292 Marx-Engels Collected Works 44: 3–4.
293 Rudolf Rocker, “Marx and Anarchism,” The Poverty of Statism (Orkney: Cienfuegos Press, 1981), Albert Meltzer (ed.), 77.
294 Marx-Engels Collected Works 4: 31.
295 Liberty 35 (1883): 2.
296 Liberty 92 (1887): 1.
297 What Is Property?, 264.
298 Capital 1: 730–1.
299 Capital 1: 451. Engels in one of his many introductions to Capital notes that “passages from economic writers are quoted in order to indicate when, where and by whom a certain proposition was for the first time clearly enunciated” (111). Clearly Marx could not bring himself to acknowledge that Proudhon had first formulated this part of his critique of capitalism.
300 Marx-Engels Collected Works 4: 52.
301 The First International, 331.
302 What Is Property?, 171.
303 Capital 1: 1011–2, 270, 731.
304 “Marx and Anarchism,” 77.
305 Marx-Engels Reader, 486.
306 The First International, 90.
307 Marx-Engels Collected Works 47: 239, 389.
308 Capital: A Critique of Political Economy (London: Penguin Books, 1981) 3: 571–72, 572, 743.
309 Theories of Surplus Value, (London: Lawrence and Wishart , 1972) 3: 472.
310 Quoted in Edward Hyams, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon: His Revolutionary Life, Mind and Works (London: John Murray, 1979), 188.
311 Marx-Engels Collected Works 38: 97, 103.
312 System of Economical Contradictions, 55.
313 What Is Property?, 310, 363, 372, 365.
314 Œuvres Completès 19: 295, 305.
315 Theories of Surplus Value 3: 525.
316 Capital 3: 735, 1015.
317 Marx-Engels Collected Works 38: 105.
318 Capital 3: 467.
319 Theories of Surplus Value 3: 525–6.
320 The First International, 82.
321 Quoted in Woodcock, Proudhon, 125. The expression “the emancipation of the working class is the task of the working class itself ” was first used by the remarkable socialist-feminist Flora Tristan in 1843 (Mattick, 333).
322 Although Marx, unlike Proudhon, repeatedly stated that universal suffrage gave the working class political power and so could be used to capture the state. See section H.3.10 of An Anarchist FAQ.
323 Marx-Engels Reader, 507–8.
324 Marx-Engels Reader, 496.
325 Quoted in Thomas, 211.
326 All quotes unless indicated otherwise are from this work.
327 Vincent, 230.
328 “He wished to soar as a man of science above the bourgeoisie and the proletarians; he is only the petty bourgeois, tossed about constantly between capital and labour, between political economy and communism” (137). If Marx embodied proletarian socialism, regardless of whether the proletariat knew this or not, then Proudhon must, by definition, represent another class. Given the starting assumption, what other conclusion could flow?
329 Thus we find Marx ignoring Proudhon’s analysis of classes in capitalism in favour of this assertion: “What... is this Prometheus resuscitated by M. Proudhon? It is society, it is the social relations based on the antagonism of classes... Efface these relations and you have extinguished the whole of society, and your Prometheus is nothing more than a phantom” (109). It is almost redundant to note that Proudhon analysed the class nature of capitalist society in System of Economic Contradictions. His discussion of machinery, for example, shows that he was well aware that capitalists introduce it to increase their profits at the expense of the workers.
330 Somewhat ironically, Marx himself has suffered from being subject to the approach he inflicted on Proudhon. Just as Marx mocked Proudhon for his high-level of abstraction when the Frenchman used the notion of a consuming and producing Prometheus to illustrate some of his points, so the German has been subject to similar abuse by bourgeois economists for his high level abstractions in Volume 1 of Capital which they stress are unrealistic. Poetic Justice, some would say.
331 We have taken the liberty of adding footnotes to the extracts of System of Economic Contradictions we provide to show what Marx claimed and what Proudhon actually wrote.
332 System of Economical Contradictions, 134.
333 System of Economical Contradictions, 145.
334 System of Economical Contradictions, 203–4.
335 Œuvres Completès 5: 230–1. So much for the assertion by Marxist Paul Thomas that “Proudhon had no real conception of alienation in the labour process” (243).
336 System of Economical Contradictions, 301–2.
337 “M. Proudhon has not got beyond the ideal of the petty bourgeois. And in order to realise this ideal he thinks of nothing better than to bring us back to the companion, or at most the master, workman of the Middle Ages” (157).
338 “M. de Sismondi, like all men of patriarchal ideas, would like the division of labour, with machinery and manufactures, to be abandoned, and each family to return to the system of primitive indivision,—that is, to each one by himself, each one for himself, in the most literal meaning of the words. That would be to retrograde; it is impossible” (System of Economical Contradictions, 206).
