626 Following the excommunication of Martin Luther and condemnation of the Reformation by the Pope, Geneva became the unofficial capital of the Protestant movement. This was because leading Protestant writer John Calvin lived there. (Editor)
627 Three distinguished Catholic political leaders who opposed Napoléon III. (Editor)
628 Felicité Robert de Lamennais (1782–1854) was a French priest who travelled from extreme right to extreme left. Initially arguing for a religious revival and active clerical organisation, by 1848 his plan for a Constitution was rejected as being too radical. That year saw him start the newspapers Le Peuple Constituant and La Révolution Démocratique et Sociale, both of which espoused radical socialist revolution as well as being named president of the Société de la Solidarité Républicaine. Lamennais’s political journey illustrates Proudhon’s argument that political positions could be highly flexible. (Editor)
629 Use of the word “government” should not be automatically taken to mean that Proudhon had rejected anarchism. In chapter II, he had discussed anarchy as a form of government, even using the expression “gouvernement anarchique” (anarchic government). He seems to be somewhat confusingly using the words “government” and “state” for all forms of social organisation. (Editor)
630 In J-J Rousseau’s theory, which is the one of Robespierre and the Jacobins, the social contract is a lawyer’s fiction, hypothesised [imaginée] to provide an alternative to divine right, paternal authority or social necessity for the formation of the State and relations between the government and individuals. This theory, borrowed from the Calvinists, was in 1764 progress, since it had as a goal to bring back to a law of reason that what had been considered until then as belonging to the law of nature and religion. In the federative system, the social contract is more than a fiction, it is a positive, effective pact which has really been proposed, discussed, voted, adopted and which is regularly modified according to the will of the contractors. Between the federative contract and Rousseau’s and ’93, there is the whole distance from reality to hypothesis.
631 A reference to cenobitic monasticism, a monastic tradition that stresses community life. The life of prayer and communal living in the monastery was one of rigorous schedules and self-sacrifice. (Editor)
632 An area associated with a supplies or estate office. (Editor)
633 The Helvetic Confederation comprises twenty-five sovereign states (nineteen cantons and six demi-cantons), for a population of two million and four hundred thousand inhabitants. It is therefore governed by twenty-five charters or constitutions similar to our ones of 1791, 1793, 1795, 1799, 1814, 1830, 1848, 1852, in addition to a federal constitution that we do not have in France. The spirit of this constitution, true to the above principles, results from the following articles:
“Art. 2. The confederation aims to insure the homeland’s independence against the outside, to maintain tranquillity and order within, to protect the liberty and the rights of the confederated, and to increase their common prosperity.
“Art. 3. The cantons are sovereign as much as their sovereignty is not limited by federal sovereignty, and as such, they exert all their rights which are not delegated to the federal power.
“Art. 5. The confederation guarantees to the cantons their territory, their sovereignty within the limits set by Art. 3, their constitutions, the people’s liberty and rights, the citizens’ constitutional rights, as well as the rights and attributes that the people has conferred to the authorities.”
Thus a confederation is not precisely a State: it is a group of sovereign and independent States, united by a mutual guarantee pact. A federal constitution is not what we understand in France as a charter or a constitution, and neither is it the summary of the public law of the country: it is the pact that contains the conditions of the league, i.e., the reciprocal rights and obligations of the States. What we call a federative Authority, finally is not a government; it is an agency created by the States, for the common running of some services that each State gives up and that become in this way federal attributes.
In Switzerland, the federal Authority comprises a deliberating Assembly elected by the people from twenty-two cantons, and an executive Council made up of seven members nominated by the Assembly. The members of the Assembly and of the
federal Council are nominated for three years; the federal constitution being able to be revised at all times, their attributes are, like their members, changeable. So that the federal Power is, in all the strength of the term, an agent placed under the control of his principals and whose power changes as they wish.
634 The Holy Alliance was a coalition of Russia, Austria and Prussia created in 1815 at the behest of Tsar Alexander I of Russia. Ostensibly created to instil the Christian values of charity and peace in European political life, in practice it was a bastion against revolutionary influence (especially from France). It was opposed to democracy, revolution, and secularism. All European nations joined, except for Great Britain, the Papal States and the Ottoman Empire. (Editor)
635 The federative public law raises several difficult questions. For example, can a State with slaves belong to a confederation? It seems not, no more than an absolutist State: the enslaving of one part of the nation is the very negation of the federative principle. In this respect, the Southern States of the United States would be even more justified to ask for separation since the Northern States do not intend to grant, at least for quite some time, the emancipated Blacks their political rights. However we see that Washington, Madison and the other founders of the Union did not agree; they admitted States with slaves into the federal pact. It is also true that we now see this unnatural pact tearing itself apart, and the Southern States, to maintain their exploitation, tend towards an unitarist constitution, whilst the Northern ones, to maintain the union, decree the deportation of the slaves [to Africa, e.g., the colony of Liberia].
The Swiss federal constitution, as reformed in 1848, decided in favour of equality; its fourth article says: “All the Swiss are equal before the law. In Switzerland there are no subjects, nor privileges of place, birth, people or families.” From the promulgation of this article, which purged Switzerland of all aristocratic elements, dates the true Helvetic federal constitution.
