And, finally, I, who have thus far published naught but criticisms: criticisms of political economy, criticisms of socialism, communism, Fourierism, Saint-Simonianism; criticism of monarchy, democracy, property, etc., etc., must now listen to a damning verdict passed upon my system, when no such system has ever seen the light of day!
The day before yesterday Le Constitutionnel was labelling me a communist; recently the Revue des Deux Mondes was also depicting me as a communist; everybody—except those who read me—has me marked as a communist, on which basis, no opportunity is ever missed to denounce my system as false and unfeasible and inimical to freedom, subversive of society and of the family, and a number of other more or less displeasing characterisations.
I have allowed such ugliness to have the run of it out of the straightforward fear that my corrections might be construed as complaints, and if I have now determined to address myself to you, it is because I hold that it serves the general interest that I should break my silence. It would be too convenient to respond to the criticisms that have been levelled at society’s institutions these past twenty years by tossing the label communist around, and the enemies of the February Revolution would all too soon have done with the proletariat.
So, if you please, let us drop Monsieur Louis Blanc and his utopia. Monsieur Louis Blanc is by no means the incarnation of a new social system. This, if I am not mistaken, is how the matter ought to be tackled by every well-meaning writer.
The people, and it was they that made the February Revolution, are neither Saint-Simonian, Fourierist, communist, nor Babouvist: nor even Jacobin or Girondin.
But the people has a perfect grasp on these two things: on the one hand, that politics is nothing; on the other, that political economy, as taught by Messieurs Say, Rossi, Blanqui, Wolowski, Chevalier, etc., is merely the economics of the propertied, the application of which to society inevitably and organically engenders misery.
I reckon that I have done more than anybody to establish this view. What holds economically true for the ordinary individual become false the moment one tries to extend it to society; that proposition encapsulates all my criticisms. This, for instance, is why net product and gross product, which in private industry are different things, are one and the same when it comes to the nation; why a fall in pay that spells impoverishment for the worker who suffers it becomes an increase in wealth when it applies to everyone;458 how, from the collective point of view, the same holds true for all of the theorems of the old political economy which, let me say it again, is nothing more than household economics. Now what is that the people asks for today? The people asks, and this is the issue raised by 24 February, that, whilst respecting the freedom of the individual, in whatever guise it may show itself, we should reshape a political economy (public or social, whatever takes your fancy) that is not a lie; for attempting to explain the practices of selfishness to society is tantamount to lying to the people and to justice. The facts are there to prove that.
And what do the socialists do to satisfy this craving of the people?
Due to an error of the same sort as the economist’s, they would extend to the whole of society the principle of fraternity which exists within the family, plus the principle of solidarity, which lies at the root of the civil and commercial companies defined by the Code. Hence the phalansterian utopia and the many others with which you are as conversant as I am.
Now, fraternity and solidarity within the body of society have no more in common with the domestic fraternity and solidarity of so-called collective societies than, in the people’s view, the laws governing loans, production and commerce have in common with the rules of private credit, private production and private consumption.
In a work that appeared more than eighteen months ago, I have expanded upon this underlying opposition. Had the economists seen fit to register my observations, they would have been able to prevent the events of February and the social revolution might have been carried through without disaster. And had socialism, and Monsieur Louis Blanc in particular, been capable of taking the good advice offered which ran counter to their dreams, we would not, today, have the depressing spectacle the Luxembourg [Commission] offers us. But, in critiquing every opinion, I should have expected that no one would heed me; so I ask but one thing: spare me the calumny. As I see it, therefore, economists and socialists alike are chasing after an unattainable goal: the former by applying the rules of private economics to society; the latter by applying private fraternity to it. And still we have individualism, still subjectivity and contradiction.
This is something that I have been repeating without cease for the past eight years. Moreover, I have been measured in my assertions: I have not published any system, and nobody can say whether I am or am not capable of curing poverty.
However, desirous to give some notion of what the solution to the social question ought to be, as I see things, I have just published a draft for the organisation of labour and credit and so I take the liberty of addressing myself to you.
Either I am sorely mistaken or you will not discover within it any trace of communism or of Babouvism and you will see there a political economy built on different foundations than those of J-B Say and Ricardo.
Since, and it was you yourself, Monsieur who said this, since the day has come when all systems are up for discussion, you force my hand and it would be only fair of you to scrutinise this little morsel of mine. The people has gone too far to back down; it is absolutely necessary to establish one of new principles: the right of the capitalist and the workers; in short, the social question is in need of sorting out. Otherwise, expect all the horrors of civil war and all the wretchedness of agrarian law.
Sir, I genuinely regret the destitution by which you have been stricken and which has, I fear, found you unduly sensitive for a man of such lofty intellect. I might not have recommended this act of pointless rigour, especially as, being primarily an economist, you are a sceptic in matters of government. Had you candidly thrown in your lot with the Revolution, you, with those talents of yours, might have been of service to the people even whilst setting your face against innovation.
