Anarchism Part 2
Comte; which is all the more remarkable since it is Comte's Positivism which, proceeding along the lines of Spencer's philosophy, has in no small degree influenced modern Anarchism, while echoes of the Comtian individualist doctrine are even to be found in the German contemporary of Proudhon, Stirner; echoes which, although numerous, are perhaps unconscious. Proudhon attached himself, as already mentioned, specially to the Hegelian dialectic and to the doctrine of Ant.i.theses.
Using this criterion, Proudhon proceeded to the consideration and criticism of social phenomena; and just as beginners and pupils in the difficult art of philosophy, instead of contenting themselves with preliminary questions, attack the very kernel of problems, with all the rashness of ignorance, so Proudhon also attacked, as his first problem, the fundamental social question of property, taking it up for the subject of his much-quoted though much less read work, _What is Property?_ (_Qu'est-ce que la Propriete?_--First essay in _Recherches sur le Principe du Droit et du Gouvernement_). Proudhon has been judged and condemned, though, and wrongly, yet almost exclusively, by this one essay, written at the beginning of his literary career.
Friends and foes alike have always contented themselves with regarding the celebrated dictum there uttered, Property is Theft, as the Alpha and the Omega of Proudhon's teaching, without reading the book itself.
And because it has been thought sufficient to catch up a phrase dragged from all its context, so it has happened that Proudhon to-day, although he is one of the most frequently mentioned authors, is hardly either known or read. Although the question of property forms the corner-stone of all Proudhon's teaching, yet it would be wrong to identify it with his doctrine entirely. And it is no less wrong to represent the first attempt which Proudhon made to solve so great a problem as the whole of his views about property, as unfortunately even serious authors have hitherto done almost without exception, and especially those who make a special study of him, such as Diehl. As a matter of fact, Proudhon has carefully and elaborately set forth his theory of property in several other works which are mixed up for the most part with his other numerous writings, and has left behind a fragment of a book on the theory of property, in which he meant to produce a comprehensive theory of property as the foundation of his whole work. We must, therefore, in order not to antic.i.p.ate, leave a complete exposition of Proudhon's theory of property to a later portion of this book, hence we will merely glance at the work, _What is Property?_ and also at another study which appeared in 1843 called _The Creation of Order in Humanity_, which shows the second, or I might say, the political side of Proudhon's train of thought in its first beginnings, and of which Proudhon himself said later, that it satisfied neither him nor the public, and was worse than mediocre, although he had very little to retract in its contents. "This book, a veritable infernal machine, which contains all the implements of creation and destruction," he said in his _Confessions_, "is badly done, and is far below that which I could have produced if I had taken time to choose and arrange properly my materials. But however full of faults my work may now appear, it was then sufficient for my purpose.
Its object was to make me understand myself. Just as contradiction had been useful to me to destroy, so now the processes of development served me to build up. My intellectual education was completed, the _Creation of Order_ had scarcely seen the light, when, with the application of the creative method which followed immediately upon it, I understood that in order to obtain an insight into the revolution of society the first thing must be to construct the whole series of its ant.i.theses, or the system of opposites."
This was done in the book which appeared at Paris in two volumes in 1846, _The System of Economic Contradictions, or the Philosophy of Misery_, which deserves to be called his masterpiece, both because it contains the philosophic and economic foundations of his theory in a perfectly comprehensive and clear exposition, and because it is impossible to understand Proudhon without a knowledge of these contradictions. In his first work upon property, Proudhon had represented it as something equivalent to theft. But now we have another doctrine proposed: that Property is Liberty. These two propositions were thought by Proudhon to be proved in the same way.
"Property considered in the totality of social inst.i.tutions has, so to speak, two current accounts. One is the thought of the good which it produces, and which flows directly from its nature; the other is the disadvantages which it produces, and the sacrifices which it causes, and which also result directly, just as much as the good, from its nature. In property evil, or the abuse of it, is inseparable from the good, just as in book-keeping by double entry the debtor is inseparable from the creditor side. The one necessarily implies the other. To suppress the abuse of property means to extinguish it, just as much as to strike out an entry on the debtor side means also striking it out on the creditor side of an account." He proceeded in the same way with all "economic categories." Labour, he tells us in the _Contradictions_ more explicitly, is the principle of wealth, the power which creates or abolishes values, or puts them in proportion one to another, and also distributes them. Labour thus in itself, at the same time, is a force that makes for equilibrium and productivity, which one might think should secure mankind against every want. But in order to work, labour must define and determine itself--that is, organise itself. What are, then, the organs of labour, that is, the forms in which human labour produces and fixes values and keeps off want? These forms or categories are: division of labour, machinery, compet.i.tion, monopoly, the State or centralisation, free exchange, credit, property, and partnership.
