Proudhon - A Biography

THE EXILE
as he returned to Brussels, he resumed writing with redoubled
energy. Some articles on Poland by Elias Regnault in La Presse
decided him to begin work on a book intended to expose finally
the reactionary character o f Polish nationalism and to wean the
French democrats from their prejudices. But, though it was com­
pleted during 1862, this work was never printed. Proudhon was
more sensitive than he liked to appear to the demands o f revo­
lutionary comradeship, and when the Poles rebelled in 1863 he
decided not to publish his book lest he should seem to attack them
in their adversity. He was also worried about the effect it might
have on many o f his old friends, particularly Herzen, Edmond and
Bakunin who, having escaped from Siberia in 1861, had embarked
on an abortive expedition to aid the Polish insurrectionaries. For
these reasons he decided to abandon the result of so much work
and to leave his treatise unpublished. The manuscript is still in
possession o f his family, a monument to the seriousness with
which he took the obligations o f friendship.
By a somewhat involved path, this work on the Polish question
led Proudhon back to a reconsideration o f the basic ideas on
property with which he had made his first appearance as a writer.
The conclusions derived from this return to his intellectual past
\ are embodied in the posthumous Theorie de la Propriete. Much has
been made o f this essay in an attempt to show that it represents
a retreat from Proudhon’s original radicalism. Fundamentally, it
does not, though its expression is certainly much more temperate
than that of, say, The Warning to Proprietors. What Proudhon does
is to change his definition o f property; when he now justifies it
as the safeguard o f liberty, he is thinking, not of the usurial
property he condemned in his earlier works, but o f the property
that guarantees the independence o f the peasant and the artisan.
He raises a new antinomy— property versus the State. Property
represents individualism, the State is the extreme negation of
individual liberty, and Proudhon therefore seeks an adjustment of
property which will help men to control their own destinies in­
dependently o f the State.
This, he hopes, can be accomplished by a series of social checks
designed to prevent abuses in either direction. The mutualist in­
stitutions o f free credit and association will prevent abuses of
property; decentralisation and federal organisation will save men
from the impositions o f the State. Property without principle is