Property Is Theft!

by Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

  We see that the basis of this theory is nothing other than chance. What the believer calls providence the sceptic calls luck: it is one and the same. Fieschi and Alibaud, believing that regicide hastened the triumph of democracy, and Bossuet, relating universal history to the establishment of the Roman apostolic Catholic Church, were from the same school. Based on historical science, there is no difference between absolute Pyrrhonism 501 and the deepest superstition. This policy of the last reign, without a system despite its pompous verbiage and unstable expedient politics, is really worth no more than Gregory VII’s, a routine followed like Catholicism, its development profoundly blind, not knowing where it is going.

  The philosophical method, while recognising that particular facts have nothing to do with fate, that they may vary infinitely, depending on whose wills produce them, consider them, however, as dependent on general laws inherent in nature and humanity. Those laws are the eternal and invariable idea of history: as for the facts they reveal, they are the arbitrary side of history, like the written characters that describe speech and the terms that express ideas. They could be changed indefinitely without the immanent thought they contain suffering as a result.

  Therefore, to respond to the objection made to me, the provisional government could have been comprised of other men, Louis Blanc could have stayed, Barbès and Blanqui could have avoided complicating such an already complex situation with their rival influence, and the majority of the national assembly could have been more democratic: all this, I say, and many more things as well could have been possible, and events would have been completely different from those we have seen: this is the accidental, the contingent side of history.

  But given the series of revolutions in which the modern world is engaged, a series that itself results from the conditions of the human mind, as well as a prejudice everyone simultaneously accepts and opposes, according to which it is the constituted authority of the nation [that is] to take the initiative of reform and direct the movement, I say that the events that had to be deduced from it, whatever they were, fortunate or unfortunate, could only have been the expression of the fatal struggle between tradition and the Revolution.

  All the incidents we have seen since February take their meaning from this double fact: on one hand, an economic and social revolution that, I dare say, is urgently is called for following the twenty previous political, philosophical and religious revolutions, and on the other hand, faith in power that instantly falsifies the Revolution by giving it an absurd and anti-liberal face. Once again, the February Revolution could have had a different plot, different actors, roles or themes. The show, instead of being a tragedy, could have been merely a melodrama, but the meaning and morality of the play would have remained the same.

  According to this philosophical conception of history, the general facts are classified and produced in succession with a deductive rigour that nothing in the positive sciences surpasses, and as it is possible for reason to articulate their philosophy, so is it possible for human prudence to direct their course. In the providential theory, on the contrary, history is no more than a fictional imbroglio without principle, reason or purpose, an argument for superstition as it is for atheism and an outrage against the mind and conscience.

  What maintains faith in providence is the involuntary confusion of the laws of society with the accidents that comprise its staging. The vulgar perceive a certain logic in the general facts and relate the detailing facts to the same source, neither the purpose nor necessity of which they discover, because, in fact, that necessity does not exist, and they conclude that a providential will completely settles the smallest and greatest matters, the contingent and the necessary alike, and as the Schoolmen say,502 all that is simply a contradiction. For us, providence in history is the same thing as supernatural revelation in philosophy, arbitrariness in government and abuse in property.

  We are going to see in the event that I have to describe that, while democracy, on the one hand, and the conservative party, on the other, obey the same passions, striving with equal ardour to exert pressure favourable to their ideas on events, history unfolds following its own laws with syllogistic precision.

  The provisional government had guaranteed the right to work in the most formal manner. It had made that guarantee in accordance with its claimed initiative, and the people accepted it as such. Both parties had made the commitment in good faith: how many people in France on February 24th, even among the most virulent adversaries of socialism, would have believed it impossible that a state as highly organised as ours, as abundantly equipped with resources, could ensure work for a few hundred thousand workers? The matter seemed so easy, so simple; conviction in this regard was so general that the most resistant to the new order of things were happy to end the revolution on that note. Furthermore, there was nothing to haggle over: the people were master, and when, after toiling all day in the heat, they only demanded more work as payment for their sovereignty, the people could rightly pass for the most just of kings and the most moderate of conquerors.

  Three months had been given to the provisional government to honour its obligation. The three months elapsed, and the work did not come. The demonstration of May 15th created some disorder in relations, so the bill the people had issued to the government was renewed, but the deadline approached, and nothing led the people to believe it would be paid.

  —“Give us work yourselves,” the workers told the government, “if the entrepreneurs cannot restart their production.”

  To this proposal from the workers, the government responded with a triple estoppel:

  —“We do not have any money and therefore cannot guarantee wages for you;”

  “We only make your products for ourselves and would not know to whom we could sell them. ”

  “And even if we could sell them, that would not help us at all because, due to our competition, free industry would be stopped and would send us back its workers.”

