Property Is Theft!

by Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

  It is this confusion of Parties, this death of power that Louis Bonaparte revealed to us; and like the Chief priest among the Jews, Louis Bonaparte was prophetic: “France has elected me,” he said, “because I don’t belong to any Party!” Yes, France elected him because it did not want anyone to govern any more. A man consists of a body and a soul; similarly, a government consists of a Party and a principle: however, now there are neither Parties nor principles. That is what has become of Government.

  This is what the people denounced in February when, unifying two denominations in a single one, they ordered, under their sovereign authority, the fusion of two Parties which expressed in a far better way both the ideology and the practice of the revolution, thus naming the Republic democratic and social.

  However, if, according to the will of the people, all shades of democracy and all schools of socialism were to disappear and to become unified as one, similarly absolutism and constitutionalism would equally disappear and become one. This is what the democratic socialist organs were telling us when they said that there were only two parties left in France, the Party of Labour and the Party of Capital; and this definition was accepted immediately by the two reactionary parties, and it acted as the watchword for the elections of May 13th.

  The London exiles acted on the same idea when they made known their intention never to convene before the High Court. On June 13th, one of the great revolutionary stages was reached. Power fell in tandem with the last remaining Party with any life left in it: what was the point in giving an account to the New France of the demonstrations that had taken place in another era? The London Declaration543 represented the resignation of the Jacobin Party: shadows fought shadows for a shadow of authority. Thus Ledru-Rollin and his friends perfectly understood the meaning of their presence at the trials of Versailles. Let us be wary, Republicans, of agitating retrospectively and thus creating a Counter-Revolution!

  And, since I am accounting here for my every smallest utterance, I reaffirm that it is the same idea, the same necessity for social and political transformation that has informed my conduct since the last elections.

  I declined the candidacy which was offered to me because the list upon which my name was inscribed no longer made any sense in the situation; the spirit which had caused this list to be drawn up tended to perpetuate the old classifications, whereas it was necessary to oppose these; since the political routine, of which the people have been dupes and victims for sixty years, had committed a slow suicide on June 13th, I did not want to be the one to revive it.

  In conjunction with my fellow prisoners, I proposed another list which, moving away from all consideration of personality, taking no account of nuances of opinion, faithful to the politics of fusion proclaimed by the people themselves after the February events, better expressed (in my opinion) the thoughts of Republican France and the needs of the movement. Published on the Tuesday, the list could have rallied all the democratic forces, had it been wished. It was criticised for arriving too late. The demagogic tail was wagging again; and my opinions and advice were currently out of fashion. Under instruction to withdraw my list—I say mine because it was attributed to me even though I was only its editor—with the express purpose, it was said, of not dividing the voice of the party, I refused. I no longer recognised the party; I did not even want it to continue to exist. My conduct in relation to the party was, on this occasion, the same as on December 10th. I protested against the general mistaken principle in the hope that the state of decay was not universal and in the hope that SOCIALIST DEMOCRACY, in opening up its ranks, could become, in a significant way, the party of LIBERTY.

  No, I did not want to further the ambitions of those who, from February 25th, 1848 to June 13th, 1849, had continually sacrificed the Revolution to their own selfish passions; those who constantly misunderstood its character; those who were the first to react against it; those who, in taking up the reins of government themselves, ended up, like the men of 1793, forgetting about such matters as liberty and the people.

  I did not want to assist either the prolongation of power by the Parties nor the Parties by power. With this in mind, the result of the demonstration of June 13th, as outrageous as it appeared to me with regard to the Constitution and liberty, served the Revolution only too well, such that, by July 8th, all I wanted was to overturn this result.

  I refused to work for the restoration of the monarchy, seeing in the monarchy fertile ground for the re-emergence of Jacobinism. My readers must be enlightened enough about the progress of societies to know that an idea never advances alone, and that opposites often arise simultaneously.

  I never consented to making myself the instrument of a coterie which, despite managing on May 13th, June 13th and July 8th, with certain amount of compromise, to rally all of the republican strands under the democratic socialist banner and thus becoming the embodiment of the nation, preferred to remain a faction; and furthermore, treating its candidates as machines, its allies as dupes, its egoism as its yardstick, when the leadership declared victory to its representatives, impatient of the law and mistrustful of their patriotism, it instructed them once more to descend to street level and to commit suicide.

  As for the rest, I confess that, to the extent that one knows me and one wishes to save me from future pointless slander, I have never been much of a flexible character, and neither have I an easy-going nature and personality; never have I been one to submit to an occult power nor to work for the profit of my gainsayers, nor to devote myself to that which I despise, nor to bow down before the dogmatism of a dozen fanatics, nor, having been blessed with a sense of reasoned thinking, to become the blind instrument of a school of thought which I mistrust and which only shows its true colours under examination from the upholders of the law.

  I belong to the Party of Labour against the Party of Capital; and I have laboured all my life. Now, let it be remembered: of all the parasites I know, the worst type is still the revolutionary parasite.

