Proudhon - A Biography

THE MAN OF AFFAIRS
society not merely conventional, but real, which changes the divi­
sion of labour into an instrument of science, which abolishes
slavery to machines and halts crises before they appear, which
makes competition a benefit and monopoly a pledge o f security
for all, which, by the power of its principle, instead o f demand­
ing credit from capital and protection from the State, submits
both capital and State to labour.. .’
We are given little more in the way o f constructive hints; the
rest is promised for a later book. And, in fact, Proudhon worked
a great deal o f the destructionism out of his system by writing
Economic Contradictions. It is more completely devoted to criticism
than any o f his later works, and in other volumes we shall find
constructive suggestions which have greater substance than these
vague sketches. But it would be unwise to forget that Proudhon
was essentially an anti-systematic thinker who hated static solu­
tions. The dynamic society was always his ideal, the society kept
alive and in movement by perpetual criticism, and such a society
can never be built according to a foreordained plan.
Economic Contradictions gained a success that was largely of
scandal, but, while it increased Proudhon’s notoriety, it also
placed him firmly among the leading intellectuals of the French
socialist movement. As events in 1848 were to show, it greatly
augmented his following among the literate workers, and in
Germany it increased the Proudhon vogue, for by the middle of
1847 no less than three translations had been announced.
On the other hand, it aroused many people against its author.
The pious were infuriated by his attacks on God. The economists
were annoyed by his polemics against themselves. Most of his
fellow socialists disagreed with him either for his denunciation of
Communism or for his anti-religion. Guillaumin, who was over­
whelmed with protests, became querulous, and an exasperated
exchange of letters took place between publisher and author. ‘I
insult no person, no class o f society, no religion,’ Proudhon pro­
tested. ‘I have the right to discuss all principles, to combat them,
to renovate them, etc.... and if I have chosen a completely dra­
matic form, that is only a question of literature and taste.’
It was not surprising, after so many attacks, that Proudhon
should have felt a return of his recurrent sense of isolation. ‘I have
earned the antipathy o f everybody,’ he told Maurice early in 1847.
‘The repulsion I inspire is general, from the communists, repub-