In case of opposition between interests, can the confederated majority oppose the separatist minority [by invoking] the indissolubility of the pact? The Sonderbund answered this question in the negative against the Helvetic majority; today, in America, the Southern Confederacy does so against the Northern Union. For my part, I believe that separation is completely right, if it is about a matter of cantonal sovereignty left outside the federal pact. Thus, it has not been demonstrated to me that the Swiss majority drew its right against the Sonderbund from the pact: the proof is that in 1848 the federal constitution was reformed precisely with a view to the dispute which had led to the formation of the Sonderbund. But it may happen, by considerations de commodo et incommodo [of advantage and disadvantage], that the split compromises the liberty of the States: in this case the question is solved by the right of war, which means that the most significant part, the one whose ruin would lead to the greatest damage, must defeat the weakest one. That is what took place in Switzerland and could also happen in the United States, if, in the United States like in Switzerland, it were not only about an interpretation or a better application of the principles of the pact, like progressively raising the Black peoples’ condition to the level of the Whites. Unfortunately M. Lincoln’s message leaves no doubt on the matter. The North cares no more than the South about a true emancipation, which renders the difficulty insoluble even by war and threatens to destroy the confederation.
In a monarchy, all justice comes from the king: in a confederation, it comes, for each State, exclusively from its citizens. The institution of a federal high court would therefore be, in principle, a dispensation to the pact. It would be likewise for a final court of appeal, since, each State being sovereign and legis
lative, laws are not uniform. However, as federal interest and federal affairs exist; as offences and crimes against the confederation can be committed, there are, for these special cases, federal tribunals and a federal justice.
636 There are three ways to conceive of law, according to the viewpoint of the moral being and the position he puts himself, as a believer, as a philosopher and as a citizen. The law is the command given to man in the name of God by a competent authority: this is the definition of theology and divine right.
The law is the expression of the relations of things: this is the definition of the philosopher, given by Montesquieu.
The law is the statute of arbitration of the human will (Justice in the Revolution and in the Church, 8th study): this is the theory of contract and of federation.
Truth being one, although many-sided, these three definitions merge into each other and must be regarded as basically identical. But the social systems they generate are not the same: in the first, man declares himself subject of the law and of its author or representative; in the second, he recognises himself as an integral part of a vast organism; in the third, he makes the law his and frees himself from all authority, fate and domination. The first formula is the one of a religious man, the second of a pantheist; the third of a republican. The last alone is compatible with liberty.
637 The sale of tobacco was a state monopoly. (Editor)
638 While the phrase “freedom of teaching” (liberté de l’enseignement), in the context of French political debates, was associated with opposition to government-run, lay education, Proudhon distinguishes elsewhere between “freedom of teaching” and “freedom of worship” (liberté des cultes). In an 1850 article for La Voix du Peuple, for instance, he insists that “freedom of worship is […] merely a negative freedom; it is the contrary of freedom of teaching” (Mélanges 3.145). (Editor)
639 According to the 1848 Swiss federal constitution, the confederation has the right to create a Swiss University. This idea was vigorously fought against as detrimental to the sovereignty of the cantons, and it seemed to me it was good policy. I ignore whether the project has been pursued.
640 The Cour des comptes (Court of Auditors) is a quasi-judicial body of the French government charged with conducting financial and legislative audits of most public institutions and some private institutions. Its three duties are to conduct financial audits of accounts, conduct good governance audits and provide information and advice to the French Parliament and Administration. It verifies the good form of accounting and the proper handling of public money and is essentially a cross between a court of exchequer, comptroller general’s office, and auditor general’s office. (Editor)
641 In Switzerland, there exists a federal budget, administered by the federal Council, but which only concerns the matters of the Confederation, and has nothing in common with the budget of the cantons and towns.
642 Swiss federal Constitution, Art. 13: “The Confederation has not got the right to maintain permanent armies.” I give this article to our unitarist republican to meditate upon.
643 Hydrocephalus, also known as Water on the Brain, is a medical condition in which sufferers have an abnormal accumulation of cerebrospinal fluid in the cavities of the brain. This may cause increased pressure inside the skull and progressive enlargement of the head, convulsion, and mental disability. It can also cause death. (Editor)
644 “Le chef de guerre élevé sur le pavois” is literally “the warlord raised on the shield.” (Translator)
645 Official residence of the French president. (Translator)
646 Seat of French National Assembly. (Translator)
647 Some imagined that, had it not been for the vote of 24th November 1851, which the President won against the right-wing and ensured the success of the coup d’État, the republic would have been saved. There has been a great deal of railing, on this occasion, against the members of the Mountain who had not declared themselves against the right. But it is obvious, according to the law of political contradictions (see above, chapters VI and VII) and in view of the facts, that if the President had been defeated, the people having abstained, the bourgeois principle prevailing, the unitary republic would have transformed itself without the least difficulty into a constitutional monarchy, and the country would not return to the status quo of 1848, but to a regime perhaps even harsher than that of the 2nd December, since a government of at least equal strength would have been joined by the decisive supremacy of the middle-class and the already half established restriction on universal suffrage, the deserved disgrace of the masses.
