Besançon, May 31, 1837.
PIERRE-JOSEPH PROUDHON, CANDIDATE FOR THE SUARD PENSION
TO THE GENTLEMEN OF THE ACADÉMIE DE BESANCON.
Gentlemen, I am a compositor and proofreader, son of a poor craftsman who, as the father of three boys, could never bear the cost of three apprenticeships. I knew evil and trouble early; my youth, to use a very popular expression, was passed through a fine sieve. Just so Suard, Marmontel, and a host of writers and scholars struggled with fortune. May you, gentlemen, upon reading this memoir, have the thought that between so many men famous for the gifts of intelligence, and the one who now seeks your votes, the community of misfortune is perhaps not the only point of resemblance.
... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) Preface
The celebrated Sir Francis Bacon was called the reformer of human reason for having replaced the syllogism with observation in the natural sciences; the philosophers, following his example, teach today that philosophy is a collection of observations and facts. But, certain thinkers have said to them, if truth and certainty exist in philosophy, they must also exist in the realm of politics: thus, there is a social science responsive to evidence, which is consequently the object of demonstration, not of art or authority, not, that is, of arbitrary will.
This conclusion, so profound in its simplicity, so innovative in its consequences, has been the signal for a vast intellectual movement, comparable with that which manife... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) If I am not deceived, my readers must be convinced at least of one thing, that Social Truth is not to be looked for either in Utopia or in the Old Routine; that Political Economy is not the Science of Society, and yet that it contains the elements of such a science, even as chaos before creation contained the elements of the universe; and finally, that in order to arrive at the definitive organization which would appear to be the destiny of our race upon this globe, it is only necessary to make a general equation of all our contradictions.
But what shall be the formula of this equation?
Already we have been enabled to perceive, that it must be a Law of Exchange, a theory of Mutualism, a system of Guarantees, which dissolves the old forms ... (From: proudhonlibrary.org.) DEFINITIONS
1. I call Order every seriated or symmetrical arrangement. Order necessarily presupposes division, distinction, difference. Nothing undivided, indistinct, undifferentiated, can be understood as ordered: these notions are mutually exclusive. [1]
2. The ideas of intelligence and final cause are foreign to the idea of order. In fact, order can appear to us as an unforeseen result of properties inherent in the various parts of a whole: intelligence cannot, in this case, be designated as a principle of order. — Besides, a secret tendency or aim can exist in disorder: purpose can also not be taken as an essential character of order.
Accordingly, the consideration of the universe, from the point of view grasp... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) A captain of the line assures me—the papers friendly to the government will say tomorrow if the information is exact—that on the occasion of the next elections, the order has been given to prevent, by all possible means, the gentlemen of the military from attending the electoral gatherings. Any disobedience in this regard will be punished by eight days in jail.
The government is right. It is consistent with itself. It follows, imperturbably, like Mr. Cabet, its straight line. For sixty years, the French people, leading the rest of the world behind it, has descended the path of the Revolution; Mr. Louis Bonaparte has sworn to make us turn back up the path of the Revolution. That is why Mr. Louis Bonaparte has been made Pre... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) COURT OF ASSIZE OF THE DEPARTMENT OF DOUBS
(Session of February 3, 1842.)
Last February 3, there appeared before the jury of Besançon, the author of a brochure entitled Warning to the Proprietors, or Letter to M. Considerant, editor of la Phalange, on a defense of property, on the charge: 1) of attacking property; 2) of provoking various classes of citizens to hatred; 3) of inciting hatred and contempt of the government and king; 4) of offense against the catholic religion.
It is not our intention to give a detailed relation of that trial, which had in common with so many others of the same type only the form of the proceedings and the jurisdiction. The public minister invoked the written law, the accused spoke i... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) Avoid the extremes, and seek the happy medium, says the Wisdom of the Nations.
That aphorism, of course, is very true: but it must be well understood.
It is up to philosophy to look into it and demonstrate it.
I say that every extreme, in itself, is false and implies a contradiction; but by extreme I mean the element constitutive of every synthesis, an element to which it does not [ ], which constitutes it [i.e. synthesis] that much better as it is found employed more energetically.
Thus, the proprietor is a constitutive element of the social order, necessary, indispensable.
To deny it implies a contradiction.
In the common language we say: Property must be curbed, not pushed to the extreme.
... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) Part One
Chapter I: Political Dualism — Authority and Liberty: Opposition and Interconnection of the Two Ideas
Chapter II: A Priori Conceptions of Political Order: Regime of Authority, Regime of Liberty
Chapter III: Forms of Government
Chapter IV: Compromise Between the Principles: Origins of Political Contradictions
Chapter V: De Facto Governments: Social Dissolution
Chapter VI: The Political Problem Posed: The Principle of a Solution
Chapter VII: Isolation of the Idea of Federation
Chapter VIII: A Progressive Constitution
Chapter IX: What Has Delayed Federation; Factors Hindering the Idea
Chapter X: Political Idealism: Efficacy of Federal Guarantees
Chapter XI: E (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) [introduction by translator, Benjamin R. Tucker]
In two recent issues of “La Nouvelle Revue” (February 1 and 15) appears a remarkable article under the above title from the pen of Edmond Lepelletier, embodying an outline sketch, left by Proudhon and now for the first time published, of a play which he had in contemplation, to be entitled “Galileo: A Philosophical Drama in Four Acts and Five Tableaux.” As no one bad dreamed of Proudhon as a dramatist, this is a surprising revelation. The article opens with a summary biographical sketch of Proudhon, which, in point of fact, contains nothing new, and, in point of opinion of Proudhon’s work, goes nearly to the ordinary extent of misconception. Indeed, nothin... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) Third Study. The Principle of Association.
The Revolution of ’89 had the industrial order to build, after having made a clean sweep of the feudal order. By returning to political theories, it plunged us into economic chaos.
In place of a natural order conceived in accordance with science and labor, we have a factitious order, in the shadow of which we have developed parasitic interests, abnormal morals, monstrous ambitions, prejudices at variance with common sense, which today all claim to be legitimate, invoking a tradition of sixty years, and, being unwilling either to abdicate or to modify their demands, place themselves in an antagonistic attitude toward one another, and in a reactionary attitude toward progress.
As this state ... (From: fair-use.org.) Introduction by Shawn P. Wilbur
Proudhon was fond of scandal and provocation — and it got him, and his friends, into hot water. In his System of Economic Contradictions, he wrapped his already provocative thesis about the evolution of institutions around a scandalous narrative about “the hypothesis of God.” Proudhon was fascinated with Christianity, and wrote about it from a variety of perspectives and in a variety of tones, but he is probably best remembered for writings like his “Hymn to Satan” and the final chapter of the first volumes of the Economic Contradictions, where he worked himself up to a sort of declaration of war against the very idea of God:
“If God did not exist”... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) There is something odd about the fate of the writer of these lines. No matter how little he may be tempted to take pride in an all but unprecedented situation, he would be compelled to believe that, just at the moment, everybody, excepting only himself, has taken leave of their senses; or that he himself, through some inexplicable freak, has gone mad, albeit a madness of the most erudite, considered, thought out, conscientious, philosophical sort and (in terms of its principle, its purpose, its deductions) the sort that conforms most closely to pure science and common sense.
But God forbid that we should mentally entertain this presumptuous alternative: and would do better to investigate whether the contradiction currently existing b... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) These letters, addressed to Frederic Bastiat, an economist, originally appeared in a debate published in The Voice of the People, in 1849.
Interest and Principal
Arguments Drawn from the Operations of the Bank of France
It is not true--and the facts just cited prove beyond a doubt that it is not--that the decrease of interest is proportional to the increase of capital. Between the price of merchandise and interest of capital there is not the least analogy; the laws governing their fluctuations are not the same; and all your dinning of the last six weeks in relation to capital and interest has been utterly devoid of sense. The universal custom of banks and the common sense of the people give you the lie on all these points in a m... (From: Anarchy Archives.) These letters, addressed to Frederic Bastiat, an economist, originally appeared in a debate published in The Voice of the People, in 1849.
Interest and Principal
A Loan is a Service
On the one hand, it is very true, as you have unquestionably established, that a loan is a service. And as every service has a value, and, in consequence, is entitled by its nature to a reward, it follows that a loan ought to have its price, or, to use the technical phrase, ought to bear interest.
But it is also true, and this truth is consistent with the preceding one, that he who tends, under the ordinary conditions of the professional lender, does not deprive himself, as you phrase it, of the capital which be lends. He lends it, on the contra... (From: Anarchy Archives.) These letters, addressed to Frederic Bastiat, an economist, originally appeared in a debate published in The Voice of the People, in 1849.
