Property Is Theft!

by Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

  Yours with all my heart.

  P-J PROUDHON

  THE FEDERATIVE PRINCIPLE

  AND THE NECESSITY OF RECONSTITUTING THE PARTY OF THE REVOLUTION

  1863

  Translation by Nathalie Colibert (First Part) and Ian Harvey

  (Conclusion)

  FIRST PART

  ON THE PRINCIPLE OF FEDERATION

  CHAPTER VI

  Posing Of The Political Problem: Principle Of The Solution

  IF THE READER HAS FOLLOWED WITH SOME DILIGENCE THE PREVIOUS EXPOSITION, human society must appear to him like a fantastic creation, full of surprises and mysteries. We shall briefly recall the different terms:a. Political order rests on two related, opposed and irreducible principles: Authority and Liberty.

  b. Two contrary regimes in parallel are deduced from these two principles: the authoritarian or absolutist regime, and the liberal regime.620

  c. The forms of these two regimes also differ amongst themselves, incompatible and irreconcilable in their natures; we have defined them in two words: Indivisibility and Separation.

  d. Now, reason points out all theory must go according to its principle, all existence according to its law: logic is the requirement of life and of thought. But it is exactly the opposite that expresses itself in politics: neither authority nor liberty can constitute itself apart, give rise to a system that would exclusively be proper to each one; far from it; they are condemned in their respective institutions to borrow from each other in a perpetual and mutual way.621

  e. The consequence is that loyalty to principles exists only as an ideal in politics, practice having to be subject to all sorts of compromises, the government limits itself, in the final analysis, despite the best will and all the virtue of the world, to an equivocal hybrid creation to a crowding of regimes [une promiscuité de régimes] that strict logic renounces, and in front of which good faith recoils. Not a single government escapes this contradiction.

  f. Conclusion: the arbitrary inevitably entering into politics, corruption soon becomes the soul of power and society is trained, without rest nor mercy, on the endless slope of revolutions.

  That is where the world is. It is neither the consequence of satanical spite nor of a failing of our nature, nor of a providential condemnation, nor a passing fancy of fortune nor of fate stopping: that is how things are. It is down to us to get the most we can out of this odd situation.

  Let us consider that for over eight thousand years—historical records go no further—all types of government, all social and political combinations have been successively tried, abandoned, resumed, modified, travestied, exhausted, and that failure has continuously rewarded the reformers’ zeal and misled the people’s hope. Always the flag of liberty was used to shelter despotism, always the privileged classes have surrounded themselves with, in the very interest of their privileges, egalitarian and liberal institutions; always parties have lied about their program, and always indifference replaced faith, corruption of the civic spirit, states have perished by the development of the ideas on which they were founded. The most vigorous and the most intelligent races wore themselves out in this work: history is full of accounts of their struggles. Sometimes a series of triumphs created illusions in the strength of the State, making one believe the constitution to be excellent, the government wise, when neither existed. But with peace arising, the vices of the system emerged for all to see and the people were simply having a rest in civil war from the fatigue of external war. Thus humanity went from revolution to revolution: the most famous nations, the ones that have lasted longest, have supported themselves in no other way. Among all known governments there is not a single one that, if it were condemned to subsist by its own virtue, would live as long as a man could. Strange fact, heads of States and their ministers are of all men those who believe least that the system they represent would last; until science comes, it is the masses’ faith that supports governments. The Greeks and Romans, who bequeathed us their institutions with their examples, having reached the most interesting time of their evolution, bury themselves in their despair; and modern society seems to have reached in its turn to a time of anxiety. Do not trust agitators who shout the words Liberty, Equality, Nationality: they know nothing; they are dead men who claim they can resurrect the dead. The public listens to them for a while, as it would to buffoons and charlatans; then it moves on, devoid of reason and with a sorry conscience.

  A sure sign that our dissolution is near and that a new era is going to open is that the confusion of language and ideas has reached the point that anybody can declare himself as much as he likes to be republican, monarchist, democrat, bourgeois, conservative, distributionist, liberal and all of these at once, without the fear that someone will prove him to be lying or mistaken. The princes and barons of the First Empire had experimented with sans-culottism. The bourgeoisie of 1814, gorged with the nation’s goods, the only thing that it had understood from the institutions of ’89 was [that they were] liberal, even revolutionary; 1830 remade it conservative; 1849 made it reactionary, catholic and more than ever monarchist. The February republicans are currently serving Victor-Emmanuel’s monarchy622 whilst the June socialists declared themselves623 unitarist [unitaires]. Some of Ledru-Rollin’s former friends join the Empire [considering it] as the veritable revolutionary expression and the most paternal form of government; others, it is true, call them traitors, but fly into rage against federalism. It is systematic mess, organised confusion, continuous apostasy, universal treason.

  We must know if society can get to something regular, equitable and permanent, that satisfies reason and conscience or if we are condemned for eternity to this Ixion wheel.624 Is the problem insoluble?…Could you be a bit more patient, reader; and if I do not get you out of this mess in a short while, you will have the right to say that logic is wrong, progress is an illusion and liberty an utopia. Would you please reason with me for a few more minutes, although in such a matter, to reason is to expose yourself to self-deception and to waste your efforts as well as your reason.

