Proudhon - A Biography

EPILOGUE
jects o f the industrial era demanded the creation of closely knit
productive associations o f workers in certain trades. Finally, the
revival o f working-class activity in the 1860’s led him to write,
in The Political Capacity of the Working Classes, a book which
called as much to the factory workers o f France as to the country
people and the Parisian artisans, and which was to be more influ­
ential than any o f his earlier and better books in shaping the radical
movements o f the later nineteenth century.
In The Political Capacity of the Working Classes Proudhon sig­
nalised the entry o f the workers as an independent force in the
field o f politics. ‘To possess political capacity,’ he explained, ‘is to
have the consciousness o f oneself as a member o f a collectivity, to
affirm the idea that results from this consciousness, and to pursue
its realisation. Whoever unites these three conditions is capable.’
The Manifesto o f the Sixty, he declared, had shown that the
French proletariat was in fact beginning to fulfil the three con­
ditions. Like all other classes that had become significant in the
community, it was conscious that its life and needs made it a
separate group with its own place in society and its own mission
in social evolution. The idea resulting from this dawning self-
consciousness was that o f Mutuality. The possession and develop­
ment o f this idea distinguished the working class (including the
peasants) from the bourgeoisie, and conferred on it a progressive
character, since by developing mutuality the workers could at
last bring justice into the economic life o f society and organise
it on an egalitarian basis, which the anti-mutualist spirit of the
bourgeois class had prevented them from doing.
Politically, mutualism was expressed in federalism, which would
guarantee the true sovereignty o f the people, since in the federal
republic power would rise up from below, and would rest on the
‘natural groups’ which, by means o f a series o f delegations, would
coalesce in co-ordinating committees to implement the. general
will of the people Its complete sensitivity could be assured by
the immediate revocability o f any delegation. Since the ‘natural
groups’ would be identical with the working units o f society, the
nature o f the State would change from political to economic
and social, and Saint-Simon’s vision o f the government of men
being replaced by the administration o f things would be finally
achieved.
If Proudhon realised that it was impossible to achieve recon-