However much labour in itself is the source of wealth, yet those means which are invented for the purpose of increasing wealth, become, through their antagonism and through that ant.i.thetical character, which, according to Proudhon, lies in the very nature of all social forms, just as many causes of want and pauperism. Labour gains by its division a more than natural fertility, but, at the same time, this divided labour, which debases the workman, sinks, owing to the manner in which this division is carried out, with great rapidity below its own level and only creates an insufficient value. After it has increased consumption by the superfluity of products, it leaves them in the lurch owing to the low rate of pay; instead of keeping off want it actually produces it.
The deficiency caused by the division of labour is said to be filled by machinery, which not only increases and multiplies the productivity of labour, but also compensates for the moral deficiency caused by the division of labour, and supplies a higher unity and synthesis in place of the division of labour. But according to Proudhon this is not the case; with machinery begins the distinction between masters and wage-earners, between capitalists and workmen. Thus mankind, instead of being raised up by machinery from degradation, sinks deeper and deeper. Man loses both his character as a man, and freedom, and becomes only a tool. Prosperity increases for the masters, poverty for the men; the distinction of caste begins, and a terrible struggle becomes manifest, which consists in increasing men in order to be able to do without them. And so the general pressure becomes more and more severe; poverty, already heralded by the division of labour, at last makes its appearance in the world, and henceforth becomes the soul and sinews of society.
As opposed to its aristocratic tendencies, society places freedom or compet.i.tion. Compet.i.tion emanc.i.p.ates the workman and produces an incalculable growth in wealth. By compet.i.tion the productions of labour continually sink in price, or (what comes to the same thing) continually increase in quality: and since the sources of compet.i.tion, just like mechanical improvements and combinations of the division of labour, are infinite, it may be said that the productive force of compet.i.tion is unlimited as regards intensity and scope. At last, by compet.i.tion, the production of wealth gets definitely ahead of the production of men, by which statement Proudhon destroys the dogma of Malthus, which, we may remark, was no more proved than his own. But this compet.i.tion is also a new source of pauperism, because the lowering of prices which it brings with it only benefits, on the one hand, those who succeed, and, on the other, leaves those who fail without work and without means of subsistence. The necessary consequence, and, at the same time, the natural ant.i.thesis of compet.i.tion is monopoly. It is that form of social possession without which no labour, no production, no exchange, and no wealth would be possible. It is most intimately connected with individualism and freedom, so that without it we can hardly imagine society, and yet it is, quite as much as compet.i.tion, anti-social and harmful. For monopoly attracts everything to itself--land, labour, and the implements of labour, productions and the distribution thereof--and annihilates them; or it annihilates the natural equilibrium of production and consumption; it causes the labourer to be deceived in the amount of his reward, and it causes progress in prosperity to be changed into a continual progress in poverty. Finally, it inverts all ideas of justice in commerce.
The State, in its economic relations, should, according to Proudhon, eventuate in an equalisation between the patricians and the proletariat; its regulations (such as taxation) should, in the first place, be an antidote against the arrogance and excessive power of monopoly; but even the inst.i.tution of the State fails in its purpose, since taxes, instead of being paid by those who have wealth, are almost exclusively paid by those who have not; the army, justice, peace, education, hospitals, workhouses, public offices, even religion,--in short, everything which is intended for the advance, emanc.i.p.ation, and the relief of the proletariat being first paid for and supported by the proletariat, and then either turned against it or lost to it altogether.
It would be useless to repeat what Proudhon says about the beneficial, and at the same time fateful, consequences both of free-trade and its opposite. Who does not know the arguments which even to-day are used by politicians and savants in the still undecided controversy for and against it?
