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Title: Proudhon the Sociologist
Author: Célestin Bouglé
Date: 1910
Language: en
Topics: Sociology, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
Source: Proudhon Sociologue.” Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale 18(5): 614–648.
Notes: Translated by Shaun Murdock. Originally published as: Bouglé, Célestin. “Proudhon sociologue.” *Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale* 18, no. 5 (1910): 614–648.

Célestin Bouglé

Proudhon the Sociologist

Which theories do we call sociological theories? Those that share this

premise: from the meeting of individual units there results an original

reality, something greater than and different to their mere sum.

Arguably no thinker has made greater use of this premise than Proudhon.

Properly sociological theories are truly the centre of his system. It is

worth identifying them in order to better understand his attitude, which

is so often difficult to classify in relation to different philosophical

tendencies.

Until now, this approach does not appear to have attracted commentators,

who no doubt saw, to a greater or lesser extent, the great difficulties

that it presents. One antithesis in particular has stood in their way:

the classic opposition between the premise of sociology and the

affirmation of individualism. Is it not commonly believed that the

latter implies an “atomist” or at least “nominalist” social philosophy,

the idea that the only realities to be taken into account are the

distinct individuals? Who most strongly affirmed the superior value of

the individual? Was it not Proudhon, the father of anarchy himself? Let

us recall in any case his diatribes against communism, inspired by the

desire to defend “the free, active, reasoning, unsubmissive personality

of man^([1]). Proudhon wants equality, but on the condition that it is

the natural product of liberty. “O Liberty, charm of my existence!

Without you work is torture and life is prolonged death^([2]).” He

himself recalls that he remains a man of liberty and individuality above

all^([3]). Louis Blanc accused him of pushing this belief to the point

of frenzy, and therefore of placing himself “completely outside the

movement of this century^([4])”. Conversely, Proudhon accused Louis

Blanc of “contradicting the manifest tendencies of civilisation”: its

wish is not to subordinate the private person to the public person, but

on the contrary for every human soul to become “a pattern of humanity as

a whole^([5])”. With such intense personalist feelings, how can social

realism in any form be logically compatible?

Whether or not the two tendencies are logically compatible, one thing is

sure in the meantime: they coexist in Proudhon’s work. Just as fiercely

as he affirms the value of the individual, Proudhon insists on the

reality of the social being. The arguments he uses to demonstrate this

are, in his eyes, among his greatest intellectual accomplishments. In

his Theory of Property^([6]), when he assesses the sixteen “very

positive” demonstrations he leaves to the world despite being called a

“demolisher”, does he not cite in the first line a theory of collective

force, a “metaphysics of the group”, to which he relates his theory of

nationalities and his theory of the division of powers? He hoped to

clarify these theories in a book he promised many times; but he had

already sketched its broad outlines on more than one occasion. The

fourth and seventh studies of Justice in the Revolution and in the

Church devote a large amount of space to the notions of collective power

and reason. The System of Economic Contradictions indicates the needs

and powers specific to Prometheus; that is, to society considered as a

unique being^([7]). But above all, as early as his first memoir on

property, Proudhon exploits the distinction between the collective force

and the sum of the individual forces; he would go so far as to declare

that this distinction is the cornerstone of his thought. What this means

is that the sociological concern is present throughout his work from

start to finish.

In order to conveniently summarise and classify the theories put

forward, and recalling how Proudhon passes from each term to the next,

we will discuss collective force, collective being, and collective

reason in turn^([8]).

---

The collective force is greater than the sum of the individual forces.

When such forces combine, a surplus of energy emerges that is not the

product of any of the individual forces, but of their association. A

very simple thought experiment suffices to demonstrate this. Two hundred

grenadiers, under the direction of an engineer, stood the obelisk of

Luxor upon its base in a few hours^([9]): should we suppose that one man

could have accomplished the same task in two hundred days? Here is a

ditch to be dug: a hundred workers, divided into squads to spread the

work – diggers, loaders, carriers and fillers – spend one day on the

task. A single worker in charge of all these tasks would spend much

longer than one hundred days! This is proof that the union and harmony

of labourers, the convergence and simultaneousness of their efforts, are

creators of value^([10]).

This observation was one of Proudhon’s key arguments in his attack

against property in the first period of his life. He would denounce the

individual appropriation of the fruits of common labour as a particular

kind of theft. You might argue that the capitalist reaps his profits

legitimately: has he not paid the daily wages of the workers he employs?

Say he has paid as many times one day’s wage as he has employed workers

each day: it is not the same thing^([11]). The employer monopolises the

value that results from the cooperation of workers, “different in

quality from the forces that compose it and superior to their sum”, at

no cost. Say’s axiom, “every product is worth what it costs^([12])”, is

therefore violated here. Between masters and workers, an “accounting

error” is revealed^([13]). Generalising this, we would realise that

since all production is necessarily collective, all accumulated capital

is social property: it is impossible, as Proudhon liked to say, for

anyone to have exclusive ownership of it.

Here we recognise similar arguments to those used by Karl Marx in the

first part of Capital. In order to oppose the private nature of

appropriation in the capitalist regime with the social character of

production, he too shows the “collective Briareus” at work: when this

Briareus applies itself to building a house, do its hundred hands not

move the stones much faster than the hands of isolated workers going up

and down the scaffolding? When “simple” cooperation becomes “complex”,

hard work is broken down, and the movement of machines involves and

coordinates the actions of more and more people, it becomes increasingly

apparent that the value created is not the work of, and therefore should

not belong to, any particular person: it emerges from groups^([14]).

Should we say that Karl Marx borrowed the core of this argument from

Proudhon? We know how much the young Marx in Paris admired the brilliant

typesetter, who seemed to give the “conscious” proletariat life and

voice^([15]). In particular, we recall the esteem the writer of The Holy

Family had for What is Property?, which he compared to Siéyès’ What is

the Third Estate? in marking a watershed moment in the history of

classes. It would be little wonder if the distinction between collective

and individual force passed from this famous memoir to Capital. But it

must be admitted that this distinction could have reached Marx’s mind by

other paths. “Quantitative changes, when they reach a certain degree,

lead to qualitative changes”: this was one of Hegel’s favourite

principles. Was it not this principle that drew the attention of his

socialist disciples to the new facts that arise when a certain number of

individual units are grouped together? The way Engels explains these

facts in Anti-Dühring suggests this is the case^([16]). No doubt what

occurred in Marx’s brain, as had happened so many times, was a synthesis

of the two traditions, German and French.

The fact remains that Proudhon was the first to introduce this theory of

collective force^([17]): he was the first to clearly note, along with

the economic principle linked to the phenomenon he observed, the

different sociological consequences that derive from it. One of the men

of whom Proudhon willingly proclaims himself a disciple is Adam Smith.

It was first through political economy – the science that right away

offered “the highest degree of positivism”, the key to history, the

theory of order, the creator’s last word – that the young prophet of The

Creation of Order in Humanity wanted to renew philosophy^([18]). It is

in The Wealth of Nations that he claims to have found the seed of his

theory of collective force. Man is the working animal par excellence.

“This one word, Work, therefore contains a whole order of knowledge.”

Adam Smith recognised this, not only showing that work in general is the

source of all exchange value, but that the division of labour in

particular is the source of all progress in production. But the

collective force is nothing but a consequence of the division of labour,

a precondition of fruitful cooperation and “commutations”^([19]).

Germain Garnier had pointed this out in passing; all Proudhon had to do

was develop this remark in order to draw out all the “organic

applications” of Smith’s theory. On this point and on many others, it

can be shown that the socialist doctrines are first and foremost the

bold heirs of orthodox political economy.

In the way in which Proudhon used his legacy we can recognise, besides

Smith’s influence, that of another master, whom Proudhon admits less

willingly but whose inventions were nevertheless always present in his

thought: his fellow Franc-Comtois, Charles Fourier. Just as Marx

remained unwillingly influenced by Hegelianism, Proudhon remained

unwillingly influenced by Fourierism. The vocabulary of The New

Industrial World – administrations, pivots, households, etc. – would

appear until his final works. But above all, for a long time the concept

of series would remain his obsession and his supreme hope. It is this

concept that he relies on in The Creation of Order to renew logic and

bring order to the chaos of science. He would not fail to combine it

with the concept of the division of labour, which he borrowed from

economic science. When we say series, we are referring to specified

groupings and coordinated units, among other things. But are specified

groupings of coordinated units not precisely the natural fruits of the

division of labour? This is why Proudhon wrote^([20]) that the division

of labour was the series revealing itself before our eyes, “embodying

itself in society”. The concept of series thus conforms to that of work

in two aspects: that of nature and that of society. Human work can be

defined as an effort to superimpose artificial series on natural series

in bodies, or to replace natural series with artificial series^([21]):

it changes the relations between elements, thus creating new forms. But

in order to achieve this transformation of the world, it is still

necessary for people to organise their activities themselves according

to certain relations. They thus form social series which are substrates

of the collective force.