I deplore the fact that petty resentments have propelled you into the enemy camp.
I am relying upon your being accommodating enough to have this present text inserted in the most imminent edition of Débats and would ask you to accept assurances of my perfect esteem.
P-J PROUDHON
THE SITUATION
20th April 1848
Le Représentant du Peuple
Translation by Paul Sharkey
WHAT WE HAD FORESEEN, WHAT WE HAD FORETOLD HAS COME TO PASS.
The revolution is bound for doctrinaire, bourgeois democracy; the provisional government, a motley crew, has just carried out a sort of a purge of itself. The personnel remain; the principles had been struck out. Serious failings have accelerated this outcome which was in any case inevitable. Let us recount them in a few lines; by way of a preamble to our profession of faith.
Victory on 24 February had hoisted three different parties into power and refreshed our ancient strifes; the Girondin or Thermidorean camp represented by Le National; the Montagnard camp represented by La Réforme; and the socialist-communist party represented by Louis Blanc.
Discounting the monarchy, those three parties covered the full spectrum of views.
So it looked as if the provisional government, precisely because of its motley composition, should have, in the eyes of France, been an expression of the reconciliation of all the ideas, all the interests. With the bourgeoisie and the proletariat linking hands over L’Organisation du Travail as if it were the gospel of the future, there was some credibility to the notion that the poverty problem, side-stepped by the outgoing government, was on the point of being resolved in an amiable, peaceable fashion by the incoming one.
We have just seen, and for the thousandth time, what such reconciliations, built on vague fellow feeling and not underpinned by any principle, are
worth.
Yet the policy the provisional government should have followed was quite straightforward and self-evident. The problem of the proletariat posed with determination and vigour; the workers employed and fed; the bourgeois class revived; then, pending the National Assembly, the building of a republican status quo; this was what common sense, as well as high politics, required of the provisional government.
In such a situation, conserving everything amounted to advancing. Well now, no one grasped what was so straightforward and wise, what not only had the advantage of common sense but also had the merit of profundity.
Scarcely had it received its brand new mandate to represent the Republic than the bourgeois party within the provisional government, relapsing into its old concerns, started to sound the retreat.—For its part, the revolutionary faction, carried away by the enthusiasm of its memories, and deluding itself utterly about the power of its resources and aiming, as it says, to engage the future, has begun to display vigour and exclusivity. Finally, not content with having laid out its principle, socialism has sought to move on to implementation, looking exclusively to itself for the implementation of its handiwork.
And we know what the upshot of these tensions has been. Everything that the provisional government has done has, in the view of the former bourgeoisie, proven a backward step—everything that it has undertaken in a revolutionary sense has been counter-revolutionary;—everything that it has decreed in the interests of the proletariat has run counter to the proletariat’s interests.
When, thus, in sticking to the conventions of bourgeois economics, the provisional government took out a loan of 100 million; when, in order to prove the soundness of its credit, it handed 50 million over to the rentiers; when it raised the interest on monies deposited with the savings funds; when it put off the insurance companies, etc., etc., and I would say when faced with the socialist principle, which should have informed the law but did not inform it, the government acted contrary to its rights and its duties.
Likewise, when the provisional government set about writing the dictatorial circulars that in 1848 frightened hardly anyone except old ladies; when, without a penny or a person other than what the pleasure of the departments afforded it, it spoke to the departments as if it were an authority; when, in the middle of a France that was republican in mind and heart—albeit in defiance of the Republic—it conjured up the reaction and the counter-revolution just as it would shortly conjure up coalition; in all of these circumstances, the provisional government was acting like a sleep-walker. It has presented us with the spectacle—the only one history has to show—of statesmen acting out an old tragedy with laughable seriousness. Through its backward-looking radicalism, it has compromised future reforms: the electoral law is sufficient proof of that for me.
If we move on from the revolutionary element to the socialist element, we find a similar series of mistakes and miscalculations.
How come there was no one to tell Monsieur Blanc: You are banned from the organisation of labour, such as you understand it, not that you are lacking in ability but because our position forbids it. You see the workshop, namely individualism, as the way to tackle the problem; whereas it is only from the side of society that you can provide the solution, to wit, credit. But even in that light, there is nothing you can do: as a member of this government, you no longer represent one class within society, but the general interests of society, and are precluded from every initiative that might serve the interests of one fraction rather than another. You belong to the bourgeoisie rather than the proletariat. Sponsor and give encouragement to the emancipation of the labouring classes: do not take a hand in it yourself, do not compromise your responsibility, the responsibility of the government. Wait for some higher authority to bestow both credit and power upon you.
