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THE
WORKS OF R J. PROUDHON.
VOLUME I.
WHAT IS PROPERTY?
^ublt0l)cti anil Siolt bg BENJ. R. TUCKER, PRINCETON, MASS.
1876.
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What is Property?
FIRST MEMOIR.
AN INQUIRY INTO THE PRINCIPLE OF RIGHT
AND OF GOVERNMENT.
BY
P. J. PROUDHON.
Adversus hosiem aelerna audoritas esto. Against the enemy, revendication is eternal.
Law of the Twelve TaNeS'
TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH BY
BENJ. R. TUCKER.
iPnbIt0t|etJ anb Solti bg BENJ. R. TUCKER, PRINCETON, MASS.
1876.
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CONTENTS.
Fige.
P. J. Proudhon: His Life and his Works ix
Preface
FIRST MEMOIR.
CHAPTER 1.
Method pursued in this Work. — The Idea of a Revolu- tion II
CHAPTER 11.
Property considered as a Natural Right. — Occupation and Civil Law as Efficient Bases of Property. — Def- initions 42
§ I. Property as a Natural Right 44
§ 2. Occupation as the Title to Property 54
V § 3- Civil Law as the Foundation and Sanction of Property . . 70
CHAPTER in.
Labor as the Efficient Cause of the Domain of Property 84
§ I. The Land cannot be appropriated 88
^ § 2. Universal Consent no Justification of Property 93
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VI CONTENTS.
§ 3. Prescription gives no Title to Property 94
* § 4. Labor. — That Labor has no Inherent Power to appropriate
Natural Wealth 103
§ 5. That Labor leads to Equality of Property no
*§ 6. That in Society all Wages are Equal 121
§ 7. That Inequality of Powers is the Necessary Condition of
Equality of Fortunes 128
' § 8. That, from the stand-point of Justice, Labor destroys Prop- erty 148
CHAPTER IV.
That Property is Impossible 151
Demonstration. Axiom.
Property is the Right of Increase claimed by the Proprietor over any thing which he has stamped as his own . . . . . 153
First Prx)position.
Property is Impossible, because it demands Something for Nothing 159
Second Proposition.
Property is Impossible, because, wherever it exists. Production costs more than it is worth 168
Third Proposition.
Property is Impossible, because, with a given Capital, Produc- tion is proportional to Labor, not to Property 172
Fourth Proposition.
Property is Impossible, because it is Homicide 177
Fifth Proposition.
Property is Impossible, because, if it exists. Society devours
itself 183
Appendix to the Fifth Proposition 195
Sixth Proposition.
Property is Impossible, because it is the Mother of Tyranny . 207
Seventh Proposition.
Property is Impossible, because, in consuming its Receipts, it loses them ; in hoarding them, it nullifies them ; and, in using them as Capital, it turns them against Production .... 209
CONTENTS. Vll
Eighth Proposition.
Property is Impossible, because its Power of Accumulation is inHnite, and is exercised only over Finite Quantities . . . 215
Ninth Proposition.
Property is Impossible, because it is powerless against Prop- erty 217
Tenth Proposition.
Property is Impossible, because it is the Negation of Equality 222
CHAPTER V.
Psychological Exposition of the Idea of Justice and In- justice, AND A Determination of the Principle of Government and of Right 224
Part I.
§ I. Of the Moral Sense in Man and the Animals 224
§ 2j Of the First and Second Degrees of Sociability .... 230
§ 3. Of the Third Degree of Sociability 238
Part II.
§ I. Of the Causes of our Mistakes. The Origin of Property . 250
§ 2. Characteristics of Communism and of Property .... 259
§ 3. Determination of the Third Form of Society. Conclusion . 280
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SECOND MEMOIR.
Letter to M. Blanqui on Property 291
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p. J. PROUDHON:
HIS LIFE AND HIS WORKS.
nPHE correspondence^ of P. J. Proudhon, the first volumes of which we publish to-day, has been collected since his death by the faithful and intelligent labors of his daugh- ter, aided by a few friends. It was incomplete when submit- ted to Sainte Beuve, but the portion with which the illustrious academician became acquainted was sufficient to allow him to estimate it as a whole with that soundness of judgment which characterized him as a literary critic.
In an important work, which his habitual readers certainly have not forgotten, although death did not allow him to finish it, Sainte Beuve thus judges the correspondence of the great publicist : —
" The letters of Proudhon, even outside the circle of his particular friends, will always be of value ; we can always learn something from them, and here is the proper place to determine the general character of his correspondence. •
1 In the French edition of Proudhon*s works, the above sketch of his life is prefixed to the first volume of his correspondence, but the translator prefers to insert it here as the best method of introducing the author to the American public. He would, however, caution readers against accepting the biographer's interpretation of the author's views as in any sense authoritative ; advising them, rather, to await the publication of the remainder of Proudhon*s writings, that they may form an opinion for themselves, — Translator.
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"It has always been large, especially since he became so celebrated ; and, to tell the truth, I am persuaded that, in the future, the correspond- ence of Proudhon will be his principal, vital work, and that most of his books will be only accessory to and corroborative of this. At any rate, his books can be well understood only by the aid of his letters and the continual explanations which he makes to those who consult him in their doubt, and request him to define more clearly his position.
