Property Is Theft!

by Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

  The consequences will not take long to be felt: the citizen and commune being deprived of all dignity, the invasions of the State increase, and the cost to the taxpayers grows proportionally. It is no longer the government that is made for the people, it is the people that is made for the government. Power invades everything, seizes everything, claims everything, in perpetuity, forever, for good: War and the Navy, Administration, Justice, Police, Public Education, Public works and repairs; Banks, Stock Exchange, Credit, Insurance, Assistance, Savings, Charity; Forests, Canals, Rivers; Religions, Finances, Customs, Commerce, Agriculture, Industry, Transportation. On the whole lot, a tremendous Tax, which strips from the nation a quarter of its gross product. The only thing the citizen has to do is to carry out his little task in his little corner, getting his little salary, raising his little family, and leaving anything else to the government’s Providence.

  Faced with this predisposition of minds, in the midst of powers hostile to the Revolution, what was the thought of the founders of’89, [being] sincere friends of liberty? Not daring to break the body of the State, they had to concern themselves above all with two things: 1st, to contain Power, always ready to usurp; 2nd, to contain the people, always ready to be led by its tribunes and to replace the morals of legality by the ones of omnipotence.

  Until now, indeed, the authors of constitutions—Sieyès, Mirabeau, the 1814 Senate, the 1830 Chamber, the 1848 Assembly—believed, not without reason, that the major point of the political system was to contain the central Power, while leaving it with the greatest freedom of action and the greatest force. To reach this goal, what were we doing? Firstly, as it was said, we were dividing Power into ministerial categories; then we were dividing legislative authority between royalty and the Chambers, with the prince’s choice of ministers subject to the majority vote of the later. Finally taxation was voted on yearly by the Chamber, which seized this opportunity to review the government’s acts.

  However, whilst one was organising the negotiating of the Chambers against the ministers, one was balancing the royal prerogative by the representatives’ initiative, the authority of the crown by the sovereignty of the nation, whilst one was matching words with words, fictions with fictions, one was giving the government, without any reserve, without any other counterbalance than a vain faculty of criticism, the prerogative of a huge administration; one was putting in its hands all the forces of the country; one was suppressing, for more safety, local liberties; one was destroying parochialism ; one was creating, finally a formidable, overwhelming, power to which one was giving oneself the pleasure of waging a war of epigrams, as if reality were sensitive to personalities. Well, what happened? The opposition ended up being considered right by the people: ministries fell one after the other; one dynasty was overthrown, then a second, empire replaced republic, and the centralising anonymous despotism grew, [while] liberty declined. Such has been our progress since the victory of the Jacobins over the Girondists. This was the inevitable result of an artificial system, where metaphysical sovereignty and the right to criticise were put on one side, and all the realities of national domain, all the powers of action of a great people, on the other.

  In the federative system, such anxieties would not exist. The central authority, initiator rather than executor, only has a quite restricted part of the public administration, the one concerning federal services; it is placed in the hands of the States, absolute masters of themselves, and having for everything that concerns them the most complete, legislative, executive and judicial authority. The central power is all the better since [it is] subordinate and entrusted to an Assembly formed of delegates of the States, members themselves, quite often, of their respective governments, and who, by this reason, exert over the federal assembly’s acts supervision all the more jealous and severe.

  The difficulties faced by the publicist in containing the masses were no less great; the means employed by them all too illusory, and the outcome just as unfortunate.

  The people are also one of the powers of the State, the one whose explosions are the most terrible. This power needs a counterweight: democracy itself is forced to acknowledge it, since it is the absence of this counterweight which, delivering people to the most dangerous incitements, leaving the State exposed to the most incredible insurrections, has twice brought down the republic in France.

  One thought to find the counterweight to the masses’ action in two institutions, one very costly for the country and full of dangers, the [other] one no less dangerous, [and] particularly painful to the public conscience: they are, 1st, the permanent army, [and] 2nd, restrictions on the right to vote. Since 1848, universal suffrage has become the law of the State: the fear of democratic unrest having grown in proportion, one had no choice but to also augment the army, to give more support to military action [de donner plus de nerf à l’action militaire]. So that, to protect oneself from popular rebellion, one is obliged to, in the system of the founders of ’89, increase the strength of Power at the very time one takes on the other hand precautions against it. So that, the day Power and the People hold out their hands to each other, all that scaffolding will collapse. Strange system where the People cannot exert sovereignty without the risk of breaking the government, nor the government exercise its prerogative without marching into absolutism!

  The federative system puts a stop to the agitation of the masses, to all the ambitions and incitements of demagogy: it is the end of the regime of the public square, of the triumphs of tribunes, of the absorption [of public life] by capital cities. What is the point if Paris, within its walls, has revolutions if Lyons, Marseilles, Toulouse, Bordeaux, Nantes, Rouen, Lille, Strasbourg, Dijon, etc., if departments, masters of themselves, do not follow? Paris will have wasted its time… The federation thus becomes the salvation of the people: because it saves it, by division, from the tyranny of its leaders and from its own madness.