In this system of contradiction, then, in this ant.i.thesis of society, Proudhon believed he had discovered the law of social progress, while as a matter of fact he had only given a very negative proof (though he certainly would hardly have acknowledged it) that there is not in economics any more than in ethics anything absolute, and that "benefit" and "harm" are relative terms which have nothing in common with the essence of things; and it is just as wrong in the one case to regard the existing social order as the best of all possible worlds, as it is in the other to regard any one economic inst.i.tution as a social panacea, or to blame one or the other for all the evils of an evil world. Such a confession of faith might easily be considered trivial, and it might even give rise to a supercilious smile if it required nothing less than the doctrine of ant.i.thesis taught by Kant and Hegel to be brought in to prove what are obviously matters of fact. But perhaps it is just this superficial smile which is the justification of Proudhon, who had to fight a severe and not always victorious battle for an apparently trivial cause. We do not forget how helplessly the age in which he lived was tossed to and fro in all social questions, from casuistical Agnosticism to arbitrary Dogmatism; from extreme Individualism to Communism, from the standpoint of absolute _laisser faire_ to the uttermost reliance on authority. In placing these two worlds in sharp contrast one to another, _Contradictions_, with all its acknowledged faults and errors, performed an undeniable service; and this book--against which Karl Marx has written a severe attack--will retain for all time its value as one of the most important and thorough works of social philosophy.
In any case, the net result of the lengthy discussion, in view of the purpose which Proudhon had before him, was absolutely nil. Proudhon certainly endeavoured in his dialectic method to find a solution of ant.i.theses, and to come to some positive result; but even this solution, which was to have been the great social remedy, is, when divested of its philosophical garments, such a general and indefinite draft upon the bank of social happiness that it could never be properly paid.
"I have shewn," said Proudhon, at the close of his _Contradictions_, "how society seeks in formula after formula, inst.i.tution after inst.i.tution, that equilibrium which always escapes it, and at every attempt always causes its luxury and its poverty to grow in equal proportion. Since equilibrium has never yet been reached, it only remains to hope something from a complete solution which synthetically unites theories, which gives back to labour its effectiveness and to each of its organs its power. Hitherto pauperism has been so inextricably connected with labour, and want with idleness, and all our accusations against Providence only prove our weakness." This solution of the great problem of our century by the synthetic union of economic and social ant.i.thesis, or, as Proudhon calls it in another place, by a scientific, legal, immortal, and inseparable combination, is certainly a beautiful and n.o.ble philosophy. It cannot be denied that herewith Proudhon, who, in all his works, raged furiously against Utopians, has none the less created a Utopia of his own, not, indeed, by forcibly urging mankind through an ideal change, but by attempting to mould life into an ideal shape without, like others, appealing to force, or venturing to organise the forces of terror, in order to accomplish his ideal.
Just as Proudhon differed from the ready-made Socialism of his age by a conception which he opposed to pauperism, so, too, he differed in the method which he recommended should be adopted for the removal of pauperism. He certainly accepted the proposition that poverty could only be removed by the labourer receiving the entire result of his labour, and that social reform must, accordingly, consist of an organisation of labour. In this he was quite at one with Louis Blanc, but only in this; for while Louis Blanc claimed for the organisation of labour the full authority of the State, Proudhon desired it to arise from the free initiative of the people, without the interference of the State in any way. This is the parting of the roads between Anarchism and authoritative Socialism; here they separate once for all, never to meet again, except in the most violent opposition. This was the starting-point of Proudhon's Anarchist views. The experiences of the Revolution of 1848, which, from the social standpoint, failed entirely, might well have fitted in with these views of his. Proudhon had taken a very active part in the occurrences of this remarkable year, as editor of the _People_, and as a representative of the Department of the Seine, and in other capacities, and thought that the cause of the fruitlessness of all attempts to solve the social problem and to reap the fruits of the Revolution lay in the fact that the Revolution had been initiated from above instead of from below, and because the revolutionary principle had been installed in power, and therefore had destroyed itself. But ultimately the opposition of Proudhon to Blanc goes back to the fundamental difference alluded to above.
