THE MAN OF AFFAIRS
come. Communists will come also. We are 100,000.’ And he
reaches the summit o f confidence when he remarks: ‘By i860, the
globe will be over-run in every direction by the association.’
It is needless to say that Proudhon did not even begin to fulfil
his ambitions in this direction, but these notebook jottings have a
particular significance because they reveal between 1843 and 1845
an attitude which anticipated not only his later efforts at associa-
tional organisation through the People’s Bank, but also the
foundation o f the International Workingmen’s Association a
quarter o f a century later under the leadership of men like
Tolainand Varlin, who held views derived from those Proudhon
evolved during his contact with the Lyons Mutualists in the early
1840’s.2
It was in September, 1843, while Proudhon was gaining his
introduction to the world of working-class revolt in Lyons, that
his philosophical treatise, De la Creation de TOrdre dans THumanite
(The Creation of Order in Humanity) was published. The year of
stability in Besangon, from the successful conclusion of his trial
to the selling o f his printing house, had enabled him to complete
this ambitious treatise, wherein he sought to lay the foundations
o f a reconstructive philosophy, without which ‘socialism would
remain an object o f pure curiosity, alarming to the bourgeoisie
and useless to the people.’
As the time of publication drew near, he began to display that
mingling of apprehension and extraordinary confidence which
almost always heralded the appearance of one of his books. ‘I
have made it... so boring, so indigestible,’ he told Maurice,
‘that few people will have the courage to go on to the end.’ But
he promised the Swiss journalist, Delerageaz, that the new book
would reveal ‘the abyss of our ignorance’ by ‘uncovering a new
world,’ and by demonstrating ‘the essential laws o f creation,
thought and social order.’
The Creation of Order did not achieve this high aim, and Proud
hon himself admitted in 1847 to Alfred Darimon that it was ‘a
book that failed.’ Its construction is sometimes chaotic, and the
vigour and clarity that are generally Proudhon’s most persuasive
qualities are often obscured by turgid reasoning and submerged