  —“In that case, take over all industry, transportation and even agriculture, and take the workers back.”

  —“We cannot do it,” replied the government. “Such a plan would be community and universal, absolute servitude against which the vast majority of the citizens protest. They proved it on March 17th, April 16th and May 15th and by sending us an assembly comprised of nine-tenths of the partisans of free competition, free trade and free and independent property. What do you want us to do against the will of 35 million citizens opposed to your will, oh unfortunate workers, you who saved us from dictatorship on March 17th?”

  —“Give us credit then; advance us capital, and organise state sponsorship.”

  —“You have no security to offer us,” observed the government. “And as we have told you, everyone knows that we do not have any money.”

  —“You told us, ‘It is up to the state to give credit, not to receive it!’ and we have not forgotten it. Create paper money; we accept it in advance and will pass it onto others.”

  —“Fiat money! Assignats!” the government responded despondently. “We can force payment, but we cannot force sales. Your paper money will fall after three months of depreciation, and your misery will be worse.”

  —“Then the February Revolution means nothing!” the workers told each other with concern. “Do we have to die again for having made it?”

  The provisional government, not being able to organise work, give credit or conduct the rest of the routine business of all governments, had hoped that, with time and order, it would bring back confidence, that work would re-establish itself, that in the meantime it would suffice to offer the working masses, who could not be abandoned to their distress, a food subsidy.

  Such was the thought behind the national workshops, a humane and wellintended but amazingly impotent idea. It was painful, perhaps dangerous, to rudely tell these men who had believed for a moment in their coming emancipation to return to their worksites and solicit their bosses’ benevolence again: this was seen as treason
toward the people, and until May 15th, although they were not the government, the people were king. But on the other hand, the provisional government soon perceived that the economic renovation necessary to satisfy the people was not the business of the state; it had sensed that the nation detested this revolutionary method. It increasingly felt that what had been proposed to it in the name of the organisation of work and that had been believed to be so easy was forbidden to it. Not seeing any way out of this labyrinth, it waited while doing its best to restart business and feed unemployed workers, for which no one could surely accuse it of committing a crime.

  But here again, the government deluded itself with the most fatal illusion.

  The doctrinaire party, rallying to the absolutist party, spoke aloud after the May 15th debacle. It ruled the government and the assembly and, from the podium and through its newspapers, gave France its slogan, republican if you like, but conservative above all. Meanwhile, the democrats, because they were tightening [government] power, were in the process of losing it themselves, and the doctrinaires, pushed on by the Jesuits, were preparing to snatch it back. They could not allow the favourable opportunity to escape them.

  The government’s opponents then claimed that the re-establishment of order and, consequently, the return of confidence, were incompatible with the existence of the national workshops, that if we seriously wanted to revive labour, it was necessary to start by dissolving those workshops. Therefore, the government found itself doubly trapped within a circle, cornered by the impossibilities that had sprung up, whether they wanted to procure work for the workers or only give them credit, whether they wanted to send them home or to feed them for a time.

  The reaction proved to be especially intractable because it thought, not without reason, that the national workshops, then including more than 100,000 men, were the road to socialism, and that once this army was dispersed, we would have a healthy market and democracy, while the executive commission perhaps thought that it could put an end to the republic before discussing the constitution. They were in a strong position: they decided to follow their luck and profit from it. These men, so sensitive towards the bankrupt with regard to their annuities, were ready to violate the promise the provisional government made in the country’s name, to make the workers with guaranteed work bankrupt, and, as needed, to impose that bankruptcy by force.

  The situation was as follows:

  As the price of the February Revolution and in view of their opinion on the quality of [those in] power, the provisional government and the people had agreed that the people would waive their sovereignty and that the government, in taking power, would commit to guaranteeing work in less than three months.

  Because the execution of the agreement was impossible, the national assembly refused to agree to it.

  Either a transaction would take place or, if the two parties were stubborn, there would be a catastrophe.

  To one party, humanity, respect for sworn belief and concern for peace, and to the other party, the republic’s financial trouble, the difficulties of the issue, and the demonstrated incompetence of power, demanded that they reach a compromise. This is what was understood by the partisans of the national workshops, represented by their delegates, but above all, by their new director, Lalanne, and by the minister of public works, Trélat, who, in these deplorable days, conducted himself as a man of courage and did his duty.

