THE CRITIC OF PROPERTYthat up to 1840 Proudhon had probably very little chance of
observing the new world o f the industrial revolution. The rail
way, pioneer of industrialism, had not reached Besanson, which
was still economically an island of workshops in a province of
peasant farmers. Proudhon’s acquaintance with such cities as
Lyons, where industrialism was really beginning to grow, had so
far been fleeting, and the part o f Paris with which he was familiar
has remained even to this day a stronghold of small workshops.
Later, when he came to know the industrially developing areas
more thoroughly, and to become involved in business ventures
which brought a wider contact with the working life of his time,
he made some very significant amendments to his theories which,
as will become evident in considering The General Idea of the Revo
lution, destroy the arguments of those who, using What is Property?
as their text, accuse Proudhon of having been retarded by a
peasant outlook.
4
As he had threatened, Proudhon dedicated What is Property? to
the Besangon Academy, and in a letter which he submitted to that
institution at the end o f June he tacitly acknowledged the acade
micians as the partners in and even the instigators of his inflam
matory work. Tf, by an infallible method o f investigation, I
establish the dogma of equality of conditions,’ he declared, ‘if I
annihilate property for ever-— to you, gentlemen, will redound all
the glory, for it is to your aid and your inspiration that I owe it.’
He decided not to wait in Paris for the Academy’s reaction to
this challenging gesture. He had again become tired of the capital,
which he described to Ackermann as ‘stupid, filthy, chattering,
egotistical, proud and gullible,’ and the troubles of his life as a
provincial printer had grown dim in retrospect, so that recently he
had been moved in his poverty to confess, ‘I sigh for the day when
I shall resume my paper cap.’
He set off on foot with an Alsatian painter named Elmerich,
who was travelling to Strasbourg and agreed to go out of his way
through the Franche-Comte in order to accompany Proudhon
home. When they reached Besancon, about the middle of July,
Proudhon found himself the subject of violent discussion among
his fellow citizens. ‘The effect of my book on the Academy has