Let us note that while Proudhon generalised the economists’ observations

in this way, he would not go so far as to adopt the assertion that many,

including the socialist reformers of his time, contented themselves

with: “The association is creative.” To him, such phrases seemed vague

and laden with mysticism. On this point, he clearly separates himself

from Fourier, as well as from Pierre Leroux and Louis Blanc. In The

General Idea of the Revolution in the 19^(th) Century, he fiercely

criticises the social principle^([22]). This is because he sees it both

as a synthesis of confused ideas and as a threat to individual freedom.

“Association, presented as a universal institution, the principle, means

and end of the Revolution, appears to me to hide a secret intention of

exploitation and despotism.” In fact, association in itself has no

organic or productive virtue: it would be foolish indeed to subdue

individual initiative and leave the field wide open to this problematic

and suspicious power. But carefully consider the mechanism of the

division of labour. Here, the workers remain autonomous, and each of

them deploys all their energy: however, from their concerted

energies^([23]), we see the birth of a surplus of power whose benefits

are to be shared among them equally. Why look further for the secret of

the effects of collectivity? On the strength of this economistic

analysis, Proudhon mocks the sociocrats’ attempts to explain the

superior return that labour yields when it is organised in association.

They invoke imitative competition, mutual stimulation, pleasure arising

from grouping by natural affinities, etc. From these psycho-sociological

explanations, Marx would perhaps retain or rediscover something:

Proudhon does not want to keep anything from it. The forces shown at

work here are not, in his view, industrial forces. All of these fanciful

theories are nothing but the “mystical and apocalyptic” expression of

facts discovered in industrial practice^([24]). Read Adam Smith again,

and you will have the key to your puzzles; you will suddenly be brought

back from mysticism to positivism.

But if Proudhon wants us to stick to the analyses introduced by the

economists in order to explain the genesis of this collective force, he

at least extends the field of application of this force well beyond the

circle of political economy proper. It is not only in a workshop, but in

an army, an orchestra, or an academy that he sees the constitution of

“the synthetic power [...] unique to the group, superior in quality and

energy to the sum of the elementary forces of which it is composed”.

Elsewhere he observes that what he says about the division of labour in

industry can be repeated about the division of powers in politics. It is

therefore not only by its sensory effects that the force indicated by G.

Garnier is revealed. It is capable of producing something other than a

surplus of monetary wealth. The intellectual world, like the material

world, is subject to its law. In the very realm of intangible things, it

remains queen.

In expanding the theory of the division of labour in this way, Proudhon,

one imagines, would naturally encounter the clichés that the philosophy

of solidarity has reintroduced nowadays.

Of Proudhon, we can repeat what we said about Bastiat^([25]). However

concerned he may have been for individuality, he was in a certain sense

a solidarist avant la lettre. “There is not a man, then, but lives upon

the products of several thousand different industries; not a labourer

but receives from society at large the things which he consumes^([26])

[...] All industries are united by mutual relations in a single group;

all productions do reciprocal service as means and end [...] Now, this

undisputed and indisputable fact of the general participation in every

species of product makes all individual productions common; so that

every product, coming from the hands of the producer, is mortgaged in

advance by society.” Elsewhere^([27]): “As long as we live, we work for

as many masters as we have co-workers, we have as many creditors as

partners.” But let us note that Proudhon does not just recall the

interdependence of individuals. What distinguishes his solidarist

argument from that of someone like Bastiat is specifically the idea that

whenever a group is formed, a new force emerges. People are not just

debtors to each other: they are creditors to each other, and therefore

contributors to a kind of common mass of wealth constituted by the very

association of their activities. From this point of view, the proof of

solidarity appears as a corollary of the theory of collective

force^([28]): as valid a proof, let us say, in the intellectual order as

in the material order. And that is why, in the world of ideas as in the

world of things, he was able to present the individual, even the genius,

as a debtor. “The finest genius is, by the laws of his existence and

development, the most dependent upon the society which creates him: who

would dare to make a god of the glorious child^([29])?” Proudhon

insisted on this conclusion with a wicked pleasure: he, the “poor

industrialist” bursting onto the literary scene, would find it a

pertinent argument against the pride of the men of letters, the

“intellectuals” as we would say today, who do not shirk from demanding

privileged wages and indefinite ownership of their works. In 1841, in

his letter to Blanqui^([30]), he praises Mr. Wolowski for having

declared himself, in his course at the Conservatory of Arts and Crafts,

to be against the perpetual and absolute ownership of works of genius

for the benefit of authors’ heirs. The exchangeable value of a book is

due even more to social reality than to the talent displayed in it.

“Society has a right of collective production over every creation of the

mind.” When he demonstrates these formulas, Proudhon says, Mr. Wolowski

is merely generalising the principle of collective force that Proudhon

had established in his first memoir. Later, when he himself attacked the

Literary Majorats, Proudhon would attend to developing all the

consequences of these observations.

“It is a fact^([31]) that when an idea’s time has come, it sprouts

everywhere at the same time, like a seed, such that the merit of the

discovery, compared to the immensity of human production, is reduced to

almost nothing. Here is a field of wheat: can you tell me which ear came

out of the earth first, and do you claim that the others that came after

owe their birth only to its initiative? Such is more or less the role of

these creators, to whom we would have the human race pay a royalty.”

To guarantee ownership of their works to their heirs would not only be

to declare things venal which are not venal by nature; it would be to

surrender public assets over which society has eminent rights, “to

violate the law of collectivity”.

---

Thus, the collective force gives rise to reserves of wealth, both

intellectual and material, which the passing individuals tap into. But

is it enough to say this? The collective force does not only accumulate

things; it constitutes beings, living a life of their own. For Proudhon

there is not only a solidarism, but a social realism.

His expressions abound in it, whichever book we look at any period in

his intellectual development. In The System of Economic

Contradictions^([32]): “In the eyes of anyone who has reflected upon the

laws of labour and exchange, the reality, I almost said the personality,

of the collective man is as certain as the reality and the personality

of the individual man.” In his articles in Voix du peuple, he told those

who seem to regard the collective being merely as a creation of the

mind: “[S]ociety is a person, understand! just as humanity as a whole is

a person”. In The General Idea of the Revolution in the 19^(th)

Century^([33][34]): “[T]here can be no question of touching Society

itself, which we must regard as a superior being, endowed with

independent life”. In Justice: “This is how the hypothesis [which

Proudhon would personally try to demonstrate] is formed of a social,

real, positive and true being.” In Pornocracy^([35]): “Collectivities

are not pure fictions of our understanding; they are realities as real

as the individuals, monads or molecules of which they are composed.”

Should these phrases written by the “father of anarchy” surprise us? Our

surprise will soon diminish, in any case, if we recall the theory of

being and knowledge that the author settled on. It is not because he has

stopped being a relativist, but on the contrary because he is a

relativist to the very end, that Proudhon can make society real in this

way. Because he affirms that reason only grasps relations, he is able to

lend as much existence to collectivity as to individuality.

Already in The Creation of Order, explaining the role reserved for the

kind of critique of the sciences that he calls metaphysical, he hints at

the consequences of the principle that order alone, in nature, is

accessible to us: we can perceive laws or relations, never substances or

causes. But it was above all in 1851, when to answer Mr. Romain-Cornut

he looked back at all his works and the movement of his thought, that he

brought this principle to the fore. In the face of the absolute which he

denies in all and everywhere, his originality is, he declares, to affirm

in all and everywhere progress. But this affirmation implies another.

What Proudhon hunts down in the notion of the absolute is not just the

notion of immobility, but of simplicity, which some would make the

supreme reality. But the search for simple elements is most

unsatisfactory of all. They escape us as we think we are getting closer

to them^([36]). In truth, we never catch simple beings: all that exists

is grouped. Every truth is a relation. Every being is a group. The

notion of group here seems to take the place of the very notion of

series in Proudhon’s mind, or at least, in his eyes, the series becomes

increasingly defined by the group. He insists on the necessarily

synthetic nature of being^([37]). To traditional ontology, he opposes a

truly sociological philosophy.