Across the board, the actions of the provisional government have not met with success. So protesting voices were not long in making themselves heard. The demonstrations on 16th and 17th March; multiple commissioners driven out of the departments; latterly, the 16th April revolt; all of these, mounted to the accompaniment of cries of Long live the Republic! Long live the provisional government!, were proof even to the least clear-sighted that France is sincerely republican, but that she would not countenance a dictatorship; that by revolution, she means reconciliation; that she rejects doctrinairism, Jacobinism and utopianism equally; but that while she has protested against each of the factions making up the revolutionary government, she retains that government as it stands, it is because she is no longer willing to endure personality issues and looks upon those who govern her as ministering to her will.
That, as we see it, is how things actually stand; the position of the provisional government is admirable and its strength beyond measure; but the difficulties to be overcome are infinite too. They can all be summed up in this formula which encapsulates its role and its rule alike: reconciling diverging interests through the generality of measures.
But just as the tree always falls in the direction in which it leans, the provisional government’s tendency is presently inclining towards the antisocialist protest of 16 April. There is plenty of encouragement along those lines and formal advice. Many people imagine, the social question having been bungled at the Luxembourg [Commission], that the social question has been dealt with; that from now on capital is spared the need to reckon with labour. Bedazzled by that notion, there is an inevitability to the provisional government’s marching towards bourgeois restoration, at the price of a few gestures made to the ardour of social ideas.
That much is being hinted at already, both by the hypocritical reflections in reactionary newspapers on the difficulty, uncertainty and impossibility of a solution, and the decrees whereby the provisional government simultaneously cuts or abolishes the levies on salt, beef and beverages and introduces other taxes on servants, dogs, quality wines, rents over 800 francs, etc., etc.
The removal of the tax on salt, beef and beverages, in the current economic circumstances, is only a philanthropic exaggeration that will cost the State dearly without bettering the lot of the workers.
The introduction of extravagant taxes is a socialist fantasy that will cost the workers dearly without filling the State’s coffers.
The provisional government’s decrees shift poverty the way bankruptcy shifts capital; they solve nothing. Blind and ignorant, the clamour for revolution is satisfied by these decrees; but the people is bamboozled by those same decrees. In return for an apparent sacrifice, we have an actual restoration: People, you will find that out soon enough.
As for ourselves, even though we may also be as dissatisfied with 16 April as we had been by 17th March, we bow to the fait accompli. We like clear cut stances. The threefold essence of the provisional government was an encumbrance to us. We now know to whom we must speak. Doctrinaire democracy now rules and governs. We had always thought that the proletariat must emancipate itself without the help of the government: the government, since April 16th, thinks the same way.
We are in agreement with the government!...
THE REACTION
29th April 1848
Le Représentant du Peuple
Translation by Paul Sharkey
THE SOCIAL QUESTION HAS BEEN PUT ON THE LONG FINGER. APRIL 16TH HAS consigned the socialist candidates to oblivion. The cause of the proletariat, denounced with such venom on the barricades in February, has just fallen at the first hurdle in the April elections. The people’s enthusiasm has given way to consternation: as before, it is the bourgeoisie that is to determine the conditions of the workers. The root of all evil, and let us spell it out one last time, has been the inadequacy of the Luxembourg [Commission] and the weakness of the Interior Ministry. Let Messieurs Blanc and Ledru-Rollin forgive themselves as we have forgiven them! They have allowed France to go to ruin and sold out the proletariat. But they are low-born: and consequently they are ours. In the wake of the battle for Cannes when Varron lost the Republic’s last remaining army, th
e Senate passed a vote of thanks to him for not having given up hope in the country. Let Messieurs Blanc and Ledru-Rollin but tell us that they have not lost hope in the emancipation of the proletariat and we stand ready to send them our congratulations. What matters now is sizing up the situation correctly.
For some time now, in the newspapers of the provisional government, doubts have existed as to the February Revolution’s having thus far been, as far as its representatives are concerned, only some sort of a retrospective revisitation of the first revolution. The two parties sharing power attack and threaten each other, under the labels Girondin and Montagnard. First and foremost, they accuse each other of restoration and counter-revolution. Little by little our makeshift monitors are wakening up to their retrograde delusions. [There is] Nothing more enlightening, nothing more telling than their mutual recriminations. Should the reaction raise its head, it will be in the ranks of the government. If plots are being hatched against the government spawned by the barricades, it is in the ministerial ante-rooms. If the authorities, pulled this way and that, should, with its communist manifestos and doctrinairian inclinations, trigger a flight of capital, murder credit, unsettle the workers, desolate property; should the organisation of labour lead to the whole of France’s downing tools, the blame lies with this two-faced democracy which rules and governs. All of the ground that we have covered in retreat over the past two months was covered under the aegis of memories contrary to the old republic. It is by ’93 and all of its discord that we are being ruled; and as for 1848, that is still the seven-times-sealed book. What we have here is a phenomenon of social psychology that is deserving of further exploration. That phenomenon has come to pass in every revolutionary age and it is this that has raised every peril and determined catastrophes.
Property Is Theft! Page 41
