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Title: Proudhon, Property and Possession
Author: Anarcho
Date: July 12, 2014
Language: en
Topics: Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, property, mutualism
Source: Retrieved on 24th April 2021 from https://anarchism.pageabode.com/?p=802

Anarcho

Proudhon, Property and Possession

“Either competition, – that is, monopoly and what follows; or

exploitation by the State, – that is, dearness of labour and continuous

impoverishment; or else, in short, a solution based upon equality, – in

other words, the organisation of labour, which involves the negation of

political economy and the end of property.”

– Proudhon, System of Economic Contradictions[1]

Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (1809–1865) has been subject to many

interpretations, from the seminal (K. Steven Vincent[2]) to the

malicious (Karl Marx[3]). This, undoubtedly, has led to many concluding

that he was a contradictory thinker but not all interpretations of his

ideas have merit.[4] He was fundamentally consistent in his libertarian

socialism.[5]

Derek Ryan Strong’s “Proudhon and the Labour Theory of Property”[6] is,

in general, a useful account of Proudhon’s ideas in relation to

replacing wage-labour by workers’ associations. As this aspect of his

ideas is often ignored or denied by commentators, it is a welcome

addition to the scholarship. However, his discussion of Proudhon’s views

of social ownership is flawed. While quoting many of the key passages,

he does not accept them and tries to explain them away by introducing

commentary which is not justified to defend an assumption in favour of

private property. We need to place these quotes into their rightful

context to show that the Frenchman supported socialisation of property

and that the communist-anarchists extended his arguments.[7]

From “Collective Force” to “Social Property”

Proudhon’s critique of property is multi-threaded reflecting the

numerous justifications for it. His arguments for the social ownership

of land and raw materials are different from those for social ownership

of “capital” (instruments of labour). The former is, as Strong indicates

(58–9), connected to the fact no one created them while the latter

relates to Proudhon’s theory of collective force but they reach the same

conclusion.[8]

While quoting the appropriate passages on social ownership of capital,

Strong introduces commentary which is not justified. He is right to note

that Proudhon’s conclusion that “since all capital is social property,

no one has exclusive property in it”[9] was drawn from “discussing the

issue of collective appropriation” (collective force) but it is not the

case that the “particular context” shows “the capital which he refers to

is actually financial capital (i.e., money) as opposed to physical

capital (i.e., capital goods).” (59) After discussing how the capitalist

who hires workers exploits them by not paying for their collective

force, Proudhon argues that if the worker is proprietor of the value

which he creates” then “it follows” that since all production being

necessarily collective, the worker is entitled to a share of the

products and profits commensurate with his labour” and so “all

accumulated capital being social property, no one can be its exclusive

proprietor”.[10] Proudhon is clearly discussing the actual process of

production to show where and how exploitation occurs and so is referring

to “physical capital” and not credit.

Strong gives only part of Proudhon’s analysis when he states that the

“value created within a firm results from the collective force of

workers labouring together and, therefore, his conclusion is that no one

person should be its exclusive proprietor.” (59) Proudhon extends this

to conclude that, to ensure this outcome, (physical) capital must become

“social property” and so it is not the case that Proudhon wished it to

be “owned collectively by the workers in a particular firm, but not

society as a whole”. (59)

This is confirmed by Proudhon’s summation that “[a]ll human labour being

the result of collective force, all property becomes, by the same

reason, collective and undivided” and so “every instrument of labour, an

accumulated capital” is “a collective property”.[11] Strong is wrong to

suggest that it only “appears as if” Proudhon “thought that capital

goods should be common property” (59) for Proudhon takes the premise

that workers own the product of their labour, combines it with an

analysis of how exploitation occurs within production and concludes that

the means of production (“capital”) must, like land and raw materials,

be “social property” and “undivided”.

The reason is obvious: if ownership is invested in a specific workers

association then what happens to new entrants? It is possible for a

workers’ association to be as exclusive as a capitalist company and hire

wage-workers. Only social property ensures this does not happen so that

workers leaving one co-operative can become an associate in a new

one.[12]

Property “was theft because those who legally appropriated the products

of labour in capitalism were not actually responsible for production”

(53) but also because it allowed the few to appropriate the means of

production from its rightful owners (everyone) so reducing the rest to

wage-workers (salariat) who “have sold their arms and parted with their

liberty” to an employer which has “degraded the worker by giving him a

master” and ensures “the surplus of labour, essentially collective,

passes entirely… to the proprietor.”[13]

If society ensures “the firm is a contractual relationship and not a

property right” (57) and if property “denotes the exclusive rights

assigned to an individual or specific group of people to access, use,

and govern a resource, object, or set of objects in a particular way”

(54) then there is social and not private property. Only social

ownership means that there are no owners of a resource such as a

workplace to stop others using them without first agreeing to oppressive

or exploitative relationships.

