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Title: Proudhon, Sociologist and Activist of the Autonomy of the Social
Author: Philippe Chanial
Date: 2017
Language: en
Topics: Sociology, Proudhon
Source: “Proudhon, sociologue et militant de l’autonomie du social” Revue de la Société P.-J. Proudhon, no. 3 (2017): 9–16. Source in French: [[https://www.proudhon.net/philippe-chanial-proudhon-sociologue-et-militant-de-lautonomie-du-social/]]
Notes: Translated by Shaun Murdock.

Philippe Chanial

Proudhon, Sociologist and Activist of the Autonomy of the Social

If Proudhon can and should be read as a forerunner of sociology, is it

not above all because he was one of the first to have systematically

hypothesised the autonomy of its very object, the “social”? As everyone

knows, this hypothesis is foundational to sociology. The late Pierre

Ansart reminded us that the heart of Proudhon’s sociological thesis is

an “essential heterogeneity of the social relative to the

individual”.[1] Before him, the Durkheimian Célestin Bouglé emphasised

that if Proudhon’s work pertains to sociological theory, it is because

it shares the premise that “the meeting of individual entities generates

an original reality, something greater than and different to their mere

sum”. And, he continued, “arguably no thinker has made greater use of

this premise than Proudhon” because “he constantly opposes, to purely

individual phenomena, the notions of collective force, collective being

and collective reason”.[2]

However, this theory of the irreducibility of the social – of the

collective – to the individual does not exhaust this hypothesis of the

autonomy of the social. It raises another question: that of the

relationship between the social, the political and the economic. In the

war of the sciences, sociology was only able to assert itself as an

autonomous science by rejecting the self-proclaimed status of both

political philosophy and political economy as the science of society.[3]

It did so by refusing that the mystery of the social order – the fact

that there is, among or between people, something rather than nothing

(chaos, arbitrary violence, war of all against all, etc.) or, to put it

another way, the fact that people manage to give a lasting form to their

coexistence – can be resolved either by identifying society with a

system of power, as if the heteronomy of its political establishment,

even if it were legitimate, were the absolute condition for the

possibility of human coexistence; or by reducing it to a market, as if

commercial ties alone were sufficient to make society. But is it not

this double refusal that also defines the unique anarchism and socialism

of Proudhon? Is is not this hypothesis of an autonomy of the social that

enables both sociology as a scientific discipline, and socialism or

anarchism as paths for emancipation?

Let us therefore attempt to unravel some of the simultaneously

sociological and normative questions raised by this Proudhonian plea for

an autonomy of the social.

The irreducibility of the social to the political and the economic

In his Carnets of 1852, Proudhon said: “I do politics to kill it. To put

an end to politics.” This confession summarises, in a particularly

polemical tone, his well-known critique of governmentalism. But this

desire to end the “governmental bias” should not be reduced to a purely

negative injunction to abolish all powers. It is also an invitation to

accede to a “constitution of society” that is no longer based on the

hierarchy of political powers but on the free organisation of social

forces. It is in Confessions of a Revolutionary, written, as Pierre

Ansart also recalled, “in a sort of anger after the failure of a

hoped-for social revolution”[4], that Proudhon makes this fundamental

distinction:

“In every society I find the distinction between two kinds of

constitution, one of which I call the social constitution and the other

the political constitution; the first, inherent to humanity, liberal,

necessary, the development of which consists above all in weakening and

gradually eliminating the second, which is essentially factitious,

restrictive and transitory. The social constitution is nothing but the

equilibrium of interests founded upon free contract and the organisation

of economic forces, which are in general: Labour, Division of Labour,

Collective Force, Competition, Commerce, Money, Machines, Credit,

Property, Equality in transactions, Reciprocity of guarantees, etc. The

political constitution has authority as its principle. Its forms are:

Class Distinctions, Separation of Powers, Administrative Centralisation,

Judicial Hierarchy [...]. These two constitutions are [...] of utterly

different and even incompatible natures”.[5]

This fit of anger is also a theoretical and normative act of force, as

if society could – and should – no longer be established on the basis of

political heteronomy but on the autonomy of the social, on the mutual

guarantee of the liberty of all by all, which on the contrary allows us,

under the supreme law of justice and contract, to do without any

government. By this radical gesture, Proudhon can thus be interpreted,

inseparably, as a pioneer of anarchism but also of sociology. Indeed,

while Proudhon constantly suggests that it is necessary to “proceed

[...] to social reform through the extermination of power and politics”,

such a reform, in all its radicality, assumes a science of the social

(which he calls for as early as The Celebration of Sunday in 1839)

capable of asserting that the social order – and Proudhon also continues

to advocate for order – is an immanent order: an order that precedes the

political order, and that cannot therefore proceed from it. In this

sense, this new science requires dethroning political philosophy in its

age-old ambition to constitute “the” science of society, in order to

better assert the primacy of the “social constitution” over the

“political constitution”.