Thus the sort of reversal of argument made by those accused of social

realism may have already been used by Proudhon. You might argue that

society, unlike an individual, does not have an independent existence.

But remember that the individual is itself already a multiplicity, a

colony, a society. Why would you refuse the reality that you grant to

this primary composite to the other, secondary composite^([38])? It

should be added that Proudhon saw very clearly how this sociological

conception of the world may be used to safeguard the originality of

beings by preventing the uniform “reduction” of the superior to the

inferior. If we recall that the group is more than the sum of its

elements, then the sudden appearance of new things in the Universe will

no longer seem disconcerting to us. In particular, if humans are capable

of deviation, it is precisely because they are composites of composites.

All the powers of nature are gathered in them, but from their very

gathering together a higher power arises, through which they become

“above nature”. “It is this force of collectivity that man refers to

when he speaks of his soul.” “It is with the aid of these notions of

collective force, of group, of series that I rise to the intelligence

and certainty of my free will^([39]).”

Proudhon would make great use of this philosophy to solve the social

problems, whether economic or political, that he meets on his way, as we

can see as early as The Philosophy of Poverty. If he aims to solve the

antinomies that political economy crashes into by means of a truly

social economy, it is precisely by relying on the theory of the

collective being, an organic and synthetic unit^([40]).

Picture society as a huge Prometheus gradually dominating nature, in

turn farmer, winemaker, baker, weaver, organising his work according to

his needs, multiplying his needs in proportion to his work. This

hypothesis will finally allow you to understand the nature of general

wealth, whereby all values produced by private industries combine in

proportion^([41]). As long as you stay at the point of view, familiar to

classical economics, of individuals seeking to win out over each other,

you see the opposition of use value and exchange value. With each person

trying to increase values for their own benefit, all contribute to

diminishing them. It is a world both of perpetual fluctuations and of

fundamental contradictions. Conversely, take the point of view of the

group: useful value and exchangeable value absorb each other and

disappear, “leaving in their place a compound possessed, but in a

superior degree, of all their positive properties”. Value is ultimately

constituted. It appears that production and consumption are in harmony

and that society has only one interest: to increase the number of

products that can indeed, according to Say, be exchanged for products,

“to align values” such that all labour leaves the worker a surplus, and

that every worker can at least buy back the value of their

product^([42]).

But for this ideal to be realised, values must in fact be measured by

labour. We must not see the idle owners taking a disproportionate share

of trade like a kind of toll, or the producers condemned to poverty

wages. When the producers’ purchasing power, and therefore consumption,

is reduced to the smallest share, the entire system of production is

threatened. This means that harmony presupposes equity. The theory of

the proportionality of values, itself deduced from the theory of the

social being, leads to the theory of equality^([43]).

It may be doubted whether Proudhon’s arguments here achieve perfect

clarity. What at least begins to appear clearly is the dual tendency

that marks the originality of his project: both realist and egalitarian,

it presents the phenomena of production, consumption and circulation as

the manifestations of the activity of a unique being; it goes so far as

to personify society, but with the sole goal of establishing equity in

exchanges between individuals.

The same tendencies come to the fore in his explanation of the genesis

and nature of social power. Proudhon, like de Maistre and de Bonald,

protests against philosophers who see the State as nothing more than an

artificial being, the product of a convention between individuals. On

this point, religious mysticism was closer to the truth. It at least

maintained this feeling among peoples that a State is not a thing that

we manufacture^([44]). In fact, social power does not come from

deliberation between individuals; it arises from groups coming together.

In families or businesses, when the elementary associations – different

in nature and object, each formed to perform a specific function and

create a specific product – enter into relations, the collective forces

that emerge from these associations somehow concentrate into a new

power, which rules over their shared life. The quality of the power in

question varies, its authority rising or falling according to the number

and variation of these “forming groups”. This proves that it is nothing

more than their shared emanation.

But if this is the case, it is abundantly clear that the profit from the

social power, as of any collective force more generally, must return to

all of those who have contributed to it in proportion to their

contribution. But is this the story that history tells us? Too often we

see the force constituted in this way being “alienated”^([45]) for the

benefit of a dynasty, race or caste. Too often religion ratifies these

abuses of power instead of opposing them. It covers these kinds of

manipulations with its cloak of illusion. But from the moment the origin

of the State is revealed, diversions and monopolisations become

“impossible”. Here again, the theory of collective reality, properly

understood, puts humanity back on the path of justice^([46]).

If these are his tendencies, we can imagine how Proudhon’s social

realism would move either towards or away from what is called

“organicism”. Proudhon also uses biological metaphors on different

occasions for different purposes. He first uses them to criticise the

solutions offered by his predecessors. He calls these solutions utopian

because they are too mechanistic. Referring to a phalansterian theory,

he says: “A deplorable error, but a natural one in a system in which

society is seen as a machine rather than as a living being. Society is

reformed only by always growing and developing, and this fact, the most

striking in history, is the condemnation of all the hypotheses that

proceed by overthrowing the forms and replacing the system.” Let us not

touch what lives: would Proudhon in turn have approved this phrase, at

least at a certain time? In any case, the idea of spontaneous growth

inherent in societies allows him to oppose the systems of the time with

a continuist philosophy of history. But even more so, it is a

pluralistic view of things that he proposes by comparing societies with

organisms. Should Proudhon be classed as a “polytheist” alongside Louis

Ménard? He would at least increasingly worship multiple forces,

irreducible to each other, whose relative independence seems to him to

be the very condition of life.

The simplistic reformers remind him of doctors who would say: “With its

diverse elements – bone, muscles, tendons, nerves, viscera, arterial and

venous blood, gastric and pancreatic fluids, chyle, lachrymal and

synovial humours, gas, liquids and solids – the body is ungovernable.

Let us reduce it to a single, solid, resilient matter, bone for example;

hygiene and therapy will become child’s play.” But neither society nor

the human body becomes ossified. In its complication, always in motion,

he discovers “a thought, an intimate collective life that develops

outside the laws of geometry and mechanics; that is loath to assimilate

to the rapid, uniform, infallible movement of a crystallisation; of

which the ordinary, syllogistic, fatalist, unitary logic is incapable of

taking account, but which is explained marvellously with the aid of a

broader philosophy, admitting in one system the plurality of principles,

the struggle of elements, the opposition of contraries and the synthesis

of all the indefinables and absolutes^([47]).”

But although he uses organ-related analogies to draw our attention to

the spontaneity of movements and the multiplicity of social elements,

Proudhon is not unaware of their dangers. In particular, he seems to

sense that they might provide arguments against the desire for

egalitarian justice which is the core of his soul. How many times since

Hegel have we not repeated that societies, by the very fact that they

are organisms, require a strict hierarchy, and not just adherence to the

traditional distribution of tasks, but respect for the privileges and

prerogatives of the ruling classes! Proudhon strives to destroy these

arguments in advance when he recalls that “[a]s an organism, society,

the moral being par excellence, fundamentally differs so much from

living beings, in whom the subordination of organs is the very law of

existence^([48])”. It loathes “any idea of hierarchy”. Rather than the

subordination of organs, the social system involves the balancing of

forces, services and products. It thus appears as a general equation, a

set of weighing scales. Scales would definitively take the place of

organisms in Proudhon’s imagination. When he wants to specify his

conception, which is always egalitarian in tendency, he more often uses

the vocabulary of the physical and mathematical sciences than that of

the biological sciences.

As history unfolds and consciousness gains ground, does the latter not

become less and less suited to reality? ^([49]) As governments become

democratic, it seems increasingly illusory to derive morality from

physiology; comparing the State to all known animals is therefore be to

no avail: “Here^([50]), physiology counts for nothing; the State figures

as the product, not of organic nature, of the flesh, but of intelligible

nature, that is, the mind.”

In fact, naturalist tendencies do not succeed in dominating in

Proudhon’s philosophy. More than once, no doubt to react against the

spiritualism of the academic philosophers whose courses he had attended,

he hints at a desire to erase the distinctions between forms of being.

