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Title: Proudhon: Communist Author: James Guillaume Date: 1911 Language: en Topics: Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, communism, Libertarian Labyrinth Source: Retrieved on 25th April 2021 from https://www.libertarian-labyrinth.org/bakunin-library/james-guillaume-proudhon-communist-1911/ Notes: Originally published in La Vie ouvrière, n°46–47 (August 20-September 5, 1911): 307–312. Working translation by Shawn P. Wilbur, with passages from The System of Economic Contradictions taken from Benjamin R. Tucker’s edition.
At the basis of Proudhon’s economic theory we find two essential ideas,
that of value and that of exchange.
These two ideas are only of interest in the regime of individual
property. in a communist society, in fact, one does not produce in order
to sell, but to consume; the question of the exchange value of objects
for consumption is thus no longer posed, as there is no longer exchange
(sale), but simple distribution. Consequently, the problem that
concerned Proudhon so much, that of the “constitution of value,” does
not exist where social products are produced by a social labor, destined
to be consumed by the community of producers.
In his Economic Contradictions (1846) Proudhon dedicated a chapter to
the “constitution of value.” Here are the principle passages:
The economists seem always to have understood by the measure of value
only a standard, a sort of original unit, existing by itself, and
applicable to all sorts of merchandise, as the yard is applicable to all
lengths. Consequently, many have thought that such a standard is
furnished by the precious metals. But the theory of money has proved
that, far from being the measure of values, specie is only their
arithmetic, and a conventional arithmetic at that. …
The idea that has been entertained hitherto of the measure of value,
then, is inexact; the object of our inquiry is not the standard of
value, as has been said so often and so foolishly, but the law which
regulates the proportions of the various products to the social wealth;
for upon the knowledge of this law depends the rise and fall of prices
in so far as it is normal and legitimate. In a word, as we understand by
the measure of celestial bodies the relation resulting from the
comparison of these bodies with each other, so, by the measure of
values, we must understand the relation which results from their
comparison. Now, I say that this relation has its law, and this
comparison its principle.
I suppose, then, a force which combines in certain proportions the
elements of wealth, and makes of them a homogeneous whole: if the
constituent elements do not exist in the desired proportion, the
combination will take place nevertheless; but, instead of absorbing all
the material, it will reject a portion as useless. The internal movement
by which the combination is produced, and which the affinities of the
various substances determine — this movement in society is exchange;
exchange considered no longer simply in its elementary form and between
man and man, but exchange considered as the fusion of all values
produced by private industry in one and the same mass of social wealth.
Finally, the proportion in which each element enters into the compound
is what we call value; the excess remaining after the combination is
non-value, until the addition of a certain quantity of other elements
causes further combination and exchange.
Although having placed himself on the terrain of private production,
Proudhon regarded the products, once entered into the general
consumption, as having received a social character. It is, he said,
exchange which, by merging all the values produced by private industries
into a single social wealth, impresses them with that character. Only,
the products exchanged, those that have become social, or, in other
words, entered into the combination by which the products become social
wealth, have a true value; those of the products that cannot be
absorbed, that is, exchanged and consumed, remain, from the social point
of view, non-values. There is, however, in this way of viewing the
facts, something unsatisfying for the mind: it is that the products
created by private industry, without preconceived plan, appear at the
beginning as so many isolated objects, manufactured arbitrarily and by
chance; but we see Proudhon correct himself, further along, this defect
in his conception.
Let’s continue the quotation:
This determined, it is conceivable that at a given moment the
proportions of values constituting the wealth of a country may be
determined, or at least empirically approximated, by means of statistics
and inventories, in nearly the same way that the chemists have
discovered by experience, aided by analysis, the proportions of hydrogen
and oxygen necessary to the formation of water. There is nothing
objectionable in this method of determining values; it is, after all,
only a matter of accounts. But such a work, however interesting it might
be, would teach us nothing very useful. On the one hand, indeed, we know
that the proportion continually varies; on the other, it is clear that
from a statement of the public wealth giving the proportions of values
only for the time and place when and where the statistics should be
gathered we could not deduce the law of proportionality of wealth…
… Social economy, on the contrary, to which no a posteriori
investigation could reveal directly the law of proportionality of
values, can grasp it in the very force which produces it, and which it
is time to announce.