It is reasonable to assume that this hypothesis of an autonomy of the

social, with its own constitution and consistency, results from an

optimism characteristic of pre-Marxist socialisms. This idea of an order

created spontaneously in humanity, without the intervention of a

coercive power, is especially reminiscent of the Fourierist utopia. As

Miguel Abensour stressed, what distinguishes these master dreamers is

first and foremost their desire to subvert modern society precisely by

preventing the State from embodying the One or the universal. Indeed, he

said, where does the utopian strategy start from, if not civil society

and “the multiple centres of socialisation that it carries within

itself”? And what is its aim, if not to substitute a “society of

societies” for the exteriority of power and State violence? In this

sense, he said again:

“Decentralisation, the multiplication of places of socialisation […], an

invitation to plurality, dissemination, a call for communication between

groups, series constantly being made and unmade, the proliferation on

the same territory of micro-experimental communities ‘behind the back’

of State unification: such are utopia’s ways of allowing a new way of

living together to be established”.[6]

But, paradoxically, does this hypothesis of an autonomy of the social

not also shape the thesis defended by the liberal economists, whereby

the natural harmony of interests is sufficient to produce such an order?

And besides, would Proudhon not suggest that the solution to the social

problem should not lie with the public authorities, but precisely with

the “identity of interests”, to the point of defining himself as a

financier? In one of his last texts, War and Peace in 1861, he wrote:

“What governs the world [...] is not the Gospel, nor the Koran, nor

Aristotle, nor Voltaire; no more is it the constitution of 1852 or that

of 1793. It is the Great Ledger, whose pages carry only two words in

large letters: on one side Debit, on the other, Credit.”[7] It is

therefore not without reason that C. Bouglé could characterise the

sociology of the author of The Stock Exchange Speculator’s Manual as a

“sociology of an economist and an accountant”.

However, despite his fascination with political economy and what he

called “banking solutions”, and also his provocations against the

“sentimental socialism” of his age, for Proudhon it is a question of

identifying other laws: laws other than economic laws alone, laws apt to

found this autonomy of the social not only against political heteronomy,

but also against “economic insolidarity”, the “respect for parasites”,

the “necessity of poverty”, and even the “homicidal Providence” promoted

by the economists. Such laws are those of the Collective Being, laws

that come only from itself. And it is up to the new science of society

mentioned as early as 1839 to identify them. In specifying that this

science must be discovered, not invented, Proudhon invites us to

consider that there is an intelligence of the social which is specific

to it and which must be explained from within. This social intelligence

is manifested in particular in the subtle “balancing” of individual

forces which produces a collective force, a distinct power generated by

the association of people. And it is through this collective force that

the sui generis reality that constitutes the Collecting Being is

manifested; in short, any social group, whether it is the ensemble

constituted by the famous workers erecting the Luxor obelisk, a

workshop, an orchestra, an academy, an army or “society”.

In this sense, the inner essence of society is, in his words, “organic”

in nature – the order it embodies results from and is manifested in

cooperation (and conflict) among the immanent forces of which it is

composed – not “mechanical”, in the sense of an artificial or

conventional order that comes from outside. On the contrary, the order

of social order comes from within. It emerges from social practices

themselves. Thus the bond – or solidarity – that unites its different

members is not the artificial result of an external constraint, but

inherent in the spontaneity and creativity of social life. Thus, while

the Collective Being is a sui generis reality, it is not a transcendent

reality.

However, people, whether willingly or by force, constantly project such

transcendent instances through a process that Proudhon calls

“externalisation”, by giving themselves a religion, subordinating

themselves to a power, or surrendering themselves to the “homicidal

Providence” of the economists’ supposed laws; in short, by attributing

to what is only a human work the capacity to create social reality.