He tries to reunite humanity with animality and sends societies back to

the school of life. At times he seems to believe that nature,

methodically consulted, would lend a superior authority to the

egalitarian dreams that obsess him: it would at least provide him with

as many justifying analogies as it does to the followers of aristocratic

doctrines^([51]). But, without losing the hope of demonstrating that

justice’s system of laws is ultimately the same as the world’s system of

laws^([52]), he realises that societies will never grasp these laws more

directly than by looking within and analysing the content of this

consciousness which constitutes one of their originalities. They are

“spiritual collectivities^([53])”. And it is because the mind gives

itself free rein that the social reign must be superimposed on others.

In Proudhon’s eyes, the main characteristic of this reign is that it is

an “industrial reign”. We know the major role that the author of Justice

grants to technology. In any case, from The Creation of Order he

comments on Franklin’s thought: “Man is a tool-making animal^([54]).” He

writes that labour is the plastic force of society, the typical idea

that determines the various phases of its growth; that the “progress of

Society is measured by the development of industry and the perfection of

instruments.” In this respect, as has been rightly noted^([55]), he

emerges as one of the precursors of historical materialism. Is this not

first of all, as Marx himself points out, a philosophy of technology, an

attempt to explain everything, in the development of societies, by the

improvement of the means of production? But while Marx draws from this

theory the conclusion that ideas are merely insignificant shadows and

reflections, veritable epiphenomena, Proudhon continues to place ideas

at the centre of society and to show the collective mind at work in

history. To establish this mind’s laws of development, measure its

progress, identify its tendencies, express its wishes: this is precisely

the primordial task that he had assigned to what we call sociology. And

that is why, having recalled how he understands collective force and

collective being, it is important that we emphasise the way in which he

conceives of collective reason.

---

From his first works, this notion is undoubtedly present in Proudhon’s

mind. In Warning to the Proprietors^([56]), does he not define society

as an unconscious collective mind that, with admirable certainty,

follows laws that the scholar’s eye finds hard to discern? But as his

experience broadens, he pays more attention to this impersonal reason

which lives in human society. He increasingly recognises its authority;

he would go so far as to oppose its oracles to the problematic

conclusions of personal reason. In Justice he already indicates why

collective reason has synthetic ideas that are very different from, and

often opposite to, those of the individual self. But it is in one of his

final writings, Theory of Property, that he draws the greatest

effect^([57]) from this antithesis. We know that here, in order to

establish it as an insurmountable barrier to the encroachments of the

State, he tries to justify not only the right to possession which not

even his first memoir challenged, but the right to absolute property,

the jus utendi et ab utendi according to the ancient quiritary formula:

an indefensible right, Proudhon acknowledges, for anyone only wants to

judge it according to the norms of individual reason. But this method,

so often applied as it has been by jurists, is imprudence itself: the

maxims of general reason that end up imposing themselves on individual

reason are often the opposite of those that the latter gives us. There

are opposites that the social genius is pleased to unite, “while the

individualist reason most often only knows how to put them in

discord^([58])”. The “inspirations of that immanent reason which directs

human collectivities” naturally surpass the self’s conceptions. If

Proudhon went one step further, he would bring us back to Joseph de

Maistre. Does he not seem to think that the more incomprehensible or

inadmissible an institution appears to individual reason – as is

precisely the case with quiritary property – the more likely it is that,

in accordance with the requirements of a higher reason, it is thereby

“providential”?

We can at least see clearly how this antithesis justifies the method

that Proudhon advocates, his distrust of a priori constructions, his

trust in the lessons of history. Since collective reason does not use

the same yardstick as individual reason, it is clear that the latter

cannot deduct from its funds the products of the former. Here,

Proudhon’s precepts foreshadow those of the sociologists who remind us

of the need to study social institutions from the outside, as things, in

facts. According to him, the knowledge of social laws, by the very fact

that it corresponds to the theory of collective ideas, could never be

anything but an empirical knowledge^([59]).

But conversely, because they also reflect the ideas of a collective

reason, the empirical knowledge of historical facts may reveal an

eternal order. Humanity as a whole, humanity as a social being, can

neither deceive nor be deceived^([60]): it is infallible. This is the

first postulate of Proudhon’s philosophy of history. How, if it were

otherwise, could there be any truth? Collective reason is nothing other

than absolute reason revealing itself in history^([61]). From this point

of view, society and God are merging: the thought of one merely becomes

aware of the will of the other^([62]).

However, we must not rush to identify these two terms with each other in

all respects. Between society and God, the way in which eternal truths

are revealed forces us to maintain an infinite distance. There is a

system of ideas, greater than time, that determine the conditions for

social balance^([63]). Proudhon especially displays this conviction in

the first period of his life, but it seems to be present in his thought

until the end and accounts for his intellectual attitude. And for this

reason it may be argued that Proudhon does not escape Platonism either.

It is even his Platonism that explains the particular colour of his

anarchism. If he objects so strongly to government arbitrariness, it is

because he believes that a “scientific” organisation of humanity is

possible: “scientific” meaning in accordance with this aforementioned

idea of justice of which he constantly dreams^([64]). And, because the

idea itself is only discovered by collective reason, we end up with this

paradox whereby Proudhon’s anarchism is justified first of all by its

confidence in the discoveries of collective reason.

But these discoveries themselves are only made gradually, after a long

series of efforts, trials and errors, hopes of all kinds – a long and

arduous road for humanity. It rises up to the truth by falling. It only

achieves balance after centuries of oscillations. Revelation by pain, by

war, by evil, which provides Proudhon with precisely the means to turn

humanity back against God. Why has God not given humans these eternal

truths, of which His intelligence is the link? Why does He let the

tables of justice be spelled out for them so laboriously? He could have

given them the synthetic intelligence to perceive the conditions for

balance intuitively. Instead, He condemns them to a slow dialectic that

progresses by way of successively resolved antinomies. This is why

antithesis between God and humanity persists. This is why humanity has

the right, or rather the duty, to consider God as a sworn enemy. This is

why we must be not atheists but antitheists^([65]).

This explains the original position that Proudhon would take on this

question of the relation between society and divinity. He begins by

finding a common path with what he calls humanism, a term that applies

in his thought, it seems, to the doctrines of both Feuerbach and Auguste

Comte. But at some point he sets himself clearly apart from it.

The author of Economic Contradictions would undoubtedly agree that

“[h]umanity in its ensemble is the reality sought by the social genius

under the mystical name of God”. Like Feuerbach, he denounces the

“projections” by which humanity ascribes to the absolute, in divinity,

the qualities that it holds close to its heart. He does not fail to add

that the idea of God is above all social. “[I]t is much more a

collective act of faith than an individual conception”. It is from the

collective self, taken as the upper pole of creation, that humanity

extends the idea of the individual creator^([66]). In their gods,

societies worship emanations of their own spontaneity. From this point

of view, theocracy appears as “a symbolism of the social force^([67]).”

And Proudhon would arrive at this formula, which could serve as a motto

for more than one contemporary work: “What the theologian pursues,

without knowing it, in the dogma that he teaches, is not the mysteries

of the infinite: it is the laws of our collective and individual

spontaneity^([68]).” But are these explanations sufficient reasons

either to deny God or divinise society? Proudhon does not think so. And

it is here that he makes his reservations about this humanism, which he

sees both as the last form of atheism and as an attempt to launch a new

religion. Even if our conception of God is anthropomorphic, or more

precisely sociomorphic, this cannot directly prove that God does not

exist. On the contrary, one may continue to need, from various points of

view, the hypothesis of God. In the meantime, one thing is certain: that

by the very fact of elevating human attributes to infinity in order to

define God, we open up an unbridgeable gap between God and man. Human

attributes raised to infinity are no longer applicable to humanity. It

essence is imperfection, and that is why perpetual struggle is its lot.

So let us not elevate humanity to God, as this would denigrate both.

Both terms can only be understood by their antithesis^([69]).

And one could undoubtedly try to explain this very antithesis by the

nature of social reality, which dominates the individual. Proudhon

anticipates this kind of explanation: “Will it be said that the

opposition between man and the divine being is illusory, and that it

arises from the opposition that exists between the individual man and

the essence of humanity as a whole?” But then it must be granted that

humanity as a collective being does not undergo this process of trial

and error of which by definition the divine being is spared. This is

precisely what Proudhon denies. Collective reason tends towards eternal

balance, but does so humanly, gradually discovering it by way of a slow

progress which is the necessary preface of order. And that is why,

ultimately, it cannot be identified with the divine intelligence.