Society, as Proudhon explains in his _Contradictions_, and as he applies his doctrine of politics in his book called the _Confessions of a Revolutionary_, written in prison in 1849, is essentially of a dialectic nature and is founded upon opposites, which are all mingled one with another, and the combinations of which are infinite. The solution of the social problem he finds in placing the different expressions of the problem no longer in contradiction but in their "dialectic developments," so that for example the right to work, to credit, and to a.s.sistance, rights whose realisation under an antagonistic legislation is impossible or dangerous, gradually result from an already established, realised, and undoubted right; and so instead of being stumbling-blocks one to another they find in their mutual connection their most lasting guarantee. But since such guarantees should lie in the inst.i.tutions themselves the authority of the State becomes neither necessary nor justifiable for the carrying out of this revolution.
But why should revolution from above be impossible? The doctrine of ant.i.thesis, applied to politics, implies freedom and order. The first is realised by revolution, the second by government. Thus there is here a contradiction; for the government can never become revolutionary for the very simple reason that it is a government. But society alone--that is, the ma.s.ses of the people when permeated by intelligence--can revolutionise itself, because it alone can express its free will in a rational manner, can a.n.a.lyse and develop and unfold the secret of its destination and its origin, and alter its beliefs and its philosophy.
"Governments are the scourge of G.o.d, introduced in order to keep the world in discipline and order. And do you demand that they should annihilate themselves, create freedom, and make revolutions? That is impossible. All revolutions, from the anointing of the first king to the declaration of the Rights of Man, have been freely accomplished by the spirit of the people. Governments have always hindered, oppressed, and crushed them to the ground. They have never made a revolution. It is not their function to produce movements but to keep them back. And even if they possessed revolutionary science--which is a contradiction of terms--they would be justified in not making use of it. They must first let their knowledge be absorbed by the people in order to receive the support of the citizens, and that would mean to refuse to acknowledge the existence of authority and power."
It follows through this that the organisation of work by the State--as was attempted by Fourier, Louis Blanc, and their followers in a more or less remote degree--is an illusion, and on this theory revolution can only take place through the initiative of the people itself--"through the unanimous agreement of the citizens, through the experience of the workmen, and through the progress and growth of enlightenment."
We here have laid bare the yawning gulf which lies between Proudhon and the State Socialism of his time, and over this gulf there is no bridge. We see how from these premises has been developed gradually and logically that which Proudhon himself has called Anarchy (_An-arche_, without government). The Socialists have made the statement that the political revolution is the means of which the social revolution is the end. Proudhon has inverted this statement and regards the social revolution as the means and a political revolution as the end. It is therefore a great mistake to consider him, as is always done, as a political economist, for he was first and foremost a social politician. The Socialists place as the ultimate object of revolution, the welfare of all, enjoyment; but for Proudhon the principle of revolution is freedom, that is:
(1) Political freedom by the organisation of universal suffrage, by the independent centralisation of social functions, and by the continual and unceasing revision of the const.i.tution.
(2) Industrial freedom through the mutual guarantee of credit and sale. In other words "no government by men by means of the acc.u.mulation of power, no exploitation of men by means of the acc.u.mulation of capital."
Proudhon thought that the fault of every political or social const.i.tution, whether it was the work of political or social Radicalism, that which produces conflicts, and sets up antagonism in society, lies in the fact that on the one hand the division of powers, or rather of functions, is badly and incompletely performed, while on the other hand centralisation is insufficient. The necessary consequence of this is that the chief power is inactive and the "thought of the people," or universal suffrage, is not exercised.
Division of functions then must be completed, and centralisation must increase; universal suffrage must regain its prerogative and therewith give back to the people the energy and activity which is lacking to them.
The manner in which Proudhon proposed this const.i.tution of society by the initiative of the ma.s.ses and the organisation of universal suffrage cannot be better or more simply explained than in the words and examples which he himself has used in the _Confessions_ in order to interpret his views. He says:
"For many centuries the spiritual power, according to the traditional conception of it, has been separated from the temporal power. I remark, by the way, that the political principle of the division of powers, or functions, is the same as the principle of the division of the departments of industry or of labour. Here already we see a glimpse of the ident.i.ty of the political and social const.i.tution. But now I say that the division of the two powers, the spiritual and temporal, has never been complete; and that their centralisation, which was a great disadvantage both for ecclesiastical administration and for the followers of religion, was never sufficient. A complete division would take place if the temporal power never mingled in religious solemnities, in the administration of the sacraments, in the government of parishes, and especially in the nomination of bishops.
