Property Is Theft!

by Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

  Everybody has heard of the division of labour.

  It consists of the distribution of the manual labor of a given industry in such a manner that each person performs always the same operation, or a small number of operations, so that the product, instead of being the integral product of one worker, is the joint product of a large number.

  According to Adam Smith, who first demonstrated this law scientifically, and all the other economists, the division of labour is the most powerful lever of modern industry. To it principally must be attributed the superiority of civilised peoples to savage peoples. Without division of labour, the use of machines would not have gone beyond the most ancient and most common utensils: the miracles of machinery and of steam would never have been revealed to us; progress would have been closed to society; the French Revolution itself, lacking an outlet, would have been but a sterile revolt; it could have accomplished nothing. But, on the other hand, by division of labour, the product of labour mounts to tenfold, a hundredfold, political economy rises to the height of a philosophy, the intellectual level of nations is continually raised. The first thing that should attract the attention of the legislator is the separation of industrial functions—the division of labour—in a society founded upon hatred of the feudal and warlike order, and destined in consequence to organise itself for work and peace.

  It was not done thus. This economic force was left to all the overturns caused by chance and by interest. The division of labour, becoming always more minute, and remaining without counterpoise, the worker has been given over to a more and more degrading subjection to machinery. That is the effect of the division of labour when it is applied as practised in our days, not only to make industry incomparably more productive, but at the same time to deprive the worker, in mind and body, of all the wealth which it creates for the capitalist and the speculator. Here is how an observer, who is not suspected of sympathy with labour, M. de Tocqueville, sums up on this grave subject:

  “In proportion to the more complete application of the principle of the division of labour, the worker becomes weaker, more limited and more dependent.”

  J-B Say has already said:

  “A man, whose whole life is devoted to the execution of a single operation, will most assuredly acquire the faculty of executing it better and quicker than others; but he will, at the same time, be rendered less fit for every other occupation, corporeal or intellectual; his other faculties will be gradually blunted or extinguished; and the man, as an individual, will degenerate in consequence. To have never done anything but make the eighteenth part of a pin, is a sorry account for a human being to give of his existence… On the whole, we may conclude, that division of labour is a skilful mode of employing human agency, that it consequently multiplies the productions of society; in other words, the powers and the enjoyments of mankind; but that it in some degree degrades the faculties of man in his individual capacity.”566

  All the economists are in accord as to this fact, one of the most serious which the science has to announce; and, if they do not insist upon it with the vehemence which they habitually use in their polemics, it must be said, to the shame of the human mind, that it is because they cannot believe that this perversion of the greatest of economic forces can be avoided.

  So the greater the division of labour and the power of machines, the less the intelligence and manual skill of the worker. But the more the value of the worker falls and the demand for labour diminishes, the lower are wages and the greater is poverty. And it is not a few hundreds of men but millions, who are the victims of this economic perturbation.

  […]

  Philanthropic conservatives, admirers of ancient customs, charge the industrial system with this anomaly. They want to go back to the feudal-farming period. I say that it is not industry that is at fault, but economic chaos: I maintain that the principle has been distorted, that there is disorganisation of forces, and that to this we must attribute the fatal tendency with which society is carried away.

  Another example.

  Competition, next to the division of labour, is one of the most powerful factors of industry; and at the same time one of the most valuable guarantees. Partly for the sake of it, the first revolution was brought about. The workers’ associations, established at Paris some years since, have recently given it a new sanction by establishing among themselves piece work, and abandoning, after their experience of it, the absurd idea of the equality of wages. Competition is moreover the law of the market, the spice of the trade, the salt of labour. To suppress competition is to suppress liberty itself; it is to begin the restoration of the old order from below, in replacing labour by the rule of favouritism and abuse, of which ’89 rid us.

  Yet competition, lacking legal forms and superior regulating intelligence, has been perverted in turn, like the division of labour. In it, as in the latter, there is perversion of principle, chaos and a tendency toward evil. This will appear beyond doubt if we remember that of the thirty-six million souls who compose the French nation, at least ten million are wage workers, to whom competition is forbidden, for whom there is nothing but to struggle among themselves for their meagre stipend.

  Thus that competition, which, as thought in ’89, should be a general right, is today a matter of exceptional privilege: only they whose capital permits them to become heads of business concerns may exercise their competitive rights.

  The result is that competition, as Rossi, Blanqui, and a host of others have recognised, instead of democratising industry, aiding the worker, guaranteeing the honesty of trade, has ended in building up a mercantile and land aristocracy, a thousand times more rapacious than the old aristocracy of the nobility. Through competition all the profits of production go to capital; the consumer, without suspecting the frauds of commerce, is fleeced by the speculator, and the condition of the workers is made more and more precarious. Speaking of this, Eugene Buret says: “I assert that the working class is turned over, body and soul, to the sweet will of industry.” And elsewhere he says: “The most trifling speculation may change the price of bread one cent a pound, which means $124,100,000 for thirty-six million people.”