  I wish neither to Govern nor to be Governed! Let those who, at the time of the elections of July 8th accused me of ambition, of pride, of indiscipline, of venality, of treason, search their own hearts. When I so vigorously attacked the Government’s response, when I solicited the initiative of the people, when I proposed a refusal to pay a tax, when I wanted to establish democratic socialism within the law and according to the constitution, was it not perhaps against their ambition, their pride, their governmental spirit, their economic utopias that I was waging war?

  Now, enough of regrets, enough of failures! We have established a slate clean of Parties and of Government. The story is reaching its climax: if the people only open their eyes, they can be free.

  No power, divine or human, could stop the Revolution. What remains for us to do now is simply to declare this before the Old Order, thus strengthening support for the sacred cause. The people are propaganda enough. Our task, as publicists, is to protect the revolution from the dangers with which its path is littered, it is to guide it according to its eternal principle.

  The dangers which threaten the revolution are as follows:

  The dangers presented by power—Power, as embodied by those same people who accuse the new spirit of materialism, is nothing more than a word. Take away its bayonets and you will see what I mean. Let us take care to prevent a soul from re-inhabiting this corpse, possessed as it is by a diabolical spirit. Let us keep away from the vampire that still thirsts for our blood. May an exorcism by organised universal suffrage return it to its grave forever.

  The dangers presented by the parties—All of the parties trailed far behind the revolutionary idea; all of them betrayed the people by implementing dictatorship; all showed themselves to be resistant to liberty and progress. Let us not resuscitate them only so that they can revive their in-fighting. Let us not try to convince the people that it would be possible to guarantee work, wellbeing and liberty if only the Government were to pass from this person here to that person there; the Right,
having crushed the Left, is in turn crushed by the Left. As Power is the instrument and citadel of tyranny, so are Parties its lifeblood and intelligence.

  The dangers presented by the reaction—I have fought throughout my life against many ideas: this was my right. I have never and will never simply react against an idea for its own sake. Philosophy and history prove that it is a thousand times easier, more human, more just, to change ideas than to repress them. I will remain, whatever happens, faithful to that wisdom. The Jesuits, the Janissaries of Catholicism, today the oppressors of everybody, will fall when it pleases God: I will not react to Catholicism. After the Jesuits, the governmental and communitarian demagogy544 may give to the world, if the world permits it, one last representation of authority: I will help its emergence from the chaos into what it will become; I will work to repair its ruins; I will not react to communism.

  The principle of the Revolution, let us remind ourselves, is Liberty.

  Liberty! By which we mean: first, political emancipation by means of universal suffrage, by the independent centralisation of social functions, by the continuous and unceasing revision of the Constitution; second, industrial emancipation by the mutual guarantee of credit and markets.

  In other words:

  No more government of man by man by means of accumulated power:

  No more exploitation of man by man by means of accumulated capital.

  Liberty! This is the first and last word of social philosophy. Isn’t it strange that, after all the oscillations and back-tracking along the unreliable and complicated road of revolutions, we should end up discovering that the remedy for all the miseries, the solution to all the problems, consists of giving a freer passage to liberty, removing the barricades which have been set in its path by public and proprietary Authority?

  But no matter! This is how humanity always reaches an understanding and implementation of its ideas.

  Socialism appears: it evokes the fables of antiquity, the legends of uncivilised people, all the reveries of the philosophers and thinkers. It presents itself as a pantheistic, metamorphic, epicurean trinity; it speaks of the body of Christ, of planetary generations, of unisexual love, of phanerogamy, of omnigamy, of communal child-rearing, of a gastrosophical regime, of industrial harmony, of analogies among plants and animals. It shocks and outrages everybody. What then does it want? What exactly is it? Nothing. It is the product that wants to become Money; it is the Government that wants to become Administration! And that is the only reform it offers!

  What our generation lacks is not a Mirabeau nor a Robespierre, nor a Bonaparte: what it lacks is a Voltaire. We know nothing of how to understand our world with an independent and irreverent interpretation. We are slaves to our opinions and our interests and, in taking ourselves too seriously, we are rendered stupid. Science, of which the most precious fruit is its unceasing contribution to liberty and thought, becomes for us a form of pedantry; instead of emancipating intelligence, it stupefies it. In sum, with regard to that which we love and that which we hate, we have lost the ability to laugh at others and they at us: in losing our spirit, we have lost our liberty.

  Liberty produces everything in the world, and I mean everything; even that which it then comes to destroy, be it religions, governments, nobility, property…

  In the same way that Reason, its sister, has yet to construct a system, it is still working to extend and refashion it; thus liberty tends to ceaselessly modify its earlier creations, to emancipate itself from the organs it has created and to create new ones from which it, in turn, will detach itself, as with the previous ones, regarding them with the same pity and dislike with which it regards those which it has already replaced.