---

But is this collective reason really a reason; that is, does it imply a

consciousness? So far, we hardly see this consciousness at work. The

philosopher examines humanity’s deeds and gestures, compares the

“manifestations of collective spontaneity”; he follows the series of

institutions whose very ruins make up the terraces of order. He thus

becomes capable of inferring the principles that govern the general

movement. But it is only in his personal intelligence that these

principles become conscious. Should we therefore grant that, always and

everywhere, their action is exerted on societies without them realising,

as if by night? Humanity, Proudhon says somewhere, is like the ropemaker

who walks backwards towards the end of their journey. Will it never turn

back around? Does a moment not come when society, ceasing to be

“unconscious”, creates bodies for reflection that we could use to

understand its thought, finally turned back on itself?

The first answer that comes to mind is that these bodies have existed

for a long time; they are the States. The very action they want to

exercise forces them to become aware of the principles that govern the

spontaneous movement of societies. In the State and through the State,

society becomes conscious, and in this sense the State is truly the

throne of God. It was Hegel’s solution, and it was also, mutatis

mutandis, Louis Blanc’s solution. But it could not in any way be

Proudhon’s solution.

His hatred of statism in all its forms is one of his most powerful

feelings. It would be to no avail to assure him that with the happy

tipping point of democracy, humanity will finally pass from the politics

of the master-State to that of the servant-State. Would government

forces now apply themselves to guaranteeing individual rights? But

wherever there is governmental force, Proudhon sees a source of

inevitable abuse. Whether democratic or monarchical, a State always

involves a delegation of powers, thereby enabling corruption. The State

is the “external constitution of the social power”^([70]); it is

organised to allow “alienations” of that very power. For too long the

people’s imagination has helped it. This idealism, which Proudhon

denounces as one of the worst enemies of the morality of human dignity,

has surrounded governments like a halo. This prestige may have been

useful at some time in history, but soon became the most dangerous of

all. It is high time that these “political myths” were destroyed forever

by carrying out a “purification of ideas”. Instead of encouraging

society to find its centre of consciousness in the State, it must

understand that it is itself a social product: not a fire, but smoke.

Essentially, Proudhon accuses those who continue to revere the State as

the necessary centre of consciousness of society of lacking sociological

faith. Still led astray by biological metaphors, they seem to believe at

all costs that this great body needs a head, and that it can only think

by delegation. According to this hypothesis, it is impossible for the

collective power, “which belongs essentially to the masses, to express

itself and act directly, without the mediation of bodies established

deliberately and, so to speak, ad hoc. It seems, we say – and this is

the explanation of the constitution of the State in all its varieties

and forms – that the collective being, society, existing only in the

mind, cannot make itself felt save through monarchical incarnation,

aristocratic usurpation, or democratic mandate; consequently, that all

it is forbidden any specific and personal manifestation.” It is

precisely against this scepticism that Proudhon erects his theory. For

him, although he is, as he said, a Pyrrhonian in politics, the other

side of his Pyrrhonism is his faith in the intellectual capacities of

the people themselves. “We deny government and the State, because we

affirm what the founders of States have never believed in: the

personality and autonomy of the masses^([71]).” If he speaks out

vehemently against those who diverted the 1848 Revolution by wanting to

lead it, it is precisely because they were allowed to gain more from

this “disease of opinion” that Aristotle studied under the name of

politics: it prevented them from being in communion with the people.

They did not believe in it: they did not understand it; they did not

know how to ask it^([72]).

“Let everyone, in these difficult days, turn to the people’s side; let

everyone study its sovereign thought, which is that of no party, of no

school, and which can nevertheless be seen in all schools and in all

parties: it will be able to define itself and answer all our questions,

provided we know how to ask it. To ask the people! This is the secret of

the future! To ask the people: this is the whole science of

society^([73]).”

But again, how should we go about getting an answer from the people? “No

more than God do the people have eyes to see, ears to hear, a mouth to

speak.” They speak only through the mouths of individuals. So what

option do we have but to ask individuals to express their opinions by a

vote? We will count those voices. And we will have the right to assume

that the opinion shared by the greatest number of them corresponds to

the collective thought. This is the solution envisioned by democracy.

But this solution, too, is in Proudhon’s eyes only a trick. He proves to

be just as stern to believers in universal suffrage as to those with

faith in the State.

It is not only the majoritarian system, or the representative system,

that he despises^([74]). Of course, to him it seems unfair that half of

the citizens plus one should impose law on the other half: “Democracy is

ostracism.” It seems inevitable to him, moreover, that the

representatives will abuse the power entrusted to them: “Democracy is a

disguised aristocracy.” But even if we introduced direct rule, the

government of the people by the people, the results would not be any

better. Establishing voting by head, viritim, is enough to prevent a

collective thought from expressing itself. Universal suffrage is an axe

to divide the people. “[The] testimony of discord, it can only produce

discord.” “How can you believe that an expression of opinion at once

particular and general, collective and individual, in a word, synthetic,

can be obtained by balloting, which is the official expression of

diversity^([75])?”

On reading these texts, we might think that in Proudhon’s eyes, in order

for the people to think, they must be in some way undivided, that the

individualities must dissolve into a higher unity. Indeed, Proudhon

often uses the unitary language of the Revolution to explain his theory.

“God forbid that the people could ever be wrong or lie. I say the people

one and indivisible, not the multitude which is only plurality without

unity^([76]).” At the beginning of a chapter of Economic

Contradictions^([77]), he describes lyrically, in the kind of vision

that he dedicates to Lamartine, the quasi-disappearance of the

individual in social communion: “[F]rom this intimate trade, we had the

exquisite feeling of a unanimous will. In this ecstasy of an instant, in

this absolute communion which, without erasing the characters, raised

them by love towards the ideal, we felt what society can, must, be: and

the mystery of immortal life was revealed to us.” And if we go back to

The Celebration of Sunday^([78]), we find a full defence of the kind of

“fusion of intelligences and hearts” that Moses dreamed of for his young

nation. He wanted it to be “not an agglomeration of individuals, but a

truly fraternal society”. Here, do we not find the lineaments of a

theory of Volksgeist, analogous to that which served as a bedrock of

legal and economic nationalism in Germany?

It would nevertheless be completely wrong to believe that as Proudhon’s

thought develops, it would join with that of Savigny, for example. On

the contrary, the distance between Volksgeist and “collective reason”

would only increase. It is all the more clear, as his feeling takes

shape, that he abhors any reabsorption whatsoever of individuality. He

refuses to rely on the obscure powers of unanimous feelings. In

particular, he does not grant that the last word of political wisdom is

to give in to the spontaneous movements that arise from the kind of

fusion of hearts achieved in national unity. We know Proudhon’s

resistance to those who invoked the principle of nationality as a sure

guide to foreign policy: he stubbornly refused to lament the

partitioning of Poland and advocate the establishment of Italian unity.

To justify this attitude which scandalised so many people, he wanted to

define the notion of nationalities once and for all^([79]). He did not

manage to complete his project in time. We can at least see quite

clearly, through the discussions outlined in various places in his

works, the direction in which the tendencies of his mind led him. He

protests against those who would make nationality a “physiological and

geographical thing”; he tries to prove that it is at its core, and in

fact is increasingly becoming, a “legal and moral thing”. Unlike de

Maistre, far from seeing the written constitutions, by which people try

to determine the conditions of government, as unnatural and therefore

unsustainable products, he is pleased that since 1815 the era of

constitutions has been open^([80]). It represents a win for the regime

of liberty over the regime of authority. It heralds the moment when all

associations will rest on voluntary pacts.

The ardour and vehemence of his imprecations against Rousseau has often

been noted. But it should be underlined that what he reproaches him for

is not the artificialism for which de Bonald criticised him; it is for

not having envisaged a society emerging from a convention. It is for

having only legislated for the strictly political forms of association,

and also for considering only a single contract, undefined in its

conditions, unrealisable in practice. Far from eliminating the idea of

contract from his philosophy, Proudhon retains it and gives it a central

place. His ambition is to bring this idea down into reality itself. He

would thus be led to replace the single contract, which is only an

abdication of the masses in the hands of an arbitrator, with a number of

truly synallagmatic contracts. It is through positive contracts, duly

countersigned by the parties, that the conditions for cooperation should

be settled^([81][82]). And it is undoubtedly so that these multiple

contracts can become the rule that Proudhon is led to prefer federalist

organisations to unitary organisations.