  It was recently seen how little free competition could do for the people, and how illusory it is as a guaranty with us at present, when the Prefect of Police, yielding to the general demand, authorised the sale of meat at auction. Nothing less than all the energy the people could muster, aided by governmental power, could overcome the monopoly of the butchers.

  Accuse human nature, say the economists, do not accuse competition. Very well, I will not accuse competition: I will only remark that human nature does not remedy one evil by another, and ask how it has mistaken its path. What? Competition ought to make us more and more equal and free; and instead it subordinates us one to the other, and makes the worker more and more a slave! This is a perversion of the principle, a forgetfulness of the law. These are not mere accidents; they are a whole system of misfortunes.

  […]

  It is not only that our present society, though having forsaken its principles, tends continually to impoverish the producer, to subordinate labour to capital—contradiction in itself—but that it tends also to make of workers a race of helots, inferior to the caste of free men as of old; and it tends to erect into a political and social dogma the enslavement of the working class and the necessity of its poverty.

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  3. ANOMALY OF GOVERNMENT. TENDENCY TOWARD TYRANNY AND CORRUPTION

  It is by contrast with error that truth impresses itself upon the understanding. In place of liberty and industrial equality, the Revolution has left us a legacy of authority and political subordination. The State, growing more powerful every day, and endowed with prerogatives and privileges without end, has undertaken to do for our happiness what we might have expected from a very different source. How has it acquitted itself of its task? What part has the government played during the last fifty years, regardless of the particular form of its organisation? What has b
een its tendency? That is now the question.

  Up to 1848, statesmen, whether belonging to the ministry or the opposition, whose influence directed public sentiment and governmental action, did not seem to have been aware of the mistaken course of society in what especially concerns the labouring classes. Most of them indeed made it a merit and a duty to busy themselves in the amelioration of the workers’ lot. One would cry out for teachers; another would talk against the premature and immoral employment of children in manufactories. This one would demand the lowering of duties upon salt, beverages and meat; that one called out for the complete abolition of town and custom house tariffs. In the lofty regions of power there was a general impulse toward economic and social questions. Not a soul saw that, in the present state of our institutions, such reforms were but innocent chimeras; that, in order to bring them about, nothing less than a new creation was necessary; in other words, a revolution.

  Since the abdication of Louis Philippe, on the 24th of February, the governmental set, participants in privilege, have changed their opinion. The policy of oppression and impoverishment which they formerly followed without knowing it, I had almost said in spite of themselves, has been accepted by many of them, this time with full knowledge.

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  What does the system demand?

  That the capitalistic feudalism shall be maintained in the enjoyment of its rights; that the preponderance of capital over labour shall be increased; that the parasite class shall be reinforced, if possible, by providing for it everywhere hangers-on, through the aid of public functions, and as recruits if necessary, and that large properties shall be gradually re-established, and the proprietors ennobled—did not Louis Philippe, toward the end of his reign, devote himself to conferring titles of nobility?—that thus, by indirect ways, certain services, which the official list of offices cannot satisfy, shall be recompensed; finally, that everything shall be attached to the supreme patronage of the State—charities, recompenses, pensions, awards, concessions, exploitations, authorisations, positions, titles, privileges, ministerial offices, stock companies, municipal administrations, etc., etc.

  This is the reason for that venality whereof the scandals under the last reign so surprised us; but at which the public conscience would have been less astonished, if the mystery had been explained. This too is the ulterior aim of that centralisation which, under pretext of the general interest, exerts pressure upon local interests, by selling to the last and highest bidder the justice which they claim.

  Understand clearly that corruption is the soul of centralisation. There is not a monarchy nor a democracy that is free from it. Government is unchangeable in its spirit and essence; if it takes a hand in public economy, it is to establish, by favour or by force, what accident tends to bring about. […]

  […]

  Even charitable institutions serve the ends of those in authority marvellously well.

  Charity is the strongest chain by which privilege and the Government, bound to protect them, holds down the lower classes. With charity, sweeter to the heart of men, more intelligible to the poor man than the abstruse laws of political economy, one may dispense with justice. Benefactors abound in the catalogue of saints; not one law dispenser is found there. The Government, like the Church, places fraternity far above justice. [Be a] good friend of the poor as much as you like, but it hates calculators. In connection with the discussion on pawnbrokers, the Journal des Debats recalled that there would in time be hospitals everywhere. Loan offices, it added, showed the same progress; each commune wanted one for itself, and would soon obtain it. I cannot conceive the indignation of the whole list of bourgeois delegates against the two honourable socialists who proposed to establish a loan office in each county immediately. Never was there a proposition more worthy of the favour of the Debats. The establishment for loans upon wages, even if the loan were gratuitous, is the antechamber of the hospital. And what is the hospital? The temple of Poverty.