" There are, among celebrated people, many methods of correspond- ence. There are those to whom letter-writing is a bore, and who, assailed with questions and compliments, reply in the greatest haste, solely that the job may be over with, and who return politeness for polite- ness, mingling it with more or less wit. This kind of correspondence, though coming from celebrated people, is insignificant and unworthy of collection and classification.
" After those who write letters in performance of a disagreeable duty, and almost side by side with them in point of insignificance, I should put those who write in a manner wholly external, wholly superficia., ae voted only to flattery, lavishing praise like gold, without counting it ; ana those also who weigh every word, who reply formally and pompously, with a view to fine phrases and effects. They exchange words only, and choose them solely for their brilliancy and show. You think it is you, indi- vidually, to whom they speak ; but they are addressing themselves in your person to the four corners of Europe. Such letters are empty, and teach us nothing but theatrical execution and the favorite pose of their writers.
" I will not class among the latter the more prudent and sagacious authors who, when writing to individuals, keep one eye on posterity. We know that many who pursue this method have written long, finished} charming, flattering, and tolerably natural letters. Beranger furnishes us with the best example of this class.
" Proudhon. however, is a man of entirely different nature and habits. In writing, he thinks of nothing but his idea and the person whom he ad- dresses : ad rem et ad hominem, A man of conviction and doctrine, to write does not weary him ; to be questioned does not annoy him. When approached, he cares only to know that your motive is not one of futile curiosity, but the love of truth ; he assumes you to be serious, he replies, he examines your objections, sometimes verbally, sometimes in writing ; for. as he remarks, * if there be some points which correspondence can never settle, but which can be made clear by conversation in two minutes, at other times just the opposite is the case : an objection clearly stated in writing, a doubt well expressed, which elicits a direct and positive reply, helps things along more than ten hours of oral inter-
HIS LIFE AND WORKS. XI
course ! ' In writing to you, he does not hesitate to treat the subject anew ; he unfolds to you the foundation and superstructure of his thought; rarely does he confess himself defeated — it is not his way ; he holds to his position, but admits the breaks, the variations, in short, the evolution of his mind. The history of his mind is in his letters ; there it must be sought.
" Proudhon, whoever addresses him, is always ready ; he quits the page of the book on which he is at work to answer you with the same pen, and that without losing patience, without getting confused, without sparing or complaining of his ink ; he is a public man, devoted to the propagation of his idea by all methods, and the best method, with him, is always the present one, the latest one. His very handwriting, bold, uni- form, legible, even in the most tiresome passages, betrays no haste, no hurry to finish. Each line is accurate : nothing is feft to chance ; the punctuation, very correct and a little emphatic and decided, indicates with precision and delicate distinction all the links in the chain of his argument. He is devoted entirely to you, to his business and yours, while writing to you, and never to anything else. All the letters of his which 1 have seen are serious : not one is commonplace.
" But at the same time he is not at all artistic or affected ; he does not construct his letters, he does not revise them, he spends no time in read- ing them over ; we ha^se a first draught, excellent and clear, a jet from the fountain-head, but that is all. The new arguments, which he discovers in support of his ideas and which opposition suggests to him, are an agreeable surprise, and shed a light which we should vainly search for even in his works. His correspondence differs essentially from his books, in that it gives you no uneasiness ; it places you in the very heart of the man, explains him to you, and leaves you with an impression of moral es- teem and almost of intellectual security. We feel his sincerity. 1 know of no one to whom he can be more fitly compared in this respect than George Sand, whose correspondence is large, and at the same time full of sincerity. His rdU and his nature correspond. If he is writing to a young man who unbosoms himself to him in sceptical anxiety, to a young woman who asks him to decide delicate questions of conduct for her, his letter takes the form of a short moral essay, of a father-confessor's advice. ^N^Ias he perchance attended the theatre (a rare thing for him) to witness one of Ponsart's comedies, or a drama of Charles Edmonds, he feels bound to give an account of his impressions to the friend to wlu)m he is indebted for this pleasure, and his letter becomes a literary and philo- sophical criticism, full of sense, and like no other. His familiarity is suited to his correspondent ; he affects no rudeness. The terms of civ-
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ility or affection which he employs towards his correspondents are sober, measured, appropriate to each, and honest in their simplicity and cor- diality. When he speaks of morals and the family, he seems at times like the patriarchs of the Bible. His command of language is complete, and he never fails to avail himself of it. Now and then a coarse word, a few personalities, too bitter and quite unjust or injurious, will have to be suppressed in printing ; time, however, as it passes away, permits many things and renders them inoffensive. Am I right in saying that Proud- hon's correspondence, always substantial, will one day be the most acces- sible and attractive portion of his works ? ''
Almost the whole of Proudhon's real biography is included in his correspondence. Up to 1837, the date of the first let- ter which we have been able to collect, his life, narrated by Sainte Beuve, from whom we make numerous extracts, may be summed up in a few pages.