  Liberty, like Reason, only exists and manifests itself through the continued reinvention of its own works; its downfall is its own narcissism. This is why irony has always been the mark of liberal and philosophical genius, the seal of the human spirit, the irresistible instrument of progress. Unchanging peoples are peoples without joy; a member of a society that knows how to laugh is a thousand times closer to rationality and liberty than the praying anchorite545 or the quibbling philosopher.

  Irony, you are true liberty! You are what saves me from ambition to power, from servitude to parties, from respect for routine, from scientific pedantry, from the worship of great men, from the mystification of politics, from the fanaticism of reformers, from the superstition of this great universe and from the adoration of myself. You revealed yourself to the Wise One on the Throne when he cried out, in view of the world in which he was regarded as a demi-god: Vanity of Vanities! You were the familiar-demon of the Philosopher when he unmasked, at a single stroke, both the dogmatist and the sophist, the hypocrite and the atheist, the epicurean and the cynic. You consoled the Righteous One in his final hours as he prayed on the cross for his torturers: Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do!

  Sweet Irony! You alone are pure, chaste and discreet. You give grace to the beauty and piquancy of love; you inspire charity through tolerance; you dispel murderous prejudice; you teach modesty to women, bravery to warriors, prudence to statesmen. You appease, with your smile, conflict and civil wars; you bring peace between brothers; you heal the fanatic and the sectarian. You are the Mistress of Truth; you serve to protect genius; and what of virtue? That, O Goddess, is you too!

  Come, my sovereign: pour upon my citizens a ray of your light; ignite in their souls a spark of your spirit: allow this, my confession to resonate with them such that this inevitable revolution may accomplish its full potential in a spirit of serenity and joy.

  Sainte-Pélagie, October 1849

  RESISTANCE TO THE REVOLUTION:

  LOUIS BLANC AND PIERRE LEROUX

  3rd December, 1849

  La Voix du Peuple

  Translation by Benjamin R. Tucker

  […]

  THE FEBRUARY REVOLUTION RAISED TWO LEADING QUESTIONS: ONE ECONOMIC, the question of labour and property; the other political, the question of government or the State.

  On the first of these questions the socialistic democracy is substantially in accord. They admit that it is not a question of the seizure and division of property, or even of its repurchase. Neither is it a question of dishonourably levying additional taxes on the wealthy and property-holding classes, which, while violating the principle of property recognised in the constitution, would serve only to overturn the general economy and aggravate the situation of the proletariat. The economic reform consists, on the one hand, in opening usurious credit to competition and thereby causing capital to lose its income,—in other words, in identifying, in every citizen to the same degree, the capacity of the worker and that of the capitalist; on the other hand, in abolishing the whole system of existing taxes, which fall only on the worker and the poor man, and replacing them all by a single tax on capital, as an insurance premium.

  By these two great reforms social economy is reconstructed from top to bottom, commercial and industrial relations are inverted, and the profits, now assured to the capitalist, return to the worker. Competition, now anarchical and subversive, becomes emulative and fruitful; markets no longer being wanting, the worker and employer, intimately connected, have nothing more to fear from stagnation or suspension. A new order is established upon the old institutions abolished or regenerated.

  On this point the revolutionary course is laid out; the meaning of the movement is known. Whatever modification may appear in practice, the reform will be effected according to these principles and on these bases; the Revolution has no other issue. The economic problem, then, may be considered solved.

  It is far from being the same with the political problem,—that is, with the disposal to be made in the future, of government and the State. On this point the question is not even stated; it has not been recognised by the public conscience and the intelligence of the masses. The economic Revolution being accomplished, as we have just seen, can government, the State, continue to exist? Ought it to continue to exi
st? This no one, either in democracy or out of it, dares to call in question; and yet it is the problem which, if we would escape new catastrophes, must next be solved.

  We affirm, then, and as yet we are alone in affirming, that with the economic Revolution, no longer in dispute, the State must entirely disappear; that this disappearance of the State is the necessary consequence of the organisation of credit and the reform of taxation; that, as an effect of this double innovation government becomes first useless and then impossible; that in this respect it is in the same category with feudal property, lending at interest, absolute and constitutional monarchy, judicial institutions, etc., all of which have served in the education of liberty, but which fall and vanish when liberty has arrived at its fullness. Others, on the contrary, in the front ranks of whom we distinguish Louis Blanc and Pierre Leroux, maintain that, after the economic revolution, it is necessary to continue the State, but in an organised form, furnishing, however, as yet no principle or plan for its organisation. For them the political question, instead of being annihilated by identification with the economic question always subsists, they favour an extension of the prerogatives of the State, of power, of authority, of government. They change names only; for example, instead of master-State they say servant-State, as if a change of words sufficed to transform things! Above this system of government, about which nothing is known, hovers a system of religion whose dogma is equally unknown, whose ritual is unknown, whose object, on earth and in heaven, is unknown.