Interest and Principal
The Origin of Ground Rent
I said before that in ancient times the landed proprietor, when neither he nor his family farmed his land, as was the case among the Romans in the early days of the Republic, cultivated it through his slaves: such was the general practice of patrician families. Then slavery and the soil were chained together; the farmer was called adscrpitus gleboe, joined to the land; property in men and things was undivided. The price of a farm depended (1) upon its area and quality of its soil, (2) upon the quantity of stock, and (3) upon the number of slav... (From: Anarchy Archives.) These letters, addressed to Frederic Bastiat, an economist, originally appeared in a debate published in The Voice of the People, in 1849.
Interest and Principal
The Circulation of Capital, Not Capital Itself, Gives Birth to Progress
Thus it is with interest on capital, legitimate when a loan was a service rendered by citizen to citizen, but which ceases to be so when society has acquired the power to organize credit gratuitously for everybody. This interest, I say, is contradictory in its nature, in that, on the one hand, the service rendered by the lender is entitled to remuneration, and that, on the other, all wages suppose either a production or a sacrifice, which is not the case with a loan. The revolution which is effecte... (From: Anarchy Archives.) Lyon, 17 May 1846
My dear Monsieur Marx,
I gladly agree to become one of the recipients of your correspondence, whose aims and organization seem to me most useful. Yet I cannot promise to write often or at great length: my varied occupations, combined with a natural idleness, do not favor such epistolary efforts. I must also take the liberty of making certain qualifications which are suggested by various passages of your letter.
First, although my ideas in the matter of organization and realization are at this moment more or less settled, at least as regards principles, I believe it is my duty, as it is the duty of all socialists, to maintain for some time yet the critical or dubitive form; in short, I make pr... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) In the biographical introduction to Tucker’s edition of What is Property? is a brief mention that around 1851 Proudhon’s “entertained the idea of writing a universal history entitled “Chronos.” This project was never fulfilled.” There was probably no shortage of “universal history” in France by 1850, although an entry by Proudhon would no doubt have been novel and interesting. The Saint-Simonians and their allies, including P. J. B. Buchez, Auguste Ott, Pierre Leroux, had written volume after volume on the subject. In 1849, William B. Greene published his Remarks On The History Of Science; Followed By An Apriori Autobiography, which was greeted by Boston’s radical ministers with “i... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) Besançon, February 8, 1842.
To Frédéric-Guillaume Bergmann
My dear Bergmann, I have just been judged, and have been absolved by the jury, on the four charges formulated against me. I have presented a written defense, the reading of which lasted more than an hour. As I intend to print it, you will judge its worth. It is a sort of general prospectus of my studies, by past and to come, and of their object. I win and I lose all at once, as a result of this trial. I win a small moment of celebrity, which does not even extend very far, for, as you know, I don’t have the sympathies of the press; I win, which is more important to me, and which no one realizes, the advantage of being able to innovate, to anal... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) Madame.
You have understood me perfectly: what I pursue under the name of the abolition of usury and of property, is the restoration of the family, it is the advent of the man-king, and of the woman-queen.
Until this great reform is accomplished, men and women will not love one another: cupidity will infect their union, and behind cupidity comes brutality of the senses. Libertinism replaces love, and murder, finally, takes its place at the domestic hearth, and chases off devotion, sanctity and decency. I say nothing to you of my religious opinions: that is too grueling and difficult a text. But what does that matter to you, if I want everything that is, according to you, desired by the Divinity?
But it is not enough, Ma... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) To Mr. [Amédée Jérôme] LANGLOIS
My dear Langlois, all your criticisms are fair, and I would have to write ten volumes to clarify the points that appear obscure to me in your brochure, but they would still be so.
Society, it is infinite, and it is certain that there are millions of cases to resolve of which those who pose as reformers will never think. All that one can do, in the time of revolution, is to strongly deny the past, and, up to a certain point, the present, then to note the aim—an Ideal!—and to plant, in the direction of that ideal, some markers. The strongest of men will never do more than that, and barely that. Did Jesus Christ make Christianity? Though we worship him as its ... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) My dear Pierre Leroux,
I really must forgive you your incessant accusations, for you do not know me and do not engage in debate.
For a start, you haven’t read me, so you have a cheek attacking me; next, I think you need telling and everything that you have written over the past month is there to prove it: you have absolutely no method. As a result of rehashing your empty formulas, wallowing in your sterile imaginings and focusing your thoughts upon some world beyond the senses, you have rendered yourself incapable of grasping other people’s thinking; the upshot being that, all unbeknownst to yourself, your criticisms amount, I am sorry to say, to unrelenting demonization.
On the basis of a few snatches of te... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) Citizens and friends:
This work was inspired by you and belongs to you.