  Through these three ministries, that of agriculture and commerce, that of public works, and that of the interior, through the taxes of consumption and through the custom house, the Government keeps its hand on all that comes and goes, all that is produced and consumed, on all the business of individuals, communes and departments; it maintains the tendency of society toward the impoverishment of the masses, the subordinating of the workers, and the always growing preponderance of parasite offices. Through the police, it watches the enemies of the system; through the courts, it condemns and represses them; through the army it crushes them; through public institutions it distributes, in such proportions as suit it, knowledge and ignorance; through the Church it puts to sleep any protest in the hearts of men; through the finances it defrays the cost of this vast conspiracy at the expense of workers.

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  Thus, in 1851 as in 1788, and from analogous causes, there is in society a pronounced tendency towards poverty. Now, as then, the wrong of which the labouring class complains is not the effect of a temporary or accidental cause, it is that of a systematic diversion of the social forces.

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  The crash of ’89–91 left no organic principle, no working structure, after having abolished, together with the monarchy, the last remains of feudalism, proclaimed equality before the law and for taxation, freedom of the press and of worship, and interested the people, as much as it could, by the sale of national property. It has not redeemed one of its promises. When the Revolution proclaimed liberty of the people, the subordination of power to the country, it set up two incompatible things, society and government; and it is this incompatibility which has been the cause or the pretext of this overwhelming, liberty-destroying concentration, called CENTRALISATION, which the parliamentary democracy admires and praises, because it is its nature to tend toward despotism.

  […]

  The Republic had Society to establish: it thought only of establishing Government. Centralisation continually fortifying itself, while Society had no institution to oppose to it, through the exaggeration of political ideas and the total absence of social ideas, matters reached a point where Society and Government could not live together, the condition of existence of the latter being to subordinate and subjugate the former.

  Therefore, while the problem propounded in ’89 seemed to be officially solved, at the bottom there was change only in the governmental metaphysics—what Napoléon called ideology. Liberty, equality, progress, with all their oratorical consequences, are written in the text of the constitutions and the laws; there is no vestige of them in the institutions. The ancient hierarchy of classes has been replaced by an ignoble feudalism, based on mercantile and industrial usury; by a chaos of interests, an antagonism of principles, a degradation of law: the abuses have changed the face which they bore before’89, to assume a different form of organisation; they have diminished neither in number nor gravity. On account of our being engrossed with politics, we have lost sight of social economy. It was in this way that the democratic party itself, the heir of the first Revolution, came to attempting to reform Society by establishing the initiative of the State, to create institutions by the prolific virtue of Power, in a word, to correct an abuse by an abuse.

  All minds being bewitched with politics, Society turns in a circle of mistakes, driving capital to a still more crushing agglomeration, the State to an extension of its prerogatives that is more and more tyrannical, the labouring class to an irreparable decline, physically, morally and intellectually.

  […]

  In place of this governmental, feudal and military rule, imitated from that of the former kings, the new edifice of industrial institutions must be built; in place of this materialist centralisation which absorbs all the political power, we must create the intellectual and liberal centralisation of economic forces. Labour, commerce, credit, education, property, public morals, philosophy, art, everything in fact require it of us.

  I conclude:

  There is sufficient cause for a revolution in the ni
neteenth century.

  THIRD STUDY

  THE PRINCIPLE OF ASSOCIATION

  […]

  I BEGIN WITH the principle of Association.

  If I wanted merely to flatter the lower classes, the recipe would not be difficult. Instead of a criticism of the social principle, I should deliver a panegyric of workers’ societies, I should exalt their virtues, their constancy, their sacrifices, their spirit of benevolence, their marvellous intelligence; I should herald their triumphs. What could I not say on this subject, dear to all democratic hearts? Do not the workers’ societies at this moment serve as the cradle for the social revolution, as the early Christian communities served as the cradle of Catholicity? Are they not always the open school, both theoretical and practical, where the worker learns the science of the production and distribution of wealth, where he studies, without masters and without books, by his own experience solely, the laws of that industrial organisation, which was the ultimate aim of the Revolution of ’89, but of which our greatest and most famous revolutionists caught only a glimpse? What a topic for me, for the manifestation of a facile sympathy, which is not the less disinterested, in that it is always sincere! With what pride do I recall that I too wanted to found an association, more than that, the central agency and circulating organ of workers’ associations! And how I cursed that Government, which, with an expenditure of 300 million, could not find a cent which it could use for the benefit of poor workers…!

  I have better than that to offer to associations. I am convinced that at this moment they would give much for an idea, and it is ideas that I am bringing them. I should decline their approval, if I could obtain it only by flattery. If those of their members who may read these pages will but deign to remember that, in treating of association, it is a principle, even less than that, a hypothesis, that I discuss: it is not this or that enterprise, for which, in spite of its name, association is in nowise responsible, and of which the success in point of fact, does not depend upon association. I speak of Association in general, not of associations, whatever they may be.