Proudhon - A Biography

THE PRISONER
liberate both— not a political revolution, but a basic change in
the economic fabric of society.
After this call to unity, he proceeds to a series o f studies out­
lining the shape which the revolution must assume in the nine­
teenth century. The first, entitled ‘Reaction Causes Revolution,’
involves an elaborate analysis of the nature o f revolution and its
inevitability as a factor in social evolution. ‘A revolution is a
force against which no power, divine or human, can prevail, and
whose nature is to grow by the very resistance it encounters’...
The more you repress it, the more you increase its rebound and
render its action irresistible, so that it is precisely the same for
the triumph of an idea whether it is persecuted, harassed, beaten
down from the start, or whether it grows and develops un­
obstructed. Like the Nemesis of the ancients, whom neither
prayers nor threats could move, the revolution advances, with
sombre and predestined tread, over the flowers strewn by its
friends, through the blood o f its defenders, over the bodies of
its enemies.’
A revolution is necessary in the nineteenth century because the
movement o f 1789 was only half accomplished; its interpreters
were concerned with politics only, and paid no attention to the
economic organisation called for by the death o f feudalism.
‘The Republic should have established Society; it thought only
N o f establishing Government.... Therefore, while the problem
propounded in ’89 seemed to be officially solved, fundamentally
there was a change only in governmental metaphysics, what
Napoleon called ideology.... In place o f this governmental, feudal
and military rule, imitated from that of former kings, the new
edifice o f industrial institutions must be built.’
The means by which this necessary revolution can be brought
about is Association, and by this Proudhon makes it clear that
he does not mean a rigid Utopian system. Association for its own
sake, considered as a dogma, is potentially dangerous to freedom,
but as a means to a greater end it is beneficial. ‘Working men’s
associations... should be judged, not by the more or less
successful results they obtain, but only according to their silent
tendency to assert and establish the social republic.... The
importance of their work lies, not in their petty union interests,
but in their denial of the rule o f capitalists, usurers and govern­
ments, which the first revolution left undisturbed. Afterwards,