His enemies, and at that time there were many of
them, would have been glad to have proved him a renegade and a recanter.
them, would have been glad to have proved him a renegade and a recanter.
Proudhon - What is Property? An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government
The Origin of Property.
% 2. Characteristics of Communism and of Property.
% 3. Determination of the Third Form of Society. Conclusion.
SECOND MEMOIR
LETTER TO M. BLANQUI ON PROPERTY
P. J. PROUDHON: HIS LIFE AND HIS WORKS.
The correspondence [1] of P. J. Proudhon, the first volumes of which we
publish to-day, has been collected since his death by the faithful
and intelligent labors of his daughter, aided by a few friends. It was
incomplete when submitted to Sainte Beuve, but the portion with which
the illustrious academician became acquainted was sufficient to allow
him to estimate it as a whole with that soundness of judgment which
characterized him as a literary critic.
He would, however, caution readers against accepting the biographer's
interpretation of the author's views as in any sense authoritative;
advising them, rather, to await the publication of the remainder
of Proudhon's writings, that they may form an opinion for
themselves. --Translator.
In an important work, which his habitual readers certainly have not
forgotten, although death did not allow him to finish it, Sainte Beuve
thus judges the correspondence of the great publicist:--
"The letters of Proudhon, even outside the circle of his particular
friends, will always be of value; we can always learn something from
them, and here is the proper place to determine the general character of
his correspondence.
"It has always been large, especially since he became so celebrated;
and, to tell the truth, I am persuaded that, in the future, the
correspondence of Proudhon will be his principal, vital work, and that
most of his books will be only accessory to and corroborative of this.
At any rate, his books can be well understood only by the aid of his
letters and the continual explanations which he makes to those who
consult him in their doubt, and request him to define more clearly his
position.
"There are, among celebrated people, many methods of correspondence.
There are those to whom letter-writing is a bore, and who, assailed with
questions and compliments, reply in the greatest haste, solely that the
job may be over with, and who return politeness for politeness, mingling
it with more or less wit. This kind of correspondence, though coming
from celebrated people, is insignificant and unworthy of collection and
classification.
"After those who write letters in performance of a disagreeable duty,
and almost side by side with them in point of insignificance, I should
put those who write in a manner wholly external, wholly superficial,
devoted only to flattery, lavishing praise like gold, without counting
it; and those also who weigh every word, who reply formally and
pompously, with a view to fine phrases and effects. They exchange words
only, and choose them solely for their brilliancy and show. You think
it is you, individually, to whom they speak; but they are addressing
themselves in your person to the four corners of Europe. Such letters
are empty, and teach as nothing but theatrical execution and the
favorite pose of their writers.
"I will not class among the latter the more prudent and sagacious
authors who, when writing to individuals, keep one eye on posterity.
We know that many who pursue this method have written long, finished,
charming, flattering, and tolerably natural letters. Beranger furnishes
us with the best example of this class.
"Proudhon, however, is a man of entirely different nature and habits.
In writing, he thinks of nothing but his idea and the person whom he
addresses: ad rem et ad hominem. A man of conviction and doctrine, to
write does not weary him; to be questioned does not annoy him. When
approached, he cares only to know that your motive is not one of futile
curiosity, but the love of truth; he assumes you to be serious, he
replies, he examines your objections, sometimes verbally, sometimes
in writing; for, as he remarks, 'if there be some points which
correspondence can never settle, but which can be made clear by
conversation in two minutes, at other times just the opposite is the
case: an objection clearly stated in writing, a doubt well expressed,
which elicits a direct and positive reply, helps things along more than
ten hours of oral intercourse! ' In writing to you he does not hesitate
to treat the subject anew; he unfolds to you the foundation and
superstructure of his thought: rarely does he confess himself
defeated--it is not his way; he holds to his position, but admits the
breaks, the variations, in short, the EVOLUTION of his mind. The history
of his mind is in his letters; there it must be sought.
"Proudhon, whoever addresses him, is always ready; he quits the page
of the book on which he is at work to answer you with the same pen, and
that without losing patience, without getting confused, without
sparing or complaining of his ink; he is a public man, devoted to the
propagation of his idea by all methods, and the best method, with him,
is always the present one, the latest one. His very handwriting, bold,
uniform, legible, even in the most tiresome passages, betrays no haste,
no hurry to finish. Each line is accurate: nothing is left to chance;
the punctuation, very correct and a little emphatic and decided,
indicates with precision and delicate distinction all the links in the
chain of his argument. He is devoted entirely to you, to his business
and yours, while writing to you, and never to anything else. All the
letters of his which I have seen are serious: not one is commonplace.
"But at the same time he is not at all artistic or affected; he does
not CONSTRUCT his letters, he does not revise them, he spends no time in
reading them over; we have a first draught, excellent and clear, a jet
from the fountain-head, but that is all. The new arguments, which he
discovers in support of his ideas and which opposition suggests to
him, are an agreeable surprise, and shed a light which we should vainly
search for even in his works. His correspondence differs essentially
from his books, in that it gives you no uneasiness; it places you in
the very heart of the man, explains him to you, and leaves you with an
impression of moral esteem and almost of intellectual security. We feel
his sincerity. I know of no one to whom he can be more fitly compared in
this respect than George Sand, whose correspondence is large, and at the
same time full of sincerity. His role and his nature correspond. If
he is writing to a young man who unbosoms himself to him in sceptical
anxiety, to a young woman who asks him to decide delicate questions of
conduct for her, his letter takes the form of a short moral essay, of a
father-confessor's advice. Has he perchance attended the theatre (a
rare thing for him) to witness one of Ponsart's comedies, or a drama of
Charles Edmond's, he feels bound to give an account of his impressions
to the friend to whom he is indebted for this pleasure, and his letter
becomes a literary and philosophical criticism, full of sense, and like
no other. His familiarity is suited to his correspondent; he affects no
rudeness. The terms of civility or affection which he employs towards
his correspondents are sober, measured, appropriate to each, and honest
in their simplicity and cordiality. When he speaks of morals and the
family, he seems at times like the patriarchs of the Bible. His command
of language is complete, and he never fails to avail himself of it. Now
and then a coarse word, a few personalities, too bitter and quite unjust
or injurious, will have to be suppressed in printing; time, however, as
it passes away, permits many things and renders them inoffensive. Am I
right in saying that Proudhon's correspondence, always substantial, will
one day be the most accessible and attractive portion of his works? "
Almost the whole of Proudhon's real biography is included in his
correspondence. Up to 1837, the date of the first letter which we have
been able to collect, his life, narrated by Sainte Beuve, from whom we
make numerous extracts, may be summed up in a few pages.
Pierre Joseph Proudhon was born on the 15th of January, 1809, in
a suburb of Besancon, called Mouillere. His father and mother were
employed in the great brewery belonging to M. Renaud. His father, though
a cousin of the jurist Proudhon, the celebrated professor in the faculty
of Dijon, was a journeyman brewer. His mother, a genuine peasant, was a
common servant. She was an orderly person of great good sense; and, as
they who knew her say, a superior woman of HEROIC character,--to use the
expression of the venerable M. Weiss, the librarian at Besancon. She
it was especially that Proudhon resembled: she and his grandfather
Tournesi, the soldier peasant of whom his mother told him, and whose
courageous deeds he has described in his work on "Justice. " Proudhon,
who always felt a great veneration for his mother Catharine, gave
her name to the elder of his daughters. In 1814, when Besancon was
blockaded, Mouillere, which stood in front of the walls of the town, was
destroyed in the defence of the place; and Proudhon's father established
a cooper's shop in a suburb of Battant, called Vignerons. Very honest,
but simple-minded and short-sighted, this cooper, the father of five
children, of whom Pierre Joseph was the eldest, passed his life in
poverty. At eight years of age, Proudhon either made himself useful in
the house, or tended the cattle out of doors. No one should fail to read
that beautiful and precious page of his work on "Justice," in which he
describes the rural sports which he enjoyed when a neatherd. At the age
of twelve, he was a cellar-boy in an inn. This, however, did not prevent
him from studying.
His mother was greatly aided by M. Renaud, the former owner of the
brewery, who had at that time retired from business, and was engaged in
the education of his children.
Proudhon entered school as a day-scholar in the sixth class. He was
necessarily irregular in his attendance; domestic cares and restraints
sometimes kept him from his classes. He succeeded nevertheless in his
studies; he showed great perseverance. His family were so poor that they
could not afford to furnish him with books; he was obliged to borrow
them from his comrades, and copy the text of his lessons. He has himself
told us that he was obliged to leave his wooden shoes outside the door,
that he might not disturb the classes with his noise; and that, having
no hat, he went to school bareheaded. One day, towards the close of his
studies, on returning from the distribution of the prizes, loaded with
crowns, he found nothing to eat in the house.
"In his eagerness for labor and his thirst for knowledge, Proudhon,"
says Sainte Beuve, "was not content with the instruction of his
teachers. From his twelfth to his fourteenth year, he was a constant
frequenter of the town library. One curiosity led to another, and he
called for book after book, sometimes eight or ten at one sitting. The
learned librarian, the friend and almost the brother of Charles Nodier,
M. Weiss, approached him one day, and said, smiling, 'But, my little
friend, what do you wish to do with all these books? ' The child raised
his head, eyed his questioner, and replied: 'What's that to you? ' And
the good M. Weiss remembers it to this day. "
Forced to earn his living, Proudhon could not continue his studies. He
entered a printing-office in Besancon as a proof-reader. Becoming,
soon after, a compositor, he made a tour of France in this capacity. At
Toulon, where he found himself without money and without work, he had a
scene with the mayor, which he describes in his work on "Justice. "
Sainte Beuve says that, after his tour of France, his service book being
filled with good certificates, Proudhon was promoted to the position
of foreman. But he does not tell us, for the reason that he had no
knowledge of a letter written by Fallot, of which we never heard until
six months since, that the printer at that time contemplated quitting
his trade in order to become a teacher.
Towards 1829, Fallot, who was a little older than Proudhon, and
who, after having obtained the Suard pension in 1832, died in his
twenty-ninth year, while filling the position of assistant librarian at
the Institute, was charged, Protestant though he was, with the revisal
of a "Life of the Saints," which was published at Besancon. The book was
in Latin, and Fallot added some notes which also were in Latin.
"But," says Sainte Beuve, "it happened that some errors escaped his
attention, which Proudhon, then proof-reader in the printing office,
did not fail to point out to him. Surprised at finding so good a Latin
scholar in a workshop, he desired to make his acquaintance; and soon
there sprung up between them a most earnest and intimate friendship: a
friendship of the intellect and of the heart. "
Addressed to a printer between twenty-two and twenty-three years of age,
and predicting in formal terms his future fame, Fallot's letter seems to
us so interesting that we do not hesitate to reproduce it entire.
"PARIS, December 5, 1831.
"MY DEAR PROUDHON,--YOU have a right to be surprised at, and even
dissatisfied with, my long delay in replying to your kind letter; I will
tell you the cause of it. It became necessary to forward an account of
your ideas to M. J. de Gray; to hear his objections, to reply to them,
and to await his definitive response, which reached me but a short time
ago; for M. J. is a sort of financial king, who takes no pains to be
punctual in dealing with poor devils like ourselves. I, too, am careless
in matters of business; I sometimes push my negligence even to disorder,
and the metaphysical musings which continually occupy my mind, added to
the amusements of Paris, render me the most incapable man in the world
for conducting a negotiation with despatch.
