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Title: Proudhon and Marx
Author: Georges Gurvitch
Date: 1965
Language: en
Topics: Marx, Proudhon, Socialism
Notes: Delivered in Brussels on 24 November 1965, during the symposium organised by the Centre National d’Etude des Problèmes de Sociologie et d’Economie Européennes (National Centre for the Study of the Problems of European Sociology and Economics) on the Relevance of Proudhon, this speech, which is Georges Gurvitch’s last contribution to knowledge, represents his political and sociological will and testament. The Editors of Cahiers thank Mr Doucy and Mr Salmon who authorised the publication of this speech. Translated by Shaun Murdock. Published as: Gurvitch, Georges and Shaun Murdock. 2021. Journal of Classical Sociology.

Georges Gurvitch

Proudhon and Marx

A member of the Confédération Générale du Travail (General Confederation

of Labour) such as myself might wonder why this commemoration of

Proudhon is taking place in Belgium and not in France. I know that a

separate speech should highlight the intellectual ties that were forged

between Proudhon and Belgium and the legacy that he left there, but I

would not like to begin this speech without mentioning the role that

Belgium played in his life.

Recall that Proudhon was twice sentenced to prison. The first time, on

28 March 1849, he took refuge in Belgium. But his anxious personality

forced him to return earlier than he should have, and his unexpected

return cost him 3 years in prison. While imprisoned in Sainte-Pélagie,

he wrote several works. It must be said that political prisoners were

better treated than they are now, and were let out once per week, and it

was during this stay in Sainte-Pélagie that Proudhon got married and his

first two daughters were born.

But it was after his second conviction that Belgium’s role became much

more important. Proudhon returned to seek asylum on publication of his

famous book: Justice in the Revolution and in the Church (1858).

Learning from his first misfortunes and expecting to be prosecuted, he

immediately fled and remained in Belgium for 4 years, where he wrote,

among others, a book of extreme importance: War and Peace (1861). As

mentioned earlier today, this work created some problems, because his

Belgian friends, who had not fully understood his intentions, believed

that Proudhon was justifying war, whereas like a true sociologist, he

was trying to show that war had different meanings, that there are many

kinds of wars (wars between states, of course, but also wars between

social classes) and that there are also wars that are ultimately nothing

but competitions, whether free competition or competitions between

economic groups in more or less equivalent circumstances. In any case,

the fact is this: Proudhon stayed in Belgium for 4 years, from 1858 to

1862. He even waited more than a year after his amnesty before returning

to France, because he had limited trust in Napoleon III. Unfortunately,

he died just 3 years after his return.

But there are other ties between Proudhon and Belgium. I want to recall

that one of the first syntheses attempted between Proudhon and Marx (of

which there have been many and you are hearing a new one, or at least a

draft of one, mine) was by a Belgian. On the one hand, César de Paepe

strongly insisted on the opposition between possession and property; on

the other hand, he introduced the idea of decentralising public services

as a means of weakening the state while at the same time giving greater

impetus to worker self-management.

I believe these three reasons are sufficient for a Frenchman to justify

Proudhon’s commemoration being celebrated in Belgium. Of course, this

commemoration should have taken place in France, but right now, rather

than Proudhon, France is worrying about the presidential elections, a

new state of affairs since this is the first time that the President of

the Republic will be elected by universal suffrage.

Having said that, I would like to turn to my proposal. I have entitled

this speech: ‘Proudhon and Marx’, which may seem paradoxical but which,

as I will try to prove to you, it is not. I am, for my part, convinced

that the overwhelming and reciprocal antipathy between Proudhon and Marx

was based more on purely personal feelings than on their ideas. Though

different, their two bodies of thought complemented one other, and I am

convinced that a coherent conception of collectivism will be achieved

only when a third thinker, equal to Marx and Proudhon, will overcome

their mistakes and discover the common thread between them, giving rise

to a third doctrine. But perhaps the person who will formulate the

synthesis that I am foreseeing has yet to be born. I do not know any

current social thinker of the stature of Proudhon or Marx.

