THE PRISONER3
La V oix du Peuple did not interfere materially with Proudhon’s
other literary activities, and on the 30th October, 1849, he told
Maguet: ‘My Confessions are printed... I did them as a kind o f
surprise to my mind.’ This work, which began as a pamphlet, and,
on a flood of inspiration, grew into a book during six weeks of
hard writing, was regarded by Sainte-Beuve as the best of all
Proudhon’s books, and while this judgment might be disputed in
favour of De la Justice, it is true that Les Confessions d’un Revolution-
naire is a much more capably written book than anything Proud
hon had produced previously. It is also one of the best books
written on the events of 1848 by any o f the men who took part in
them.
The title is misleading; the Confessions is actually a study o f the
revolutionary movement in France from 1789 to 1849,
anticipations o f its further development, and interspersed are
autobiographical chapters in which Proudhon gives the back
ground to the positions he took up with regard to specific events.
It begins with a profession o f faith in the form o f society pro
mised by the revolutionary tradition. ‘The Republic remains the
ideal o f all societies, and outraged liberty will soon reappear,
like the sun after an eclipse.’ But the question remains why
democracy should have failed so often, and it is to seek an answer
that Proudhon sets out.
He begins by examining the trends into which French political
movements are inclined to flow— absolutism and socialism at the
extremes, and between them the juste-milieu or Centre (‘the
hypocrisy o f conservatism’) and demagogy or Jacobinism (‘the
hypocrisy of progress’). O f these only socialism views society by
the light of a positive and objective science, but even it, Proudhon
admits with an eye to Cabet and Considerant, ‘is liable to take its
hypotheses for reality and its utopias for institutions.’
Absolutism and socialism represent the poles o f past and future
between which society moves; the juste-milieu and the Jacobins
represent the compromise parties o f right and left which are
brought into existence by the influence of human passions and
reasoning on the progress o f events. This is the master plan
from which Proudhon makes his analysis o f the historic situ
ation. And here we come to the touchstone o f Proudhonian
H 5