Proudhon - A Biography

THE CRITIC OF PROPERTY
new points of view: for example, that humanity, for the last four
thousand years, has been going through a process o f levelling;
that French society, unknown to itself and by the fatality o f Provi­
dential laws, is every day engaged in demolishing property (for
example, by the laws o f expropriation, the conversion of bonds,
the protection o f the labour o f women and children).’
His self-defence is based on the contention that he has been gen­
erally misunderstood as a violent revolutionary, and that what he
advocates is nothing more than a logical continuation o f the hist­
orical process. He attacks ‘competition, isolation of interests, mon­
opoly, privilege, accumulation o f capital, exclusive enjoyment,
subordination o f functions, individual production, the right of
profit or increase, the exploitation o f man by man,’ and it is these
j evils he calls Property. On the other hand, he recognises a ‘necess-
I ary, immutable and absolute’ element in property which he is anxi­
ous to retain, and this he defines as ‘individual and transmissible
possession, susceptible o f change but not o f alienation, founded
on labour and not on fictitious occupancy or idle caprice.’ In other
words, the means o f production and living can be possessed by the
peasant or the artisan, but nobody has a right to the property
which enables him to exploit the labour o f other men.
1 Proudhon denies any intention of arousing hatred against the
proprietors as a class; it is property he attacks, and all are corrupted
by it, according to their circumstances. He even calls upon the
workers to forsake those who inspire them with revengeful
desires. ‘OI proletarians, proletarians! H ow long are you to be vic­
timised by this spirit o f revenge and implacable hatred which your
false friends kindle, and which, perhaps, has done more harm to
the development of reformatory ideas than the corruption, ignor­
ance and malice o f the government ?’
And he ends his essay with an ironical passage in which, posing
as a good patriot and a lover o f order, he seeks to enrol no less a
pillar of respectable society than Louis-Philippe, the Citizen King
himself. ‘Since we are a monarchy, I would cry, “ Long live the
King!” rather than suffer death, which does not prevent me from
demanding that the irremovable, inviolable and hereditary repre­
sentative of the nation shall act with the proletarians against the
privileged classes; in other words, that the king shall become the
leader o f the radical party.’
The ambiguity of this appeal was to be echoed more than once
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