While these are Proudhon’s tendencies, it is clear that he cannot in any

case ask for the silence of personal reasons in order for the public

reason to be heard. On the contrary^([83]): each should freely express

their idea and clearly convey their claims. It is the clash of ideas

that casts the light. From the antagonism of claims, rules emerge that

rest on the relations between things. “The impersonality of the public

reason presupposes as a principle the greatest contradiction; as an

organ, the greatest possible multiplicity.” Here, Proudhon finds one of

his dearest ideas: the idea of balance, by which forces are set against

one another in order to discover the conditions for their balance. Each

human self is an insatiable ambition that tend towards the absolute. To

correct this “exorbitance”, there is nothing better than putting man

before man, balancing the self with another self. The individual

absolutisms thereby become neutralised; there is a sort of “airing of

ideas”. Truths appear which determine just relations, and whose system

is the framework of public reason. “When two or several men have to come

to a conclusion about a question through contradiction, either of the

natural order or, and for a greater reason, of the human order, what

results from the reciprocal and respective elimination that they are led

to make of their subjectivity, i.e. the absolute that the self affirms

and represents, is a common manner of seeing, which no longer resembles,

either in content or in form, what it would have been without this

debate, their individual way of thinking. This manner of seeing, into

which only pure relations enter, without mixtures of metaphysical and

absolutist elements, constitutes the collective reason or public

reason.” There is therefore no need to conceive it as a separate

metaphysical entity, a previous and superior Logos^([84]): it is “the

result of all the particular reasons or ideas, whose inequalities,

arising from the conception of the absolute and its egoistic

affirmation, compensate for each other by their mutual criticism and

cancel each other out^([85])”.

Here again, we might ask if Proudhon is as far from Rousseau as he

believes himself to be. Rousseau also views the general will as

something other than the sum of the particular wills. For the former to

be constituted, he wants “the pluses and minuses to destroy each

other^([86])”. And he sees this reciprocal neutralisation as the

guarantee of equality. The fact remains that, more so than Rousseau,

Proudhon insists on the need for prior debate. Daily discussion is in

his view the indispensable “usher” of justice. “In order to ensure

peace, keep social energies in perpetual struggle” is the paradoxical

solution he settles on: for the collective self to arise, the individual

selves must be set against each other. Above all, Proudhon firmly

refuses to allow individuals, having decided one fine day to create the

State, to surrender in its hands and pride themselves on now being the

humble slaves of their creation. We know that he aims not for the

apotheosis of the State, but rather its dissolution: what he hopes for

from the regime of partial, truly synallagmatic and commutative

contracts, through which individuals freely debate the terms of their

exchanges, is precisely that it enables an order without masters,

without functionaries, without government.

The idea that clearly comes to the surface here is the idea of economic

society as opposed to political society; it is the idea of civil

society. When Proudhon calls for universal debate to precede the

establishment of commutative contracts, the ideal he wants to serve is

undoubtedly that of freedom of thought against the theocratic tradition,

but even more so that of equity of exchanges against any statist

intervention. Those selves who confront their claims are above all, in

his eyes, mercantilists; and the truth that collective reason must

derive from their confronted claims is the value of things, measured by

the labour embodied in them. In short, it is above all the life of

commerce that Proudhon considers when he develops his theory of the

relationship of individual thought to impersonal thought. “Translate

these words, contract, commutative justice, which are the language of

the law, into the language of business, and you have Commerce, that is

to say, in its highest significance, the act by which man and man

declare themselves essentially producers, and abdicate all pretension to

govern each other^([87]).”

The tradition that Proudhon joins with here is a very different

tradition from that of Rousseau and the political contract theorists: it

is that of the economists of the late 18^(th) century, which provided

Saint-Simon with the elements of his central antithesis. In both the

feudal regime and the industrial regime, Saint-Simon clearly opposes, to

the government of persons, the administration of things. On this point,

Proudhon’s thought simply welds to Saint-Simon’s. He clearly indicates

this himself: “Commutative justice, the reign of contracts, in other

words the economic or industrial reign: these are the different synonyms

of the idea whose advent will abolish the old systems of distributive

justice, of the reign of laws, in more concrete terms of the feudal,

governmental or military regime. The future of humanity lies in this

substitution”.

In Hegel, too, the influence of the concepts elaborated by the

economists had been felt: in Philosophy of Right and Philosophy of Mind,

between the family and the State there is the “bürgerliche Gesellschaft”

in which the “system of needs” is realised. And it is undoubtedly from

there that it passed into Marx’s philosophy, providing its substructure

to the whole social world. But for Hegel, the order constituted by the

system of needs is in no way an order capable of being self-sufficient.

Rather, the philosopher sees in it, by the very fact that individuals

take their particular interests as ends, a kind of return to atomism. At

its core, associations born from commerce seem to him least associative

of all: they cannot serve as a support for the collective spirit. And

this is why the bürgerliche Gesellschaft must be by surpassed by the

State, which alone allows the social essence to reach consciousness of

itself. On this point, the Proudhonian tendency is the exact opposite of

the Hegelian tendency. For the author of General Idea of the Revolution

in the 19^(th) Century, civil society is the milieu in which he wants to

dissolve, submerge the State. “What we put in place of the public force

is the collective force.” In elliptical terms, he thus indicates that

the “economic organisation” where this collective force takes hold must

reabsorb the governmental power.

Where a free agro-industrial federation has been established, what need

will there be for legislators, prefects, public prosecutors, customs

officers, police officers? When agreement is reached through the

proliferation of equitable contracts, the coercive apparatus will no

longer need to function. “Contractual solidarity” (a phrase that would

appear much later) renders authoritarian centralisation useless^([88]).

Proudhon is therefore far from seeing the world of trade as a dispersive

atomism. He is far from believing that when individuals are face to

face, debating the conditions of their exchanges, the collective mind

lacks support. On the contrary, it is this very debate that brings its

verdict. Let free people contract equally: it is then that justice, the

supreme interest of society, manifests itself; in other words, it is

then that the collective reason speaks.

We now understand how Proudhon could write that political economy is the

depository of the secret thoughts of society. His sociology is neither

statist, nor democratic, nor nationalist; it is a sociology of an

economist, of an “accountant”, of a “mutualist”, at the same time

liberal and egalitarian. It lends force, life, even intelligence to

society; but it is arranged in such a way that this force, this life and

this intelligence presuppose the worker-traders’ equal freedom rather

than crushing it.

---

Egalitarian and liberal as well as federalist, we can sense the specific

attitude that Proudhon would adopt towards the specific groups existing

or arising within nations themselves. To be sure, he grants these groups

great recognition. And it is on this point that his politics is most

clearly opposed to Rousseau’s. “War on particular societies” was the

motto of the author of The Social Contract. On the contrary, for the

author of The Federative Principle, they constitute the true “pivots of

democracy”. Nevertheless, in order for them to provide all the services

legitimately expected, their organisation must be subject to certain

conditions: those that enable the collective reason to be revealed

through debate between individuals.

We recently discovered Proudhon to be the authentic ancestor of the

syndicalist philosophy that, by correcting the political deviations of

socialism, strives to disassociate itself from democracy. The vocabulary

of Proudhonian sociology has been used to define, between individualist

anarchy and statist socialism, the positions of revolutionary

syndicalism. And it^([89]) is very true that the commentary that

Proudhon hastily wrote on his deathbed for the Manifesto of the Sixty

reads in places like a hymn to “class consciousness”. The working class

has won its “political capacity” precisely because its members have

finally become aware of the special situation of the collectivity that

they compose. They look within to identify the original idea that

responds to this situation. They have now understood that they must

think among themselves. Their collective self arises from opposition to

one another. Proudhon no doubt foresaw the role that the workers’

associations, the “workers’ groups”, could play as organs of this self.

A centre of education as well as of production, in his eyes the workers’

association is first of all its centre of consciousness. It is therefore

possible to argue that if he had known them, he would have applauded the

actions of the unions seeking to discover the thought of producers by

bringing them together. However, we must not to be too hasty on this

point either. We would have a very narrow idea of Proudhon’s sociology

if we were to believe, for example, that according to him the working

group is the single organ of justice, and above all that in his eyes it

would suffice, for social progress to be achieved, to rouse the

non-owners against the owners in some way and drag them along by some

irresistible collective emotion.