Ten months ago you asked me what I thought of the electoral manifesto published by sixty workers from the Seine. You especially wanted to know if, after having pronounced yourselves at the elections of 1863 with a negative vote, you should persist in this line or if, because of the circumstances, you were permitted to support with your vote and your influence the candidacy of a comrade worthy of our sympathy.
There can be no doubt concerning my opinion on the thoughts expressed in your manifesto, and I frankly expressed it when I received it. To be sure, I was pleased by this reawakening of socialism: who in France had more right to be pleased than ... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) Besançon, August 3, 1840
TO THE MEMBERS OF THE ACADEMY OF BESANÇON
Gentlemen, I have learned through the confidences of some of my friends that the publication of my Memoir on Propriété, and especially the preface addressed to the Academy of Besançon, which appears at the beginning of that Memoir, have roused your displeasure, not to mention you indignation, against me. That is the motive that enlists me to explain to you here, in few words and in all their simplicity, my conduct and my intentions.
First of all, what has been taken for a dedication is only a simple report, which my condition as the Suard pensionnaire and the obligation imposed on me to make known each year the progress... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) My dear Villiaumé, it is too warm for me to venture, with my sick head, all the way to Rue Marsollier. I am thinking instead of fleeing for ten or twelve days to some hole in Franche-Comté, where the devil may perhaps not come to torment me with his pomps and work.
But you, who are spry, come some evening after your dinner and we will have a mug at the local cabaret, which will do you as much good as an ample banquet. Friendship, and understanding as well, is surely found in a modest to your health.
I regret to learn of the illness of Béranger, whom I have not seen.
I had intended to pay tribute to him this year with a copy of my next book: it is an honor that will be denied me.
It occurs to ... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) Dr. Malthus, an economist, an Englishman, once wrote the following words:
“A man who is born into a world already possessed, if he cannot get subsistence from his parents on whom he has a just demand, and if the society do not want his labor, has no claim of right to the smallest portion of food, and, in fact, has no business to be where he is. At nature’s mighty feast there is no vacant cover for him. She tells him to be gone, and will quickly execute her own orders...”[1]
As a consequence of this great principle, Malthus recommends, with the most terrible threats, every man who has neither labor nor income upon which to live to take himself away, or at any rate to have no more children. A family, — that is, love,... (From: anarchism.pageabode.com.) [Undated fragment from Ms. 2971, Ville de Besançon]
I always see the fathers of families, sufficiently enlightened regarding the value of religious fables, worry nonetheless about the Education to give their children, and ask on what the moral principles that they will be taught will rest.
Morals and superstition have been so thoroughly mixed together that the majority of men do not manage to separate them, and, for them, to destroy the latter it is always a matter of compromising the former.
I am an honest man, says a father, and I know where I stand on the question of the cults. I do not need religion to lead me as a man of honor. But my children must be educated, and I know what that costs. It disgusts me to p... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) Summary of principles, facts, and complaints, against the exploiting caste.
Exhortation to the proletariat to organize and take action against their oppressors, by any sort of means, until the avengers take a hand, and justice is done.
To write slowly and in my own hand, 25 copies, to be distributed and disseminated after my death.
To write down clearly the principles of economic right.—Bring out above all those that make up the right of the masses and guarantee leveling;--collective force, gratuity of public services, determination of values;--assurances ;--corporations; marriage; family; land-rent; state; taxation; general disarmament.—
Right of revendication, [1] by secret judgment; and of executio... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) There must, says holy Scripture, be factions [partis] [1]: For there must be heresies [Oportet enim hoereses esse]. – Terrible. There must! writes Bossuet [2] in profound adoration, without daring to search for the reason behind this There must!
A little reflection has revealed to us the principle and the significance of factions: the point is to know their goal and their end.
All men are equal and free: society, by nature and destination, is thus autonomous, one might say, ungovernable. If the sphere of activity of each citizen is determined by the natural division of labor and the choice one makes of a profession, social functions are combined so as to produce an effect of harmony, and the order results from the free a... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) The interests established by society are mobile, subject to a constant and fundamentally unstable shifting.
Fixity, permanence or perpetuity in the relations of interests is a chimera.
That mobility of interests is the primary source of revolutions.
An interest, however unjust it may be, can only be abolished on the condition of being replaced by another, which itself could appear every bit as unjust later.
The human mind has a horror of the void; it does not accept pure negation, even if it is the negation of the greatest of crimes.
Nations do nothing from pure love or pure justice; there is always a self-serving motive for every reform.
The worship of truth for its own sake... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