  1. First, you will notice that both principles, Authority and Liberty, origin of all evil, show themselves in history in a chronological and logical succession. Authority, like family, like the father, genitor, is the first to appear; it has initiative, it is assertion. Questioning Liberty [La Liberté raisonneuse] comes afterwards: it is criticism, protest, determination. The fact of this succession results from the very definition of ideas and the nature of things and the whole of history testifies to it. There, no inversion is possible, nor the least trace of the arbitrary.

  2. Another observation (by no means any less important), it is that the authoritarian regime, paternal and monarchist, moves further away from its ideal as the family, tribe or city becomes more numerous and as the State grows in population and in territory: so that the more authority spreads, the more it becomes intolerable, hence the concessions that it is obliged to make to Liberty. Conversely, the regime of liberty comes near to its ideal and multiplies its chances of success as the State grows greater in population and in its area, [as] relationships multiply and science gains ground. Firstly, it is a constitution which is called for from all sides; later it will be decentralisation. Wait again and you will see emerge the idea of federation. So that we can say of Liberty and Authority what John the Baptist said of himself and Jesus: Illam oportet crescere, hanc autem minui.625

  This double motion, one of regression, the other of progress, resolves itself in an unique phenomenon, also results from the definition of principles, their relative position and their roles: here again not a single ambiguity is possible, not the slightest place for the arbitrary. The fact is obviously objective and of mathematical certainty; it is what we will call a LAW.

  3. The consequence of this law, which we can call necessary, is in itself necessary: it is that the principle of authority seeming to be the first, being used as the material or subject for the elaboration of Liberty, reason and right, is little by little su
bordinated to the juridical, rational and liberal principle; the head of State first immune, irresponsible, absolute, like the father in the family, becomes responsible to reason, first subject of law, finally a simple agent, instrument or servant of Liberty itself.

  This third suggestion is as certain as the first two, safe from all ambiguity and contradiction and highly vouched for by history. In the perpetual struggle of both principles, the French Revolution, as well as the Reformation, looks like a crucial period. It marks the time when, in the political order, Liberty officially supplants Authority, just as the Reformation had marked the moment when, in religious order, free examination prevailed over faith. Since Luther, belief has everywhere become questioning [raisonneuse ]; orthodoxy as well as heresy pretended to lead man to faith using reason, Saint Paul’s precept, rationabile sit obsequium vestrum, that your obedience be reasoned, has been widely commented upon and put into practice. Rome started to discuss like Geneva626; religion tends to show itself as science; submission to the Church surrounded itself with so many conditions and reservations that, except for the difference of articles of faith, there was no more difference between a Christian and a non-believer. They are not of the same opinion, that is all: besides, thought, reason, consciousness behave the same in both. Likewise, since the French Revolution, respect towards authority has weakened; deference to orders of the prince has become conditional; one expected reciprocities from the monarch, guarantees; the political constitution changed, the most fervent royalists, like the [King] John-Lackland barons, wanted to have deeds and MM. Berreyer, de Falloux, de Montalembert,627 etc., can claim to be as liberal as our democrats. Chateaubriand, the Restoration bard, bragged of being a philosopher and a republican; it was by a pure act of his free will that he made himself an advocate of the altar and of the throne. We know what became of the violent Catholicism of Lamennais.628

  Thus, while authority, from day to day more precarious, collapses, right becomes more precise, and liberty, always precarious, becomes nevertheless more real and stronger. Absolutism does its best to resist, but is on its way out; it seems that the REPUBLIC, always fought against, held in contempt, betrayed, banished, is getting nearer every day. What advantage are we going to take of this essential fact for the constitution of government?629

  CHAPTER VII

  Extrication Of The Idea Of Federation

  Since, in theory and in history, Authority and Liberty follow one another as by a kind of polarisation;

  That the first declines imperceptibly and withdraws whilst the second grows and reveals itself;

  That a kind of subordination results from this double movement in accordance of which Authority takes up more and more the cause of Liberty [au droit de la Liberté];

  Since, in other words, the liberal or contractual regime from day to day gets the upper hand over the authoritarian regime, it is to the idea of contract that we must attach ourselves to as a dominant idea of politics.

  First, what do we mean by contract?

  The contract, says the civil code art. 1101, is a convention by which one or several person(s) binds themselves towards one or several others to do or not to do something.

  Art. 1102. It is bilateral or synallagmatic when the contracting parties bind themselves to one another in a mutual way.

  Art.1103. It is unilateral when one or several person(s) are bound to one or several others, without any commitment in return.

  Art.1104. It is commutative when each of the parties commits itself to give or do a thing which is considered the equivalent of what is given or is done for it. When the equivalent consists of a gain or of a loss for each of the parties, following an uncertain event, the contract is risky.

  Art. 1105. The contract of charity is one in which one of the parties gives to the other a completely gratuitous benefit.

  Art.1106. The onerous contract is one that subjects each one of the parties to give or do something.

  Art.1371. We call quasi-contracts the voluntary acts of man, from which results some commitment towards a third party and sometimes a reciprocal commitment of both parties.