"I have M. Jobard's decision; here it is: In his judgment, you are
too learned and clever for his children; he fears that you could not
accommodate your mind and character to the childish notions common
to their age and station. In short, he is what the world calls a good
father; that is, he wants to spoil his children, and, in order to do
this easily, he thinks fit to retain his present instructor, who is not
very learned, but who takes part in their games and joyous sports with
wonderful facility, who points out the letters of the alphabet to
the little girl, who takes the little boys to mass, and who, no less
obliging than the worthy Abbe P. of our acquaintance, would readily
dance for Madame's amusement. Such a profession would not suit you, you
who have a free, proud, and manly soul: you are refused; let us dismiss
the matter from our minds. Perhaps another time my solicitude will be
less unfortunate. I can only ask your pardon for having thought of thus
disposing of you almost without consulting you. I find my excuse in the
motives which guided me; I had in view your well-being and advancement
in the ways of this world.
"I see in your letter, my comrade, through its brilliant witticisms and
beneath the frank and artless gayety with which you have sprinkled it,
a tinge of sadness and despondency which pains me. You are unhappy, my
friend: your present situation does not suit you; you cannot remain in
it, it was not made for you, it is beneath you; you ought, by all
means, to leave it, before its injurious influence begins to affect your
faculties, and before you become settled, as they say, in the ways of
your profession, were it possible that such a thing could ever happen,
which I flatly deny. You are unhappy; you have not yet entered upon the
path which Nature has marked out for you. But, faint-hearted soul, is
that a cause for despondency? Ought you to feel discouraged? Struggle,
morbleu, struggle persistently, and you will triumph. J. J. Rousseau
groped about for forty years before his genius was revealed to him.
You are not J. J Rousseau; but listen: I know not whether I should have
divined the author of "Emile" when he was twenty years of age, supposing
that I had been his contemporary, and had enjoyed the honor of his
acquaintance. But I have known you, I have loved you, I have divined
your future, if I may venture to say so; for the first time in my life,
I am going to risk a prophecy. Keep this letter, read it again fifteen
or twenty years hence, perhaps twenty-five, and if at that time the
prediction which I am about to make has not been fulfilled, burn it as
a piece of folly out of charity and respect for my memory. This is my
prediction: you will be, Proudhon, in spite of yourself, inevitably,
by the fact of your destiny, a writer, an author; you will be a
philosopher; you will be one of the lights of the century, and your name
will occupy a place in the annals of the nineteenth century, like those
of Gassendi, Descartes, Malebranche, and Bacon in the seventeenth, and
those of Diderot, Montesquieu, Helvetius. Locke, Hume, and Holbach in
the eighteenth. Such will be your lot! Do now what you will, set type in
a printing-office, bring up children, bury yourself in deep seclusion,
seek obscure and lonely villages, it is all one to me; you cannot escape
your destiny; you cannot divest yourself of your noblest feature, that
active, strong, and inquiring mind, with which you are endowed; your
place in the world has been appointed, and it cannot remain empty. Go
where you please, I expect you in Paris, talking philosophy and the
doctrines of Plato; you will have to come, whether you want to or not.
I, who say this to you, must feel very sure of it in order to be willing
to put it upon paper, since, without reward for my prophetic skill,--to
which, I assure you, I make not the slightest claim,--I run the risk of
passing for a hare-brained fellow, in case I prove to be mistaken: he
plays a bold game who risks his good sense upon his cards, in return
for the very trifling and insignificant merit of having divined a young
man's future.
"When I say that I expect you in Paris, I use only a proverbial phrase
which you must not allow to mislead you as to my projects and plans.
To reside in Paris is disagreeable to me, very much so; and when this
fine-art fever which possesses me has left me, I shall abandon the place
without regret to seek a more peaceful residence in a provincial town,
provided always the town shall afford me the means of living, bread, a
bed, books, rest, and solitude. How I miss, my good Proudhon, that dark,
obscure, smoky chamber in which I dwelt in Besancon, and where we spent
so many pleasant hours in the discussion of philosophy! Do you remember
it? But that is now far away. Will that happy time ever return? Shall
we one day meet again? Here my life is restless, uncertain, precarious,
and, what is worse, indolent, illiterate, and vagrant. I do no work, I
live in idleness, I ramble about; I do not read, I no longer study; my
books are forsaken; now and then I glance over a few metaphysical works,
and after a days walk through dirty, filthy, crowded streets. I lie
down with empty head and tired body, to repeat the performance on the
following day. What is the object of these walks, you will ask. I make
visits, my friend; I hold interviews with stupid people. Then a fit of
curiosity seizes me, the least inquisitive of beings: there are museums,
libraries, assemblies, churches, palaces, gardens, and theatres to
visit. I am fond of pictures, fond of music, fond of sculpture; all
these are beautiful and good, but they cannot appease hunger, nor take
the place of my pleasant readings of Bailly, Hume, and Tennemann, which
I used to enjoy by my fireside when I was able to read.
"But enough of complaints. Do not allow this letter to affect you too
much, and do not think that I give way to dejection or despondency; no,
I am a fatalist, and I believe in my star. I do not know yet what my
calling is, nor for what branch of polite literature I am best fitted;
I do not even know whether I am, or ever shall be, fitted for any: but
what matters it? I suffer, I labor, I dream, I enjoy, I think; and, in a
word, when my last hour strikes, I shall have lived.
"Proudhon, I love you, I esteem you; and, believe me, these are not mere
phrases. What interest could I have in flattering and praising a poor
printer? Are you rich, that you may pay for courtiers? Have you a
sumptuous table, a dashing wife, and gold to scatter, in order to
attract them to your suite? Have you the glory, honors, credit, which
would render your acquaintance pleasing to their vanity and pride? No;
you are poor, obscure, abandoned; but, poor, obscure, and abandoned,
you have a friend, and a friend who knows all the obligations which that
word imposes upon honorable people, when they venture to assume it. That
friend is myself: put me to the test.
"GUSTAVE FALLOT. "
It appears from this letter that if, at this period, Proudhon had
already exhibited to the eyes of a clairvoyant friend his genius for
research and investigation, it was in the direction of philosophical,
rather than of economical and social, questions.
Having become foreman in the house of Gauthier & Co. , who carried on
a large printing establishment at Besancon, he corrected the proofs of
ecclesiastical writers, the Fathers of the Church. As they were printing
a Bible, a Vulgate, he was led to compare the Latin with the original
Hebrew.
"In this way," says Sainte Beuve, "he learned Hebrew by himself, and,
as everything was connected in his mind, he was led to the study of
comparative philology. As the house of Gauthier published many works
on Church history and theology, he came also to acquire, through this
desire of his to investigate everything, an extensive knowledge of
theology, which afterwards caused misinformed persons to think that he
had been in an ecclesiastical seminary. "
Towards 1836, Proudhon left the house of Gauthier, and, in company
with an associate, established a small printing-office in Besancon. His
contribution to the partnership consisted, not so much in capital, as
in his knowledge of the trade. His partner committing suicide in 1838,
Proudhon was obliged to wind up the business, an operation which he did
not accomplish as quickly and as easily as he hoped. He was then urged
by his friends to enter the ranks of the competitors for the Suard
pension. This pension consisted of an income of fifteen hundred francs
bequeathed to the Academy of Besancon by Madame Suard, the widow of the
academician, to be given once in three years to the young man residing
in the department of Doubs, a bachelor of letters or of science, and
not possessing a fortune, whom the Academy of Besancon SHOULD DEEM BEST
FITTED FOR A LITERARY OR SCIENTIFIC CAREER, OR FOR THE STUDY OF LAW
OR OF MEDICINE. The first to win the Suard pension was Gustave Fallot.
Mauvais, who was a distinguished astronomer in the Academy of Sciences,
was the second. Proudhon aspired to be the third. To qualify himself, he
had to be received as a bachelor of letters, and was obliged to write a
letter to the Academy of Besancon. In a phrase of this letter, the terms
of which he had to modify, though he absolutely refused to change
its spirit, Proudhon expressed his firm resolve to labor for the
amelioration of the condition of his brothers, the working-men.
The only thing which he had then published was an "Essay on General
Grammar," which appeared without the author's signature. While
reprinting, at Besancon, the "Primitive Elements of Languages,
Discovered by the Comparison of Hebrew roots with those of the Latin and
French," by the Abbe Bergier, Proudhon had enlarged the edition of his
"Essay on General Grammar. "
The date of the edition, 1837, proves that he did not at that time think
of competing for the Suard pension. In this work, which continued and
completed that of the Abbe Bergier, Proudhon adopted the same point
of view, that of Moses and of Biblical tradition. Two years later, in
February, 1839, being already in possession of the Suard pension, he
addressed to the Institute, as a competitor for the Volney prize,
a memoir entitled: "Studies in Grammatical Classification and the
Derivation of some French words. " It was his first work, revised and
presented in another form. Four memoirs only were sent to the Institute,
none of which gained the prize. Two honorable mentions were granted,
one of them to memoir No. 4; that is, to P. J. Proudhon, printer at
Besancon. The judges were MM. Amedde Jaubert, Reinaud, and Burnouf.
"The committee," said the report presented at the annual meeting of the
five academies on Thursday, May 2, 1839, "has paid especial attention to
manuscripts No. 1 and No. 4. Still, it does not feel able to grant
the prize to either of these works, because they do not appear to
be sufficiently elaborated. The committee, which finds in No. 4 some
ingenious analyses, particularly in regard to the mechanism of the
Hebrew language, regrets that the author has resorted to hazardous
conjectures, and has sometimes forgotten the special recommendation of
the committee to pursue the experimental and comparative method. "
Proudhon remembered this. He attended the lectures of Eugene Burnouf,
and, as soon as he became acquainted with the labors and discoveries of
Bopp and his successors, he definitively abandoned an hypothesis which
had been condemned by the Academy of Inscriptions and Belles-lettres.
He then sold, for the value of the paper, the remaining copies of the
"Essay" published by him in 1837. In 1850, they were still lying in a
grocer's back-shop.
A neighboring publisher then placed the edition on the market, with
the attractive name of Proudhon upon it. A lawsuit ensued, in which
the author was beaten.
His enemies, and at that time there were many of
them, would have been glad to have proved him a renegade and a recanter.
Proudhon, in his work on "Justice," gives some interesting details of
this lawsuit.
In possession of the Suard pension, Proudhon took part in the contest
proposed by the Academy of Besancon on the question of the utility
of the celebration of Sunday. His memoir obtained honorable mention,
together with a medal which was awarded him, in open session, on the
24th of August, 1839. The reporter of the committee, the Abbe Doney,
since made Bishop of Montauban, called attention to the unquestionable
superiority of his talent.
"But," says Sainte Beuve, "he reproached him with having adopted
dangerous theories, and with having touched upon questions of practical
politics and social organization, where upright intentions and zeal for
the public welfare cannot justify rash solutions. "
Was it policy, we mean prudence, which induced Proudhon to screen his
ideas of equality behind the Mosaic law? Sainte Beuve, like many others,
seems to think so. But we remember perfectly well that, having asked
Proudhon, in August, 1848, if he did not consider himself indebted in
some respects to his fellow-countryman, Charles Fourier, we received
from him the following reply: "I have certainly read Fourier, and have
spoken of him more than once in my works; but, upon the whole, I do not
think that I owe anything to him. My real masters, those who have caused
fertile ideas to spring up in my mind, are three in number: first, the
Bible; next, Adam Smith; and last, Hegel. "
Freely confessed in the "Celebration of Sunday," the influence of the
Bible on Proudhon is no less manifest in his first memoir on property.