Considering Marx’s initial attitude towards Proudhon, his enthusiasm for

Proudhon’s early writings – an enthusiasm expressed in the Rheinische

Zeitung, of which he was one of the editors – if we then open The Holy

Family, a work written before Marx came to France, we see the

persistence of an unreserved admiration. Marx does not just say, for

example, that Proudhon is the only thinker who personifies proletarian

thought, he also affirms that Proudhon has inspired a total upheaval in

social economy. He attributed to him a similar role to that played by

Sieyès in the preparation of the French Revolution. According to him,

what Sieyès said about the Third Estate, Proudhon expressed for the

proletariat: ‘What is the proletariat? Nothing. What does it want to

become? Everything’. Is Marx right? Let us say it bluntly: yes, and more

than he thought. Indeed, in Proudhon’s first and famous work, What is

Property? (1840), by means of often superfluous and artificial legal

analyses, we find the idea of surplus value explained and developed for

the first time. To be precise, Proudhon explains that even if the

capitalist pays each worker his due, there is something that he does not

pay, something that increases the value of the products a hundred or a

thousand times: the ‘collective force’. While the ‘individual force’

acquired from the worker is paid, the ‘collective force’ is not. Here we

have all of Marx’s theory of surplus value. This theory was thus

borrowed from Proudhon’s first work. Marx could have said – he almost

did say in his early works – that the concept of surplus value is a

Proudhonian concept. But, since it was in the first volume of Capital,

written 27 years later, that Marx examined the problem of absolute

surplus value and relative surplus value in detail, you will not find

any remarks of this sort.

There is more. Reading Proudhon’s first book holds another surprise for

us, because we learn with astonishment that it was not Marx, but

Proudhon, who contrasted ‘utopian socialism’ with ‘scientific

socialism’. These terms were thus invented not by Marx, but by Proudhon.

Is it a good idea? That is another question. Of course, Proudhon accused

Marx of being a utopian socialist. He criticised him for not predicting

the possibility of conflicts within realised socialism. For Marx, in

realised socialism, when man and society are finally reconciled, there

are no more conflicts and everything works for the good of the world. In

Proudhon’s eyes, this is the very sign of utopia! For him, there is no

society in which all problems are resolved. New problems arise

constantly, because society is constant creation, it is ongoing.

Socialism is not a final stage: there is no end to history, there are

only new problems to solve.

Conversely, for Marx – as he said and repeated dozens of times –

Proudhon was the representative of utopian socialism par excellence.

Why? Because Proudhon’s socialism advocated self-management, so

brilliantly explained today by Daniel Guérin. But self-management

involves a variety of problems and, for Marx, socialism based on

self-management was a form of utopian socialism. I therefore believe

that the term ‘scientific socialism’, opposed to ‘utopian socialism’, is

an unfortunate term. But, because it has been used often, perhaps too

often, I want to point out that it comes not from Marx, but from

Proudhon. And if the latter is guilty of something, it is surely that he

promoted this term that should never have been used.

Things began to get worse between Proudhon and Marx when they met in

Paris and felt overwhelming antipathy for each other. The result was

that Proudhon’s System of Economic Contradictions (1846), which was

subtitled The Philosophy of Poverty, inspired Marx’s only work written

in French: The Poverty of Philosophy (1847). In this book, Marx

criticised Proudhon for being an idealist and accused him of not

understanding Hegel, the Hegel that Marx had revealed to him. It must be

stressed that these allegations are false. A man who denounces idealism

on almost every page should not be accused of ideomania. Proudhon

tirelessly hunts ideomania down, from Plato to Leibniz and in many more

recent thinkers. How could someone who hates ideomania so much be

idealistic?

You immediately sense that something is wrong, that Marx is being unfair

to Proudhon. Let me quote this extract from a letter where Proudhon

writes about The Poverty of Philosophy: ‘A tissue of crudities,

slanders, falsifications and plagiarism’. Moreover, he notes in his own

copy of Poverty: ‘The true meaning of Marx’s work is that he regrets

that I have thought like him everywhere and that I was the first to say

it’. Proudhon says (and I must rule in his favour): ‘Have I ever said

that principles are anything other than the intellectual representation,

not the generative cause, of facts?’

Let us recognise that Marx was very skilful here, because by attacking

Proudhon and judging him with extreme severity, he was aiming at a

different man through him, and that man was called Hegel. Ultimately, it

is not Proudhon, but Hegel that The Poverty of Philosophy stands

against. It is quite paradoxical to see Marx assert that Proudhon never

understood Hegel, while in this very book, it is Marx himself who

attacks and discredits Hegel with such exceptional vigour.