Considering the autonomy of the social thus opens up to a critical point

of view these forms of alienation and domination, from which society

must extricate itself so that it can in some way “recapture” itself and

retrieve its “inherent, secular constitution”.

Justice, or the normative autonomy of the social

But what can this capacity of the social to capture or recapture itself

be supported? On which lever? What is the pivot, the axis of a society

restored to itself, master of itself? For Proudhon, this lever, this

axis, this pivot is, as everyone knows, the idea of justice. Through

justice, Proudhon proposes to recognise a normativity immanent to the

Collective Being. The social is not a normative no man’s land, a simple

play of forces: the very texture of social reality is, as he put it,

“ideo-realist”. This assumes that justice is not an abstract ideal, a

transcendental implant, but a practical reality, an “idea-force” in

Alfred Fouillée’s sense, enshrined in interpersonal practices and

relations, a manifestation of what I have called the intelligence of the

social.

Here we see the emergence of Proudhon’s sociological, Durkheimian

argument: within social reality itself there is a distinct force of

obligation, which in some way renders any external constraint parasitic

(hence his criticisms of Hobbes): a force of obligation which links

people together and which they are linked to, which holds them together

and which they hold on to. For this reason, the imperative of justice –

which for Proudhon can alone freely oblige people to one another – is

indeed the condition of the autonomy of the social. Conversely, this

means that any unjust order can only be heteronomous. And as everyone

knows, it is on this pivot – because for Proudhon everything revolves

around justice – that Proudhon defends his mutualism and then his

federalism.

However, it is first and foremost at the heart of the most anodyne

interpersonal relations that he emphasises the socialising and

individualising force of this free obligation of justice. Thus in

Justice he opposes the “oblique” look, cast “from top to bottom”, that

of contempt, inherent in the relationship between superior and inferior,

with the respect, the “equality of consideration”, manifested in the

greeting exchanged between two people who look at each other

face-to-face, in the eyes, as equals. Justice thus means equal and

reciprocal respect for the dignity of each person. This means for us

that the autonomy of the social presupposes the reciprocal and

egalitarian quality of interpersonal relations that we find in simple

greetings. But, more broadly, for Proudhon, it is society as a whole

that takes shape through these transactions, reciprocal exchanges, pacts

of mutual respect, all of which respond to justice.

However, we should not misunderstand the meaning of the imperative of

reciprocity which, for Proudhon, ratifies interpersonal relations under

the seal of the contract. The “regime of contracts” that he calls for,

as the concrete form of the “system of immanence” that he opposes to the

“system of transcendence”, is not, of course, the reign of interest. If

he sees in the contract the exclusive expression of a realistic justice,

his contract-based rhetoric is in part misleading. Social life cannot be

exhausted in the strict accounting of a generalised system of

give-and-take. Referring to the mutualist organisation, he writes:

“Which private or social virtue will you accuse men of lacking who

reciprocally promise each other everything, who, without granting

anything for nothing, guarantee each other everything, assure each other

everything, give each other everything: Education, Work, Trade,

Property, Wealth, Security?”[8]

“Giving everything without granting anything for nothing”: this phrase

is striking as it recalls the very logic of the Maussian gift[9], the

subtle articulation between generosity or unconditionality (“giving

everything”) and reciprocity or conditionality (“without granting

anything for nothing”). In short, if we need to know how to calculate,

we also need to know how to give everything. Thus the moral dimension of

Proudhonian sociology appears more clearly, and thereby how much the

autonomy of the social requires the social order to be understood as a

moral order. This is why the Proudhonian “regime of contracts” in which

this autonomy is achieved in practice is based less on the calculation

of well-understood interests than, first of all, on the capacity of

people to oblige each other reciprocally. Or, to express it another way,

because the law of justice is immutable and objective, the contracts

that implement it – or approximate it – are, for Proudhon, irrevocable

by their very nature. Their model is much more that of the oath, the

promise, the pact of trust:

“Men, having made a pact of probity, loyalty, guarantee and honour

between themselves, cannot say in separating from each other: we were

wrong; now we will become liars and rascals again; we will gain more

that way”.[10]

In short, he concludes later, “one does not go back on a pact, on a

profession of faith, as with the mutualist profession of faith, as with

the federative pact”.[11] It is this fidelity to the pact (and the

conjugal pact should also be included, but that is another matter),

whatever the price, and if necessary against one’s own interests, that

sums up the Proudhonian law of justice. And it is justice that, on the

model of the conditional unconditionality of the Maussian gift, enables

this self-institution, both performative and normative, of the social.