339 The First International, 79.
340 Capital 3: 571.
341 System of Economical Contradictions, 244.
342 Frederic S. Lee, Post Keynesian Price Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 212.
343 See section I.1.2 of An Anarchist FAQ.
344 Capital 1: 938, 931.
345 Discussing communism as “it emerges from capitalist society” Marx argued that “the individual producer... receives a certificate from society that he has furnished suchand-such an amount of labour” and “draws from the social stock of means of consumption as much as the same amount of labour cost.” So (“obviously”!) “the same principle prevails as that which regulates the exchange of commodities, as far as this is exchange of equal values. Content and form are changed” as “nothing can pass to the ownership of individuals, except individual means of consumption” (Marx-Engels Reader, 529–30).
346 System of Economical Contradictions, 101.
347 Capital 1: 283.
348 Allen Oakley, Marx’s Critique of Political Economy: intellectual sources and evolution, 1844 to 1860 Vol. 1, (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1984), 118.
349 Capital 1: 769, 325.
350 System of Economical Contradictions, 56–7.
351 Œuvres Completès 5: 246–7.
352 While Marx suggests that Proudhon’s work was presenting a panacea to society’s ills, it was primarily a work of critique: “We will reserve this subject [the organisation of labour] for the time when, the theory of economic contradictions being finished, we shall have found in their general equation the programme of association, which we shall then publish in contrast with the practice and conceptions of our predecessors” (System of Economical Contradictions, 311).
353 System of Economical Contradictions, 340, 411, 312, 307, 37.
354 System of Economical Contradictions, 67, 198 (translation corrected).
355 Capital 1: 274.
356 Theories of Surplus Value 3: 296.
357 Capital 3: 276.
358 Archer, 50.
359 System of Economical Contradictions, 171.
360 Hyams, 92.
361 It is only marred by Vincent considering anarchism as being incompatible with social organisation and, as such, Proudhon’s theory “conflicts with the traditional concept of anarchism” and so he was not an anarchist in the “popular meaning” (269, 234)!
362 For a short critique of Ehrenberg’s Marxist assumptions, see K. Steven Vincent’s review (The American Historical Review 102: 4 [1997]).
363 An arresting observation in light of Proudhon’s patriarchal conceptions of marriage and family. (Editor)
364 Quoting from the collection of Roman legal writings, Digest of Justinian. (Editor)
365 Giraud, Investigations into the Right of Property among the Romans.
366 Perrin Dandin, a character in François Rabelais’s Third Book. (Editor)
367 To perform an act of benevolence towards one’s neighbour is called, in Hebrew, to do justice; in Greek, to take compassion or pity (έλεημοσυνή, from which is derived the French aumone); in Latin, to perform an act of love or charity; in French, give alms. We can trace the degradation of this principle through these various expressions: the first signifies duty; the second only sympathy; the third, affection, a matter of choice, not an obligation; the fourth, caprice.
368 The meaning ordinarily attached to the word “anarchy” is absence of principle, absence of rule; consequently, it has been regarded as synonymous with “disorder.”
369 If such ideas are ever forced into the minds of the people, it will be by representative government and the tyranny of talkers. Once science, thought, and speech were characterised by the same expression [in Greek, logos]. To designate a thoughtful and a learned man, they said, “a man quick to speak and powerful in discourse.” For a long time, speech has been abstractly distinguished from science and reason. Gradually, this abstraction is becoming realised, as the logicians say, in society; so that we have today savants of many kinds who talk but little, and talkers who are not even savants in the science of speech. Thus a philosopher is no longer a savant: he is a talker. Legislators and poets were once profound and sublime characters: now they are talkers. A talker is a sonorous bell, whom the least shock suffices to set in perpetual motion. With the talker, the flow of speech is always directly proportional to the poverty of thought. Talkers govern the world; they stun us, they bore us, they worry us, they suck our blood, and [they] laugh at us. As for the savants, they keep silence: if they wish to say a word, they are cut short. Let them write.
370 libertas, librare, libratio, libra,—liberty, to liberate, libration, balance (pound [in French, livre]),—words which have a common derivation. Liberty is the balance of rights and duties. To make a man free is to balance him with others,—that is, to put him on their level.
371 Individual possession is no obstacle to extensive cultivation and unity of exploitation. If I have not spoken of the drawbacks arising from small estates, it is because I thought it useless to repeat what so many others have said, and what by this time all the world must know. But I am surprised that the economists, who have so clearly shown the disadvantages of spade-husbandry, have failed to see that it is caused entirely by property; above all, that they have not perceived that their plan for mobilising the soil is a first step towards the abolition of property.
372 Member of a limited partnership company, with shares and who is fully responsible for its debts. (Editor)
373 A professor of comparative legislation, M. Lerminier, has gone still farther. He has dared to say that the nation took from the clergy all their possessions, not because of idleness, but because of unworthiness. “You have civilised the world,” cries this apostle of equality, speaking to the priests; “and for that reason your possessions were given you. In your hands they were at once an instrument and a reward. But you do not now deserve them, for you long since ceased to civilise any thing whatever…”
This position is quite in harmony with my principles, and I heartily applaud the indignation of M. Lerminier; but I do not know that a proprietor was ever deprived of his property because unworthy; and as reasonable, social, and even useful as the thing may seem, it is quite contrary to the uses and customs of property.