What actually remains of the complaints against Proudhon? Marx claims

that Proudhon has a dialectical mind only in the sense that he

constantly seeks contradiction and therefore gets stuck in

contradictions. But this forgets that, aside from the Hegelian

dialectic, there are other interpretations of the dialectic. Showing

that Proudhon had a dialectical mind, that he understood the dialectic

in a hundred different ways, where antinomy was not always essential,

but where equally dialectical complementarities and balances appeared –

did this not show that Proudhon, far from discrediting the dialectic,

multiplied its methods? In sum, when you read Marx attentively, you see

that he charges Proudhon with all the sins of the dialectic, without

recognising that at the same time Proudhon initiated its new directions.

The very directions that have won out today and link the dialectic to an

ever-renewed empiricism.

The Revolution of 1848 came. Marx, as usual, was not expecting it.

Events, it is true, almost always surprise those who profess to predict

them. The Communist Manifesto came late: it appeared in London in March,

while the Revolution broke out in February in Paris. Moreover, the

Communist Manifesto found no more of a real audience in France than the

Poverty of Philosophy. Translated far too late, it passed unnoticed in

the midst of the general tumult.

Meanwhile, from 1847 Proudhon attacked Le Représentant du peuple, the

government and Louis Blanc on a daily basis. We have talked about Louis

Blanc here, but we have forgotten to mention that it was Louis Blanc who

organised the ‘National Workshops’ and it was their failure that

provoked the workers’ insurrection. During the workers’ insurrection in

June 1848, Proudhon, who had just been elected to the National Assembly,

gave a famous speech, a speech that caused a scandal and earned him the

hostility of all his colleagues. He is the only one who took a stand in

favour of the workers, in terms such that Marx himself, in the obituary

he devoted to Proudhon, recognised that ‘it was an act of great

courage’. Indeed, you all know the result of this speech: the censure

that the National Assembly inflicted on Proudhon, by 691 votes to 2, one

of these two votes being Proudhon’s. He had found only one supporter! In

any case, he had unanimous support against him, and Marx paid tribute to

him.

From Marx’s point of view, if there are hesitations in Proudhon’s

thinking, they are found especially in The General Idea of the

Revolution in the Nineteenth Century (1851), in The Social Revolution

Demonstrated by the Coup d’Etat of December 2 (1852) and in The

Philosophy of Progress (1853). One can make a very precise criticism of

these three books, all written in prison. Obsessed by the weakness of

the proletariat and struck by its failure to defend itself better than

it had in 1848, Proudhon called for an alliance or entente between the

middle class and the proletariat. These are the texts where this

alliance is mentioned which first gave Marx, then Marxists, a pretext to

see Proudhon as a representative of the petite bourgeoisie. They thus

ignored a fundamental point: these are the works of a man so cruelly

disappointed that at some point, overestimating the strength of the

bourgeoisie, he hesitated and believed that without the help of the

middle class, the proletariat would never be able to succeed.

But he already overcame this moment of weakness in the Stock Market

Speculator’s Manual. The title may be surprising, and we must say why.

Proudhon explained it himself: it was a second-hand work, a work imposed

by the need to feed his family. He had to live; a publisher introduced

himself and asked Proudhon, who was considered by his contemporaries to

be a great economist, to offer his advice to the stock market

speculators. Proudhon complied, but did not want to jeopardise his name

and the work appeared anonymously in 1854. Only in the third edition

(1857), after adding an introduction and a conclusion that did not

appear in previous editions, did Proudhon agree to sign his name to the

book.