The Synthesis of Property and Community

For Proudhon, anarchism (“liberty”, “association”, “universal

association” or “mutualism”[14]) was the “third form of society” and a

“synthesis” of property and “community”.[15] His opposition to both

community and capitalism should not blind us to his desire for a

“synthesis” between the two. This means taking Proudhon at his word

rather than, to quote George Woodcock, suggesting that he “did not even

mean literally what he said” in What is Property?.[16] Strong follows

Woodcock in suggesting Proudhon’s possession is a modified form of

property rather than, as Proudhon insisted, its negation.

In What is Property? Proudhon argued that everyone becomes “a possessor

or usufructuary” which is “a function which excludes proprietorship” and

“receives his usufruct from the hands of society, which alone is the

permanent possessor.”[17] He clarified this point by stressing that

“this value or wealth, produced by the activity of all, is by the very

fact of its creation collective wealth, the use of which, like that of

the land, may be divided, but which as property remains undivided. And

why this undivided ownership? Because the society which creates is

itself indivisible”. In short: “property in capital is indivisible, and

consequently inalienable”. Proudhon, then, “opposes the exclusive

appropriation of the instruments of production” and “this

non-appropriation of the instruments of production” would be “a

destruction of property. In fact, without the appropriation of

instruments, property is nothing.”[18]

In April 1848 he argued that “to organise national workshops contains an

authentic idea, one that I endorse, for all my criticisms” and these

“workshops are owned by the nation, even though they remain and must

always remain free.” The “Exchange Bank is the organisation of labour’s

greatest asset” and would allow “the new form of society to be defined

and created among the workers.”[19] His election manifesto of the same

year saw him proclaim that “under universal association, ownership of

the land and of the instruments of labour is social ownership” to be

operated by “democratically organised workers’ associations”.[20] He

empathetically denied in 1849 that he argued that the “ownership of the

instruments of labour must forever stay vested in the individual and

remain unorganised”, stating he had “never penned nor uttered any such

thing”, had “argued the opposite a hundred times over” and he wished for

“an order wherein the instruments of labour will cease to be

appropriated and instead become shared”. He then sketched how

“transferring ownership” would be achieved by the organisation of credit

that would produce “workers’ associations” before forming “the

over-arching group, comprising the nation in its entirety”.[20]

A few years later, Proudhon talks of a “double contract” between the

members of the co-operative and between it and society. While its

members have “an undivided share in the property of the company”, the

company itself was “a creation and a dependence” of society and “holds

its books and records at the disposition of Society, which… reserves the

power of dissolving the workers company, as the sanction of its right of

control.” The company was to be run democratically and “may take in new

members at any time” so producing an institution which “has no precedent

and no model.”[21] The change in terminology does not obscure that the

company was to be run (used) by its workers – who automatically become

members of the association upon entry – under the control (ownership) of

society.

On his deathbed he stressed that mutualism would not be “community” but

rather an association “which must embrace the whole of Society, and

nevertheless preserve all the rights of individual and corporate [i.e.,

self-managed industry] freedom”. While both capitalist firms and

communist associations show “their narrowness of spirit” and “are

composed by a determinate number of people, to the exclusion of all

others”, the “mutualist association… admits… everyone in the world, and

tends towards universality”. Thus “the labouring masses are actually,

positively and effectively sovereign” because “the economic organism –

labour, capital, property and assets – belongs to them entirely”.[22]

Proudhon’s objection to community was that while the “members of a

community… have no private property” the community “is proprietor, and

proprietor not only of the goods, but of the persons and wills.”[23]

Workers did not control their own labour (“persons and wills”) nor its

product (“goods”) – use was, in other words, as undivided as ownership.