There would then be a much greater centralisation, and consequently still more regular government, if in every parish the people had the right to choose their clergymen and chaplains themselves, or even not to have any at all; if the priests in every diocese chose their bishops; if the a.s.sembly of bishops alone regulated religious affairs in theological education and in divine worship. By this division the clergy would cease to be a tool of tyranny in the hands of the political power against the people; and by this application of universal suffrage the Church Government, centralised in itself, would receive its inspiration from the people, and not from the Government or from the Pope: it would continually find itself in harmony with the needs of society and with the spiritual condition of the citizens. In order thus to return to organic, economic, and social truth, it is necessary (1) To do away with the const.i.tutional acc.u.mulation of power, by taking away the nomination of bishops from the State, and separating once for all spiritual from temporal affairs; (2) To centralise the Church in itself by a system of elective grades; (3) To give to the ecclesiastical power, as to all other powers of the State, the right of voting as its foundation. By this system, that which to-day is 'government' becomes nothing more than administration. And it will be understood if it is possible to organise the whole country in all its temporal affairs, according to the rules which we have just laid down for its spiritual organisation, the most perfect order and the most powerful centralisation would exist without there being anything of what we now call the const.i.tuted authority of a government.
"One other example: formerly there existed besides the legislative and executive powers a third, the judicial power. This was an abolition of the dividing dualism, a first step towards the complete separation of political functions as of the departments of industry. The judicial functions--with their different specialties, their hierarchy, their irremovability, their union in a single ministry--testify undoubtedly to their privileged position and their efforts towards centralisation.
But these functions do not arise from the people upon whom they are exercised; their purpose is the administration of executive power; they are not subordinated to the country by election, but to the Government, president, or princes, by nomination. The consequence is that the liberties of the people who are judged are given into the hands of those who are supposed to be their natural judges, like parishioners into the hands of their pastor, so that the people belong to the magistrates as an inheritance, while the litigants exist for the sake of the judge, and not the judge for the sake of the litigants. Apply universal suffrage and the system of elective grades to judicial functions in the same way as to ecclesiastic; take away their irremovability which is the denial of the right of election; take away from the State all action and influence upon the judges; let this order, centralised in and for itself, arise solely from the people, and you have taken away from the State its most powerful implement of tyranny. You have made out of justice a principle of freedom and order, and unless you suppose that the people from whom, by means of universal suffrage, all power must proceed is in contradiction with itself, and that it does not wish in the case of justice what it wishes in the case of religion, or _vice versa_, you may rest a.s.sured that the division of power can produce no conflict.
You can confidently establish the principle that division and equilibrium will in future be synonymous.
"I pa.s.s over to another case, to the military power. It belongs to the citizens to nominate their military commanders in due order, by advancing simple privates and national guards to the lower grades and officers to the higher grades in the army. Thus organised the army maintains its citizen-like sentiment. There is no longer a nation in a nation, a country in a country, a kind of wandering colony where the citizen is a citizen amongst soldiers, and learns to fight against his own country. The nation itself, centralised in its strength and youth, can, independently of the power of the State, appeal to the public power in the name of the law, just like a judge or police official, but cannot command it or exercise authority over it. In the case of a war the army owes obedience only to the representative a.s.sembly of the nation, and to the leaders appointed by it.
"It is clear that in this, no judgment is pa.s.sed upon the necessity of these great manifestations of the social mind, and that if we wish to abide by the judgment of the people, which alone is competent to decide as to the importance and duration of its inst.i.tutions, we can do nothing better (as has just been said) than to const.i.tute them in a democratic manner.
"Societies have at all times experienced the need of protecting their trade and industry against foreign imports; the power or function which protects native labour in each country and guarantees it a national market, is taxation in the shape of Customs. I will not here say anything at all about the morality, or want of it, the usefulness or the harm of Customs duties. I take it as I see it in society, and confine myself to examining it from the point of view of the const.i.tution of powers. Taxation, by the very fact that it exists, is a centralised function. Its origin like its action, excludes every idea of division or dismemberment. But how does it happen that this function, which belongs specially to the province of merchants and those concerned with industry, and proceeds exclusively from the authority of the Chambers of Commerce, yet belongs to the State? Who can know better than industry itself wherein and to what extent it requires protection, where the compensation for the taxation which has to be raised must come from, and what products require bounties and encouragement? And as for the Customs service itself, is it not obvious that it is the business of those interested to reckon up the expenses of it, while it is not at all suitable for the Government to make of it a source of emolument for its favourites by procuring an income for its extravagances by differential taxes?