Pierre Joseph Proudhon was bom on the 15th of January, 1809, in a suburb of Besangon, called Mouillire. His father and mother were employed in the great brewery belonging to M. Renaud. His father, though a cousin of the jurist Proudhon, the celebrated professor in the faculty of Dijon, was a journeyman brewer. His mother, a genuine peasant, was a common servant. She was an orderly person of great good sense ; and, as they who knew her say, a superior woman of heroic character, — to use the expression of the venerable M. Weiss, the librarian at Besan^on. She it was especially that Proudhon resembled : she and his grandfather Tourn6si, the soldier peasant of whom his mother told him, and whose courageous deeds he has described in his work on " Justice." Proudhon, who always felt a great veneration for his mother Catharine, gave her name to the elder of his daughters. In 1 8 14, when Besan5on was blockaded, Mouill^re, which stood in front of the walls of the town, was destroyed in the
HIS LIF^ AND WORKS. XUl
defence of the place ; and Proudhon's father established a cooper's shop in a suburb of Battant, called Vignerons. Very honest, but simple-minded and short-sighted, this cooper, the father of five children, of whom Pierre Joseph was the eldest, passed his life in poverty. At eight years of age, Proudhon either made himself useful in the house, or tended the cattle out of doors. No one should fail to read that beautiful and precious page of his work on " Justice," in which he describes the rural sports which he enjoyed when a neatherd. At the age of twelve, he was a cellar-boy in an inn. This, however, did not prevent him from studying. His mother was greatly aided by M. Renaud, Jhe former owner of the brewery, who had at that time retired from business, and was engaged in the education of his children.
Proudhon entered school as a day-scholar in the sixth class. He was necessarily irregular in his attendance ; domestic cares and restraints sometimes kept him from his classes. He succeeded nevertheless fn his studies ; he showed great perseverance. His family were so poor that they could not afford to furnish him with books ; he was obliged to borrow them from his comrades, and copy the text of his lessons. He has himself told us that he was obliged to leave his wooden shoes outside the door, that he might not disturb the classes with his noise ; and that, having no hat, he went to school bareheaded. One day, towards the close of his studies, on returning from the distribution of the prizes, loaded with crowns, he found nothing to eat in the house.
"In his eagerness for labor and his thirst for knowledge, Proudhon," says Sainte Beuve, " was not content with the instruction of his teachers. From his twelfth to his fourteenth year, he was a constant frequenter of
XIV p. J. PROUDHON.
the town library. One curiosity led to another, and he called for book after book, sometimes eight or ten at one sitting. The learned librarian, the friend and almost the brother of Charles Nodier, M. Weiss, approached him one day, and said, smiling, * But, my little friend, what do you wish to do with all these books ? ' The child raised his head, eyed his ques- tioner, and replied: *Whafs that to you?* And the good M. Weiss remembers it to this day."
Forced to earn his living, Proudhon could not continue his studies. He entered a printing-office in Besan9on as a proof- reader. Becoming, soon after, a compositor, he made a tour of France in this capacity. At Toulon, where he found him- self without money and without work, he had a scene with the mayor, which he describes in his work on " Justice.**
Sainte Beuve says that, after his tour of France, his service book being filled with good certificates, Proudhon was pro- moted to the position of foreman. But he does not tell us, for the reason that he had no knowledge of a letter written by Fallot, of which we never heard until six months since, that the printer at that time contemplated quitting his trade in order to become a teacher.
Towards 1829, Fallot, who was a little older than Proud- hon, and who, after having obtained the Suard pension in 1832, died in his twenty-ninth year, while filling the position of assistant librarian at the Institute, was charged, Protestant though he was, with the revisal of a " Life of the Saints,** whicri was published at Besanjon. The book was in Latin, and Fallot added some notes which also were in Latin.
" But," says Sainte BeuVe, " it happened that some errors escaped his attention, which Proudhon, then proof-reader in the printing office; did not fail to point out to him. Surprised at finding so good a Latin scholar in a workshop, he desired to make his acquaintance ; and soon there sprung up between them a most earnest and intimate friendship : a friendship oi the intellect and of the heart."
HIS LIFE AND WORKS. XV
Addressed to a printer between twenty-two and twenty- three years of age, and predicting in formal terms his future fame, Fallot's letter seems to us so interesting that we do not hesitate to reproduce it entire.
"Paris, December 5, 1831.
" My IJEAR Proudhon, — You have a right to be surprised at, and even dissatisfied with, my long delay in replying to your kind letter ; I will tell you the cause of it. It became necessary to forws^rd an account of your ideas to M. J. de Gray ; to hear his objections, to reply to them, and to await his definitive response, which reached me but a short time ago ; for M. J. is a sort of financial king, who takes no pains to be punc- tual in dealing with poor devils like ourselves. I, too, am careless in matters of business ; I sometimes push my negligence even to disorder, and the metaphysical musings which continually occupy my mind, added to the amusements of Paris, render me the most incapable man in the world for conducting a negotiation with despatch.
