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 const.i.tution 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 inst.i.tuted? 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 ident.i.ty 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 a.s.sures 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 "const.i.tute" 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 const.i.tute value is to const.i.tute small private property, and small private property once const.i.tuted, 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 _a.s.sociation_ 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 a.s.suredly 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 Misere 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 "const.i.tuted" 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 const.i.tution" 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 inst.i.tution 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 propria_, by all who partic.i.p.ate in it. If its discussion were prevented, curtailed or burked; if consent to it were filched; if the signature were given to a blank doc.u.ment 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 const.i.tution." 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'etre_ 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--const.i.tuted 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. "Const.i.tuted 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 const.i.tution" 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 const.i.tution of a country has its root in the conditions of property existing there. For Proudhon the political const.i.tution 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 const.i.tution of value? It is very funny.

The const.i.tution 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 quant.i.ty 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 Const.i.tuent a.s.sembly ... had seriously wished to help along business, encourage commerce, industry, agriculture, stop the depreciation of property, a.s.sure 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 compet.i.tive 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' a.s.sociations 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 const.i.tution of value."[29]

Thus "No more parties! No politics!" when it is a question of the cla.s.s 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 aedificabo_," 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 "_aedificatio_" 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 const.i.tution 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 ma.s.s 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 const.i.tution 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 cla.s.s 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 cla.s.s to be held in subjection; as soon as cla.s.s 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 const.i.tutes 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 Revolutionnaire." 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 Probleme 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 a.s.sociation (!), without any partic.i.p.ation 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 cla.s.s 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 Revolutionnaire." 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 Representant 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 a.s.sociation 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." (_Idee Generale de la Revolution au XIX Siecle_, 2 ed., Paris 1851, p. 173).

[23] "Idee Generale de la Revolution." Paris, 1851, pp. 124-127.

[24] "Idee Generale," pp. 298-299.

[25] "Idee Generale," 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] "Idee Generale," p. 268.

[30] See his book, "Du Principe Federatif."

[31] _Socialism: Utopian and Scientific._ By F. Engels. Translated by Edward Aveling. Pp. 75-77.

CHAPTER V

BAKOUNINE