The introduction and conclusion are essential – at least I consider them

to be – because, for the first time, several stages, several phases of

capitalism are defined: first industrial anarchy, that is, free

competition; then industrial feudalism, a term that Proudhon did not

invent but was, as he very honestly acknowledges, borrowed from Fourier

who had used it in a very different sense. According to Proudhon,

‘industrial feudalism’ corresponds to the appearance of trusts and

cartels, at the beginning of organised capitalism, of which Proudhon

would not see the complete realisation. He argues that ‘industrial

feudalism’ is only a phase of capitalism that cannot last, but that

pushes in two directions: towards industrial empire, and then industrial

democracy. ‘Industrial empire’ is a very accurate description of what

happened under Napoleon III, because Napoleon III was nothing other than

the head of the trusts and cartels. Proudhon speaks with justified

hostility of the Saint-Simonian ‘bankocrats and industrial despots’ who,

forming the Emperor’s entourage, were entrusted with carrying out

immense works and established big industry in France. He predicts that

the ‘industrial empire’ will not hold, that it cannot last. He believes

that we will go directly from ‘industrial empire’ to ‘industrial

democracy’, and this is where his optimism comes in. He makes events

flow far more quickly than they do in reality, and, speeding through the

various stages of capitalism, he predicts the triumph of ‘industrial

democracy’, one of the essential elements of which is worker

self-management. Obviously, this is going a bit too fast. In any case,

the great merit of the third edition of the Stock Market Speculator’s

Manual is the definition of the different phases of capitalism. And,

from another perspective, it is also the premonition of the not only

Caesarean, but fascistic or even openly fascist aspect of organised

capitalism that had already started to become frightened of the labour

movement.

We have spoken here about Proudhon’s frequent reservations about strikes

or, as he said, ‘coalitions’. I would note that if he was against

strikes, against ‘coalitions’, it was only because he thought the times

were not ripe enough. And I will cite a text to you to support my

comments, a passage in the second volume of Justice in the Revolution

and in the Church where Proudhon declares: ‘If the bosses agree, if the

companies merge, the public authorities can do even less about it

because power promotes and encourages the centralisation of capitalist

interests. But if the workers, who feel the right bequeathed to them by

the Revolution, protest and strike, their only means of having their

claims recognised, they are punished, transported without mercy,

deported to Cayenne and Lambessa’ (p. 77). You can see that already, in

1858, Proudhon’s attitude towards strikes is not at all that for which

he is usually criticised.

For my part, I believe that Proudhon’s most important work on political

doctrine is his last book, which he completed at his deathbed: The

Political Capacity of the Working Classes (1865), which remains, of all

his works, the one that is closest to Marxism. Not only does Proudhon

draw a clear distinction between the economic and political capacity of

the working class, but he goes much further, so far that it surely lies

much further to the left than today’s Marxists. Indeed, he asks why,

since the bourgeoisie had the right to separate themselves from the

working class, the working class would not have the right to separate

themselves ‘consciously’ from the bourgeoisie? He calls for a policy of

boycotting all political institutions, not because they are political

institutions but because they are bourgeois institutions. He therefore

preaches a radical policy of ‘separation’, which is an absolutely

revolutionary policy. Going much further than all the Marxist theorists,

he appeals to the proletarian class for permanent war until victory.

As always, one can reproach Proudhon for his unrepentant optimism here.

He claims that the bourgeoisie is virtually dead, that it is just a

rabble without any moral and political ideas, and that it only remains

thanks to its economic interests; that, under these conditions, a

revolutionary practice of total separation of the working class,

boycotting the bourgeois political government, can quickly dominate the

bourgeois class. In other words, he expects a social revolution in the

very near future. He dictated the last sentences of this political will,

The Political Capacity of the Working Classes, a few weeks, a few days

before his death. It is easy to guess that what he foresees, what he

sees coming, is the Commune. Indeed, most communards were Proudhonians.

We know that Proudhon’s friends played a decisive role in the Commune.

We must also recall that the French section of the International

Workingmen’s Association, organised by Marx in 1864, was, between the

death of Proudhon and the Commune, exclusively in the hands of the

Proudhonians: there were only two Marxists before the Commune. At that

time, Marx advised the French workers to be cautious, while the

Proudhonians called the French working class to revolution. I do not

mean to say that if one favours patience, like Marx, or an immediate

revolution, like the Proudhonians, one side is always wrong and the

other is always right. I simply want to emphasise that it is unfair to

the Proudhonians to claim that Proudhon represented the bourgeoisie’s

fear, when in reality he had a much more revolutionary spirit than Marx.