"Besides the ministries of justice, religion, war, and international trade, the Government appoints yet others; the ministry for agriculture, public works, public instruction, and finally to pay for all these, the ministry of finance. Our so-called division of powers is only an acc.u.mulation of all kinds of powers, our centralisation is an absorption. Do you not think that the agriculturists, who are already all organised in their communities and committees, would perform their own centralisation very well, and could guide their common interests without this being done by the State? Do you not think that the merchants, manufacturers, agriculturists, the industrial population of every kind, who have their books open before them in the Chambers of Commerce, could in the same way, without the help of the State, without expecting their salvation from its good-will, or their ruin from its inexperience, organise at their own cost a central administration for themselves; could debate their own affairs in general a.s.semblies; could correspond with other administrations; could pa.s.s all their useful decisions without waiting for the sanction of the President of the Republic; and could entrust the execution of their will to one amongst themselves, who would be chosen by his fellows to be the Minister? It is clear that the public works which concern agricultural industry and trade, or the departments and the communes, might in future be a.s.signed to the local and central administrations which have an interest in them; and should no more be a special corporation in the hands of the State than is the army, the customs, or monopolies. Or should the State have its hierarchy, its privileges, its ministry, so that it may carry on a trade in mining, ca.n.a.ls, or railways, may speculate on the Stock Exchange, grant leases for ninety-nine years, and leave the building of streets, bridges, dams, water-ways, excavations, sluices, etc., to a legion of contractors, speculators, usurers, destroyers of morality, and extortioners, who live upon the public wealth by the exploitation of workmen and wage-earners, and upon the folly of the State?
"Can it not be believed that public instruction could be just as well made universal, be administered, directed, and that the teachers, professors, and inspectors could be just as well elected, and the system of studies would be just as much in harmony with the habits and interests of the nation if it was the business of munic.i.p.al and general councils to appoint teachers, while the universities only had to grant them their diplomas; if in public instruction, as in the military career, merit in the lower grades was necessary for promotion to the higher, if our dignitaries of the university must first have gone through the duties of an elementary teacher and supervisor of studies?
"Does one imagine that this perfectly democratic system would do harm to the discipline of schools, to morality, education, the dignity of instruction, or the peace of the family?
"And as the sinews of every administration are money, as the budget is made for the country and not the country for the budget, as the taxes must every year be granted freely by the representatives of the people, as this is the original and inalienable right of the people both under a monarchy and a republic, since the country must first sanction the income and expenditure before it can be applied by the Government,--does it not follow that the consequence of this financial initiative, which is formally recognised as belonging to the citizens in all our const.i.tutions, will consist in the fact that the finance minister, or, in a word, the whole fiscal organisation, belongs to the country and not to its ruler; that it depends directly upon those who pay the budget and not upon those who spend it; that there would be infinitely fewer abuses in the administration of public money, fewer extravagances and deficits, if the State had just as little power over public finances as over religion, justice, the army, taxes, public works, and public instruction?
"Supposing the heads of the different branches of administration were grouped together, we should have then a council of ministry or an executive power which would serve just as well as a State Council.
Place over this a great 'jury,' legislative body, or national a.s.sembly, elected and commissioned directly by the whole of the country, whose duty it is not to nominate the ministers, for these receive their office from the members of their special departments, but to look through accounts, to make laws, to draw up the budget, and to decide the differences between the different administrations after having received the report of the Public Minister or the Minister of the Interior, to which in the future the whole Government will be reduced,--and there you would have a centralisation which would be all the stronger the more its different centres were multiplied. You would have responsibility, which is all the more real because the separation between various powers is more sharply defined; you would have a const.i.tution which at the same time is political and social."