" I have M. Jobard's decision ; here it is : In his judgment, you are too learned and clever for his children ; he fears that you could not ac- commodate your mind and character to the childish notions common to their age and station. In short, he is what the world calls a good father ; that is, he wants to spoil his children, and, in order to do this easily, he thinks fit to retain his present instructor, who is not very learned, but who takes part in their games and joyous sports with wonderful facility, who points out the letters of the alphabet to the little girl, who takes the little boys to mass, and who, no less obliging than the worthy Abb^ P. of our acquaintance, would readily dance for Madame's amusement. Such a profession would not suit you, you who have a free, proud, and manly soul : you are refused ; let us dismiss the matter from our minds. Per- haps another time my solicitude will be less unfortunate. I can only ask your pardon for having thought of thus disposing of you almost without consulting you. I find my excuse in the motives which guided me ; I had in view your well-being and advancement in the ways of this world.
" I see in your letter, my comrade, through its brilliant witticisms and beneath the frank and artless gayety with which you have sprinkled it, a tinge of sadness and despondency which pains me. You are unhappy, my friend : your present situation does not suit you; you cannot remain in it, it was not made for you, it is beneath you ; you ought, by all means, to leave it, before^ its injurious influence begins to affect your faculties, and before you become settled, as they say, in the ways of your profes-
XVI p. J. PROUDHON.
sion, were it possible that such a thing could ever happ>en, which I flatly deny. You are unhappy ; you have not yet entered upon the path which Nature has marked out for you. But, faint-hearted soul, is that a cause for despondency ? Ought you to feel discouraged ? Struggle, morbleUy struggle persistently, and you will triumph. J. J. Rousseau groped about for forty years before his genius was revealed to him. You are not J. J. Rousseau ; but listen : I know not whether I should have divined the author of *^ Emile " when he was twenty years of age, supposing that I had been his contemporary, and had enjoyed the honor of his acquaintance. But I have known you, I have loved you, I have divined your future, if I may venture to say so ; for the first time in my life, I am going to risk a prophecy. Keep this letter, read it again fifteen or twenty years hence, perhaps twenty-five, and if at that time the prediction which I am about to make has not been fulfilled, burn it as a piece of folly out of charity and respect for my memory. This is my prediction : you will be, Proud- hon, in spite of yourself, inevitably, by the fact of your destiny, a writer, an author ; you will be a philosopher ; you will be one of the lights of the century, and your name will occupy a place in the annals of the nine- teenth century, like those of Gassendi, Descartes, Malebranche, and Bacon in the seventeenth, and those of Diderot, Montesquieu, Helvetius, Locke, Hume, and Holbach in the eighteenth. Such will be your lot I Do now what you will, set type in a printing-office, bring up children, bury yourself in deep seclusion, seek obscure and lonely villages, it is all one to me ; you cannot escape your destiny ; you cannot divest yourself of your noblest feature, that active, strong, and inquiring mind, with which you are endowed ; your place in the world has been appointed, and it cannot remain empty. Go where you please, I expect you in Paris, talking philosophy and the doctrines of Plato ; you will have to come, whether you want to or not. I, who say this to you, must feel very sure of it in order to be willing to put it upon paper, since, without reward for my prophetic skill, — to which, I assure you, I make not the slightest claim, — I run the risk of passing for a hare-brained fellow, in case I prove to be mistaken ; he plays a bold game who risks his good sense upon his cards, in return for the very trifling and insignificant merit of having divined a young man's future.
" When I say that I expect you in Paris, I use only a proverbial phrase which you must not allow to mislead you as to my projects and plans. To reside in Paris is disagreeable to me, very much so \ and when this fine-art fever which possesses me has left me, I shall abandon the place without regret to seek a more peaceful residence in a provincial town, provided always the town shall afford me the means of living, bread, a
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HIS LIFE AND WORKS. XVll
bed, books, rest, and solitude. How I miss, my good Proudhon, that dark, obscure, smoky chamber in which I dwelt in Besan^on, and where wc spent so many pleasant hours in the discussion of philosophy! Do you remember it ? But that is now far away. Will that happy time ever return ? Shall we one day meet again ? Here my life is restless, uncer- tain, precarious, and, what is worse, indolent, illiterate, and vagrant. I do no work, I live in idleness, I ramble about ; I do not read, I no longer study ; my books are forsaken ; now and then I glance over a few meta- physical works, and after a day's walk through dirty, filthy, crowded streets, I lie down with empty head and tired body, to repeat the per- formance on the following day. What is the object of these w&lks, you will ask. I make visits, my friend ; I hold interviews with stupid peo- ple. Then a fit of curiosity seizes me, the least inquisitive of beings : there are museums, libraries, assemblies, churches, palaces, gardens, and theatres to visit. I am fond of pictures, fond of music, fond of sculpture ; all these are beautiful and good, but they cannot appease hunger, nor take the place of my pleasant readings of Bailly, Hume, and Tennemann, which I used to enjoy by my fireside when I was able to read.
** But enough of complaints. Do not allow this letter to affect you too much, and do not think that I give way to dejection or despondency ; no, I am a fatalist, and I believe in my star. I do not know yet what my calling is, nor for what branch of polite literature I am best fitted ; I do not even know whether I am, or ever shall be, fitted for any : but what matters it ? I suffer, I labor, I dream, I enjoy, I think ; and, in a word, when my last hour strikes, I shall have lived.