The “entire animus of [Proudhon’s] opposition to what he termed

‘community’ was to avoid the central ownership of property and the

central control of economic and social decision-making”.[24]

While his critique of property as theft and despotism is well known,

Proudhon also suggested the “most delightful feature of property” was

“the free disposition of one’s goods”[25] and so desired “property

restored to its proper limits, that is to say, free disposition of the

fruits of labour, property MINUS USURY!”[26] Proudhon wished to “retain

the private possession of the land, dwelling, and tools which a worker

needed… a social arrangement which would allow the worker to make the

decisions relevant to the conduct and operation of his trade, either

alone or with cooperation of his immediate associations.”[27]

Anarchists are well aware that “private property in capital goods is

possible without exploitation” (58) but only when it involves workers

using the tools they own as in artisan and peasant production.[28]

Unlike artisan and peasant production, capitalism divorces ownership and

use: “when the usufructuary converted his right to personally use the

thing into the right to use it by his neighbour’s labour – then property

changed its nature, and its idea became complex.”[29] Would ownership by

co-operatives end this complexity? No, for, as indicated above,

co-operatives can be as exclusive as capitalist companies. Proudhon

recognised the economic transformation produced by the industrial

revolution and his arguments for workers’ associations and social

ownership of capital reflect this.[30]

So in capitalism ownership and use are divided while in community they

are undivided. A synthesis that produced liberty meant that ownership

had to be undivided while use was divided. Social property ensured

workers would become associates not wage-workers when they join a

workplace and so receive the full product of their labour. This would

allow the benefits desired by both property and community to be achieved

without their negative consequences.

Strong is wrong: Proudhon did argue for the social ownership of land and

capital, using the word indivise (“joint” or “undivided”) to describe

it. Such “undivided” ownership by all was the framework within which

possession (use) was exercised.[31] As Jack Hayward notes, it was “the

community which alone owns property, although its use is accorded to

individual and associated producers linked by free contract” and while

“the means of production should be publicly owned, production itself

should be organised by workers companies.”[33] Other commentators on

Proudhon – Max Stirner[32] Daniel Guérin[33], Georges Gurvitch[34] and

Robert L. Hoffman[35] – concur.

Mutualism and Libertarian Communism

Proudhon rejected communism as well as community and did not extend the

socialisation from the means of production to the goods created by them:

workers would sell the product of their labour in markets.[38] Those who

did move from the critique of wage-labour to the wage-system like

Proudhon’s contemporary Joseph Déjacque and later communist-anarchists

based their ideas on Proudhon’s and retained the same commitment to

undivided ownership and divided use: the same usufructuary position is

common to both.[36]

There is a clear link between mutualism and libertarian communism and we

discover Kropotkin arguing for distribution according to need by

pointing to the contradiction between usufructuary use of commonly held

means of production and the private ownership of the products created by

them.[37] However, the use of both means and goods would remain

“divided” and, as such, libertarian communism avoids the problems of

“community.” Indeed, Kropotkin explicitly argues that

anarchist-communism would not sacrifice the individual on the “altar” of

“the community” by ensuring use rights to all socialised goods.[38]

Strong is incorrect to suggest a fundamental difference in perspective

between mutualism and communism. This is not to suggest that Proudhon

would have embraced libertarian communism simply that his ideas on

possession are at the heart of it.[39]

Conclusion

For Proudhon, then, it was not the case that “[e]nsuring access to

capital goods need not imply common ownership of physical capital” (60),

he did not “mean two different things” when he advocated social

ownership and so did not argue for workplaces being “owned collectively

by the workers in a particular firm, but not society as a whole.” (59)

Only social ownership/property meant new entrants to a workplace become

associates and not wage-workers. Strong fails to grasp how Proudhon’s

theory of “collective force” shows how exploitation happens within

production and why socialisation of “capital” was necessary.

Yet while land, raw materials and instruments of labour (“capital

goods”) must be socially owned to end exploitation their use must be

divided to ensure freedom. Social property was the foundation which

ensured the collective use of a workplace by its associated workforce.

Strong confuses use (which is divided) with ownership (which is not).

If, as he (rightly) argues, Proudhon’s position on land use “is best

described as usufruct, or private use of common property, rather than a

type of private property” (59) then this also applies to the means of

production. The notion of Proudhon advocating “mutualist private

property” (63) is incorrect and it would be better to use his term:

possession.

[20]Election Manifesto of Le Peuple”, 377

[33]Jack Hayward, After the French Revolution: Six Critics of Democracy

and Nationalism (Hemel Hempstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1991), 181, 201

[38]This explains how “some of the items Proudhon lists, such as a

plough, are capital goods” (62) for he is talking of the plough as a

“product of labour” and, as such, the workers should be paid for that

labour. The paid for good would then be used by the worker who bought it

and who would, in turn, be paid for the goods they create using it. This

would be possession and not property.

[1] Property is Theft! A Pierre-Joseph Proudhon Anthology (Iain McKay

(Editor), Edinburgh/Oakland/Baltimore: AK Press, 2011), 202. All quotes

from Proudhon’s works are from this anthology.