  The 1848 Constitution, on one hand, removed the command of the army from the President of the republic, on the other hand had tried to avert this double danger of usurpation by the central Power and revolt by the people. But the 1848 Constitution did not say what progress consisted of, under what conditions it could be carried out. In the system it had founded, distinction of classes, bourgeoisie and people, still remained: we saw it during the discussion on the right of work and the law of 31st May restricting universal suffrage. The unitary prejudice was stronger than ever; Paris giving the tone, the idea, the will to the departments, it was easy to see that, in case of a conflict between the President and the Assembly, the people would follow its elected leader rather than its representatives. Events confirmed these predictions. The day of 2nd December showed what purely legal guarantees are worth against a Power that united popular favour with administrative strength, and that also has its own right. But if, for example, at the same time as the republican Constitution of 1848, municipal and departmental organisation had been made and implemented; if the provinces had learnt to live a proper life again; if they had had their share of the executive power, if the inert multitude of the 2nd December had been something in the State beyond mere voters, the coup d’état would have been impossible. The battlefield being limited to [the area] between the Elysee palace645 and the Palais-Bourbon, 646 the hue and cry of the executive power would have enthused at the very most only the garrison of Paris and the personnel of the ministries.647

  […]

  The idea of Federation is certainly the highest to which the political genius has risen until now. It exceeds by far the French constitutions promulgated for seventy years in spite of the Revolution, and whose short duration honours our country so little. It solves all the difficulties that the accord of Liberty and Authority raises. With it, we do not have to be afraid of sinking in governmental antinomies; of seeing the plebes emancipating themselves by proclaiming a perpetual dictatorship, the bourgeoisie manifesting its liberalism by pushing centralisation to excess, the public spirit corrupting itself in this debauchery of
licentiousness copulating with despotism, power coming back constantly into the hands of an intriguer, as Robespierre would call them, and the revolution, in the words of Danton, always remaining with the most villainous. Eternal reason is at last vindicated, scepticism defeated. One will no longer blame human misfortune on the failings of Nature, the irony of Providence, or the contradiction of the Mind; the opposition of principles finally appears as the condition of universal balance.

  CHAPTER XI

  Economic Ratification: Agricultural-Industrial Federation

  Not everything has been explained yet. However irreproachable the federal constitution may be in its logic, in the guarantees that it offers in its practice, it can only last as long as it does not encounter constant causes of dissolution in public economy. In other words, political right must have the buttress of economic right. If the production and distribution of wealth is left to chance; if the federative order only serves to protect capitalist and mercantile anarchy; if, by the effect of that false anarchy, Society is divided in two classes, one of owners-capitalists-entrepreneurs, the other of wage-earning proletarians; one rich, the other poor; then the political structure will always be unstable. The working class, the most numerous and poorest class, will end up by seeing it only as a deception; the workers will unite against the bourgeois, who for their part will unite against the workers; and we will see the confederation degenerate, if the people is the strongest, into an unitary democracy, if the bourgeoisie triumphs, into a constitutional monarchy.

  It is in anticipation of the possibility of a social war, as was said in the previous chapter, that strong governments were formed, the object of admiration by publicists who think that confederations are unable to preserve Power from the aggression of the masses; that is, activities of the government against the rights of the nation. For, once again, make no mistake about it: all power is established, all citadels built, all armies organised against the internal at least as much as the external threat. If the mission of the State is to make itself absolute master of society, and the fate of the people is to serve as a tool for its activities, we have to recognise that the federative system cannot be compared with the unitary system. There, neither the central power because of its dependence, nor the multitude by its division, can one act more than the other against public liberty. The Swiss, after their victories over Charles-the-Bold,648 were for a long time the first military power of Europe. But, because they formed a confederation, capable of defending itself against external threats but proving inept at conquest and coups d’État, they remained a peaceful republic, the most harmless and the least ambitious of States. The German Confederation also had, under the name of Empire, its centuries of glory; but, because the imperial power lacked fixedness and centre, the Confederation was torn to pieces, dismantled, and nationality jeopardised. The Netherlands Confederation vanished in its turn after contact with centralised powers: there is no need to mention the Italian Confederation. Yes, indeed, if civilisation, if the economy of societies had to maintain the ancient statu quo, imperial unity would be better for people than federation.