Proudhon undoubtedly brought to this work many ideas of his own; but
is not the very foundation of ancient Jewish law to be found in its
condemnation of usurious interest and its denial of the right of
personal appropriation of land?
The first memoir on property appeared in 1840, under the title, "What is
Property? or an Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government. "
Proudhon dedicated it, in a letter which served as the preface, to the
Academy of Besancon. The latter, finding itself brought to trial by its
pensioner, took the affair to heart, and evoked it, says Sainte Beuve,
with all possible haste.
The pension narrowly escaped being immediately withdrawn from the bold
defender of the principle of equality of conditions. M. Vivien, then
Minister of Justice, who was earnestly solicited to prosecute the
author, wished first to obtain the opinion of the economist, Blanqui, a
member of the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences. Proudhon having
presented to this academy a copy of his book, M. Blanqui was appointed
to review it. This review, though it opposed Proudhon's views, shielded
him. Treated as a savant by M. Blanqui, the author was not prosecuted.
He was always grateful to MM. Blanqui and Vivien for their handsome
conduct in the matter.
M. Blanqui's review, which was partially reproduced by "Le Moniteur," on
the 7th of September, 1840, naturally led Proudhon to address to him, in
the form of a letter, his second memoir on property, which appeared
in April, 1841. Proudhon had endeavored, in his first memoir, to
demonstrate that the pursuit of equality of conditions is the true
principle of right and of government. In the "Letter to M. Blanqui," he
passes in review the numerous and varied methods by which this principle
gradually becomes realized in all societies, especially in modern
society.
In 1842, a third memoir appeared, entitled, "A Notice to Proprietors, or
a Letter to M. Victor Considerant, Editor of 'La Phalange,' in Reply
to a Defence of Property. " Here the influence of Adam Smith manifested
itself, and was frankly admitted. Did not Adam Smith find, in the
principle of equality, the first of all the laws which govern wages?
There are other laws, undoubtedly; but Proudhon considers them all as
springing from the principle of property, as he defined it in his first
memoir. Thus, in humanity, there are two principles,--one which leads us
to equality, another which separates us from it. By the former, we
treat each other as associates; by the latter, as strangers, not to say
enemies. This distinction, which is constantly met with throughout the
three memoirs, contained already, in germ, the idea which gave birth to
the "System of Economical Contradictions," which appeared in 1846, the
idea of antinomy or contre-loi.
The "Notice to Proprietors" was seized by the magistrates of Besancon;
and Proudhon was summoned to appear before the assizes of Doubs within
a week. He read his written defence to the jurors in person, and was
acquitted. The jury, like M. Blanqui, viewed him only as a philosopher,
an inquirer, a savant.
In 1843, Proudhon published the "Creation of Order in Humanity," a
large volume, which does not deal exclusively with questions of social
economy. Religion, philosophy, method, certainty, logic, and dialectics
are treated at considerable length.
Released from his printing-office on the 1st of March of the same year,
Proudhon had to look for a chance to earn his living. Messrs. Gauthier
Bros. , carriers by water between Mulhouse and Lyons, the eldest of whom
was Proudhon's companion in childhood, conceived the happy thought
of employing him, of utilizing his ability in their business, and in
settling the numerous points of difficulty which daily arose. Besides
the large number of accounts which his new duties required him to make
out, and which retarded the publication of the "System of Economical
Contradictions," until October, 1846, we ought to mention a work, which,
before it appeared in pamphlet form, was published in the "Revue des
Economistes,"--"Competition between Railroads and Navigable Ways. "
"Le Miserere, or the Repentance of a King," which he published in
March, 1845, in the "Revue Independante," during that Lenten season when
Lacordaire was preaching in Lyons, proves that, though devoting himself
with ardor to the study of economical problems, Proudhon had not lost
his interest in questions of religious history. Among his writings on
these questions, which he was unfortunately obliged to leave unfinished,
we may mention a nearly completed history of the early Christian
heresies, and of the struggle of Christianity against Caesarism.
We have said that, in 1848, Proudhon recognized three masters. Having
no knowledge of the German language, he could not have read the works
of Hegel, which at that time had not been translated into French. It
was Charles Grun, a German, who had come to France to study the various
philosophical and socialistic systems, who gave him the substance of the
Hegelian ideas. During the winter of 1844-45, Charles Grun had some long
conversations with Proudhon, which determined, very decisively, not the
ideas, which belonged exclusively to the bisontin thinker, but the form
of the important work on which he labored after 1843, and which was
published in 1846 by Guillaumin.
Hegel's great idea, which Proudhon appropriated, and which he
demonstrates with wonderful ability in the "System of Economical
Contradictions," is as follows: Antinomy, that is, the existence of two
laws or tendencies which are opposed to each other, is possible,
not only with two different things, but with one and the same thing.
Considered in their thesis, that is, in the law or tendency which
created them, all the economical categories are rational,--competition,
monopoly, the balance of trade, and property, as well as the division
of labor, machinery, taxation, and credit. But, like communism and
population, all these categories are antinomical; all are opposed, not
only to each other, but to themselves. All is opposition, and disorder
is born of this system of opposition. Hence, the sub-title of the
work,--"Philosophy of Misery. " No category can be suppressed; the
opposition, antinomy, or contre-tendance, which exists in each of them,
cannot be suppressed.
Where, then, lies the solution of the social problem? Influenced by the
Hegelian ideas, Proudhon began to look for it in a superior synthesis,
which should reconcile the thesis and antithesis. Afterwards, while at
work upon his book on "Justice," he saw that the antinomical terms do
not cancel each other, any more than the opposite poles of an electric
pile destroy each other; that they are the procreative cause of motion,
life, and progress; that the problem is to discover, not their fusion,
which would be death, but their equilibrium,--an equilibrium for ever
unstable, varying with the development of society.
On the cover of the "System of Economical Contradictions," Proudhon
announced, as soon to appear, his "Solution of the Social Problem. " This
work, upon which he was engaged when the Revolution of 1848 broke
out, had to be cut up into pamphlets and newspaper articles. The two
pamphlets, which he published in March, 1848, before he became editor
of "Le Representant du Peuple," bear the same title,--"Solution of the
Social Problem. " The first, which is mainly a criticism of the early
acts of the provisional government, is notable from the fact that in
it Proudhon, in advance of all others, energetically opposed the
establishment of national workshops. The second, "Organization of
Credit and Circulation," sums up in a few pages his idea of economical
progress: a gradual reduction of interest, profit, rent, taxes, and
wages. All progress hitherto has been made in this manner; in this
manner it must continue to be made. Those workingmen who favor a nominal
increase of wages are, unconsciously following a back-track, opposed to
all their interests.
After having published in "Le Representant du Peuple," the statutes of
the Bank of Exchange,--a bank which was to make no profits, since it
was to have no stockholders, and which, consequently, was to discount
commercial paper with out interest, charging only a commission
sufficient to defray its running expenses,--Proudhon endeavored, in
a number of articles, to explain its mechanism and necessity. These
articles have been collected in one volume, under the double title,
"Resume of the Social Question; Bank of Exchange. " His other articles,
those which up to December, 1848, were inspired by the progress of
events, have been collected in another volume,--"Revolutionary Ideas. "
Almost unknown in March, 1848, and struck off in April from the list of
candidates for the Constituent Assembly by the delegation of workingmen
which sat at the Luxembourg, Proudhon had but a very small number of
votes at the general elections of April. At the complementary elections,
which were held in the early days of June, he was elected in Paris by
seventy-seven thousand votes.
After the fatal days of June, he published an article on le terme, which
caused the first suspension of "Le Representant du Peuple. " It was at
that time that he introduced a bill into the Assembly, which, being
referred to the Committee on the Finances, drew forth, first, the report
of M. Thiers, and then the speech which Proudhon delivered, on the
31st of July, in reply to this report. "Le Representant du Peuple,"
reappearing a few days later, he wrote, a propos of the law requiring
journals to give bonds, his famous article on "The Malthusians" (August
10, 1848).
Ten days afterwards, "Le Representant du Peuple," again suspended,
definitively ceased to appear. "Le Peuple," of which he was the
editor-in-chief, and the first number of which was issued in the early
part of September, appeared weekly at first, for want of sufficient
bonds; it afterwards appeared daily, with a double number once a week.
Before "Le Peuple" had obtained its first bond, Proudhon published a
remarkable pamphlet on the "Right to Labor,"--a right which he denied
in the form in which it was then affirmed. It was during the same
period that he proposed, at the Poissonniere banquet, his Toast to the
Revolution.
Proudhon, who had been asked to preside at the banquet, refused, and
proposed in his stead, first, Ledru-Rollin, and then, in view of the
reluctance of the organizers of the banquet, the illustrious president
of the party of the Mountain, Lamennais. It was evidently his intention
to induce the representatives of the Extreme Left to proclaim at last
with him the Democratic and Social Republic. Lamennais being accepted by
the organizers, the Mountain promised to be present at the banquet. The
night before, all seemed right, when General Cavaignac replaced Minister
Senart by Minister Dufaure-Vivien. The Mountain, questioning the
government, proposed a vote of confidence in the old minister, and,
tacitly, of want of confidence in the new. Proudhon abstained from
voting on this proposition. The Mountain declared that it would not
attend the banquet, if Proudhon was to be present. Five Montagnards,
Mathieu of Drome at their head, went to the temporary office of "Le
Peuple" to notify him of this. "Citizen Proudhon," said they to the
organizers in his presence, "in abstaining from voting to-day on
the proposition of the Mountain, has betrayed the Republican cause. "
Proudhon, vehemently questioned, began his defence by recalling, on
the one hand, the treatment which he had received from the dismissed
minister; and, on the other, the impartial conduct displayed towards him
in 1840 by M. Vivien, the new minister. He then attacked the Mountain by
telling its delegates that it sought only a pretext, and that really, in
spite of its professions of Socialism in private conversation, whether
with him or with the organizers of the banquet, it had not the courage
to publicly declare itself Socialist.
On the following day, in his Toast to the Revolution, a toast which
was filled with allusions to the exciting scene of the night before,
Proudhon commenced his struggle against the Mountain. His duel with
Felix Pyat was one of the episodes of this struggle, which became less
bitter on Proudhon's side after the Mountain finally decided to publicly
proclaim the Democratic and Social Republic. The campaign for the
election of a President of the Republic had just begun. Proudhon made
a very sharp attack on the candidacy of Louis Bonaparte in a pamphlet
which is regarded as one of his literary chefs-d'oeuvre: the "Pamphlet
on the Presidency. " An opponent of this institution, against which he
had voted in the Constituent Assembly, he at first decided to take no
part in the campaign. But soon seeing that he was thus increasing the
chances of Louis Bonaparte, and that if, as was not at all probable, the
latter should not obtain an absolute majority of the votes, the Assembly
would not fail to elect General Cavaignac, he espoused, for the sake of
form, the candidacy of Raspail, who was supported by his friends in
the Socialist Committee. Charles Delescluze, the editor-in-chief of
"La Revolution Democratique et Sociale," who could not forgive him for
having preferred Raspail to Ledru-Rollin, the candidate of the Mountain,
attacked him on the day after the election with a violence which
overstepped all bounds. At first, Proudhon had the wisdom to refrain
from answering him. At length, driven to an extremity, he became
aggressive himself, and Delescluze sent him his seconds. This time,
Proudhon positively refused to fight; he would not have fought with
Felix Pyat, had not his courage been called in question.