Revolutionary syndicalism has been mentioned here. I agree strongly with

Mrs Kriegel – but in my opinion, without Proudhon there would have been

no revolutionary syndicalism. Revolutionary syndicalism is a product of

Proudhonism, and could not have existed without Proudhonism. Mrs Kriegel

also spoke of the failure of revolutionary syndicalism during the 1914

war. But she focused on the French perspective. France, however, is not

the only country where the problems of revolutionary syndicalism have

arisen. I am thinking in particular of another country, of which I am a

native, Russia, where these problems took shape as early as 1905 with

the creation of the first workers’ councils. They arose a second time

under Kerensky’s provisional government, then a third time under the

Soviet government, and I can attest to the extraordinary penetration of

Proudhonian ideas, both among Russian intellectuals and among Russian

workers’ unions. For my part, it was not in France, but in Russia, that

I became a Proudhonian, and I came to France to deepen my knowledge of

Proudhon. I therefore bear a direct personal testimony. The first

Russian soviets were organised by Proudhonians, the Proudhonians who

came from the left-wing elements of the Socialist Revolutionary Party or

the left-wing of Russian social democracy. It was not from Marx that

they could take the idea of revolution by the base soviets, because it

was an essentially, exclusively, Proudhonian idea. As I am one of the

organisers of the Russian soviets of 1917, I can speak with full

knowledge of the facts. I remember the first soviets organised in the

Putilov factory before the communists came to power, and I testify that

those who organised them, like those who organised themselves, were

imbued with Proudhonian ideas. At such a time, Lenin could not avoid

this influence. Believe me, Sorel did not need to act as an

intermediary! It was a direct Proudhonian influence that rose from

Russia’s revolutionary milieus. In his first speeches, Lenin proclaimed

that social planning and revolution were possible only on the basis of

direct representation of workers at the base. And I can even tell you a

secret: the Communist Party’s second programme, the second programme

voted on before the Communists came to power, the absolutely untraceable

second programme – you can search all over Russia, you can search all

the bookstores in France, but unless you were able to buy it in May

1917, you will not find it – the second programme, of which I do not

know if all copies were burned or eliminated; what I can tell you is

that it reproduced Lenin’s very words as the main points: no revolution,

no collective planning is possible without the direct participation of

the base soviets and their representatives. As you can see, the whole

idea of worker self-management lies there. This did not prevent Trotsky

and Stalin, who were friends at the time, from forcing Lenin’s hand

during the war against the ‘white guards’ and to make him suppress

‘temporarily’ – I know the text very well – the base councils, on the

grounds that they were preventing sufficient weapons from being

produced. It should be noted that the USSR remained stuck in this

paradox that it was the peasantry, who were nevertheless largely cast

aside by the communist government, who benefited from economic democracy

(kolkhoses, sovkhoses), while the proletariat, who officially dominated,

had not yet achieved what the social revolution began with: worker

self-management. In this area, Proudhon still retains great influence.

It is hard to believe that Russia’s development could be achieved

without a return to worker self-management at the base and the

participation of representatives of the base councils in planning

bodies. The way to democratising the Russian revolution is paved and it

is Proudhon who has the honour of having paved it.

Does this mean that Proudhon is infallible? He has been criticised very

much here, and on the whole I agree with the criticisms that have been

made. I could have even extended this speech to explain my own

reservations. But I am convinced, for my part, that no social doctrine

that is concerned about both dedogmatising Marxism and correcting

Proudhon by surpassing them both is possible without a synthesis of the

thought of these enemy brothers. For these enemy brothers are condemned

to seeing their contributions melt into a third doctrine. And it seems

to me that the day is not far off when a mind their equal will achieve

this synthesis. Several have already been tried. I cited César de Paepe

from Belgium. In France, a little later, Jaurès pursued a constant

effort in the same direction. More attempts will certainly be made. Time

favours worker self-management.

At the moment, it is my deep conviction that there is only one choice

for the world: fascism or a decentralised collectivism. For organised

capitalism, frightened by the worker movement, is becoming not only more

and more technocratic, but fascistic. There are different species of

fascism, including the fascism of organised capitalism or the fascism of

fear. This threat can only be countered by a new collectivism, neither

Marxist nor Proudhonian, but surpassing both. But this collectivism

cannot be achieved without worker self-management, which is making

progress. I therefore believe that Proudhon’s merits are immense. They

can be measured by his ongoing relevance both in the west and in the

east. To be both threatening and attractive both to so-called western

democracies and to popular democracies, is this not evidence that we

have seen far and wide?