Here we have the picture of the society of the future, as Proudhon imagined it when the principles of democracy and, above all, of universal suffrage have become a reality--the celebrated federative principle of Proudhon, the inheritance of the most talented party of any age, the Girondists, locally developed, and to some extent not without a profound knowledge of politics. It cannot be denied that the federal principle, as Proudhon here explains it, means the integration of social force, which in its differentiation meets us sometimes as a special and sometimes as the common interest, sometimes as Individualism or again as Altruism. According to this, federation is nothing more than the translation into politics of the metaphor (which we formerly used from physics) of the resultants of several component forces; a metaphor which not only suits the genius of Proudhon, but also is frequently found in his language. Proudhon was deeply permeated by the reality of Collectivism, but saw it in the light both of Physics and Physiology, so that the word "resultants" is with him more than a metaphor. In this respect Proudhon far surpa.s.sed in insight all the social philosophers of his age, and antic.i.p.ated the pioneers of modern sociology. But he contradicted himself, and lost his special merits by wishing to make out of a social law an absolute formula; by abandoning the scientific standpoint which he once attained, and falling back again into dogmatism. If we conceive all society in the mechanical manner in which Proudhon did; or if we think (as he did) that we have at least partially discovered the laws of its movement, then all further politics exhaust themselves in an experimental verification of the laws in question. But to antic.i.p.ate any point of the development which one expects, and to regard it as something absolute, is a process irreconcilable with an exact scientific method. In brief, Proudhon's federalism is a political principle; his Anarchism is a dogma, or at best an hypothesis which cannot even be logically proved from the first-named, for it is not true, as Proudhon maintains, that the idea of agreement excludes that of lordship.
But if Proudhon conceives all society in a mechanical manner, it is to be expected that he would again seek--and find--the same laws that he saw operating in the political const.i.tution also in economic life.
This is, as a matter of fact, the case. "Agreement solves every problem"; only agreement in economic life means with him exchange.
"Social agreement," he says, "is in its essence like the agreement of exchange." Therefore the corner-stone in his economic system is exchange. But Proudhon transposed into this purely empiric idea a moral element, by presupposing equality and justice as necessary to exchange. Economic freedom, he reasons, is free exchange; but an exchange can only be called free which presupposes the equality of values, or, in other words, equality and justice. This again presupposes a just balance and const.i.tution of values--a mutual balance of all economic and social forces. What, then, is economic freedom? It is equality and justice. And what is the opposite--the hindrance of these principles? It is inequality, injustice, slavery, which means property. This is the reason why Proudhon's doctrine of property stands at the centre of his system, which it by no means exhausts; it is the reason why he always proceeded from this point, and always returned to it again. Here we have clearly the reason for all his numberless and endless mistakes in the province of economics, the weak point of this otherwise great and n.o.ble mind. As we already have remarked about the _Contradictions_, Proudhon did not attack property in itself; he tried to enn.o.ble it and bring it into harmony with the claims of justice and equality by taking away from it what to-day is a _jus utendi et abutendi_, that is, its rights over the substance of a thing, and the right of devolving it for ever. The ominous statement "Property is Theft" was directed only against this.
This kind of property (_propriete_, _dominium_) was to be replaced by individual possession (_possession individuelle_): as to which one must take care to understand the distinction between "property" and "possession" in the legal sense.
Proudhon sought in his first and larger work, which is mainly of a critical nature, to put forward the negative proof that property is impossible, by inverting all the proofs. .h.i.therto brought forward in its favour, so that instead of justifying the possession of property they seemed rather to make for freedom. It is, however, quite wrong to regard this dialectic jugglery as the essence of Proudhon's system. A proof, such as that here proposed by Proudhon, is not only quite inadmissible as logic, but it cannot even be said that Proudhon himself (usually so accurate in this respect) turned out here a really good piece of work. On the one hand he attacks the defenders of property, who, after all, are not very difficult to controvert; while, at the same time, his attempt itself does not always succeed. Of course it does not mean very much when he cleverly riddles the old argument for property drawn from divine right or the right of nature; for in any case he was only attacking dead theories. In the attack on really living arguments, as in the case of his theory of labour, he does not succeed.
Property cannot be explained by labour because
(1) The land cannot be appropriated,
(2) Labour leads to equality, and in the sight of justice labour, on the contrary, abolishes property.
The proposition that property, _i. e._, the right to the substance of the thing appropriated, cannot be created by labour, because the land cannot be appropriated, is at least a _pet.i.tio principii_ or tautology. But, leaving that, let us suppose that the land really cannot be appropriated; yet there is always some kind of property which has nothing to do with the land. It will not do always to speak of landed property only, as Proudhon invariably does. Movable property (in weapons, utensils, ornaments, animals, etc.) precedes immovable property, owing to its origin, which was only created in imitation of the other much later, and is entirely property due to work; thus not only property, but not even the origin of the idea of property in men, can be explained from the point of view of social history otherwise than by work.
