Property Is Theft!

by Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

  When you come to the articles, “God” and “Property,” I would appreciate it if you let me know. You will see with a few explanatory words that there is more than paradox in the affirmations, “God is evil” and “Property is theft,” which I hold in the literal sense without thinking of making faith in God a crime or of abolishing property.

  Sincerely,

  P-J PROUDHON

  THE POLITICAL CAPACITY OF THE WORKING CLASSES

  1865

  Translation by Paul Sharkey (“To Some Workers” and Second Part:

  Chapter XV) and John Duda (Second Part: Chapter IV, Chapter VIII,

  Chapter XIII and Third Part: Chapter IV)

  TO SOME WORKERS FROM PARIS

  AND ROUEN WHO HAD SOUGHT HIS VIEWS OF THE ELECTIONS

  December 1864

  Citizens and friends,

  THIS ESSAY HAS BEEN INSPIRED BY YOURSELVES; IT BELONGS TO YOU.

  Ten months ago you asked me what my thoughts were regarding the electoral Manifesto issued by sixty workers from the [department of the] Seine. You were primarily interested in knowing whether, having cast a negative vote in the 1863 elections, you should abide by that line or whether, in the light of circumstances, it was legitimate for you to throw your votes and your influence behind the candidacy of a comrade deserving of your sympathy.

  As to the thinking behind the Manifesto, my opinion could scarcely have been in doubt and, in acknowledging receipt of your letters, I told you so frankly. Certainly, I was delighted at this awakening of Socialism; and who but I in the whole of France would have had more right to rejoice at it?… Moreover, I was in agreement with you and with the Sixty that the working class is not represented and that it is entitled to be: how could I possibly have thought otherwise? Today as in 1848, would not worker representation, if such a thing were possible, amount to, in political and economic terms, a formal affirmation of socialism?

  But I made no bones about there being, in my view, a huge gulf between this and participation in elections, which would have signed away, along with its democratic conscience, its principles and its future… And let me add that that reservation, which you welcomed to a man, has since been confirmed by experience.

  Where is the French Democracy, once so proud and pure, which, on the reassurances of a few ambitious men, suddenly imagined that it was about to stride from victory to victory on the basis of a false pledge? What gains have we made? By what brand new and mighty idea has our politics distinguished itself? Eighteen months on, what success has flagged up the forcefulness of our advocates and rewarded their palaver? Have we not been witness to their perpetual defeats and shortcomings? Gulled by their hollow parliamentarism, have we not seen them, on nearly every issue, routed by the Government’s speakers? And quite recently, when hauled before the courts on charges of unwarranted association and assembly and required to explain themselves to the Country and to the Powers that be, have they not been confounded by the very legality into which they invited us and as whose spokesmen they posed? What pathetic scheming! Such an even more pathetic defence! I will leave it to you to judge ... Finally, after all the noisy debates, are we in a position to deny that, at bottom, our representatives have no other ideas, tendencies or policies to offer than the Government’s policies, tendencies and ideas?

  So, thanks to them, the game is up for the young democracy just as it is for the elderly liberalism to which they would hitch it: the world is beginning to slip away from them both. Truth, it is said, and righteousness and liberty, are no more on their side than on any other.

  The issue, then, is to disclose to the world, on the basis of authentic testimony, the thinking, the true thinking of modern folk: to legitimise their reforming aspirations and entitlement to sovereignty. Universal suffrage, fact or fiction? Once again, the preoccupation has been with restricting it and the fact is that very few, outside of the labouring classes, take it seriously.

  The point is to show the labour Democracy which, for want of sufficient self-awareness and an inadequate appreciation of its Idea, has lent the backing of its votes to names that do not represent it, on what conditions a party ventures into political life; how, in a nation, the upper class having lost its grasp on and leadership of the movement, it falls to the lower class to pick up the baton and how a people incapable of self-regeneration by means of such an orderly succession is doomed to perish. The issue, dare I say it?, is to get it through to the French plebes that if, in 1869, it sets its sights on winning yet another battle on behalf of its masters, like the one it won for them in 1863–64, its emancipation may be postponed by a half a century.

  For—do not doubt this, my friends—protests registered in the form of blank ballot papers are badly misunderstood and not welcomed, but still cause the public some unease and the political world everywhere has started to engage in: this declaration of utter incompatibility between an outmoded system and our most cherished aspirations: this stoic veto, finally, which we pronounced upon presumptuous candidacies, was nothing less than a heralding of a new order of things, our self-possession as the party of righteousness and freedom, a solemn registration of our entry into political life and, if I may make so bold, a signalling to the old world of its imminent and inevitable downfall…

  I had undertaken, citizens, to explain myself to you on these matters; I have now honoured that promise. Do not judge this essay by its extent, which I might have reduced to forty pages; you will find herein but one idea, the IDEA of the new Democracy. But I thought it useful to present that Idea through a series of examples, so that friend and foe may know once and for all what it is that we seek and with whom they are dealing.