  Because this part of the facts on the June insurrection has remained highly obscure up until now, the Report of the Inquest503 on the June events not bothering to mention it although it reveals the cause of those bloody days, I will go into a few details. The people have to know what enemies they had to make and how revolutions are evaded; the bourgeoisie also have to know how their terrors are exploited and what schemers use their feelings of loyal moderation in their detestable politics. M. Lalanne himself provided me with the main information. On this occasion, he displayed a kindness for which I cannot thank him enough here.

  The executive commission had just formed a ministry. On May 12th, Trélat was called to public works, the department responsible for the national workshops. He immediately saw the dangers of the situation and started looking for the means to ward it off. On the 17th, despite the problems of the 15th, he instituted a commission that he charged with reporting on the national workshops and proposing a solution. The next day, the 18th, this commission met and deliberated for the entire day without stopping. The report was drafted the following night, read to the commission on the morning of the 19th, discussed and decreed in this second session, copied and immediately delivered to the minister. After hearing it read, Trélat declared that he adopted all its conclusions and ordered that it be printed, and by the 20th at two o’clock, the national treasury had produced 1,200 copies intended for the national assembly and the main administrations. Distribution had to take place that same day.

  Suddenly, the order was given to stop distribution: the executive commission had decided that not one copy must leave the minister’s office, fearing that the conclusions of the Report, in which certain principles were expressed, including the right to work, would face violent opposition in the national assembly. Since May 15th, hostile emotions had started to arise: there was no reason to provide a pretext for them to explode. While only daring could have saved it, the executive commission gave in to fear: the time for its withdrawal had come.

  Impeded right from the start on the prudent yet radical path of reform to which he was committed, the minister was not disheartened. At least he tried to eradicate the most glaring abuses among those that the commission had indicated to him, but he only received unfulfilled promises from the young director who had presided over the creation of the national workshops from the start. It was said that an evil spirit fought to simultaneously aggravate the illness and hinder the cure. A few days were lost in useless efforts. Trélat wanted to overcome the inertia that he encountered, give more authority to his orders and surround himself with more intelligence in order to reconstitute the commission with experienced administrators who represented various ministerial departments. That commission met on May 26th, presided over by the minister. It called the director and soon recognised that it could expect nothing from him. He was replaced the same day.

  From this time on, the National Workshops Commission modified, extended or restricted each proposal of the first report. It was first concerned with reforming abuses. It reduced the offices that had grown excessively, replaced day labour with work by the job, organised, with the help of the municipal authorities, some control, and, from the start, recognised that out of 120,000 registered names 25,000 had to be deleted for double or triple entries. But all of these measures were pure repression. It was not enough to gradually reduce the cadres of this large army without providing work for those it had dismissed. The commission sensed this, and it was its unending preoccupation.

  It successively presented to the minister special proposals designed to reassure workers about the intentions of power. Encouragement to workers’ associations, Algerian colonisation on a grand scale, a law on industrial tribunals [prud’hommes] and the organisation of a pension and assistance system: this is what it proposed to do in response to the working classes’ legitimate demands. Export premiums, wage advances, direct orders and a guarantee on certain manufactured objects were the measures that it indicated in favour of merchants and industrialists. The bourgeoisie and the workers shared the commission’s solicitude equally as if the commission considered their interests as one. It did not separate them in its encouragement or credit projects. It valued the total expenditure to be distributed among the various ministerial departments at 200 million francs but was convinced that this was a productive expense, an apparent cost, not an actual one, much less burdensome for the country than the consequences of more unemployment.

  Trélat completely adopted these views. In fact, it was no longer an issue of communism, egalitarian organisation or the state’s universal grip on wo
rk and property. It was simply returning to the status quo, of re-entering the rut out of which the February shake-up had pushed us. Trélat vainly tried to introduce these ideas into national assembly commissions. They objected to the poverty of the treasury but did not want to see that it was a question of saving the treasury itself by returning its exhausted receipts to it through a large distribution of credit. They feigned not to understand that the sacrifices made to labour benefited the workers even less than the employers and that, after all, the bourgeoisie was still the party most interested in this tutelary resumption of work.—“200 million francs to hire an army of 100,000 men?!” cried the calculating Baron Charles Dupin, as if 100,000 men in the national workshops were not a minimal fraction of the then-unemployed working class. Ah! If, instead of workers, it were an issue of a railroad company! —“200 million! Is that expensive? It would be a shame to admit that, to keep the public peace, it was necessary to pay each of our 100,000 workers a bonus of 2,000 francs, to which we never would have agreed. At most, we could, by pronouncing immediate dissolution, give each worker three months salary (100 francs), 10 million in all, which is far from 200. With this advance, the workers would no doubt withdraw in satisfaction.”

  “And in three months?” asked Director Lalanne.