This force, which Adam Smith has glorified so eloquently, and which his
successors have misconceived (making privilege its equal), — this force
is Labor…
Society, or the collective man, produces an infinitude of objects, the
enjoyment of which constitutes its well-being. This well-being is
developed not only in the ratio of the quantity of the products, but
also in the ratio of their variety (quality) and proportion. From this
fundamental datum it follows that society always, at each instant of its
life, must strive for such proportion in its products as will give the
greatest amount of well-being, considering the power and means of
production. Abundance, variety, and proportion in products are the three
factors which constitute Wealth…
But how establish this marvelous proportion, so essential that without
it a portion of human labor is lost, — that is, useless, inharmonious,
untrue, and consequently synonymous with poverty and annihilation?
Prometheus, according to the fable, is the symbol of human activity.
Prometheus steals the fire of heaven, and invents the early arts;
Prometheus foresees the future, and aspires to equality with Jupiter;
Prometheus is God. Then let us call society Prometheus.
…
Prometheus knows that such a product costs an hour’s labor, such another
a day’s, a week’s, a year’s; he knows at the same time that all these
products, arranged according to their cost, form the progression of his
wealth. First, then, he will assure his existence by providing himself
with the least costly, and consequently most necessary, things; then, as
fast as his position becomes secure, he will look forward to articles of
luxury, proceeding always, if he is wise, according to the natural
position of each article in the scale of prices. Sometimes Prometheus
will make a mistake in his calculations, or else, carried away by
passion, he will sacrifice an immediate good to a premature enjoyment,
and, after having toiled and moiled, he will starve. Thus, the law
carries with it its own sanction; its violation is inevitably
accompanied by the immediate punishment of the transgressor.
…
According to this analysis, value, considered from the point of view of
the association which producers, by division of labor and by exchange,
naturally form among themselves, is the proportional relation of the
products which constitute wealth; and what we call the value of any
special product is a formula which expresses, in terms of money, the
proportion of this product to the general wealth…
In the course of that explanation, the original point of view is
transformed. Proudhon, who showed us, in the beginning, individual
producers each working as they wish, without concert, so that part of
the products risk remained unused, has substituted for private industry
an entirely different conception of production. He no longer speaks to
us of isolated laborers, but of the “society,” the “collective man;” he
symbolized that collective man in the mythological character of
Prometheus, “the one who foresees:” it is Prometheus who rules
production by proportioning to the various needs. The producers, he
said, “naturally form a society among themselves,” and there is the
recognition of that truth, that production is also a social fact, and
not only exchange. Proudhon shows a society that combines the efforts of
labor in a manner to realize “such proportion in its products as will
give the greatest amount of well-being;” which obtains “abundance,
variety and proportion in the products;” a society, consequently, where
the laborers are united and act in concert.
But that is the communist society.
And then, since production is social, since it is organized in advanced
and proportional to needs, it is not, as Proudhon said at the beginning,
by exchange that the socialization of products occurs. There is no need
to socialize them after the fact; they are socialized in advance by the
fact of the agreement and solidarity between the producers. The products
once created, and created according to the quantity and proportion which
have been settled upon by Prometheus, that is to say by society, it is
not a question of exchanging them by of dividing them in conformity with
the plan that has directed production, since the production has been
done precisely with an eye to that division destined to satisfy the
needs of all the producers.
Proudhon ended up, then, at the communist idea—although, in his horror
of authority, he had battled energetically as we know the communists in
the manner of Cabet or Blanqui.
Proudhon was an anti-authoritarian, anti-statist communist, a federalist
communist. Was he a communist without knowing it?
No, he suspected it, and he said it, at least once.
In his famous letter to Marx, May 17, 1846 (published for the first time
in the Correspondence), he wrote :
I myself put the problem in this way: to bring about the return to
society, by an economic combination, of the wealth which was withdrawn
from society by another economic combination. In other words, through
Political Economy to turn the theory of Property against Property in
such a way as to engender what you German socialists call community and
what I will limit myself for the moment to calling liberty or equality.
Liberty and equality: that is how Proudhon formulated his social ideal;
and that is the same, he said, as what Marx and his friends call
community. [1]
We must believe him.
JAMES GUILLAUME
[1] Proudhon’s book against property (What is Property?) was the first
socialist expression, of historical importance, which issued from the
proletariat. Marx knew that book before coming to Paris, and it was like
a revelation for him (eine Art Offenbarung)… The writing of Proudhon
impressed him, by its careful and substantial language, its penetrating
dissection of jurisprudence and bourgeois political economy by the
boldness with which it subjected property to a critical analysis, and,
especially, because that writing was the work of a proletarian. (Franz
Mehring, Gesammelte Schriften von Karl Marx und Friedrich Engels, II,
pages 11–12, 1902.)