THE MAN OF AFFAIRSto have been taken seriously on both sides, for in Proudhon’s
diary we find, in a long list of ‘works to be done,’ a note of ‘one
piece a week’ for Le Populaire. When he returned to Paris in the
spring of 1844 he again visited Cabet, and in July, when the
latter went to speak in Lyons, he made a great deal o f Proudhon.
‘The good man designates me his successor in the apostolate,’
said Proudhon to Maurice. ‘I will hand over the succession to
anybody who buys me a cup o f coffee.’ By now he had realised
the impossibility o f two such incompatible attitudes as the com
munist and the anarchist being able to work together.
Yet the idea of a collaboration between all the socialist sects
and tendencies, in which he would play a leading part as unifier,
continued to tempt him. As early as October, 1844, he gave
Ackermann the most glowing picture o f the prospects for unity:
‘What today is called in France the socialist party is becoming
organised. Already several writers have come together; Pierre
Leroux, Louis Blanc, several others o f whom you have not heard,
and your unworthy friend. The people call upon us only to give
them an example o f unity and to educate them. George Sand has
completely entered into our ideas.’
Socialism, he declared, numbered more than a hundred thous
and adherents— perhaps even more than two hundred thousand,
and in this mass o f confused opinions he saw himself (strangely
enough for a man who could rarely collaborate) as the great go-
between. ‘I work with all my strength to bring an end to the
dissensions between us, at the same time as I carry discord into
the enemy camp.’
Though he was mistaken in his own role, Proudhon was not
wholly wrong in detecting a unifying influence at work among
the jarring sects who represented the French left of the 1840’s.
But it was less an internal urge than a tendency imposed from
outside, by a growing realisation of the scanty hope of seeing
social reform granted freely by the entrenched bourgeoisie. This
realisation swept Phalansterians, Icarians, neo-Jacobins, Saint-
Simonians, feminists, Republicans and unattached anarchists like
Proudhon on the same wave o f popular awakening and indig
nation. As always, the revolutionary thinkers and talkers had
produced no situation; they were responding to a situation that
grew out of the people’s discontent, and, while Proudhon was
right when he remarked to Ackermann, ‘the half-century will not