374 Treatise on Prescription.
375 Origin of French Law.
376 To honour one’s parents, to be grateful to one’s benefactors, to neither kill nor steal,—truths of inward sensation. To obey God rather than men, to render to each that which is his; the whole is greater than a part, a straight line is the shortest road from one point to another,—truths of intuition. All are a priori but the first are felt by the conscience, and imply only a simple act of the soul; the second are perceived by the reason, and imply comparison and relation. In short, the former are sentiments, the latter are ideas.
377 In a very short article, which was read by M. Wolowski, M. Louis Blanc declares, in substance, that he is not a communist (which I easily believe); that one must be a fool to attack property (but he does not say why); and that it is very necessary to guard against confounding property with its abuses. When Voltaire overthrew Christianity, he repeatedly avowed that he had no spite against religion, but only against its abuses.
378 Pierre Leroux, De l’humanité, de son principe, et de son avenir, où se trouve exposée la vrais définition de la religion et où l’on explique le sens, la suite et l’enchaînement du mosaisme et du christianisme (Paris: Perrotin, 1840). (Editor)
379 M. Leroux has been highly praised in a review for having defended property. I do not know whether the industrious encyclopedist is pleased with the praise, but I know very well that in his place I should mourn for reason and for truth.
Le National, on the other hand, has laughed at M. Leroux and his ideas on property, charging him with tautology and childishness. Le National does not wish to understand. Is it necessary to remind this journal that it has no right to deride a dogmatic philosopher, because it is without a doctrine itself? From its foundation, Le National has been a nursery of intriguers and renegades. From time to time it takes care to warn its readers. Instead of lamenting over all its defections, the democratic sheet would do better to lay the blame on itself, and confess the shallowness of its theories. When will this organ of popular interests and the electoral reform cease to hire sceptics and spread doubt? I will wager, without going further, that M. Leon Durocher, the critic of M. Leroux, is an anonymous or pseudonymous editor of some bourgeois, or even aristocratic, journal.
380 In Roman law, quiritary or “free” ownership entailed absolute rights over the thing owned, as opposed to limited or bonitary ownership. (Editor)
381 Proudhon had been an employee of MM. Gauthier Frères (publishers). (Translator)
382 Latin for “absentminded”; here Proudhon means something like “ignorant fools.” (Translator)
383 Saint Bartholomew’s Night refers to the massacre in 1572 of thousands of Huguenot Protestants by French Catholics. (Translator)
384 A reference to Proudhon’s System of Economic Contradictions. (Editor)
385 Marx in his letter to Proudhon warned Proudhon that Grun had poked fun at him in his book on the French socialists and that Grun had also made erroneous claims that he had tutored him. (Translator)
386 “I shall destroy and I shall build.” (Editor)
387 A reference to a philosophical controversy that arose in the Middle Ages over the problem of universals (general categories or classes of things, as distinct from the individual examples or members of those classes). Realist philosophers held that universals exist in reality; the nominalists held that only individual, particular things exist in reality, and that universals are merely “names.” (Editor)
388 Tucker supplies a slightly different version of this passage, having translated Proudhon’s quotation of Joseph Garnier’s French translation of Malthus back into English. This passage, which Malthus struck from subsequent editions of his Essay on the Principle of Population, appears in the 1803 edition. (Editor)
389 Cf. Marx’s comment in The Poverty of Philosophy (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1995) that Proudhon “borrows from the economists the necessity of eternal relations” (137). (Editor)
390 This is a reference to Ancient Rome where the patricians were rich and powerful families who managed to secure power over plebeians. Subsequently “patrician” became a vaguer term used for aristocrats and elite bourgeoisie in many countries. (Editor)
391 Marx (op. cit.) quotes this and then adds, without indicating the different source, the following sentences from Chapter V: “But what need of insisting? From the moment that the communist changes the name of things, vera rerum vocabala, he t
acitly admits his powerlessness, and puts himself out of the question.” Ironically, he also changes (again without indicating) “communist” to “economist” and mockingly inserts “(read M. Proudhon)” in the modified text (61). (Editor)
392 Cf. Marx (op. cit.): “It is beyond doubt that M. Proudhon confounds the two measures, the measure by the labour-time necessary to the production of a commodity, and the measure by the value of labour. ‘The labour of every man,’ says he, ‘will purchase the labour which it embodies.’ Thus according to him, a certain quantity of labour embodied in a product equals in value the remuneration of the worker, that is to say, the value of labour” (59). Proudhon, in fact, is taunting the bourgeois economists as he is well aware that a workers’ wages did not equal their product under capitalism, arguing that the capitalist appropriates both the workers’ “collective power” (Chapter VI: section II) and “surplus of labour” (Chapter XI: section IV). (Editor)
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