" Proudhon, I love you, I esteem you ; and, believe me, these are not
mere phrases. What interest could I have in flattering and praising a
poor printer ? Are you rich, that you may pay for courtiers ? Have you
a sumptuous table, a dashing wife, and gold to scatter, in order to attract
them to your suite ? Have you the glory, honors, credit, which would
render your acquaintance pleasing to their vanity and pride ? No ; you
are poor, obi^cure, abandoned ; but, poor, obscure, and abandoned, you
have a friend, and a friend who knows all the obligations' which that
word imposes upon honorable people, when they venture to assume it.
That friend is myself : put me to the test
"GusTAVE Fallot."
It appears from this letter that if, at this period, Proudhon had already exhibited to the eyes of a clairvoyant friend his genius for research and investigation, it was in the direction
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of philosophical, rather than of economical and social, questions.
«
Having become foreman in the house of Gauthier & Co., who carried on a large printing establishment at Besan^on, he corrected the proofs of ecclesiastical writers, the Fathers of the Church. As they were printing a Bible, a Vulgate, he was led to compare the Latin with the original Hebrew.
" In fhis way," says Sainte Beuve, " he learned Hebrew by himself, and, as everything was connected in his mind, he was led to the study of comparative philology. As the house of Gauthier published many works on Church history and theology, he came also to acquire, through this de- sire of his to investigate everything, an extensive knowledge of theology, which afterwards caused misinformed persons to think that he had been in an ecclesiastical seminary."
Towards 1836, Proudhon left the. house of Gauthier, and, in company with an associate, established a small printing- office in Besan^on. His contribution to the partnership consisted, not so much in capital, as in his knowledge of the trade. His partner committing suicide in 1838, Proudhon was obliged to wind up the business, an operation which he did not accomplish as quickly and as easily as he hoped. He was then urged by his friends to enter the ranks of the competitors for the Suard pension. This pension c5onsisted of an income of fifteen hundred francs bequeathed to the Academy pf Besanjon by Madame Suard, the widow of the academician, to be given once in three years to the young man residing in the department of Doubs, a bachelor of letters or of science, and not possessing a fortune, whom the Academy of Besangon should deem best fitted for a literary or scientific career^ or for the study of law or of medicine. The first to win the Suard pension was Gustave Fallot. Mauvais, who
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HIS LIFE AND WOR*. xix
was a distinguished astronomer in the Acaden of Sciences, was the second. Proudhon aspired to be the third. To qualify himself, he had to be received as a bachelor of letters, and was obliged to write a letter to the Academy of Besan^on, In a phrase of this letter, the terms of which he had to modify, though he absolutely refused to change its spirit, Proudhon expressed his firm resolve to labor for the amelioration of the condition of his brothers, the working-men.
The only thing which he had then published was an " Essay on General Grammar," which appeared without the author s signature. While reprinting, at Besan^on, the " Primitive Elements of Languages, Discovered by the Comparison of Hebrew roots with those of the Latin and French," by the Abb^ Bergier, Proudhon had enlarged the edition of his " Essay on General Grammar."
The date of the edition, 1837, proves that he did not at that time think of competing for the Suard pension. In this work, which continued and completed that of the Abb^ Bergier, Proudhon adopted the same point of view, that of Moses and of Biblical tradition. Two years later, in February, 1839, being already in possession of the Suard pension, he addressed to the Institute, as a competitor for the Volney prize, a memoir entitled : " Studies in Grammatical Classification and the Deri- vation of some French words." It was his first work, revised and presented in another form. Four memoirs only were sent to the Institute, none of which gained the prize. Two honorable mentions were granted, one of them to memoir No. 4 ; that is, to P. J. Proudhon, printer at Besan^on. The judges were MM. Am^d^e Jaubert, Reinaud, and Burnouf.
" The committee," said the report presented at the annual meeting of the five academies on Thursday, May 2, 1839, **has paid especial atten-
XX p. J. PROUDHON.
tion to manuscripts No. i and No. 4. Still, it does not feel able to grant the prize to either of these works, because they do not appear to be sufficiently elaborated. The committee, which finds in No. 4 some very ingenious analyses, particularly in regard to the mechanism of the Hebrew language, regrets that the author has resorted to hazardous conjectures, and has sometimes forgotten the special recommendation of the commit- tee to pursue the experimental and comparative method."
Proudhon remembered this. He attended the lectures of Eugine Bumouf, and, as soon as he became acquainted with the labors and discoveries of Bopp and his successors, he defini- tively abandoned an hypothesis which had been condemned by the Academy of Inscriptions and Belles-lettres. He then sold, for the value of the paper, the remaining copies of the "Essay" published by him in 1837. In 1850, they were still lying in a grocer's back-shop. A neighboring publisher then placed the edition on the market, with the attractive name of Proudhon upon it. A lawsuit ensued, in which the author was beaten. His enemies, and at that time there were many of them, would have been glad to have proved him a renegade and a recanter. Proudhon, in his work on " Justice," gives some interesting details of this lawsuit.
In possession of the Suard pension, Proudhon took part in the contest proposed by the Academy of Besan^on on the question of the utility of the celebration of Sunday. His memoir obtained honorable mention, together with a medal which was awarded him, in open session, on the 24th of August, 1839, The reporter of the committee, the Abb^ Doney, since made Bishop of Montauban, called attention to the unquestionable superiority of his talent.