  Receive, citizens and friends, my fraternal greetings,

  P-J PROUDHON

  SECOND PART DEVELOPMENT OF THE WORKER IDEA:

  CREATION OF ECONOMIC RIGHT

  CHAPTER IV

  2. The Mutualist System, Or, On the Manifesto—Spontaneity of the Idea of Mutuality in the Modern Masses—Definition

  WHAT IS IMPORTANT to bring out in popular movements is their perfect spontaneity. Do the people obey an excitation or a suggestion from outside, or do they instead listen to a natural inspiration, intuition, or conception? In the study of revolutions, this is something that one could not be too careful in determining. Without a doubt the ideas that have agitated the masses in all epochs have bloomed previously in the brain of some thinker; in fact, when it comes to ideas, opinions, beliefs, errors, priority never is with the multitude, and it is far from being otherwise today. Priority, in all acts of the mind, belongs to individuality; the relationship between the terms indicates this. But it is hardly the case that every thought which seizes the individual will later on seize hold of the population; among the ideas which do lead to this, it is even less the case that they are always just and useful; and we say precisely that that which is important above all to the philosophical historian is to observe how the people attach themselves to certain ideas more than others, how they generalise them, develop them in their own manner, making from them institutions and customs which they follow traditionally, until they fall in the hands of legislators and justiciers,655 who make of them in their turn articles of law and rules for the tribunals.

  Thus, what is true of the idea of community is true of that of mutuality; it is as old as the social condition. Every now and then, some speculative types have glimpsed its organic power and revolutionary scope; never, until 1848, had it assumed the importance and affected the role that it appeared really to be on the verge of playing. Hence, it had lagged well behind the communist idea, which, after having thrown a rather grand radiance in antiquity and in the Middle Ages, thanks to the eloquence of sophists, the fanaticism of sectarians and the power of convents, seemed in our time to be on the verge of taking on a new force.

  The principle of mutuality had been explained for the first time, with a certain philosophical hauteur and a reforming intention, in that famous maxim that all the sages have repeated, and that our
Constitutions of Year II and Year III, following their example, placed in the Declaration des droits et des devoirs de l’homme et du citoyen:

  “Do not do to others that which you would not want done to you;

  “Always do to others the good which you would like to receive”

  This principle, so to speak double-edged, admired from age to age and never contradicted, inscribed, said the author of the Constitution of Year III, by nature in all of our hearts, presupposes, first, that the subject to whom this injunction is addressed is free; and second, that he can distinguish between good and evil, in other words, that he possesses justice within himself. Two things, I mean, Liberty and Justice, that take us very far beyond the idea of authority, [whether] collective or of divine right, on which, as we will see, the system of Luxembourg depends.

  Until the present this beautiful maxim has not been for the peoples, according to the language of the moralist theologians, anything but a bit of advice [conseil]. By virtue of the importance which it is accorded today and the manner in which the working classes demand that it be applied, it is becoming a PRECEPT, taking on a decidedly obligatory character, in a word, acquiring the force of law.

  Let us observe first off the progress accomplished in this regard in the working classes. I can read in the Manifesto of the Sixty:

  “Universal suffrage has been given to us for the most part politically; but it still remains for us to emancipate ourselves socially. The liberty that the Third-Estate knew how to acquire with such vigour must extend itself in France to all citizens. Equal political rights necessarily imply equal social rights.”

  Let us note this method of reasoning: “Without social equality, political equality is nothing but an empty word; universal suffrage a contradiction.” One leaves aside syllogistic reasoning and proceeds by assimilation: Political equality = social equality. This turn of mind [espirit] is new; moreover it suggests, as a first principle, individual liberty.

  “The bourgeoisie, our older sister in emancipation, had to absorb the nobility and destroy unjust privileges in ’89. It is now up to us not to destroy the rights which the middle classes justly enjoy, but to acquire for ourselves the same liberty of action.”

  And a little further on:

  “If only they would not accuse us of dreaming of agrarian laws, chimerical equality, that puts each on the bed of Procrustes; division [of wealth], maximum [prices], excessive taxation, etc. No, it is time to be finished with these calumnies propagated by our enemies and adopted by the ignorant.—Liberty, credit, solidarity, these are our dreams.”

  It concludes with these words:

  “The day where they (our dreams) are realised, there will no longer be bourgeois, nor proletarians, nor bosses, nor workers.”

  All this writing is a bit dodgy. No one stripped the nobility of their wealth in 1789; the confiscations came later, as an act of war.656 One contented oneself with abolishing certain privileges incompatible with right and freedom, and that the nobility had unjustly arrogated to themselves, this abolition had determined its absorption. Now, it goes without saying that the proletariat did not ask beyond this to deprive the bourgeoisie of their acquired goods, nor of any the rights which it enjoyed justly; one only wanted to realise, under the perfectly juridical and legal names of liberty of labour, credit, solidarity , certain reforms of which would result in the abolition of—what?—the rights, privileges, and so forth that the bourgeoisie enjoyed exclusively; by this method to make it such that there would neither be bourgeois nor proletarians anymore, i.e., to absorb it into itself.

