Proudhon - A Biography

THE MAN OF AFFAIRS
added a complaint that ‘no idea is accepted, no book will sell,
unless the author belongs to something: to the university, the
press, the administration, the clergy, to some coterie or corpora­
tion.’
It was perhaps in the hope o f dispelling this sense o f grievance
that in March, 1844, Garnier invited Proudhon to attend a
gathering o f the Societe des Economistes at the Cafe des Panora­
mas. Proudhon was delighted by the gesture, and out of their
academic chairs he found the economists ‘good fellows, educated
men, of sound sense, and good taste, whom it is a pleasure to
meet.’ But the main practical advantage o f the encounter was the
contact he made with the publisher Guillaumin, who produced
most o f the important treatises on political economy that ap­
peared in France. Garnier had predisposed Guillaumin in Proud­
hon’s favour, representing him as a man whose ideas, despite
the aggressiveness o f their expression, deserved consideration.
Guillaumin ‘made advances,’ and in a very short time had agreed
to publish the work on economic contradictions which Proudhon
had described to Bergmann in October, 1843.
This success in placing his book before it was completed
stimulated Proudhon to work, but, though his situation in the
summer of 1844 seems to have been more auspicious than for a
long time before, he still found plenty o f cause to bewail his
fortune. He was not wholly unjustified, for his debts and family
obligations formed a burden other men might have found
crippling. Yet at times one has the impression— an impression
that recurs in studying his later life— o f a discontent which,
though rooted in sound causes, had tended to become self-
perpetuating. For instance, shortly after successfully completing
his negotiations with Guillaumin, he wrote to Tourneux in the
tones o f a man whose future had been blasted by the prejudices of
his enemies. ‘I am simply an excommunicant. The appearance of
my booklets has put me everywhere on the index; anger and the
feeling o f injustice have embittered me, and, like Raspail, with all
my capacity and zeal I achieve not a quarter o f what I wish.’ To
an extent this attitude can be traced to that feeling of inferiority
which a man with little formal education often experiences in the
presence of those whom chance has given the advantages he has
missed.
But if at times Proudhon’s discontent became tiresomely