"But," says Sainte Beuve, "he reproached him with having adopted dangerous theories, and with having touched upon questions of practical politics and social organization, where upright intentions and zeal for the public welfare cannot justify rash solutions."
HIS LIFE AND WORKS. XXI
Was it policy, we mean prudence, which induced Proudhon to screen his ideas of equality behind the Mosaic law ? Sainte Beuve, like many others, seems to think so. But we remember perfectly well that, having asked Proudhon, in August, 1848, if he did not consider himself indebted in some respects to his fellow-countryman, Charles Fourier, we received from him the following reply : " I have certainly read Fourier, and have spoken of him more than once in my works ; but, upon the whole, I do not think that I owe any- thing to him. My real masters, those who have caused fertile ideas to spring up in my mind, are three in number : first, the Bible ; next, Adam Smith ; and last, Hegel,
Freely confessed in the ** Celebration of Sunday," the influ- ence of the Bible on Proudhon is no less manifest in his first memoir on property. Proudhon undoubtedly brought to this work many ideas of his own ; but is not the very foundation of ancient Jewish law to be found in its condemnation of usuri- ous interest and its denial of the right of personal appropria- tion of land ?
The first memoir on property appeared in 1840, under the title, " What is Property ? or an Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government." Proudhon dedicated it, in a let- ter which served as the preface, to the Academy of Besan^on. The latter, finding itself brought to trial by its pensioner, took the affair to heart, and evoked it, says Sainte Beuve, with all possible haste. The pension narrowly escaped being immediately withdrawn from the bold defender of the prin- ciple of equality of conditions. M. Vivien, then Minister of Justice, who was earnestly solicited to prosecute the author, wished first to obtain the opinion of the economist, Blanqui,
^ w
xxu
?. J. PROUDHON.
a member of the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences. Proudhon having presented to this academy a copy of his book, M. Blanqui was appointed to review it. This review, though it opposed Proudhon's views, shielded him. Treated as a savant by M. Blanqui, the author was not prosecuted. He was always grateful to MM. Blanqui and Vivien for their handsome conduct in the matter.
M. Blanqui's review, which was partially reproduced by " Le Moniteur,"on the 7th of September, 1840, naturally led Proud- hon to address to him, in the form of a letter, his second memoir on property, which appeared in April, 1841. Proud- hon had endeavored, in his first memoir, to demonstrate that the pursuit of equality of conditions is the true principle of right and of government. In the " Letter to M. Blanqui," he passes in review the numerous and varied methods by which this principle gradually becomes realized in all societies, especially in modern society.
In 1842, a third memoir appeared, entitled, "A Notice to Proprietors, or a Letter to M. Victor Consid^rant, Editor of * La Phalange,* in Reply to a Defence of Property." Here the influence of Adam Smith manifested itself, and was frankly admitted. Did not Adam Smith find, in the principle of equality, the first of all the laws which govern wages } There are other laws, undoubtedly; but Proudhon considers them all as springing from the principle of property, as he defined it in his first memoir. Thus, in humanity, there are two principles, — one which leads us to equality, another which separates us from it. By the former, we treat each other as associates; by the latter, as strangers, not to say enemies. This distinction, which is constantly met with throughout the
HIS LIFE AND WORKS. XXlll
three memoirs, contained already, in germ, the idea which gave birth to the " System of Economical Contradictions," which appeared in 1846, the idea of antinomy or contre-loi.
The " Notice to Proprietors " was seized by the magistrates of Besangon ; and Proudhon was summoned to appear before the assizes of Doubs within a week. He read his written defence to the jurors in person, and was acquitted. The jury, like M. Blanqui, viewed him only as a philosopher, an inquirer, a savant.
In 1843, Proudhon published the "Creation of Order in Humanity," a large volume, which does not deal exclusively with questions of social economy. Religion, philosophy, method, certainty, logic, and dialectics are treated at con- siderable length.
Released from his printing-office on the ist of March of the same year, Proudhon had to look for a chance to earn his living. Messrs. Gauthier Bros., carriers by water between Mulhouse and Lyons, the eldest of whom was Proudhon's companion in childhood, conceived the happy thought of employing him, of utilizing his ability in their business, and in settling the numerous points of difficulty which daily arose. Besides the large number of accounts which his new duties required him to make out, and which retarded the publication of the " System of Economical Contradictions," until October, 1846, we ought to mention a work, which, before it appeared in pamphlet form, was published in the " Revue des Econo- mistes," — " Competition between Railroads and Navigable Ways."
" Le Miserere, or the Repentance of a King," which he pub- lished in March, 1845, in the "Revue Ind^pendante," during
XXIV p. J. PROUDHON.
that Lenten season when Lacordaire was preaching in Lyons,
proves that, though devoting himself with ardor to the study
\ of economical problems, Proudhon had not lost his interest in
/questions of religious history. Among his writings on these questions, which he was unfortunately obliged to leave unfin- /ished, we may mention a nearly completed history of the early Christian heresies, and of the struggle of Christianity against Caesarism.
