organise. In order that there might be neither shortage nor
surplus, credit must be unrestricted and its scope must be equal
to the productivity o f society; instead o f being subjected to usury,
it must be gratuitous. To realise this end, the actual products of
the workers should become, in a sense, current money. This
could be achieved by the use of coupons, handed to each worker
on the basis o f his production, as an issue of gratuitous credit, by
means o f which he would be able to buy the products o f other
workers.
The further ramifications of the Bank of Exchange’s activities
included the buying and selling o f consignments as a means of
relieving over-stocked warehouses, loans on mortgage, and the
encouragement of workmen’s productive co-operatives. There is
no need to go into these matters in any great detail, and for the
present it is enough to point out that in the idea of credit based,
not on specie, but on productivity, Proudhon was anticipating
not only many recent theories o f extended credit, but also actual
measures of credit reform to which contemporary governments
have resorted in order to avert financial catastrophe or to ease
industrial crises complicated by an insufficient flow o f money.
Proudhon put forward his scheme as one which should be
carried out by the Provisional Government, with the Bank of
France becoming the nucleus for the Bank o f Exchange. It was
with this in mind that, on the 8th April, he wrote to Louis Blanc,
the socialist member of the Provisional Government— whom he
had already lambasted in print on more than one occasion for his
utopian authoritarianism— pointing out the virtues o f his plan
and suggesting that Blanc should sponsor it before the govern
ment. Blanc did not even reply, and Proudhon therefore decided
to create the Bank o f Exchange by a direct appeal to the public.
But before this further effort of Proudhon the constructor was
launched, Proudhon the critic had once more taken the scene,
and it is to his debut as the most eloquent opposition journalist
of 1848 that we must now turn our attention.3
The regular issues of Le Representant du Peuple commenced on
the 1st April, bearing the banner motto: ‘What is the Producer?
Nothing. What should he be? Everything!’ and in the latter part
THE VOICE OF THE PEOPLE