If it is right, as one of our most acute thinkers says, to declare that mankind has placed his tools between himself and the animal world, then another proposition follows directly from this, namely, that man has placed property between himself and animals. It is true that the animal develops as far as the family, for if this also is founded merely upon thought, it cannot be a conscious one. Property presupposes a definite mental equipment, which even in the case of primitive men must be important, implying subjectively an already clear consciousness of self; objectively a certain capacity for measuring even the remoter consequences of an action; for the desire for special possession could only exist with reference to a p.r.o.nounced consciousness of the self, and to the recognised purpose and further utility of an object. Neither of these mental presuppositions are anywhere fulfilled in the animal world. It need hardly be mentioned that labour in the technical sense has developed naturally and gradually from physiological labour and the bodily functions; that is, that even between the natural implement and the artificial there is no hiatus.
Espinas says (_Animal Communities_, by A. Espinas, p. 338): "Every living being, however lonely its life may be, can in case of need build itself some protective covering, and that is the beginning of the artistic impulse (_Kunst-trieb_), unless, perhaps, this is to be found in the formation of the organism itself. Leaving out of consideration the tubicolous annelidae, the mussels and stone-boring molluscs, the weaving caterpillars, and finally spiders, even the non-social hymenoptera present, among many insects, examples of a very skilful adaptation of materials. But it is equally undeniable that, since the appearance of communities whose purpose is the rearing of their offspring, the artistic tendency receives a considerable impulse and produces unexpected marvels. Here it decidedly abandons its usual procedure in order to take up a new one. Hitherto the lower animals have, to a great extent, taken the materials for their places of refuge and their implements from their own bodies: the former an extension of the organism that produces it; the latter, as in the case of the spider, only an enlargement of the animal itself which forms the centre. The productions of the social artistic impulse, on the other hand, are made out of materials which are more and more foreign to the substance of the artificer, and are worked up externally by means which become more and more exclusively mechanical. Hence it follows that the living body is no longer so directly interested in the preservation of its work; it can alter and again build up this structure to an almost infinite extent--in short, the structure becomes more and more an implement instead of an organ. That was the inevitable result of animal life, which, being essentially capable of transference, and presupposing an intercourse of several separate existences, must necessarily raise itself above external substances, or else organise them according to the purposes of its life. But must we now conceive its operations as altogether distinct from those of physiological life?
"If one reflects that unnoticed steps connect the unconscious work which produces the organ with the conscious work which produces the implement, then it does not appear so. Speaking exactly, the waxen cell in which the larvae of the bee wait for their daily food is external for every individual of the race, but internal for the whole of the community; since this forms one single consciousness, or a collective individuality. The mind of the race is to some extent a common function, its body a common apparatus; the one is only the material translation of the other, and the implement performs its function as faithfully as does the organ. One might even go farther and maintain that the implement in the full sense of the word is an organ; for it serves a function that is vital for the community, and this is exposed to every change, and derives benefit from every growth which circ.u.mstances bring to it."
The work of animals, therefore, only differs in its highest developments from purely physiological functions, in that the animal becomes more independent of its implements and of the product of its labour. Notice, for instance, the progress which is shown in the series of the mussel's sh.e.l.l, the spider's web, the bee's cell, the bird's nest, and the mole's burrow. The progressive differentiation of the products of labour keeps step with the progressive individualisation of the labourer and with the growing material independence of the body from its products. Mussel sh.e.l.l, cobweb, and bee's cell are still produced from the secretions of the body; but while the mussel is inseparable from its sh.e.l.l, the spider, at least without immediate harm, can be detached from its web; while the bee is still further emanc.i.p.ated from its structure of cells. The bird's nest and the mole's burrow have been formed already by a manipulation of materials foreign to the body, though in the case of the first still by the help of secretions from the body. In both cases the animal is almost completely independent of its product. Still the most complicated product of animal labour is, after all, connected inseparably with the body of the worker; and to a much less extent can the animal be separated from its implements; therefore complete emanc.i.p.ation never takes place in the animal world.