We have said that, in 1848, Proudhon recognized three masters. Having no knowledge of the German language, he could not have read the works of Hegel, which at that time
had not been translated into French. It was Charles Griin, a
I
German, who had come to France to study the various philo- sophical and socialistic systems, who gave him the substance of the Hegelian ideas. During the winter of 1844-45, Charles Griin had some long conversations with Proudhon, which determined, very decisively, not the ideas, which belonged exclusively to the bisontin thinker, but the form of the impor- tant work on which he labored after 1843, and which was published in 1846 by Guillaumin.
Hegel's great idea, which Proudhon appropriated, and which he demonstrates with wonderful ability in the " System of Eco- nomical Contradictions," is as follows : Antinomy, that is, the existence of two laws or tendencies which are opposed to each other, is possible, not only with two different things, but with one and the same thing. Considered in their thesis, that is, in the law or tendency which created them, all the economical categories are rational, — competition, monopoly, the balance of trade, and property, as well as the division of labor, machinery, taxation, and credit. But, like communism
HIS LIFE AND WORKS. XXV
and population, all these categories are antinomical; all are opposed, not only to each other, but to themselves. All is opposition, and disorder is born of this system of opposition. Hence, the sub-title of the work, — " Philosophy of Misery." No category can be suppressed ; the opposition, antinomy, or contre-tendance^ which exists in each of them, cannot be suppressed.
Where, then, lies the solution of the social problem ? In- fluenced by .the Hegelian ideas, Proudhon began to look for it in a superior synthesis, which should reconcile the thesis and antithesis. * Afterwards, while at work upon his book on ** Jus- tice," he saw that the antinomical terms do not cancel each other, any more than the opposite poles of an electric pile destroy each other ; that they are the procreative cause of motion, life, and progress ; that the problem is to discover, not their fusion, which would be death, but their equilibrium, — an equilibrium for ever unstable, varying with the develop- ment of society.
On the cover of the " System of Economical Contradictions," Proudhon announced, as soon to appear, his " Solution of the Social Problem.*' This work, upon which he was engaged when the Revolution of 1848 broke out, had to be cut up into pamphlets and newspaper articles. The two pamphlets, which he published in March, 1 848, before he became editor of " Le Repr^sentant du Peuple," bear the same title, — " Solution of th6 Social Problem." The first, which is mainly a criticism of the early acts of the provisional government, is notable from the fact that in it Proudhon, in advance of all others, energetically opposed the establishment of national work- shops. The second, " Organization of Credit and Circulation,"
XXVI p. J. PROUDHON.
sums up in a few pages his idea of economical progress : a gradual reduction of interest, profit, rent, taxes, and wages. All progress hitherto has been made in this manner ; in this manner it must continue to be made. Those workingmen who favor a nominal increase of wages are, unconsciously, following a back-track, opposed to all their interests.
After having published in " Le Repr^sentant du Peuple," the statutes of the Bank of Exchange, — a bank which was to make no profits, since it was to have no stockholders, and which, consequently, was to discount commercial paper with- out interest, charging only a commission sufficient to defray its running expenses, — Proudhon endeavored, in a number of articles, to explain its mechanism and necessity. These arti- cles have been collected in one volume, under the double title, " Risumi of the Social Question ; Bank of Exchange.*' His other articles, those which up to December, 1848, were in- spired by the progress of events, have been collected in another volume, — " Revolutionary Ideas."
Almost unknown in March, 1848, and struck off in April from the list of candidates for the Constituent Assembly by the delegation of workingmen which sat at the Luxembourg, Proudhon had but a very small number of votes at the general elections of April. At the complementary elections, which were held in the early days of June, he was elected in Paris by seventy-seven thousand votes.
After the fatal days of June, he published an article on le terme, which caused the first suspension of " Le Represent ant du Peuple." It was at that time that he introduced a bill into the Assembly, which, being referred to the Committee on the Finances, drew forth, first, the report of M. Thiers, and then
HIS LIFE AND WORKS. XXVII
the speech which Proudhon delivered, on the 31st of July, in reply to this report, *' Le Repr^sentant du Peuple," reappear- ing a few days later, he wrote, a propos of the law requiring jour- nals to give bonds, his famous article on "The Malthusians" (August 10, 1848). Ten days afterwards, " Le Repr^sentant du Peuple," again suspended, definitively ceased to appear. " Le Peuple," of which he was the editor-in-chief, and the first num- ber of which was issued in the early part of September, appeared weekly at first, for want of sufficient bonds ; it after- wards appeared daily, with a double number once a week. Before " Le Peuple " had obtained its first bond, Proudhon pub- lished a remarkable pamphlet on the " Right to Labor," — a right which he denied in the form in which it was then affirmed. It was during the same period that he proposed, at the Pois- sonniire banquet, his Toast to the Revolution.