  To these distinctions and definitions of the Code, related to the form and condition of the contract, I will add a last one, concerning their subject:

  According to the nature of things we deal with or the object we offer each other, the contracts are domestic, civil, commercial or political.

  It is this last type of contract, the political contract, that we are going to deal with.

  The idea of contract is not entirely foreign to the monarchical regime, no more than it is to fatherhood and the family. However, according to what we have said about the principles of liberty and authority and their role in the formation of governments, one understands that these principles do not intervene in the same way in the making of the political contract; that therefore the obligation which binds the monarch to his subjects, a spontaneous obligation, unwritten, resulting from the clannishness and quality of the people, is a unilateral obligation, since in accordance with the principle of obedience, the subject is obliged more towards the prince than vice versa. The theory of divine right expressly says that the monarch is responsible only to God. It can even happen that the contract of the prince to the subject degenerates into a contract of pure charity, when by inertia or by idolising the citizens, the prince is requested to take hold of authority and to take care of his subjects, [considered] incapable of governing and defending themselves, like a shepherd and flock. It is much worse when the principle of heredity is accepted. A plotter like the duke of Orleans, later Louis XII, a parricide like Louis XI, an adulteress like Mary-Stuart, retain, despite their crimes, their potential right to the crown. Birth making them inviolable, one can say that a quasi-contract exists between them and the subjects faithful to the prince they have to follow. In short, by the mere fact that authority is preponderant in the monarchical system, the contract is not equal.

  The political contract only acquires all its dignity and morality provided that 1) it is synallagmatic and commutative; 2) it is contained, as to its object, in certain limits: two conditions that one supposed to exist under the democratic regime, but that, here again, are most often only a fiction. Can one say that in a representative and centralised democracy, in a constitutional monarchy based on restricted suffrage, all the more so in a communist republic, such as Plato’s, the political contract that binds the citizen to the State is equal and reciprocal? Can one say that this contract, which takes away from the citizens half or two thirds of their sovereignty and quarter of their product, be contained in fair limits? It would be more true to say, what experience confirms too often, that the contract, in all these systems, is outrageous, onerous, since it is for a more or less considerable part without compensation; and risky, since the promised advantage, already insufficient, is not even assured.

  So that the political contract fulfils the synallagmatic and commutative condition that suggests the idea of democracy; so that, contained within wise limits, it remains advantageous and practical to all, the citizen by entering the association must: 1) have as much to receive from the State as he gives up to it; 2) keep all his liberty, his sovereignty and his initiative, minus what is related to the special objects for which the contract is formed and for which one asks for the guarantee of the State. Thus settled and understood, the political contract is what I call federation.

  Federation, from the Latin foedus, genitive foederis, i.e. pact, contract, treaty, convention, alliance, etc., is a convention by which one or several heads of family, one or several communes or States, unite with each other in a mutual and equal way, for one or more specific tasks, whose responsibility specially and exclusively falls to the delegates of the federation.630

  Let us go back to the definition.

  What makes the nature and the essence of the federative contract, and what I draw the reader’s attention to, is that in this system, the contracting parties, heads of families, communes, cantons, provinces or States, no
t only unite synallagmatically and commutatively with each other, they individually reserve for themselves, by forming the pact, more rights, liberty, authority, property, than they give up.

  This is not the case, for example, in the universal society of goods and earnings, authorised by the civil Code, in other words community [communauté ], picture in miniature of [all] absolute States. The one who commits oneself to such an association, especially if it is permanent, is surrounded by constraints, subjected to more burdens than one keeps [in] initiative. But that is also what makes this contract rare, and what in all times made the cenobital life unbearable.631 Any commitment, even a synallagmatic and commutative one, that, demands from the associates all their efforts, leaves nothing to their independence and sacrifices them entirely to the association, is an excessive commitment, one which is equally repugnant to the citizen and to the man.

  According to these principles, the contract of federation, having as an objective, in general terms, to guarantee the confederated States their sovereignty, their territory, their citizen’s liberty; to settle their disagreements; to provide, by general measures, everything of interest to the common prosperity and security, this contract, I am saying, despite the size of the interests committed, is basically limited. The Authority in charge of its execution can never get the upper hand over its constituents, I mean that the federal allocation [of tasks] can never exceed in number and in reality the communal or provincial ones, likewise these cannot exceed the rights and prerogatives of man and citizen. If it were different, the commune would be a community [communauté]; the federation would become again a centralised monarchy, the federal authority, instead of the mere agent [mandataire] and subordinate function that it should be, would be regarded as dominating, instead of being limited to a special service, it would tend to embrace all activity and all initiative; the confederated States would be converted into prefectures, intendancies,632 branches or local governments. The political body thus transformed could be called a republic, democracy or anything you like but it would no longer be a State constituted in the fullness of its autonomies, it would no longer be a confederation. The same thing would take place, even more so, if, by a false sense of economic efficiency, by deference or by some other cause, the communes, cantons or confederated States put one of themselves in charge of the administration and the others the government. The federative republic would become unitary; it would be on the road to despotism.633