On the 25th of January, 1849, Proudhon, rising from a sick bed, saw
that the existence of the Constituent Assembly was endangered by the
coalition of the monarchical parties with Louis Bonaparte, who was
already planning his coup d'Etat. He did not hesitate to openly attack
the man who had just received five millions of votes. He wanted to break
the idol; he succeeded only in getting prosecuted and condemned himself.
The prosecution demanded against him was authorized by a majority of the
Constituent Assembly, in spite of the speech which he delivered on that
occasion. Declared guilty by the jury, he was sentenced, in March, 1849,
to three years' imprisonment and the payment of a fine of ten thousand
francs.
Proudhon had not abandoned for a single moment his project of a Bank of
Exchange, which was to operate without capital with a sufficient number
of merchants and manufacturers for adherents. This bank, which he then
called the Bank of the People, and around which he wished to gather the
numerous working-people's associations which had been formed since
the 24th of February, 1848, had already obtained a certain number of
subscribers and adherents, the latter to the number of thirty-seven
thousand. It was about to commence operations, when Proudhon's sentence
forced him to choose between imprisonment and exile. He did not hesitate
to abandon his project and return the money to the subscribers. He
explained the motives which led him to this decision in an article in
"Le Peuple. "
Having fled to Belgium, he remained there but a few days, going thence
to Paris, under an assumed name, to conceal himself in a house in the
Rue de Chabrol. From his hiding-place he sent articles almost every
day, signed and unsigned, to "Le Peuple. " In the evening, dressed in a
blouse, he went to some secluded spot to take the air. Soon, emboldened
by habit, he risked an evening promenade upon the Boulevards, and
afterwards carried his imprudence so far as to take a stroll by daylight
in the neighborhood of the Gare du Nord. It was not long before he was
recognized by the police, who arrested him on the 6th of June, 1849, in
the Rue du Faubourg-Poissonniere.
Taken to the office of the prefect of police, then to Sainte-Pelagie,
he was in the Conciergerie on the day of the 13th of June, 1849, which
ended with the violent suppression of "Le Peuple. " He then began to
write the "Confessions of a Revolutionist," published towards the end
of the year. He had been again transferred to Sainte-Pelagie, when he
married, in December, 1849, Mlle. Euphrasie Piegard, a young working
girl whose hand he had requested in 1847. Madame Proudhon bore him four
daughters, of whom but two, Catherine and Stephanie, survived their
father. Stephanie died in 1873.
In October, 1849, "Le Peuple" was replaced by a new journal, "La Voix
du Peuple," which Proudhon edited from his prison cell. In it were
published his discussions with Pierre Leroux and Bastiat.
The political articles which he sent to "La Voix du Peuple" so
displeased the government finally, that it transferred him to Doullens,
where he was secretly confined for some time. Afterwards taken back
to Paris, to appear before the assizes of the Seine in reference to
an article in "La Voix du Peuple," he was defended by M. Cremieux and
acquitted. From the Conciergerie he went again to Sainte-Pelagie, where
he ended his three years in prison on the 6th of June, 1852.
"La Voix du Peuple," suppressed before the promulgation of the law of
the 31st of May, had been replaced by a weekly sheet, "Le Peuple" of
1850. Established by the aid of the principal members of the Mountain,
this journal soon met with the fate of its predecessors.
In 1851, several months before the coup d'Etat, Proudhon published the
"General Idea of the Revolution of the Nineteenth Century," in which,
after having shown the logical series of unitary governments,--from
monarchy, which is the first term, to the direct government of the
people, which is the last,--he opposes the ideal of an-archy or
self-government to the communistic or governmental ideal.
At this period, the Socialist party, discouraged by the elections of
1849, which resulted in a greater conservative triumph than those of
1848, and justly angry with the national representative body which
had just passed the law of the 31st of May, 1850, demanded direct
legislation and direct government. Proudhon, who did not want, at any
price, the plebiscitary system which he had good reason to regard as
destructive of liberty, did not hesitate to point out, to those of his
friends who expected every thing from direct legislation, one of the
antinomies of universal suffrage. In so far as it is an institution
intended to achieve, for the benefit of the greatest number, the social
reforms to which landed suffrage is opposed, universal suffrage is
powerless; especially if it pretends to legislate or govern directly.
For, until the social reforms are accomplished, the greatest number is
of necessity the least enlightened, and consequently the least capable
of understanding and effecting reforms. In regard to the antinomy,
pointed out by him, of liberty and government,--whether the latter be
monarchic, aristocratic, or democratic in form,--Proudhon, whose chief
desire was to preserve liberty, naturally sought the solution in the
free contract. But though the free contract may be a practical solution
of purely economical questions, it cannot be made use of in politics.
Proudhon recognized this ten years later, when his beautiful study on
"War and Peace" led him to find in the FEDERATIVE PRINCIPLE the exact
equilibrium of liberty and government.
"The Social Revolution Demonstrated by the Coup d' Etat" appeared in
1852, a few months after his release from prison. At that time, terror
prevailed to such an extent that no one was willing to publish his
book without express permission from the government. He succeeded in
obtaining this permission by writing to Louis Bonaparte a letter which
he published at the same time with the work. The latter being offered
for sale, Proudhon was warned that he would not be allowed to publish
any more books of the same character. At that time he entertained the
idea of writing a universal history entitled "Chronos. " This project was
never fulfilled.
Already the father of two children, and about to be presented with a
third, Proudhon was obliged to devise some immediate means of gaining a
living; he resumed his labors, and published, at first anonymously, the
"Manual of a Speculator in the Stock-Exchange. " Later, in 1857, after
having completed the work, he did not hesitate to sign it, acknowledging
in the preface his indebtedness to his collaborator, G. Duchene.
Meantime, he vainly sought permission to establish a journal, or review.
This permission was steadily refused him. The imperial government
always suspected him after the publication of the "Social Revolution
Demonstrated by the Coup d'Etat. "
Towards the end of 1853, Proudhon issued in Belgium a pamphlet entitled
"The Philosophy of Progress. " Entirely inoffensive as it was, this
pamphlet, which he endeavored to send into France, was seized on the
frontier. Proudhon's complaints were of no avail.
The empire gave grants after grants to large companies. A financial
society, having asked for the grant of a railroad in the east of France,
employed Proudhon to write several memoirs in support of this demand.
The grant was given to another company. The author was offered an
indemnity as compensation, to be paid (as was customary in such cases)
by the company which received the grant. It is needless to say that
Proudhon would accept nothing. Then, wishing to explain to the public,
as well as to the government, the end which he had in view, he
published the work entitled "Reforms to be Effected in the Management of
Railroads. "
Towards the end of 1854, Proudhon had already begun his book on
"Justice," when he had a violent attack of cholera, from which he
recovered with great difficulty. Ever afterwards his health was
delicate.
At last, on the 22d of April, 1858, he published, in three large
volumes, the important work upon which he had labored since 1854. This
work had two titles: the first, "Justice in the Revolution and in the
Church;" the second, "New Principles of Practical Philosophy, addressed
to His Highness Monseigneur Mathieu, Cardinal-Archbishop of Besancon. "
On the 27th of April, when there had scarcely been time to read the
work, an order was issued by the magistrate for its seizure; on the
28th the seizure was effected. To this first act of the magistracy,
the author of the incriminated book replied on the 11th of May in a
strongly-motived petition, demanding a revision of the concordat of
1802; or, in other words, a new adjustment of the relations between
Church and State. At bottom, this petition was but the logical
consequence of the work itself. An edition of a thousand copies being
published on the 17th of May, the "Petition to the Senate" was regarded
by the public prosecutor as an aggravation of the offence or offences
discovered in the body of the work to which it was an appendix, and was
seized in its turn on the 23d. On the first of June, the author appealed
to the Senate in a second "Petition," which was deposited with the
first in the office of the Secretary of the Assembly, the guardian and
guarantee, according to the constitution of 1852, of the principles
of '89. On the 2d of June, the two processes being united, Proudhon
appeared at the bar with his publisher, the printer of the book, and
the printer of the petition, to receive the sentence of the police
magistrate, which condemned him to three years' imprisonment, a fine of
four thousand francs, and the suppression of his work. It is needless
to say that the publisher and printers were also condemned by the sixth
chamber.
Proudhon lodged an appeal; he wrote a memoir which the law of 1819, in
the absence of which he would have been liable to a new prosecution,
gave him the power to publish previous to the hearing. Having decided
to make use of the means which the law permitted, he urged in vain the
printers who were prosecuted with him to lend him their aid. He then
demanded of Attorney-General Chaix d'Est Ange a statement to the effect
that the twenty-third article of the law of the 17th of May, 1819,
allows a written defence, and that a printer runs no risk in printing
it. The attorney-general flatly refused. Proudhon then started for
Belgium, where he printed his defence, which could not, of course, cross
the French frontier. This memoir is entitled to rank with the best of
Beaumarchais's; it is entitled: "Justice prosecuted by the Church;
An Appeal from the Sentence passed upon P. J. Proudhon by the Police
Magistrate of the Seine, on the 2d of June, 1858. " A very close
discussion of the grounds of the judgment of the sixth chamber, it was
at the same time an excellent resume of his great work.
Once in Belgium, Proudhon did not fail to remain there. In 1859, after
the general amnesty which followed the Italian war, he at first thought
himself included in it. But the imperial government, consulted by his
friends, notified him that, in its opinion, and in spite of the contrary
advice of M. Faustin Helie, his condemnation was not of a political
character. Proudhon, thus classed by the government with the authors
of immoral works, thought it beneath his dignity to protest, and waited
patiently for the advent of 1863 to allow him to return to France.
In Belgium, where he was not slow in forming new friendships, he
published in 1859-60, in separate parts, a new edition of his great work
on "Justice. " Each number contained, in addition to the original text
carefully reviewed and corrected, numerous explanatory notes and some
"Tidings of the Revolution. " In these tidings, which form a sort of
review of the progress of ideas in Europe, Proudhon sorrowfully
asserts that, after having for a long time marched at the head of the
progressive nations, France has become, without appearing to suspect it,
the most retrogressive of nations; and he considers her more than once
as seriously threatened with moral death.
The Italian war led him to write a new work, which he published in 1861,
entitled "War and Peace. " This work, in which, running counter to
a multitude of ideas accepted until then without examination, he
pronounced for the first time against the restoration of an aristocratic
and priestly Poland, and against the establishment of a unitary
government in Italy, created for him a multitude of enemies. Most of
his friends, disconcerted by his categorical affirmation of a right
of force, notified him that they decidedly disapproved of his new
publication. "You see," triumphantly cried those whom he had always
combated, "this man is only a sophist. "
Led by his previous studies to test every thing by the question of
right, Proudhon asks, in his "War and Peace," whether there is a real
right of which war is the vindication, and victory the demonstration.
This right, which he roughly calls the right of the strongest or the
right of force, and which is, after all, only the right of the most
worthy to the preference in certain definite cases, exists, says
Proudhon, independently of war. It cannot be legitimately vindicated
except where necessity clearly demands the subordination of one will to
another, and within the limits in which it exists; that is, without ever
involving the enslavement of one by the other. Among nations, the right
of the majority, which is only a corollary of the right of force, is
as unacceptable as universal monarchy.