Conclusion

This performative and instituting dimension of the imperative of justice

deserves to be measured in all its radicality. It implies that the

social order can no longer be based on any form of authority, on any

form of traditional consensus, or even on shared beliefs, but on justice

and equality alone as the internal requirement for social practices and

relations. Here, Proudhonian anarchism curiously meets the sociology of

Durkheim. For the latter, because the forms of mechanical solidarity of

past societies are now behind us, what has become necessary is a very

different form of social solidarity that does not depend on the

authority of collective beliefs, but rather on a shared commitment to

equality in participation and reciprocity in cooperation; in short, on

justice. This is the historical condition of the autonomy of the social.

And this was the conclusion of The Division of Labour in Society:

“The task of the most advanced societies may therefore be said to be a

mission for justice. [...] Just as the ideal of lower societies was to

create or maintain a common life as intense as possible, in which the

individual was engulfed, ours is to inject an even greater equity into

our social relationships, in order to ensure the free deployment of all

those forces that are socially useful. [...] Just as ancient peoples had

above all need of a common faith to live by, we have need of justice. We

can rest assured that this need will become ever more pressing if, as

everything leads us to foresee, the conditions that dominate social

evolution remain unchanged.”[12]

Neither Durkheim nor Proudhon believed, as the conservatives of their

time did, that the problems confronting modern societies came from a

growing division of labour or the development of individualism, eroding

tradition. For Durkheim, they result from the fact that we continue to

think and act as if authority and consensus were essential, when they

have in fact been replaced by justice and equality as prerequisites for

implementing new forms of cooperation between people. Moreover, as

Durkheim shows – and Proudhon, through his distinction between social

constitution and political constitution, could only share its analysis –

modern societies still too often seek to rely on the authority of formal

systems that can no longer create ties. On the contrary, a new form of

spontaneous social order must be created to challenge this type of

authority by developing and consolidating itself from the bottom up.

Ultimately, the problem of modern societies results from the inability

to recognise that individual freedom is possible only in a certain

social context, and under the condition of a certain quality –

egalitarian and reciprocal – of interpersonal relations, and from the

resulting failure to implement the justice needed to fully achieve it.

As such – and this lesson of sociology is of course valid for our

contemporary societies – do Durkheim and Proudhon not concur in showing

that only by consolidating this autonomy of the social – the reciprocal

quality of social relations that Marcel Mauss, a socialist activist and

Durkheim’s nephew, would designate under the concept of gift[13] – can

we achieve freedom and justice for all?

[1] Ansart, P., Sociologie de Proudhon, Paris, PUF, 1967, p. 18.

[2] Bouglé, C., Sociologie de Proudhon, Paris, A. Colin, 1911, p. XIII.

[3] Cf. Chanial, Ph., La sociologie comme philosophie politique. Et

réciproquement [Sociology as Political Philosophy and Vice Versa],

Paris, La Découverte, 2011, particularly the introduction.

[4] Op. cit.

[5] Confessions d’un révolutionnaire, Paris, Editions Tops/Trinquier,

1997, p. 173.

[6] Abensour, M., « Le procès des maîtres rêveurs » [The Trial of the

Master Dreamers], in Libre, no. 4, Paris, Payot, 1978, p. 226.

[7] La guerre et la paix, in Œuvres complètes de P.-J. Proudhon

[Complete Works of P.-J. Proudhon], Paris, Marcel Rivière, 1927, p. 463.

[8] De la capacité des classes ouvrières [Political Capacity of the

Working Classes], in Œuvres complètes de P.-J. Proudhon, Paris, Marcel

Rivière, 1924, p. 224.

[9] Mauss, M., « Essai sur le don » [Essay on the Gift], in Sociologie

et anthropologie, Paris, PUF, 1989.

[10] Ibid., p. 195.

[11] Ibid., p. 222.

[12] Durkheim, É., De la division du travail social, PUF, Paris, 1991,

p. 381.

[13] Cf. Chanial, Ph., La délicate essence du socialisme [The Delicate

Essence of Socialism], Lormont, Le Bord de l’eau, 2009.