Proudhon - A Biography

THE EXILE
evil; property governed by principle can become the support of
society ‘against the assaults o f an unbridled industrialism.’
Because of his changes in definition, Proudhon appears more
conservative, but the alterations are not radical, since he con­
tin u e s to uphold the basic right of the producer to control his
land or his workshop. He agrees for the present to retain property
in a mitigated form because he can see no other protection for the
freedom o f ordinary men in a world where the sense o f justice
is not so well developed as he would wish. But, against any sus­
picion that he was ageing into complacency, we need only read
the final paragraphs o f the essay, in which he declares his personal
feelings towards the idea o f property.
‘I have developed the considerations that make property in­
telligible, rational, legitimate, and outside o f which it remains
usurpatory and odious. Yet even in these conditions, it retains
something egotistical which is still antipathetic to me. My egali­
tarian and anti-governmental reason, inimical to rancour and to
the abuse o f force, can admit and support property as a shield,
a point o f security for the weak; my heart can never cleave to i t...
‘Private Property! I sometimes read these words written in great
letters at the beginning o f an open way, like a sentinel forbidding
one to pass. I swear that my human dignity bristles with disgust.
Ah, in such matters I have remained of the religion of Christ,
which recommends detachment, preaches modesty, simplicity of
spirit, and poverty o f heart. Away with the old patrician, greedy
and pitiless, away with the insolent baron, the grasping bourgeois
and the hard peasant! Such people are odious to me; I can neither
love nor see them.’
II
The end o f 1861 found Proudhon in a better position financially
than he had enjoyed for several years. War and Peace and The
Theory of Taxation had done a great deal towards re-establishing
his solvency, and he began to hope that he would soon be free of
debt. It was the mirage he had been seeing habitually for the past
two decades, and once again it was to fail him, for the early part of
1862 brought renewed attacks of nervous exhaustion, accompanied
by the most alarming symptoms. ‘I stagger in the street; I have
terrible nightmares; I see spectres besetting me in the shadows...
There are moments when I cannot move a foot or a hand.’