Let us first recall that for Proudhon, whatever privilege he may grant

to labour, which he honours as the revealer of the most precious truths,

it is not only in the industrial company that the collective reason

speaks, but also in the scholarly or artistic company; in the academies,

schools, municipalities; in the national assembly, in the club, in the

jury, in “every meeting of men, in a word, formed for the discussion of

ideas and the inquiry into questions of right^([90][91])”.

And then, as this phrase itself warns us, these groups, whatever they

may be, cannot hear the conclusions of the collective reason unless they

have first given voice to the individual reasons. From this point of

view, sentimental unanimity is not something to hope for; it is

something to fear. Above all, the collectivity questioned must not “vote

as one man in the name of a particular feeling that has become common.”

The collectivity would thus become as unfriendly to Proudhon as to

Rousseau himself. Multiplicity, opposition, even contradiction of

opinions: let us remember that these are, for our philosopher, within

particular societies and elsewhere, the preconditions for the

impersonality of the conclusions. This means that in drawing Proudhon’s

thought to syndicalism, it would be too much to turn it back against

individualism. It also means that he did not in any way share the faith

of “the new school” in class instinct. This instinct, once stimulated to

the right degree, would supposedly cause the working class to march as

one against the bourgeoisie. But at no point does Proudhon take pleasure

from this prospect^([92]). He indignantly denounces any attempt to

“excite working-class democracy to scorn and hatred for the terrible and

elusive colleagues of the middle class.” He refuses to give the working

class a kind of “power of extortion” that would allow it to stop

worrying about winning the majority over to its idea peacefully and

legally. Not content with blaming strikes, he goes so far as to oppose

the workers being given a right of coalition that would destroy

competition, precisely by invoking against E. Ollivier the sort of force

inherent to collectivities^([93]). Proudhon does not dream of setting

class interests against one another: he dreams of balancing the rights

of individuals. The idea that he wants to be discovered by workers,

reflecting in their autonomous groups, is not an exclusively

working-class idea, but a human, universal, rational idea: that of

justice in exchange – service for service, product for product – which

will equalise people by ensuring their independence. In other words,

whether they are made up of workers’ companies or otherwise, what

Proudhon expects of particular societies is not, it seems, that they

prepare so many specific collective souls: it is that by offering

favourable environments for the confrontation of individual reasons,

they each favour the uncovering of this impersonal reason that speaks of

justice.

---

However, among these societies, there some whose role deserve to be

specified separately, those formed spontaneously, prior to the State,

even prior to the economic association: families. Throughout his career

as a thinker, Proudhon, as a son, husband, and model father, appreciated

the value of the domestic group. If there is one religion he keeps, it

is that of the home. Saint-Simonians and Fourierists easily arouse his

anger, even his disgust: more than their mysticism or illuminism, their

shared indecency alarms him. In the chapter on duties of the family, he

is as intransigent as Auguste Comte. Both are anti-feminists: they fear

opening up the slightest breach in the family unit.

In truth, Proudhon cannot praise unreservedly the influence that the

domestic grouping has historically wielded. Is it not responsible for

the authoritarian form of the political grouping? The latter is merely

the long shadow cast by the former. Like de Bonald, Proudhon observes

this fact. But his ideal is the inverse of that of theocrats; far from

rejoicing, he complains about this sort of relic. And the reason he

criticises the governmental socialism of Louis Blanc, for example, is

precisely that its doctrine is nothing more than a clumsy application of

the domestic economy to society^([94]). Before Spencer, Proudhon mocks

the anti-individualists of this school as incapable of conceiving of

anything other than a household economy. The society whose progress must

be supported is economic society, born of the workshop, which

individualises people^([95]). As for political society, born of the

family, which aims to merge people into one other, we must hope for and

hasten its dissolution. Domestic in origin, the order that the State

establishes is authoritarian in its means, communist in its tendencies;

but true, definitive order must be both egalitarian and liberal. It is

supported by innumerable pillars erected by the wills in agreement: fair

contracts.

But through a detour, to this order which is anti-family in tendency,

the family finds itself rendering the most distinguished services. For

collective reason to finally discover the conditions of balance, which

are also the rules of justice, would be a great deal, but it would not

be everything. For the conscious idea to become active, the contribution

of feeling appears necessary. As his reflections as a moralist deepen,

Proudhon becomes more aware of this: though so critical of “idealism”,

which he sees as the great deviant of moral life, he comes to recognise

that justice itself needs the reinforcement brought by nurturing

feelings methodically.

Certainly, idealism cannot discover the rational law of equal exchange,

but once it has been discovered it can help it overcome any resistance

it encounters. It presupposes among all individuals the will to respect

and to ensure respect for the dignity of people, both their own and that

of others. But does experience not prove that when we appeal to this

sense of dignity, the individual thinks of themselves first and

foremost? To combat the selfish instinct, which so easily takes the

shape of right, would it not be useful for justice to form its own

organ? By its action, hearts would inclined to this social goodwill

without which balance itself could not be established. This organ is

precisely the couple, the androgyne where the selves complement each

other and, at the same time as, their absolutisms correct each other.

“For the production of justice, we need a premotion, a grace, say

theologians: we need love.” From this point of view, we discover that

the woman in marriage – the wife, the mother – is the most precious

auxiliary of right itself. “Man holds onto society by woman, neither

more nor less than the child holds onto the mother by the umbilical

cord^([96]).” The family spirit paves the way for the civic spirit. This

small group, which the citizen must support, in turn supports them,

contains them, exalts their honour, restrains their pride. Being single

implies being unsociable, “uncontrollable”, “unreachable”. If family

ties, so strong but yet so soft, were to break down, we would then see

“with indomitable violence, the contradiction between the individual and

the society^([97])” break out. Society persists through the

subordination of all human forces and faculties, individual and

collective, to justice. The family naturally prepares this

subordination. Domestic discipline is the best school we can imagine for

contractual solidarity. The ideal that collective reason reveals from

the confrontation of individual reasons cannot become a reality unless

the feelings of individuals have first received social guidance within

families, groups especially favourable to moral education. Ultimately,

once again, the fruits of reflection presuppose the fruits of

spontaneity.

---

These brief summaries provide a glimpse of the complexity of what may be

called the sociology of Proudhon, in which one can sense a wide variety

of intersecting influences. Proudhon as a sociologist sometimes reminds

us of A. Smith, sometimes de Bonald, occasionally Rousseau, most often

Saint-Simon. But in the series of systems that pave the way for

sociological investigations, his sociology occupies a unique place,

undoubtedly determined by the very nature of the tendencies that he

wants to satisfy above all.

Proudhon remains faithful to the passion for equality that his first

life experiences instilled in the depths of his heart, but he is a

liberal egalitarian. He reacts against so many utopias which he saw

built and which all more or less tended to turn people into machines. He

is, it seems, even more afraid of the abuse of authority than of the

excess of inequality. To save civilisation, he relies solely on the

virtue of equitable contracts. Individuals will finally decide to

measure the value of the products they exchange by the amount of labour

they have incorporated into it.

This solution has only one flaw: it presupposes among the contracting

parties the firm commitment to be just, the resolve not to abuse a

privileged situation, the desire for equality. The whole edifice built

by the powerful accountant’s imagination that lived inside Proudhon is

ruined in advance if the individual favours themselves over others, and

does not effectively recognise their equal dignity. More than once

Proudhon sensed this. And it is no doubt because he sensed it that he

does not remain an individualist pure and simple. He seeks an authority

to provide a basis for the precept he needs. He tries to prove that his

desire for equality is necessitated by the very nature of the collective

being, by its progress, by the consciousness that it gains of the

conditions for its balance. To discipline individual reasons, the

so-called father of anarchism appeals to the prestige of collective

reason.

But in thus lending life and reason to the collectivity, he takes great

care not to make it oppress and absorb individuals. He finds a way to

justify his defiance of the State through the manner in which society is

realised. It is economic society that he personifies; that is, precisely

the society that presupposes exchange, commerce, contract, all the free

play of individual activities. Similarly, it is not from the elimination

of personal reasons, but from their antagonistic affirmation that he

derives the system of impersonal reason. It is only when it comes to

putting active feelings at the service of this reason that Proudhon, no

doubt informed by his own experience, sees the value of the fusion of

souls. He thus praises the miracle of the family. But it should be noted

that in no way does he want citizens, composed of families, to work

towards establishing a public order conceived in their image. He wants

to leave them face to face, confronting their claims, measuring their

rights, united solely by the rational bond of equal exchange. In this

sense, if we want to refer to the doctrines that claim to respect and

enforce the equal freedom of all individuals as individualistic, we are

right to continue saying that Proudhon’s dominant tendency remains

individualistic. His originality lies in putting to work, to the glory

of the individualistic ideas thus understood, the very sociological

spirit that for a long time seemed only to discredit them.