% 2. Characteristics of Communism and of Property.
% 3. Determination of the Third Form of Society. Conclusion.
SECOND MEMOIR
LETTER TO M. BLANQUI ON PROPERTY
P. J. PROUDHON: HIS LIFE AND HIS WORKS.
The correspondence [1] of P. J. Proudhon, the first volumes of which we
publish to-day, has been collected since his death by the faithful
and intelligent labors of his daughter, aided by a few friends. It was
incomplete when submitted to Sainte Beuve, but the portion with which
the illustrious academician became acquainted was sufficient to allow
him to estimate it as a whole with that soundness of judgment which
characterized him as a literary critic.
He would, however, caution readers against accepting the biographer's
interpretation of the author's views as in any sense authoritative;
advising them, rather, to await the publication of the remainder
of Proudhon's writings, that they may form an opinion for
themselves. --Translator.
In an important work, which his habitual readers certainly have not
forgotten, although death did not allow him to finish it, Sainte Beuve
thus judges the correspondence of the great publicist:--
"The letters of Proudhon, even outside the circle of his particular
friends, will always be of value; we can always learn something from
them, and here is the proper place to determine the general character of
his correspondence.
"It has always been large, especially since he became so celebrated;
and, to tell the truth, I am persuaded that, in the future, the
correspondence of Proudhon will be his principal, vital work, and that
most of his books will be only accessory to and corroborative of this.
At any rate, his books can be well understood only by the aid of his
letters and the continual explanations which he makes to those who
consult him in their doubt, and request him to define more clearly his
position.
"There are, among celebrated people, many methods of correspondence.
There are those to whom letter-writing is a bore, and who, assailed with
questions and compliments, reply in the greatest haste, solely that the
job may be over with, and who return politeness for politeness, mingling
it with more or less wit. This kind of correspondence, though coming
from celebrated people, is insignificant and unworthy of collection and
classification.
"After those who write letters in performance of a disagreeable duty,
and almost side by side with them in point of insignificance, I should
put those who write in a manner wholly external, wholly superficial,
devoted only to flattery, lavishing praise like gold, without counting
it; and those also who weigh every word, who reply formally and
pompously, with a view to fine phrases and effects. They exchange words
only, and choose them solely for their brilliancy and show. You think
it is you, individually, to whom they speak; but they are addressing
themselves in your person to the four corners of Europe. Such letters
are empty, and teach as nothing but theatrical execution and the
favorite pose of their writers.
"I will not class among the latter the more prudent and sagacious
authors who, when writing to individuals, keep one eye on posterity.
We know that many who pursue this method have written long, finished,
charming, flattering, and tolerably natural letters. Beranger furnishes
us with the best example of this class.
"Proudhon, however, is a man of entirely different nature and habits.
In writing, he thinks of nothing but his idea and the person whom he
addresses: ad rem et ad hominem. A man of conviction and doctrine, to
write does not weary him; to be questioned does not annoy him. When
approached, he cares only to know that your motive is not one of futile
curiosity, but the love of truth; he assumes you to be serious, he
replies, he examines your objections, sometimes verbally, sometimes
in writing; for, as he remarks, 'if there be some points which
correspondence can never settle, but which can be made clear by
conversation in two minutes, at other times just the opposite is the
case: an objection clearly stated in writing, a doubt well expressed,
which elicits a direct and positive reply, helps things along more than
ten hours of oral intercourse! ' In writing to you he does not hesitate
to treat the subject anew; he unfolds to you the foundation and
superstructure of his thought: rarely does he confess himself
defeated--it is not his way; he holds to his position, but admits the
breaks, the variations, in short, the EVOLUTION of his mind. The history
of his mind is in his letters; there it must be sought.
"Proudhon, whoever addresses him, is always ready; he quits the page
of the book on which he is at work to answer you with the same pen, and
that without losing patience, without getting confused, without
sparing or complaining of his ink; he is a public man, devoted to the
propagation of his idea by all methods, and the best method, with him,
is always the present one, the latest one. His very handwriting, bold,
uniform, legible, even in the most tiresome passages, betrays no haste,
no hurry to finish. Each line is accurate: nothing is left to chance;
the punctuation, very correct and a little emphatic and decided,
indicates with precision and delicate distinction all the links in the
chain of his argument. He is devoted entirely to you, to his business
and yours, while writing to you, and never to anything else. All the
letters of his which I have seen are serious: not one is commonplace.
"But at the same time he is not at all artistic or affected; he does
not CONSTRUCT his letters, he does not revise them, he spends no time in
reading them over; we have a first draught, excellent and clear, a jet
from the fountain-head, but that is all. The new arguments, which he
discovers in support of his ideas and which opposition suggests to
him, are an agreeable surprise, and shed a light which we should vainly
search for even in his works. His correspondence differs essentially
from his books, in that it gives you no uneasiness; it places you in
the very heart of the man, explains him to you, and leaves you with an
impression of moral esteem and almost of intellectual security. We feel
his sincerity. I know of no one to whom he can be more fitly compared in
this respect than George Sand, whose correspondence is large, and at the
same time full of sincerity. His role and his nature correspond. If
he is writing to a young man who unbosoms himself to him in sceptical
anxiety, to a young woman who asks him to decide delicate questions of
conduct for her, his letter takes the form of a short moral essay, of a
father-confessor's advice. Has he perchance attended the theatre (a
rare thing for him) to witness one of Ponsart's comedies, or a drama of
Charles Edmond's, he feels bound to give an account of his impressions
to the friend to whom he is indebted for this pleasure, and his letter
becomes a literary and philosophical criticism, full of sense, and like
no other. His familiarity is suited to his correspondent; he affects no
rudeness. The terms of civility or affection which he employs towards
his correspondents are sober, measured, appropriate to each, and honest
in their simplicity and cordiality. When he speaks of morals and the
family, he seems at times like the patriarchs of the Bible. His command
of language is complete, and he never fails to avail himself of it. Now
and then a coarse word, a few personalities, too bitter and quite unjust
or injurious, will have to be suppressed in printing; time, however, as
it passes away, permits many things and renders them inoffensive. Am I
right in saying that Proudhon's correspondence, always substantial, will
one day be the most accessible and attractive portion of his works? "
Almost the whole of Proudhon's real biography is included in his
correspondence. Up to 1837, the date of the first letter which we have
been able to collect, his life, narrated by Sainte Beuve, from whom we
make numerous extracts, may be summed up in a few pages.
Pierre Joseph Proudhon was born on the 15th of January, 1809, in
a suburb of Besancon, called Mouillere. His father and mother were
employed in the great brewery belonging to M. Renaud. His father, though
a cousin of the jurist Proudhon, the celebrated professor in the faculty
of Dijon, was a journeyman brewer. His mother, a genuine peasant, was a
common servant. She was an orderly person of great good sense; and, as
they who knew her say, a superior woman of HEROIC character,--to use the
expression of the venerable M. Weiss, the librarian at Besancon. She
it was especially that Proudhon resembled: she and his grandfather
Tournesi, the soldier peasant of whom his mother told him, and whose
courageous deeds he has described in his work on "Justice. " Proudhon,
who always felt a great veneration for his mother Catharine, gave
her name to the elder of his daughters. In 1814, when Besancon was
blockaded, Mouillere, which stood in front of the walls of the town, was
destroyed in the defence of the place; and Proudhon's father established
a cooper's shop in a suburb of Battant, called Vignerons. Very honest,
but simple-minded and short-sighted, this cooper, the father of five
children, of whom Pierre Joseph was the eldest, passed his life in
poverty. At eight years of age, Proudhon either made himself useful in
the house, or tended the cattle out of doors. No one should fail to read
that beautiful and precious page of his work on "Justice," in which he
describes the rural sports which he enjoyed when a neatherd. At the age
of twelve, he was a cellar-boy in an inn. This, however, did not prevent
him from studying.
His mother was greatly aided by M. Renaud, the former owner of the
brewery, who had at that time retired from business, and was engaged in
the education of his children.
Proudhon entered school as a day-scholar in the sixth class. He was
necessarily irregular in his attendance; domestic cares and restraints
sometimes kept him from his classes. He succeeded nevertheless in his
studies; he showed great perseverance. His family were so poor that they
could not afford to furnish him with books; he was obliged to borrow
them from his comrades, and copy the text of his lessons. He has himself
told us that he was obliged to leave his wooden shoes outside the door,
that he might not disturb the classes with his noise; and that, having
no hat, he went to school bareheaded. One day, towards the close of his
studies, on returning from the distribution of the prizes, loaded with
crowns, he found nothing to eat in the house.
"In his eagerness for labor and his thirst for knowledge, Proudhon,"
says Sainte Beuve, "was not content with the instruction of his
teachers. From his twelfth to his fourteenth year, he was a constant
frequenter of the town library. One curiosity led to another, and he
called for book after book, sometimes eight or ten at one sitting. The
learned librarian, the friend and almost the brother of Charles Nodier,
M. Weiss, approached him one day, and said, smiling, 'But, my little
friend, what do you wish to do with all these books? ' The child raised
his head, eyed his questioner, and replied: 'What's that to you? ' And
the good M. Weiss remembers it to this day. "
Forced to earn his living, Proudhon could not continue his studies. He
entered a printing-office in Besancon as a proof-reader. Becoming,
soon after, a compositor, he made a tour of France in this capacity. At
Toulon, where he found himself without money and without work, he had a
scene with the mayor, which he describes in his work on "Justice. "
Sainte Beuve says that, after his tour of France, his service book being
filled with good certificates, Proudhon was promoted to the position
of foreman. But he does not tell us, for the reason that he had no
knowledge of a letter written by Fallot, of which we never heard until
six months since, that the printer at that time contemplated quitting
his trade in order to become a teacher.
Towards 1829, Fallot, who was a little older than Proudhon, and
who, after having obtained the Suard pension in 1832, died in his
twenty-ninth year, while filling the position of assistant librarian at
the Institute, was charged, Protestant though he was, with the revisal
of a "Life of the Saints," which was published at Besancon. The book was
in Latin, and Fallot added some notes which also were in Latin.
"But," says Sainte Beuve, "it happened that some errors escaped his
attention, which Proudhon, then proof-reader in the printing office,
did not fail to point out to him. Surprised at finding so good a Latin
scholar in a workshop, he desired to make his acquaintance; and soon
there sprung up between them a most earnest and intimate friendship: a
friendship of the intellect and of the heart. "
Addressed to a printer between twenty-two and twenty-three years of age,
and predicting in formal terms his future fame, Fallot's letter seems to
us so interesting that we do not hesitate to reproduce it entire.
"PARIS, December 5, 1831.
"MY DEAR PROUDHON,--YOU have a right to be surprised at, and even
dissatisfied with, my long delay in replying to your kind letter; I will
tell you the cause of it. It became necessary to forward an account of
your ideas to M. J. de Gray; to hear his objections, to reply to them,
and to await his definitive response, which reached me but a short time
ago; for M. J. is a sort of financial king, who takes no pains to be
punctual in dealing with poor devils like ourselves. I, too, am careless
in matters of business; I sometimes push my negligence even to disorder,
and the metaphysical musings which continually occupy my mind, added to
the amusements of Paris, render me the most incapable man in the world
for conducting a negotiation with despatch.