648 Charles-le Téméraire (1433–77) was the last Valois Duke of Burgundy and one of the wealthiest and most powerful nobles in Europe. He marched against the Swiss and at Grandson in 1476 he met the confederate army, suffering a shameful defeat. Raising another army, he again invaded Switzerland and was again defeated. He died in an attempt to retake Nancy, when his troops, decimated by severe cold, fought the joint forces of the Lorraines and the Swiss. (Editor)
649 I wrote somewhere (De la Justice dans la Révolution et dans l’Eglise, fourth study, Belgian edition, note), that the year 1814 had opened the era of constitutions in Europe. The habit of [automatically] contradicting made people ridicule [huer] this proposal, people who wrongly mixing their daily ramblings, history and politics, affairs and intrigues, are even unaware of the chronology of their century. But that is not what interests me now. The era of constitutions, very real and perfectly named, has its comparison in the Actiac [or Actian] era named by Augustus, after his victory over Anthony in Actium, and which started in the year 30 BC. These two eras, the Actian era and the era of constitutions have in common the fact they showed a general renewal in politics, political economy, public right, liberty and general sociability. Both of them inaugurated a period of peace, both testified to the awareness that contemporaries had of the general revolution which took place, and of the will of national leaders to contribute to it. However, the Actian era, dishonoured by imperial orgy, has sunk into oblivion; it has been erased completely by the Christian era, which marked, in a far more imposing, moral and popular manner, the same renewal. It will be the same for the so-called constitutional era: it will disappear in its turn before the social and federative era whose profound and popular idea must repeal the bourgeois and moderate idea of 1814.
650 A simple calculation will show this. The average education given to both sexes, in a free State, can not embrace a period of less than 10 to 12 years, which consists of about the fifth of the total population, i.e., in France, seven and a half million individuals, boys and girls, out of thirty eight million inhabitants. In countries where marriages produce lots of children, like America, this proportion is greater still. Therefore they are seven and a half million individuals of both sexes to whom it is a question of giving, to a reasonable extent, which would definitely have nothing aristocratic [about it], literary, scientific, moral and professional education. Now, what is the number of individuals that go to secondary and higher schools in France? One hundred and twenty seven thousand four hundred and seventy four, according to M. Guillard’s statistics. All the others, seven million three hundred and seventy thousand five hundred and twenty five in number, are doomed to never go beyond primary school. But they all have to go there: recruitment committees notice each year a growing number of illiterates. Where would our rulers be, I am asking, if they had to solve the problem of giving an average education to seven million three hundred and seventy thousand five hundred and twenty five individuals, in addition to the one hundred and twenty seven thousand four hundred and seventy four who already are in schools? What use, here, the unilateral pact of a bourgeois monarchy, and the charity contract of a paternal Empire, and the Church’s charitable foundations, and Malthus’s precautionary advice, and the hopes of free-trade? All the Committees of Public Safety, with their revolutionary strength, would fail. Such a goal can only be reached through a combination of apprenticeship and schooling that wo
uld make of each pupil a producer: that which assumes a universal federation. I do not know any fact more overwhelming for the old politics than this one.
651 The phrase “elles sont des démembrements les unes des autres” literally means “they are dismemberments from each other.” (Translator)
652 Censitary [censitaire] refers to voting based on census and in which only those whose taxation exceeds a certain threshold can vote. That is, suffrage is limited to the propertied classes. (Editor)
653 The central or federal power’s relationship with the local or federated powers is expressed by the distribution of the budget. In Switzerland, the federal budget is barely one-third of the total contributions the Swiss dedicate to their political life; the other two-thirds remain in the hands of local authorities. In France, on the contrary, the central power possesses nearly all of the country’s resources; it governs receipts and expenditures; also, it is responsible for administering, by committee, the large cities, such as Paris, the municipalities thereby becoming purely nominal; central power is also the depository of commune funds, and it oversees employment.
654 In an average year, France produces 30 to 35 hectolitres of wine. That quantity, along with cider and beer, would not much surpass the consumption of the country’s 38 million residents if everyone could go to Corinth [a reference to Horace’s famous dictum: non licet omnibus adire Corinthum, “Not everyone can go to Corinth,” i.e., not everyone can live a life of ease], that is, if everyone could drink their share of wine, beer or cider. Therefore, what good is it to look for a market outside the country when we already have one here? But worse, when the domestic market is closed in some way by state taxes, transportation costs, tolls, etc., then it has been believed that another market should be obtained abroad, but the foreign market only buys expensive wines, not ordinary ones, which it is not much interested in or which it finds too expensive: therefore, producers still have their merchandise but no domestic or foreign buyers. The department of Gironde had counted on the trade treaty with England to sell its wines; large quantities were shipped to London, but remained unsold on the docks. If you look, you will see that this defect, once indicated, is in keeping with a series of causes that all stem from one cause: the unitary system (see my Théorie de l’Impôt , volume 1, 1861).
Property Is Theft! Page 118