C. Bouglé.

[1] Qu’est-ce que la Propriété ? (1841 edition),

p. 281.

[2] Les Majorats littéraires, p. 46, note.

[3] Système des Contradictions économiques, II,

p. 237. (Citations are from the complete works edition, unless

otherwise indicated.)

[4] Questions d’aujourd’hui et de demain [Questions for Today and

Tomorrow], 3^(rd) series, p. 162

[5] Articles in Voix du Peuple, in Mélanges,

III. p. 22.

[6] pp. 215–6.

[7] Ch. II, § 3.

[8] Translator’s note: The following citation appears as a footnote but

the in-text citation is missing and it is unclear precisely where it

should appear: Correspondance, I, p. 238, Lettre à M. Blanqui (1841

edition), p. 118.

[9] Qu’est-ce que la Propriété ? p. 121. Cf. Contradictions économiques,

I, p. 243.

[10] La Création de l’ordre dans l’humanité, p.

269.

[11] Qu’est-ce que la Propriété ? p. 124. Proudhon goes so far as to say

in the conclusion (p. 311): “All human labour being the result of

collective force, all property becomes, in consequence, collective and

unitary. To speak more exactly, labour destroys property.”

[12] Contradictions économiques, I, p. 242.

[13] Cr. de l’ordre, p. 245. Cf. Idée générale de la révolution au XIXe

siècle, p. 81.

[14] We have analysed Karl Marx’s theory more extensively here (November

1908): Marxisme et Sociologie [Marxism and Sociology]).

[15] Aus dem literarischen Nachlass von Karl Marx, Fr. Engels u, F.

Lassalle, II, p. 127 et seqq.

[16] See our article cited above, p. 724.

[17] One could find more than one hint of this theory in working-class

newspapers. See no. 1 of Association, international bulletin of

cooperative societies (cited by Proudhon, Capacité politique des classes

ouvrières, p. 52), and Rive gauche, cited by Albert Thomas in Histoire

socialiste, t. X, p.

289.

[18] Cr. de l’ordre, p. 236.

[19] Justice, 7^(th) Study, p. 154, in a note in response to Renouvier.

[20] Cr. de l’ordre, p. 269.

[21] Ibid., p. 265.

[22]

p. 77 et seqq.

[23] Translator’s note: The following citation appears as a footnote but

the in-text citation is missing and it is unclear precisely where it

should appear: Idee generale de la Revolution, p. 98;

[24] Justice, 4^(th) Study, p. 112.

[25] See Mr. C. Gide’s lecture: La Morale de Bastiat, dans les Études

sur la philosophie morale au XIXe siècle [Bastiat’s Morality in Studies

in Moral Philosophy in the 19^(th) Century].

[26] Qu’est-ce que la Propriété ? p. 157.

[27] Avertissement aux Propriétaires, p. 46.

[28] Cr. de l’ordre, p. 286.

[29] Lettre à M. Blanqui, p. 171.

[30]

p. 120.

[31] Majorats, p. 94–95.

[32] I, p. 92.

[33] Translator’s note: The following citation appears as a footnote but

the in-text citation is missing and it is unclear precisely where it

should appear: Mélanges, III, p. 12.

[34]

p. 75.

[35]

p. 117.

[36] Translator’s note: The following citation appears as a footnote but

the in-text citation is missing and it is unclear precisely where it

should appear: Philosophie du Progrès,

p. 36.

[37] Philosophie du Progrès, p. 36, cf. Justice, 12^(th) Study, p. 102.

[38] Justice, IV, p. 112.

[39] Ibid., VII, p. 99, 102; XII, p. 102.

[40] Contrad. écon., I, p. 82, 92.

[41] Contrad. écon., p. 75.

[42] Ibid., p. 84.

[43]

p. 82, 100. In Volume II, p. 330, Proudhon writes: “The division of

labour acts on the collective being like harmful industries on those

who carry them out: by providing it with abundance it poisons it,

and after having invited it to life, plunges it back into death.”

The example clearly shows Proudhon’s attempt to adopt the point of

view of the collective being’s interests. With regard to the

individual being’s interests, Proudhon focuses his critique of the

division of labour on other points.

[44] Justice, IV, p. 112, 117.

[45] Ibid., p. 119, 122.

[46] Translator’s note: The following citation appears as a footnote but

the in-text citation is missing and it is unclear precisely where it

should appear: Avertissement aux propriétaires, p. 62.

[47] Théorie de la Propriété, p. 213, 229.

[48] Justice, VII, p. 127.

[49] Du Principe fédératif, p. 267.

[50] Ibid., p. 15.

[51] Cr. de l’ordre, p. 193.

[52] Justice, XII, p. 105.

[53] Ibid, VIII, p. 140.

[54]

p. 242 et seqq.

[55]

E. Droz, P.-J. Proudhon, p. 88.

[56] p. 37, 71.

[57] VIII, p. 118.

[58] Th. de la Propriété, p. 207, 99, 77.

[59] Contrad. éc., I, p. 5.

[60] Ibid., p. 21.

[61] Ibid., p. 327.

[62] Proudhon clearly expressed this dogmatism as early as his first

memoirs. Cf. Lettre à Blanqui, p. 146 : “Now, while the short-sighted

spectator begins to despair of humanity, and, distracted and cursing

that of which he is ignorant, plunges into scepticism and fatalism, the

true observer, certain of the spirit which governs the world, seeks to

comprehend and fathom Providence.”

[63] Contradictions écon., II, p. 398: “All human science consists in

finding in this confusion the abstract system of eternal thought.” Cf.

I, p. 370: “Progressive reason resulting from the projection of eternal

ideas upon the movable and inclined plane of time [...]”.

[64] Qu’est-ce que la Propriété ?, p. 302; Idée générale de la

révolution, p. 103,

Mélanges, III, p. 75.

[65] Contradictions économiques, I, p. 360 et seqq.

[66] Contrad., écon., I, p. 2, 5.

[67] Justice, IV, p. 133.

[68] Confessions d’un révolutionnaire, p. 3.

[69] Contrad. écon., I, p. 369.

[70] Mélanges, III, p. 11.

[71] Id., ibid., Cf. Louis Blanc, Questions d’aujourd’hui et de demain,

III, p. 176.

[72] Idées révolutionnaires, p. 182.

[73] Solution du Problème social, p. 17.

[74] Ibid., p. 60 et seqq.

[75] Idée générale de la révolution, p. 153.

[76] Solution, p. 7.

[77] II, p. 183.

[78]

p. 128.

[79] Principe fédératif, p. 106.

[80] Ibid., p. 267.

[81] Translator’s note: The following citation appears as a footnote but

the in-text citation is missing and it is unclear precisely where it

should appear: Idée générale de la révolution, p. 124.

[82] Principe fédératif, p. 47.

[83] Translator’s note: The following citation appears as a footnote but

the in-text citation is missing and it is unclear precisely where it

should appear: Justice, VII, p. 123.

[84] Justice, VII, p. 130.

[85] Contrat social (Dreyfus-Brisac edition), p. 53

[86] Justice, VII, p. 129 et seqq.

[87] Idée générale de la Révolution, p. 115.

[88] Translator’s note: The following citation appears as a footnote but

the in-text citation is missing and it is unclear precisely where it

should appear: Idée générale, p. 115.

[89] Translator’s note: The following citation appears as a footnote but

the in-text citation is missing and it is unclear precisely where it

should appear: V. Berth, Les aspects nouveaux du socialisme (final

part).

[90] Translator’s note: The following citation appears as a footnote but

the in-text citation is missing and it is unclear precisely where it

should appear: Became Capacité politique des classes ouvrières.

[91] Justice, VII, p. 133.

[92] Capacité politique, p. 338.

[93] Ibid., p. 336.

[94] Mélanges, III, p. 40, 44.

[95] Cr. de l’ordre, p. 134.

[96] Justice, p. 92.

[97] Pornocratie, p. 64.