  In two words: as the bourgeoisie did to the nobility during the Revolution of 1789, thus will be done to it by the proletariat in the new revolution, and since in 1789 there had been no injustice committed, in the new revolution, which has taken its older sister as a model, there will not be any committed either.

  That said, the Manifesto develops its thought with a growing energy.

  “We are not represented, we who refuse to believe that poverty is a divine institution. Charity, a Christian virtue, has radically proved and acknowledged its impotency as a social institution. In the time of the sovereignty of the people, of universal suffrage, it can no longer be only a private virtue... We do not want to be clients657or recipients of charity; we want to become EQUALS. We refuse hand-outs, we want justice.”

  What do you say about this declaration? As you yourselves have done, our bourgeois elders, thus we wish to do. Is that clear enough?

  “Enlightened by experience, we do not hate men; we wish to change things”

  This is as decisive as it is radical. And the allegedly democratic Opposition pursued previous campaigns under a similar profession of faith!

  Thus the Sixty, by their dialectic as by their ideas, leaves behind the old routine of communist and bourgeoisie. They want neither exclusive privileges nor exclusive rights; they have abandoned this materialist equality which places man on a Procrustean bed; they affirm the liberty of labour, condemned by the Luxembourg Commission in the inquiry into piecework [le travail à la tâche]; they accept competition [concurrence], even though this is equally condemned by the Luxembourg Commission, they proclaim at the same time solidarity and responsibility; they want no more clientèles,658 no more hierarchies. What they want is equality and dignity, unceasing agent of social and economic equalisation; they reject handouts and all the institutions of charity; in its place, they demand JUSTICE.

  The majority among them are members of mutual credit societies, of mutual aid societies, of which they tell us that thirty five function, without fanfare, in the capital; directors of industrial societies, in which communism has been banned and which are founded on the principle of participation, recognised by the Code, and on that of mutuality.

  From the point of view of the courts, the same workers demand chambers of workers and chambers of entrepreneurs [chambres patronales], complementing each other, controlling each other and balancing each other; executive syndicates and tribunals [prud’hommies]; in short, a total reorganisation of industry, under the jurisdiction of those who compose it.659

  In all of this, they say, universal suffrage is their supreme rule. One of the first and most powerful effects shall be, according to them, to reconstitute, according to new relations, natural groups of labour, that is to say, workers’ corporations.—This word corporations is one of those most frequently used to accuse these workers; we are not afraid of it. Do not judge based on words, look at the things themselves, as we do.

  This is sufficient, it seems to me, to demonstrate that the mutualist idea has penetrated, in a new and original fashion, the working classes; that they have appropriated it; that they have more or less deepened it; that they apply it with reflection, that they have anticipated its development, in a word, that they have made of it their new faith and their new religion. Nothing is more authentic than this movement, which remains weak at the moment, but which is destined to absorb not only a nobility of several hundred thousand souls, but a bourgeoisie reckoned in the millions, and to regenerate the entirety of Christian society.

  Let us look now at the idea itself.

  The French word mutuel, mutualité, mutuation,660 which has for a synonym reciprocal, reciprocity, comes from the Latin mutuum, which signifies a loan (for consumption), and in a larger sense, exchange. One knows that in the loan for consumption the object loaned is consumed by the borrower, who for this returns only the equivalent, whether of the same nature, or in a totally different form. Suppose that the lender becomes in his turn a borrower, you will have a mutual loan, therefore an exchange; such is the logical link which has given the same name to two different operations. Nothing is more elementary than this notion: also I will not insist any further on the logical and grammatical side. What is interesting to us is to know how, under this idea of mutuality, reciprocity, exchange, JUSTICE, substituted for those of authority, community [communauté], or charity, one comes to construct, in politics and in political economy, a syst
em of relations which tends to do nothing less than to change the social order from top to bottom.

  In what capacity, first, and under what influence has the idea of mutuality seized hold of these minds?

  We have seen previously how the school of Luxembourg understands the relationship of man and citizen vis-à-vis society and the State: according to it, this relationship is one of subordination. Authoritarian and communist organisation follows from this.

  To this governmental conception is now opposed that of the partisans of individual liberty, according to whom society must be considered, not as a hierarchy of functions and faculties, but as a system of equilibrations between free forces, in which each is assured the enjoyment of the same rights on the condition of fulfilling the same duties, obtaining the same advantages in exchange for the same services, a system therefore essentially egalitarian and liberal, which excludes all recognition of wealth, rank, and class. Now, see how these anti-authoritarians, or liberals, reason and conclude.

  They maintain that, since human nature is the highest expression in the Universe, not to mention the incarnation of universal Justice, man and citizen derives his rights directly from the dignity of his nature, even as later on he will derive his well-being directly from his personal labour and the good usage of his faculties, in consideration of the free exercise of his talents and virtues. They say therefore that the State is nothing but the result of the free union formed between subjects who are equal, independent, and all upholding justice; that thus it stands for nothing but their combined freedoms and interests; that any disagreement between Power and this or that citizen reduces itself into a debate between citizens; that, as a consequence, there is no other prerogative in society but that of freedom, and no other supremacy than that of Right. Authority and charity, they say, have had their time; in their place we want justice.