[2]

K. Steven Vincent, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and the Rise of French

Republican Socialism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984)

[3] While The Poverty of Philosophy (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books,

1995) is best known, Marx repeatedly commented on Proudhon throughout

his life. I discuss this in my introduction to Property is Theft!

(64–79) as well as indicating on how Marx distorts Proudhon’s System of

Economic Contradictions within The Poverty of Philosophy by comparing

what Marx claims Proudhon wrote with the actual text.

[4] Most obviously, J. Salwyn Schapiro’s attempt to portray Proudhon as

a fascist cannot withstand even a causal familiarity with Proudhon’s

ideas nor an investigation of the material he selectively quotes from

(“Pierre Joseph Proudhon, Harbinger of Fascism”, The American Historical

Review, 50: 4, 714–737).

[5] For example, his discussion of association within mutualism in “The

Political Capacity of the Working Classes” (744–753) is identical to

that made nearly 20 years previously within “System of Economic

Contradictions” (213–215).

[6] Anarchist Studies 22: 1, 52–65

[7] I address these issues in “Introduction: General Idea of the

Revolution in the 21^(st) Century” (Property is Theft!, 30–1, 37–8,

47–9) and “Laying the Foundations: Proudhon’s Contribution to Anarchist

Economics” (Accumulation of Freedom: Writings on Anarchist Economics

[Anthony J. Nocella, Deric Shannon and John Asimakopoulos (Editors),

Oakland/Edinburgh/Baltimore: AK Press, 2012], 64–78)

[8] As Proudhon suggested, they are related: “Here [economist] M.

Wolowski pretends to think that the opponents of property refer only to

property in land, while they merely take it as a term of comparison”

(“Letter to M. Blanqui on Property”, 147)

[9] Benjamin Tucker translated this passage as “all accumulated capital

being social property, no one can be its exclusive proprietor.” (“What

is Property?”, 118)

[10] “What is Property?”, 117–8

[11] “What is Property?”, 137

[12] See Proudhon’s discussion of association in “System of Economic

Contradictions” (213–5) and Vincent’s excellent discussion (154–160)

[13] “System of Economic Contradictions”, 212, 192, 253. Labour renting

capital does not end exploitation and so it is not “difficult to say

whether or not Proudhon [like Ellerman] would have supported” a

situation of “labour-managed firms” in which “labour hires in capital to

produce goods” and so “divorces the ownership and usage of those goods

while maintaining workers’ control of production”. (58) Proudhon was

clear: “if labour is the sole basis of property, I cease to be

proprietor of my field as soon as I receive rent for it from another… It

is the same with all capital”. Rent “received by the proprietor” means

“to be rewarded for the use of a tool” and so he “literally receives

something for nothing.” (“What is Property?”, 119, 123)

[14] “What is Property?”, 109, 136; “Letter to M. Blanqui on Property”,

143, 148; “System of Economic Contradictions”, 179, 255; “Election

Manifesto of Le Peuple”, 377. Other equivalent terms include

“agricultural-industrial federation” (“The Federative Principle”, 709)

and “Guaranteeism” (“The Federative Principle”, 718; “The Political

Capacity of the Working Classes”, 750)

[15] “What is Property?”, 136. An added confusion is the translation of

“community” as “communism” by Benjamin Tucker and others. I did not

clarify the issue in Property is Theft! by consistently correcting

Tucker’s translations by replacing “communism” by the more accurate

“community.” If a second edition is produced, this error will be

rectified. In addition, “community” would not be considered as communism

by the likes of Kropotkin for it retained payment to members related to

the amount of work done, skill expressed and money invested.

[16] Pierre-Joseph Proudhon: A Biography 3^(rd) edition (Montréal: Black

Rose, 1987), 45. Woodcock’s account of many of Proudhon’s ideas (such as

on possession as property, small-scale production, late acceptance of

workers’ associations) seem more driven by his own rejection of

revolutionary anarchism (“A Personal Preface to the Third Edition”,

xiii-xx) than an objective summary.

[17] “What is Property?”, 100

[18] “Letter to M. Blanqui on Property”, 153, 149

[19] “Letter to Louis Blanc”, 296–7

[20] Letter to Pierre Leroux”, 498–500

[21] “General Idea of the Revolution in the Nineteenth Century”, 585–6.