"I have M. Jobard's decision; here it is: In his judgment, you are
too learned and clever for his children; he fears that you could not
accommodate your mind and character to the childish notions common
to their age and station. In short, he is what the world calls a good
father; that is, he wants to spoil his children, and, in order to do
this easily, he thinks fit to retain his present instructor, who is not
very learned, but who takes part in their games and joyous sports with
wonderful facility, who points out the letters of the alphabet to
the little girl, who takes the little boys to mass, and who, no less
obliging than the worthy Abbe P. of our acquaintance, would readily
dance for Madame's amusement. Such a profession would not suit you, you
who have a free, proud, and manly soul: you are refused; let us dismiss
the matter from our minds. Perhaps another time my solicitude will be
less unfortunate. I can only ask your pardon for having thought of thus
disposing of you almost without consulting you. I find my excuse in the
motives which guided me; I had in view your well-being and advancement
in the ways of this world.
"I see in your letter, my comrade, through its brilliant witticisms and
beneath the frank and artless gayety with which you have sprinkled it,
a tinge of sadness and despondency which pains me. You are unhappy, my
friend: your present situation does not suit you; you cannot remain in
it, it was not made for you, it is beneath you; you ought, by all
means, to leave it, before its injurious influence begins to affect your
faculties, and before you become settled, as they say, in the ways of
your profession, were it possible that such a thing could ever happen,
which I flatly deny. You are unhappy; you have not yet entered upon the
path which Nature has marked out for you. But, faint-hearted soul, is
that a cause for despondency? Ought you to feel discouraged? Struggle,
morbleu, struggle persistently, and you will triumph. J. J. Rousseau
groped about for forty years before his genius was revealed to him.
You are not J. J Rousseau; but listen: I know not whether I should have
divined the author of "Emile" when he was twenty years of age, supposing
that I had been his contemporary, and had enjoyed the honor of his
acquaintance. But I have known you, I have loved you, I have divined
your future, if I may venture to say so; for the first time in my life,
I am going to risk a prophecy. Keep this letter, read it again fifteen
or twenty years hence, perhaps twenty-five, and if at that time the
prediction which I am about to make has not been fulfilled, burn it as
a piece of folly out of charity and respect for my memory. This is my
prediction: you will be, Proudhon, in spite of yourself, inevitably,
by the fact of your destiny, a writer, an author; you will be a
philosopher; you will be one of the lights of the century, and your name
will occupy a place in the annals of the nineteenth century, like those
of Gassendi, Descartes, Malebranche, and Bacon in the seventeenth, and
those of Diderot, Montesquieu, Helvetius. Locke, Hume, and Holbach in
the eighteenth. Such will be your lot! Do now what you will, set type in
a printing-office, bring up children, bury yourself in deep seclusion,
seek obscure and lonely villages, it is all one to me; you cannot escape
your destiny; you cannot divest yourself of your noblest feature, that
active, strong, and inquiring mind, with which you are endowed; your
place in the world has been appointed, and it cannot remain empty. Go
where you please, I expect you in Paris, talking philosophy and the
doctrines of Plato; you will have to come, whether you want to or not.
I, who say this to you, must feel very sure of it in order to be willing
to put it upon paper, since, without reward for my prophetic skill,--to
which, I assure you, I make not the slightest claim,--I run the risk of
passing for a hare-brained fellow, in case I prove to be mistaken: he
plays a bold game who risks his good sense upon his cards, in return
for the very trifling and insignificant merit of having divined a young
man's future.
"When I say that I expect you in Paris, I use only a proverbial phrase
which you must not allow to mislead you as to my projects and plans.
To reside in Paris is disagreeable to me, very much so; and when this
fine-art fever which possesses me has left me, I shall abandon the place
without regret to seek a more peaceful residence in a provincial town,
provided always the town shall afford me the means of living, bread, a
bed, books, rest, and solitude. How I miss, my good Proudhon, that dark,
obscure, smoky chamber in which I dwelt in Besancon, and where we spent
so many pleasant hours in the discussion of philosophy! Do you remember
it? But that is now far away. Will that happy time ever return? Shall
we one day meet again? Here my life is restless, uncertain, precarious,
and, what is worse, indolent, illiterate, and vagrant. I do no work, I
live in idleness, I ramble about; I do not read, I no longer study; my
books are forsaken; now and then I glance over a few metaphysical works,
and after a days walk through dirty, filthy, crowded streets. I lie
down with empty head and tired body, to repeat the performance on the
following day. What is the object of these walks, you will ask. I make
visits, my friend; I hold interviews with stupid people. Then a fit of
curiosity seizes me, the least inquisitive of beings: there are museums,
libraries, assemblies, churches, palaces, gardens, and theatres to
visit. I am fond of pictures, fond of music, fond of sculpture; all
these are beautiful and good, but they cannot appease hunger, nor take
the place of my pleasant readings of Bailly, Hume, and Tennemann, which
I used to enjoy by my fireside when I was able to read.
"But enough of complaints. Do not allow this letter to affect you too
much, and do not think that I give way to dejection or despondency; no,
I am a fatalist, and I believe in my star. I do not know yet what my
calling is, nor for what branch of polite literature I am best fitted;
I do not even know whether I am, or ever shall be, fitted for any: but
what matters it? I suffer, I labor, I dream, I enjoy, I think; and, in a
word, when my last hour strikes, I shall have lived.
"Proudhon, I love you, I esteem you; and, believe me, these are not mere
phrases. What interest could I have in flattering and praising a poor
printer? Are you rich, that you may pay for courtiers? Have you a
sumptuous table, a dashing wife, and gold to scatter, in order to
attract them to your suite? Have you the glory, honors, credit, which
would render your acquaintance pleasing to their vanity and pride? No;
you are poor, obscure, abandoned; but, poor, obscure, and abandoned,
you have a friend, and a friend who knows all the obligations which that
word imposes upon honorable people, when they venture to assume it. That
friend is myself: put me to the test.
"GUSTAVE FALLOT. "
It appears from this letter that if, at this period, Proudhon had
already exhibited to the eyes of a clairvoyant friend his genius for
research and investigation, it was in the direction of philosophical,
rather than of economical and social, questions.
Having become foreman in the house of Gauthier & Co. , who carried on
a large printing establishment at Besancon, he corrected the proofs of
ecclesiastical writers, the Fathers of the Church. As they were printing
a Bible, a Vulgate, he was led to compare the Latin with the original
Hebrew.
"In this way," says Sainte Beuve, "he learned Hebrew by himself, and,
as everything was connected in his mind, he was led to the study of
comparative philology. As the house of Gauthier published many works
on Church history and theology, he came also to acquire, through this
desire of his to investigate everything, an extensive knowledge of
theology, which afterwards caused misinformed persons to think that he
had been in an ecclesiastical seminary. "
Towards 1836, Proudhon left the house of Gauthier, and, in company
with an associate, established a small printing-office in Besancon. His
contribution to the partnership consisted, not so much in capital, as
in his knowledge of the trade. His partner committing suicide in 1838,
Proudhon was obliged to wind up the business, an operation which he did
not accomplish as quickly and as easily as he hoped. He was then urged
by his friends to enter the ranks of the competitors for the Suard
pension. This pension consisted of an income of fifteen hundred francs
bequeathed to the Academy of Besancon by Madame Suard, the widow of the
academician, to be given once in three years to the young man residing
in the department of Doubs, a bachelor of letters or of science, and
not possessing a fortune, whom the Academy of Besancon SHOULD DEEM BEST
FITTED FOR A LITERARY OR SCIENTIFIC CAREER, OR FOR THE STUDY OF LAW
OR OF MEDICINE. The first to win the Suard pension was Gustave Fallot.
Mauvais, who was a distinguished astronomer in the Academy of Sciences,
was the second. Proudhon aspired to be the third. To qualify himself, he
had to be received as a bachelor of letters, and was obliged to write a
letter to the Academy of Besancon. In a phrase of this letter, the terms
of which he had to modify, though he absolutely refused to change
its spirit, Proudhon expressed his firm resolve to labor for the
amelioration of the condition of his brothers, the working-men.
The only thing which he had then published was an "Essay on General
Grammar," which appeared without the author's signature. While
reprinting, at Besancon, the "Primitive Elements of Languages,
Discovered by the Comparison of Hebrew roots with those of the Latin and
French," by the Abbe Bergier, Proudhon had enlarged the edition of his
"Essay on General Grammar. "
The date of the edition, 1837, proves that he did not at that time think
of competing for the Suard pension. In this work, which continued and
completed that of the Abbe Bergier, Proudhon adopted the same point
of view, that of Moses and of Biblical tradition. Two years later, in
February, 1839, being already in possession of the Suard pension, he
addressed to the Institute, as a competitor for the Volney prize,
a memoir entitled: "Studies in Grammatical Classification and the
Derivation of some French words. " It was his first work, revised and
presented in another form. Four memoirs only were sent to the Institute,
none of which gained the prize. Two honorable mentions were granted,
one of them to memoir No. 4; that is, to P. J. Proudhon, printer at
Besancon. The judges were MM. Amedde Jaubert, Reinaud, and Burnouf.
"The committee," said the report presented at the annual meeting of the
five academies on Thursday, May 2, 1839, "has paid especial attention to
manuscripts No. 1 and No. 4. Still, it does not feel able to grant
the prize to either of these works, because they do not appear to
be sufficiently elaborated. The committee, which finds in No. 4 some
ingenious analyses, particularly in regard to the mechanism of the
Hebrew language, regrets that the author has resorted to hazardous
conjectures, and has sometimes forgotten the special recommendation of
the committee to pursue the experimental and comparative method. "
Proudhon remembered this. He attended the lectures of Eugene Burnouf,
and, as soon as he became acquainted with the labors and discoveries of
Bopp and his successors, he definitively abandoned an hypothesis which
had been condemned by the Academy of Inscriptions and Belles-lettres.
He then sold, for the value of the paper, the remaining copies of the
"Essay" published by him in 1837. In 1850, they were still lying in a
grocer's back-shop.
A neighboring publisher then placed the edition on the market, with
the attractive name of Proudhon upon it. A lawsuit ensued, in which
the author was beaten.
His enemies, and at that time there were many of
them, would have been glad to have proved him a renegade and a recanter.
Proudhon, in his work on "Justice," gives some interesting details of
this lawsuit.
In possession of the Suard pension, Proudhon took part in the contest
proposed by the Academy of Besancon on the question of the utility
of the celebration of Sunday. His memoir obtained honorable mention,
together with a medal which was awarded him, in open session, on the
24th of August, 1839. The reporter of the committee, the Abbe Doney,
since made Bishop of Montauban, called attention to the unquestionable
superiority of his talent.
"But," says Sainte Beuve, "he reproached him with having adopted
dangerous theories, and with having touched upon questions of practical
politics and social organization, where upright intentions and zeal for
the public welfare cannot justify rash solutions. "
Was it policy, we mean prudence, which induced Proudhon to screen his
ideas of equality behind the Mosaic law? Sainte Beuve, like many others,
seems to think so. But we remember perfectly well that, having asked
Proudhon, in August, 1848, if he did not consider himself indebted in
some respects to his fellow-countryman, Charles Fourier, we received
from him the following reply: "I have certainly read Fourier, and have
spoken of him more than once in my works; but, upon the whole, I do not
think that I owe anything to him. My real masters, those who have caused
fertile ideas to spring up in my mind, are three in number: first, the
Bible; next, Adam Smith; and last, Hegel. "
Freely confessed in the "Celebration of Sunday," the influence of the
Bible on Proudhon is no less manifest in his first memoir on property.