  But everything tells that times have changed, and that the revolution of interests must follow, as a legitimate consequence, the revolution of ideas. The twentieth century will open the era of federations,649 or humanity will begin another thousand years of purgatory. The real problem to solve is not actually the political problem, it is the economic problem. My friends and I suggested continuing the work of the February Revolution by this last solution. The Democracy was in power; the provisional government only had to act to succeed; had the revolution been carried out in the sphere of work and wealth, one would not have had any trouble to implement it afterwards in government. Centralisation, which would have had to be broken later, had momentarily been a great help. Besides, nobody at that time, except perhaps the one who writes these lines and who has declared himself an anarchist since 1840, was thinking of attacking unity and calling for federation.

  The democratic prejudice decided otherwise. The politics of the old school maintained, and still maintain today, that the correct procedure, for a social revolution, was to start with government, and to deal afterwards, at leisure, with work and property. The Democracy declined to accept responsibility after having supplanted the bourgeoisie and chased away the prince, and so what had to happen happened. The Empire has imposed silence upon those speakers without plans; the economic revolution was carried out in the opposite direction to the aspirations of 1848, and liberty has been compromised.

  One suspects that I am not going to present the whole of the economic science of federation and list everything that ought to be done as regards this. I am simply saying that the federative government, before reforming the political order, must in addition implement a series of reforms in the economic domain: here are a few words on what these reforms consist of.

  Just as from a political standpoint, two or more independent States confederate to jointly guarantee their territorial integrity or for the protection of their liberties; just as from an economic standpoint, one can federate for a mutual protection of commerce and industry, what we call a customs union ; one can federate for the construction and maintenance of communication routes, roads, canals, railways, for the organisation of credit and insurance, etc. The aim of these particular federations is to shield the citizens of the contracting State from bankocratic and capitalist exploitation as much from the inside as from the outside; they form by their ensemble, in opposition to the prevailing financial feudalism of today, what I will call an agricultural-industrial federation.

  I will not go into detail on this topic. The public, that for fifteen years has been following my works, knows what I mean. Financial and industrial feudalism has for its aim to establish, by monopolisation of public services, by privilege of education, the extreme division of labour, interest on capital, inequalities in taxation, etc., the political decay of the masses, economic serfdom or wage-labour, in a word, the inequality of conditions and fortunes. The agricultural-industrial federation, on the contrary, tends to approximate equality more and more by the organisation, at the lowest price and not in the hands of the State; of all public services; by mutual credit and insurance, by the balancing out of taxes, by guaranteeing work and education, by a combination of work to allow each worker to evolve from a mere labourer to a skilled worker or even an artist, and from a wage-earner to their own master.

  Such a revolution would not be the work of a bourgeois monarchy nor of a unitary democracy; it will be the result of a federation. It does not come under the unilateral or charity contract nor by charity institutions; it is an exclusive feature of the synallagmatic and commutative contract.650

  Considered in itself, the idea of an industrial federation acting as a complement to and ratification of the political federation receives the most striking confirmation by the principles of economics. It is the implementation on the highest scale of the principles of mutuality, of division of labour and of economic solidarity, that the will of people will have transformed into laws of the State.

  That labour remains free; that power, more deadly to work than community [communauté] itself, refrains from touching it: that would be a fine idea. But industries are sisters; they are parts of the same body;651 one cannot suffer without the others suffering because of it. I wish that they federate then, not to absorb one another and merge, but to mutually guarantee the conditions of prosperity that are common to them all and on which none can claim a monopoly. By forming such a pact, they will not infringe their liberty; they will only give it more certainty and strength. They will be like the powers of the State, or the organs of an animal, whose separation is precisely what makes it powerful and harmonious.

  Thus, wonderful thing, zoology, political economy and politics are all in agreement: first, that the most perfect animal, the one best served by its organs, and consequently the most active, the most intelligent, the best formed for dominance, is the one whose faculties and
limbs are the most specialised, separated out, co-ordinated; second, that the most productive society, the richest, the best insured against over-development [of wealth] and pauperism, is the one in which work is the most divided, competition the most whole, exchange the most honest, distribution the most regular, salaries the fairest, property [ownership] the most equal, all industries guaranteeing one another; third, finally, the freest and most moral government is the one where powers are the best divided, administration the best distributed, independence of groups the most respected, the provincial, cantonal, and municipal authorities the best served by central authority; it is, in a word, the federative government.

  Thus, just as the monarchic or authoritarian principle has for its first consequence the assimilation or integration of the groups associated with it, in other words, administrative centralisation, what we could even call the community [communauté] of the political household; for its second consequence, the indivisibility of power, in other words absolutism; for its third consequence, rural and industrial feudalism; likewise the federative principle, liberal par excellence, has for its first consequence the administrative independence of the assembled localities; for its second consequence the separation of power in each sovereign State; [and] for its third consequence the agricultural-industrial federation.

  In a republic set up on such foundations, one can say that liberty is raised to its third power, authority reduced to its cubic root. The former, indeed, grows with the State, in other words multiplies itself along with the federations; the later, subordinate from level to level [in the social organisation], is only found whole within the family where it is tempered by both conjugal and paternal love.