
[20] He is speaking of the two papers _Le Peuple_ and _Le Réprésentant
du Peuple_, which he had published in 1848-9 before the _Voix du
Peuple_.
[21] "Confessions," pp. 7-8.
[22] For Proudhon the principle of association invoked by most schools
(he means the various Socialist schools), "a principle essentially
sterile, is neither an industrial force nor an economic law ... it
supposes government and obedience, two terms excluded by the
Revolution." (_Idée Générale de la Révolution au XIX Siècle_, 2 ed.,
Paris 1851, p. 173).
[23] "Idée Générale de la Revolution." Paris, 1851, pp. 124-127.
[24] "Idée Générale," pp. 298-299.
[25] "Idée Générale," p. 304.
[26] Ibid. p. 324.
[27] Ibid. p. 328.
[28] It was thus that Proudhon understood the determining of value by
labour. He could never understand a Ricardo.
[29] "Idée Générale," p. 268.
[30] See his book, "Du Principe Fédératif."
[31] _Socialism: Utopian and Scientific._ By F. Engels. Translated by
Edward Aveling. Pp. 75-77.