This socialisation of property included more than capital, with Proudhon

indicating community ownership of housing: “all payments made as rental

shall be carried over to the account of the purchase of the property…

such payment shall purchase for the tenant a proportional undivided

share in the house he lives in, and in all buildings erected for rental,

and serving as a habitation for citizens ... [housing] thus paid for

shall pass under the control of the communal administration… in the name

of all the tenants, and shall guarantee them all a domicile, in

perpetuity… For repairs, management, and upkeep of buildings, as well as

for new constructions, the communes shall deal with… building workers’

associations”. This also applied to land and once “the property has been

entirely paid for, it shall revert immediately to the commune, which

shall take the place of the former proprietor”. (576, 578)

[22] “The Political Capacity of the Working Classes”, 750, 746, 752,

761.

[23] “What is Property?”, 131.

[24] Vincent, 141

[25] “Letter to M. Blanqui on property”, 155

[26] “Election Manifesto of Le Peuple”, 379

[27] Vincent, 141

[28] An artisan worker would not fear expropriation because he “exploits

nobody, and nobody would have the right to interfere with his work” and

so “we see no use in taking the tools… to give to another worker.”

(Peter Kropotkin, “Communism and the Wage System: Expropriation,” Act

For Yourselves: Articles from FREEDOM 1886–1907 (London: Freedom Press,

1988), 104–5.

[29] “Letter to M. Blanqui on property”, 155

[30] Given that many secondary sources assert – following Marx – that

Proudhon wished to return to a pre-industrial economy, it must be

stressed that he explicitly rejected such a position: “M. de Sismondi,

like all men of patriarchal ideas, would like the division of labour,

with machinery and manufactures, to be abandoned, and each family to

return to the system of primitive indivision, that is, to each one by

himself, each one for himself, in the most literal meaning of the words.

That would be to retrograde; it is impossible.” (“System of Economic

Contradictions”, 194) Compare Marx’s almost identical comments

suggesting Proudhon held the opposite viewpoint (The Poverty of

Philosophy, 73)

[31] There is a parallel here with Proudhon’s position on democracy

within unitarian and federalist regime, for example his comments on

decentralisation in “General Idea of the Revolution in the Nineteenth

Century” (595) and elsewhere.

[32] Proudhon “tries to get us to believe that society is the original

possessor and the sole proprietor… against it the so-called proprietors

have become thieves”. (The Ego and Its Own [London: Rebel Press, 1993],

250)

[33] Proudhon “distinguished between possession and ownership” and so

workers “should hold their means of production in alleu ... but would

not be the outright owners. Property would be replaced by federal,

cooperative ownership vested not in the State but in the producers as a

whole, united in a vast agricultural and industrial federation.” (Daniel

Guérin, Anarchism: From Theory to Practice [New York/London: Monthly

Review Press, 1970], 48)

[34] Rob Knowles quotes approvingly Georges Gurvitch’s summary that “the

attribution of the means of production all at once to the whole of

economic society, to each region, to each group of labourers, and to

each individual worker and peasant. Individuals and groups could demand

the redemption of their share [of the means of production], but not the

division of federative property, which remains one and indivisible.” The

means of production was “co-property in communal hands” and so

“effectively socialised” and thereby change “not only its subjects, but

its nature.” (quoted in Rob Knowles, Political Economy From Below:

Economic Thought in Communitarian Anarchism, 1840–1914 [Oxon: Routledge,

2004], 150)

[35] “By labour man creates products; by this he has right to the

products, but not to the land or to any other instrument of production…

Everyone had a right to possession of the means of production… Proudhon

would abolish property right altogether… possession… would be granted

and withdrawn by society…” (Revolutionary Justice: The Social and

Political Ideas of P-J Proudhon [Urbana: University of Illinois Press,

1972], 58–9)

[36] Emma Goldman, “There is No Communism in Russia”, Red Emma Speaks:

An Emma Goldman Reader (3^(rd) Edition, Alix Kates Shulman (ed.), New

York: Humanity Books, 1998), 406; Alexander Berkman, What is Anarchism?

(Edinburgh/London/Oakland: AK Press, 2003), 217

[37] Peter Kropotkin, “The Wages System”, Direct Struggle Against

Capital: A Peter Kropotkin Anthology (Iain McKay (Editor),

Edinburgh/Oakland/Baltimore: AK Press, 2014) 617–629

[38] “The Place of Anarchism in Socialistic Evolution”, Direct Struggle

Against Capital, 125–6

[39] See his rejection of the idea of production according to ability

and distribution according to need in “General Idea of the Revolution in

the Nineteenth Century” (555–7)