Proudhon undoubtedly brought to this work many ideas of his own; but
is not the very foundation of ancient Jewish law to be found in its
condemnation of usurious interest and its denial of the right of
personal appropriation of land?
The first memoir on property appeared in 1840, under the title, "What is
Property? or an Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government. "
Proudhon dedicated it, in a letter which served as the preface, to the
Academy of Besancon. The latter, finding itself brought to trial by its
pensioner, took the affair to heart, and evoked it, says Sainte Beuve,
with all possible haste.
The pension narrowly escaped being immediately withdrawn from the bold
defender of the principle of equality of conditions. M. Vivien, then
Minister of Justice, who was earnestly solicited to prosecute the
author, wished first to obtain the opinion of the economist, Blanqui, a
member of the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences. Proudhon having
presented to this academy a copy of his book, M. Blanqui was appointed
to review it. This review, though it opposed Proudhon's views, shielded
him. Treated as a savant by M. Blanqui, the author was not prosecuted.
He was always grateful to MM. Blanqui and Vivien for their handsome
conduct in the matter.
M. Blanqui's review, which was partially reproduced by "Le Moniteur," on
the 7th of September, 1840, naturally led Proudhon to address to him, in
the form of a letter, his second memoir on property, which appeared
in April, 1841. Proudhon had endeavored, in his first memoir, to
demonstrate that the pursuit of equality of conditions is the true
principle of right and of government. In the "Letter to M. Blanqui," he
passes in review the numerous and varied methods by which this principle
gradually becomes realized in all societies, especially in modern
society.
In 1842, a third memoir appeared, entitled, "A Notice to Proprietors, or
a Letter to M. Victor Considerant, Editor of 'La Phalange,' in Reply
to a Defence of Property. " Here the influence of Adam Smith manifested
itself, and was frankly admitted. Did not Adam Smith find, in the
principle of equality, the first of all the laws which govern wages?
There are other laws, undoubtedly; but Proudhon considers them all as
springing from the principle of property, as he defined it in his first
memoir. Thus, in humanity, there are two principles,--one which leads us
to equality, another which separates us from it. By the former, we
treat each other as associates; by the latter, as strangers, not to say
enemies. This distinction, which is constantly met with throughout the
three memoirs, contained already, in germ, the idea which gave birth to
the "System of Economical Contradictions," which appeared in 1846, the
idea of antinomy or contre-loi.
The "Notice to Proprietors" was seized by the magistrates of Besancon;
and Proudhon was summoned to appear before the assizes of Doubs within
a week. He read his written defence to the jurors in person, and was
acquitted. The jury, like M. Blanqui, viewed him only as a philosopher,
an inquirer, a savant.
In 1843, Proudhon published the "Creation of Order in Humanity," a
large volume, which does not deal exclusively with questions of social
economy. Religion, philosophy, method, certainty, logic, and dialectics
are treated at considerable length.
Released from his printing-office on the 1st of March of the same year,
Proudhon had to look for a chance to earn his living. Messrs. Gauthier
Bros. , carriers by water between Mulhouse and Lyons, the eldest of whom
was Proudhon's companion in childhood, conceived the happy thought
of employing him, of utilizing his ability in their business, and in
settling the numerous points of difficulty which daily arose. Besides
the large number of accounts which his new duties required him to make
out, and which retarded the publication of the "System of Economical
Contradictions," until October, 1846, we ought to mention a work, which,
before it appeared in pamphlet form, was published in the "Revue des
Economistes,"--"Competition between Railroads and Navigable Ways. "
"Le Miserere, or the Repentance of a King," which he published in
March, 1845, in the "Revue Independante," during that Lenten season when
Lacordaire was preaching in Lyons, proves that, though devoting himself
with ardor to the study of economical problems, Proudhon had not lost
his interest in questions of religious history. Among his writings on
these questions, which he was unfortunately obliged to leave unfinished,
we may mention a nearly completed history of the early Christian
heresies, and of the struggle of Christianity against Caesarism.
We have said that, in 1848, Proudhon recognized three masters. Having
no knowledge of the German language, he could not have read the works
of Hegel, which at that time had not been translated into French. It
was Charles Grun, a German, who had come to France to study the various
philosophical and socialistic systems, who gave him the substance of the
Hegelian ideas. During the winter of 1844-45, Charles Grun had some long
conversations with Proudhon, which determined, very decisively, not the
ideas, which belonged exclusively to the bisontin thinker, but the form
of the important work on which he labored after 1843, and which was
published in 1846 by Guillaumin.
Hegel's great idea, which Proudhon appropriated, and which he
demonstrates with wonderful ability in the "System of Economical
Contradictions," is as follows: Antinomy, that is, the existence of two
laws or tendencies which are opposed to each other, is possible,
not only with two different things, but with one and the same thing.
Considered in their thesis, that is, in the law or tendency which
created them, all the economical categories are rational,--competition,
monopoly, the balance of trade, and property, as well as the division
of labor, machinery, taxation, and credit. But, like communism and
population, all these categories are antinomical; all are opposed, not
only to each other, but to themselves. All is opposition, and disorder
is born of this system of opposition. Hence, the sub-title of the
work,--"Philosophy of Misery. " No category can be suppressed; the
opposition, antinomy, or contre-tendance, which exists in each of them,
cannot be suppressed.
Where, then, lies the solution of the social problem? Influenced by the
Hegelian ideas, Proudhon began to look for it in a superior synthesis,
which should reconcile the thesis and antithesis. Afterwards, while at
work upon his book on "Justice," he saw that the antinomical terms do
not cancel each other, any more than the opposite poles of an electric
pile destroy each other; that they are the procreative cause of motion,
life, and progress; that the problem is to discover, not their fusion,
which would be death, but their equilibrium,--an equilibrium for ever
unstable, varying with the development of society.
On the cover of the "System of Economical Contradictions," Proudhon
announced, as soon to appear, his "Solution of the Social Problem. " This
work, upon which he was engaged when the Revolution of 1848 broke
out, had to be cut up into pamphlets and newspaper articles. The two
pamphlets, which he published in March, 1848, before he became editor
of "Le Representant du Peuple," bear the same title,--"Solution of the
Social Problem. " The first, which is mainly a criticism of the early
acts of the provisional government, is notable from the fact that in
it Proudhon, in advance of all others, energetically opposed the
establishment of national workshops. The second, "Organization of
Credit and Circulation," sums up in a few pages his idea of economical
progress: a gradual reduction of interest, profit, rent, taxes, and
wages. All progress hitherto has been made in this manner; in this
manner it must continue to be made. Those workingmen who favor a nominal
increase of wages are, unconsciously following a back-track, opposed to
all their interests.
After having published in "Le Representant du Peuple," the statutes of
the Bank of Exchange,--a bank which was to make no profits, since it
was to have no stockholders, and which, consequently, was to discount
commercial paper with out interest, charging only a commission
sufficient to defray its running expenses,--Proudhon endeavored, in
a number of articles, to explain its mechanism and necessity. These
articles have been collected in one volume, under the double title,
"Resume of the Social Question; Bank of Exchange. " His other articles,
those which up to December, 1848, were inspired by the progress of
events, have been collected in another volume,--"Revolutionary Ideas. "
Almost unknown in March, 1848, and struck off in April from the list of
candidates for the Constituent Assembly by the delegation of workingmen
which sat at the Luxembourg, Proudhon had but a very small number of
votes at the general elections of April. At the complementary elections,
which were held in the early days of June, he was elected in Paris by
seventy-seven thousand votes.
After the fatal days of June, he published an article on le terme, which
caused the first suspension of "Le Representant du Peuple. " It was at
that time that he introduced a bill into the Assembly, which, being
referred to the Committee on the Finances, drew forth, first, the report
of M. Thiers, and then the speech which Proudhon delivered, on the
31st of July, in reply to this report. "Le Representant du Peuple,"
reappearing a few days later, he wrote, a propos of the law requiring
journals to give bonds, his famous article on "The Malthusians" (August
10, 1848).
Ten days afterwards, "Le Representant du Peuple," again suspended,
definitively ceased to appear. "Le Peuple," of which he was the
editor-in-chief, and the first number of which was issued in the early
part of September, appeared weekly at first, for want of sufficient
bonds; it afterwards appeared daily, with a double number once a week.
Before "Le Peuple" had obtained its first bond, Proudhon published a
remarkable pamphlet on the "Right to Labor,"--a right which he denied
in the form in which it was then affirmed. It was during the same
period that he proposed, at the Poissonniere banquet, his Toast to the
Revolution.
Proudhon, who had been asked to preside at the banquet, refused, and
proposed in his stead, first, Ledru-Rollin, and then, in view of the
reluctance of the organizers of the banquet, the illustrious president
of the party of the Mountain, Lamennais. It was evidently his intention
to induce the representatives of the Extreme Left to proclaim at last
with him the Democratic and Social Republic. Lamennais being accepted by
the organizers, the Mountain promised to be present at the banquet. The
night before, all seemed right, when General Cavaignac replaced Minister
Senart by Minister Dufaure-Vivien. The Mountain, questioning the
government, proposed a vote of confidence in the old minister, and,
tacitly, of want of confidence in the new. Proudhon abstained from
voting on this proposition. The Mountain declared that it would not
attend the banquet, if Proudhon was to be present. Five Montagnards,
Mathieu of Drome at their head, went to the temporary office of "Le
Peuple" to notify him of this. "Citizen Proudhon," said they to the
organizers in his presence, "in abstaining from voting to-day on
the proposition of the Mountain, has betrayed the Republican cause. "
Proudhon, vehemently questioned, began his defence by recalling, on
the one hand, the treatment which he had received from the dismissed
minister; and, on the other, the impartial conduct displayed towards him
in 1840 by M. Vivien, the new minister. He then attacked the Mountain by
telling its delegates that it sought only a pretext, and that really, in
spite of its professions of Socialism in private conversation, whether
with him or with the organizers of the banquet, it had not the courage
to publicly declare itself Socialist.
On the following day, in his Toast to the Revolution, a toast which
was filled with allusions to the exciting scene of the night before,
Proudhon commenced his struggle against the Mountain. His duel with
Felix Pyat was one of the episodes of this struggle, which became less
bitter on Proudhon's side after the Mountain finally decided to publicly
proclaim the Democratic and Social Republic. The campaign for the
election of a President of the Republic had just begun. Proudhon made
a very sharp attack on the candidacy of Louis Bonaparte in a pamphlet
which is regarded as one of his literary chefs-d'oeuvre: the "Pamphlet
on the Presidency. " An opponent of this institution, against which he
had voted in the Constituent Assembly, he at first decided to take no
part in the campaign. But soon seeing that he was thus increasing the
chances of Louis Bonaparte, and that if, as was not at all probable, the
latter should not obtain an absolute majority of the votes, the Assembly
would not fail to elect General Cavaignac, he espoused, for the sake of
form, the candidacy of Raspail, who was supported by his friends in
the Socialist Committee. Charles Delescluze, the editor-in-chief of
"La Revolution Democratique et Sociale," who could not forgive him for
having preferred Raspail to Ledru-Rollin, the candidate of the Mountain,
attacked him on the day after the election with a violence which
overstepped all bounds. At first, Proudhon had the wisdom to refrain
from answering him. At length, driven to an extremity, he became
aggressive himself, and Delescluze sent him his seconds. This time,
Proudhon positively refused to fight; he would not have fought with
Felix Pyat, had not his courage been called in question.
On the 25th of January, 1849, Proudhon, rising from a sick bed, saw
that the existence of the Constituent Assembly was endangered by the
coalition of the monarchical parties with Louis Bonaparte, who was
already planning his coup d'Etat. He did not hesitate to openly attack
the man who had just received five millions of votes. He wanted to break
the idol; he succeeded only in getting prosecuted and condemned himself.
The prosecution demanded against him was authorized by a majority of the
Constituent Assembly, in spite of the speech which he delivered on that
occasion. Declared guilty by the jury, he was sentenced, in March, 1849,
to three years' imprisonment and the payment of a fine of ten thousand
francs.
Proudhon had not abandoned for a single moment his project of a Bank of
Exchange, which was to operate without capital with a sufficient number
of merchants and manufacturers for adherents. This bank, which he then
called the Bank of the People, and around which he wished to gather the
numerous working-people's associations which had been formed since
the 24th of February, 1848, had already obtained a certain number of
subscribers and adherents, the latter to the number of thirty-seven
thousand. It was about to commence operations, when Proudhon's sentence
forced him to choose between imprisonment and exile. He did not hesitate
to abandon his project and return the money to the subscribers. He
explained the motives which led him to this decision in an article in
"Le Peuple. "
Having fled to Belgium, he remained there but a few days, going thence
to Paris, under an assumed name, to conceal himself in a house in the
Rue de Chabrol. From his hiding-place he sent articles almost every
day, signed and unsigned, to "Le Peuple. " In the evening, dressed in a
blouse, he went to some secluded spot to take the air. Soon, emboldened
by habit, he risked an evening promenade upon the Boulevards, and
afterwards carried his imprudence so far as to take a stroll by daylight
in the neighborhood of the Gare du Nord. It was not long before he was
recognized by the police, who arrested him on the 6th of June, 1849, in
the Rue du Faubourg-Poissonniere.
Taken to the office of the prefect of police, then to Sainte-Pelagie,
he was in the Conciergerie on the day of the 13th of June, 1849, which
ended with the violent suppression of "Le Peuple. " He then began to
write the "Confessions of a Revolutionist," published towards the end
of the year. He had been again transferred to Sainte-Pelagie, when he
married, in December, 1849, Mlle. Euphrasie Piegard, a young working
girl whose hand he had requested in 1847. Madame Proudhon bore him four
daughters, of whom but two, Catherine and Stephanie, survived their
father. Stephanie died in 1873.
In October, 1849, "Le Peuple" was replaced by a new journal, "La Voix
du Peuple," which Proudhon edited from his prison cell. In it were
published his discussions with Pierre Leroux and Bastiat.
The political articles which he sent to "La Voix du Peuple" so
displeased the government finally, that it transferred him to Doullens,
where he was secretly confined for some time. Afterwards taken back
to Paris, to appear before the assizes of the Seine in reference to
an article in "La Voix du Peuple," he was defended by M. Cremieux and
acquitted. From the Conciergerie he went again to Sainte-Pelagie, where
he ended his three years in prison on the 6th of June, 1852.
"La Voix du Peuple," suppressed before the promulgation of the law of
the 31st of May, had been replaced by a weekly sheet, "Le Peuple" of
1850. Established by the aid of the principal members of the Mountain,
this journal soon met with the fate of its predecessors.
In 1851, several months before the coup d'Etat, Proudhon published the
"General Idea of the Revolution of the Nineteenth Century," in which,
after having shown the logical series of unitary governments,--from
monarchy, which is the first term, to the direct government of the
people, which is the last,--he opposes the ideal of an-archy or
self-government to the communistic or governmental ideal.
At this period, the Socialist party, discouraged by the elections of
1849, which resulted in a greater conservative triumph than those of
1848, and justly angry with the national representative body which
had just passed the law of the 31st of May, 1850, demanded direct
legislation and direct government. Proudhon, who did not want, at any
price, the plebiscitary system which he had good reason to regard as
destructive of liberty, did not hesitate to point out, to those of his
friends who expected every thing from direct legislation, one of the
antinomies of universal suffrage. In so far as it is an institution
intended to achieve, for the benefit of the greatest number, the social
reforms to which landed suffrage is opposed, universal suffrage is
powerless; especially if it pretends to legislate or govern directly.
For, until the social reforms are accomplished, the greatest number is
of necessity the least enlightened, and consequently the least capable
of understanding and effecting reforms. In regard to the antinomy,
pointed out by him, of liberty and government,--whether the latter be
monarchic, aristocratic, or democratic in form,--Proudhon, whose chief
desire was to preserve liberty, naturally sought the solution in the
free contract. But though the free contract may be a practical solution
of purely economical questions, it cannot be made use of in politics.
Proudhon recognized this ten years later, when his beautiful study on
"War and Peace" led him to find in the FEDERATIVE PRINCIPLE the exact
equilibrium of liberty and government.
"The Social Revolution Demonstrated by the Coup d' Etat" appeared in
1852, a few months after his release from prison. At that time, terror
prevailed to such an extent that no one was willing to publish his
book without express permission from the government. He succeeded in
obtaining this permission by writing to Louis Bonaparte a letter which
he published at the same time with the work. The latter being offered
for sale, Proudhon was warned that he would not be allowed to publish
any more books of the same character. At that time he entertained the
idea of writing a universal history entitled "Chronos. " This project was
never fulfilled.
Already the father of two children, and about to be presented with a
third, Proudhon was obliged to devise some immediate means of gaining a
living; he resumed his labors, and published, at first anonymously, the
"Manual of a Speculator in the Stock-Exchange. " Later, in 1857, after
having completed the work, he did not hesitate to sign it, acknowledging
in the preface his indebtedness to his collaborator, G. Duchene.
Meantime, he vainly sought permission to establish a journal, or review.
This permission was steadily refused him. The imperial government
always suspected him after the publication of the "Social Revolution
Demonstrated by the Coup d'Etat. "
Towards the end of 1853, Proudhon issued in Belgium a pamphlet entitled
"The Philosophy of Progress. " Entirely inoffensive as it was, this
pamphlet, which he endeavored to send into France, was seized on the
frontier. Proudhon's complaints were of no avail.
The empire gave grants after grants to large companies. A financial
society, having asked for the grant of a railroad in the east of France,
employed Proudhon to write several memoirs in support of this demand.
The grant was given to another company. The author was offered an
indemnity as compensation, to be paid (as was customary in such cases)
by the company which received the grant. It is needless to say that
Proudhon would accept nothing. Then, wishing to explain to the public,
as well as to the government, the end which he had in view, he
published the work entitled "Reforms to be Effected in the Management of
Railroads. "
Towards the end of 1854, Proudhon had already begun his book on
"Justice," when he had a violent attack of cholera, from which he
recovered with great difficulty. Ever afterwards his health was
delicate.
At last, on the 22d of April, 1858, he published, in three large
volumes, the important work upon which he had labored since 1854. This
work had two titles: the first, "Justice in the Revolution and in the
Church;" the second, "New Principles of Practical Philosophy, addressed
to His Highness Monseigneur Mathieu, Cardinal-Archbishop of Besancon. "
On the 27th of April, when there had scarcely been time to read the
work, an order was issued by the magistrate for its seizure; on the
28th the seizure was effected. To this first act of the magistracy,
the author of the incriminated book replied on the 11th of May in a
strongly-motived petition, demanding a revision of the concordat of
1802; or, in other words, a new adjustment of the relations between
Church and State. At bottom, this petition was but the logical
consequence of the work itself. An edition of a thousand copies being
published on the 17th of May, the "Petition to the Senate" was regarded
by the public prosecutor as an aggravation of the offence or offences
discovered in the body of the work to which it was an appendix, and was
seized in its turn on the 23d. On the first of June, the author appealed
to the Senate in a second "Petition," which was deposited with the
first in the office of the Secretary of the Assembly, the guardian and
guarantee, according to the constitution of 1852, of the principles
of '89. On the 2d of June, the two processes being united, Proudhon
appeared at the bar with his publisher, the printer of the book, and
the printer of the petition, to receive the sentence of the police
magistrate, which condemned him to three years' imprisonment, a fine of
four thousand francs, and the suppression of his work. It is needless
to say that the publisher and printers were also condemned by the sixth
chamber.
Proudhon lodged an appeal; he wrote a memoir which the law of 1819, in
the absence of which he would have been liable to a new prosecution,
gave him the power to publish previous to the hearing. Having decided
to make use of the means which the law permitted, he urged in vain the
printers who were prosecuted with him to lend him their aid. He then
demanded of Attorney-General Chaix d'Est Ange a statement to the effect
that the twenty-third article of the law of the 17th of May, 1819,
allows a written defence, and that a printer runs no risk in printing
it. The attorney-general flatly refused. Proudhon then started for
Belgium, where he printed his defence, which could not, of course, cross
the French frontier. This memoir is entitled to rank with the best of
Beaumarchais's; it is entitled: "Justice prosecuted by the Church;
An Appeal from the Sentence passed upon P. J. Proudhon by the Police
Magistrate of the Seine, on the 2d of June, 1858. " A very close
discussion of the grounds of the judgment of the sixth chamber, it was
at the same time an excellent resume of his great work.
Once in Belgium, Proudhon did not fail to remain there. In 1859, after
the general amnesty which followed the Italian war, he at first thought
himself included in it. But the imperial government, consulted by his
friends, notified him that, in its opinion, and in spite of the contrary
advice of M. Faustin Helie, his condemnation was not of a political
character. Proudhon, thus classed by the government with the authors
of immoral works, thought it beneath his dignity to protest, and waited
patiently for the advent of 1863 to allow him to return to France.
In Belgium, where he was not slow in forming new friendships, he
published in 1859-60, in separate parts, a new edition of his great work
on "Justice. " Each number contained, in addition to the original text
carefully reviewed and corrected, numerous explanatory notes and some
"Tidings of the Revolution. " In these tidings, which form a sort of
review of the progress of ideas in Europe, Proudhon sorrowfully
asserts that, after having for a long time marched at the head of the
progressive nations, France has become, without appearing to suspect it,
the most retrogressive of nations; and he considers her more than once
as seriously threatened with moral death.
The Italian war led him to write a new work, which he published in 1861,
entitled "War and Peace. " This work, in which, running counter to
a multitude of ideas accepted until then without examination, he
pronounced for the first time against the restoration of an aristocratic
and priestly Poland, and against the establishment of a unitary
government in Italy, created for him a multitude of enemies. Most of
his friends, disconcerted by his categorical affirmation of a right
of force, notified him that they decidedly disapproved of his new
publication. "You see," triumphantly cried those whom he had always
combated, "this man is only a sophist. "
Led by his previous studies to test every thing by the question of
right, Proudhon asks, in his "War and Peace," whether there is a real
right of which war is the vindication, and victory the demonstration.
This right, which he roughly calls the right of the strongest or the
right of force, and which is, after all, only the right of the most
worthy to the preference in certain definite cases, exists, says
Proudhon, independently of war. It cannot be legitimately vindicated
except where necessity clearly demands the subordination of one will to
another, and within the limits in which it exists; that is, without ever
involving the enslavement of one by the other. Among nations, the right
of the majority, which is only a corollary of the right of force, is
as unacceptable as universal monarchy.