Proudhon, who had been asked to preside at the banquet, refused, and proposed in his stead, first, Ledru-Rollin, and then, in view of the reluctance of the organizers of the ban- quet, the illustrious president of the party of the Mountain, Lamennais. It was evidently his intention to induce the representatives of the Extreme Left to proclaim at last with him the Democratic and Social Republic. Lamennais being accepted by the organizers, the Mountain promised to be present at the banquet. The night before, all seemed right, when General Cavaignac replaced Minister Senart by Minis- ter Dufaure-Vivien. The Mountain, questioning the govern- ment, proposed a vote of confidence in the old minister, and, tacitly, of want of confidence in the new. Proudhon ab- stained from voting on this proposition. The Mountain declared that it would not attend the banquet, if Proud-
XXVlll p. J. PROUDHON.
hon was to be present. Five Montagnards, Mathieu of Dr6me at their head, went to the temporary office of " Le Peuple " to notify him of this. " Citizen Proudhon/' said they to the organizers in his presence, " in abstaining from voting to-day on the proposition of the Mountain, has betrayed the Republican cause." Proudhon, vehemently questioned, began his defence by recalling, on the one hand, the treatment which he had received from the dismissed minister ; and, on the other, the impartial conduct displayed towards him in 1840 by M. Vivien, the new minister. He then attacked the Mountain by telling its delegates that it sought only a pretext, and that really, in spite of its professions of Social- ism in private conversation, whether with him or with the organizers of the banquet, it had not the courage to publicly declare itself Socialist.
On the following day, in his Toast to the Revolution^ a toast which was filled with allusions to the exciting scene of the night before, Proudhon commenced his struggle against the Mountain. His duel with Felix Pyat was one of the episodes of this struggle, which became less bitter on Proudhon's side after the Mountain finally decided to publicly proclaim the Democratic and Social Republic. The campaign for the elec- tion of a President of the Republic had just begun. Proud- hon made a very sharp attack on the candidacy of Louis Bonaparte in a pamphlet whicJi is regarded as one of his literary chefs-d'oeuvre : the " Pamphlet on the Presidency." An opponent of this institution, against which he had voted in the Constituent Assembly, he at first decided to take no part in the campaign. But soon seeing that he was thus increas- ing the chances of Louis Bonaparte, and that if, as was not
HIS LIFE AND WORKS. XXIX
at all probable, the latter should not obtain an absolute major- ity of the votes, the Assembly would not fail to elect General Cavaignac, he espoused, for the sake of form, the candidacy of Raspail, who was supported by his friends in the Socialist Committee. Charles Delescluze, the editor-in-chief of " La Revolution Dfemocratique et Sociale," who could not forgive him for having preferred Raspail to Ledru-Rollin, the candi- date of the Mountain, attacked him on the day after the elec- tion with a violence which overstepped all bounds. At first, Proudhon had the wisdom to refrain from answering him. At length, driven to an extremity, he became aggressive him- self, and Delescluze sent him his seconds. This time, Proud- hon positively refused to fight ; he would not have fought with F^lix Pyat, had not his courage been called in question.
On the 25th of January, 1849, Proudhon, rising from a sick bed, saw that the existence of the Constituent Assembly was endangered by the coalition of the monarchical parties with Louis Bonaparte, who was already planning his coup d'Etat, He did not hesitate to openly attack the man who had just received five millions of votes. He wanted to. break the idol ; he succeeded only in getting prosecuted and con- demned himself. The prosecution demanded against him •was authorized by a majority of the Constituent Assembly, in spite of the speech which he delivered on that occasion. Declared guilty by the jury, he was sentenced, in March, 1849, ^o three years' imprisonment and the payment of a fine of ten thousand francs.
Proudhon had not abandoned for a single moment his project of a Bank of Exchange, which was to operate with- out capital with a sufficient number of merchants and manu*
XXX p. J. PROUDHON.
facturers for adherents. This bank, which he then called the Bank of the PeopUy and around which he wished to gather the numerous working-people's associations which had been formed since the 24th of February, 1848, had already ob- tained a certain number of subscribers and adherents, the latter to the number of thirty-seven thousand. It was about to commence operations, when Proudhon's sentence forced him to choose between imprisonment and exile. He did not hesitate to abandon his project and return the money to the subscribers. He explained the motives which led him to this decision in an article in " Le Peuple."
Having fled to Belgium, he remained there but a few days, going thence to Paris, under an assumed name, to conceal himself in a house in the Rue de Chabrol. From his hiding- place he sent articles almost every day, signed and unsigned, to " Le Peuple." In the evening, dressed in a blouse, he went to some secluded spot to take the air. Soon, emboldened by habit, he risked an evening promenade upon the Boulevards, and afterwards carried his imprudence so far as to take a stroll by daylight in the neighborhood of the Gare du Nord. It was not long before he was recognized by the police, who arrested him on the 6th of June, 1849, ^^ ^^ ^m^ du Fau- bourg-Poissonnifere.
Taken to the office of the prefect of police, then to Sainte- P61agie, he was in the Conciergerie on the day of the 13th of June, 1849, which ended with the violent suppression of " Le Peuple." He then began to write the " Confessions of a Revo- lutionist," published towards the end of the year. He had been again transferred to Sainte-P^lagie, when he married, in December, 1849, Mile. Euphrasie Pi^gard, a young working-
HIS LIFE AND WORKS. XXXI
girl whose hand he had requested in 1847. Madame Proudhon bore him four daughters, of whom but tWo, Catherine and Stephanie, survived their father. Stephanie died in 1873.
In October, 1 849, " Le Peuple " was replaced by a new journal, " La Voix du Peuple," which Proudhon edited from his prison cell. In it were published his discussions with Pierre Leroux and Bastiat. The political articles which he sent to " La Voix du Peuple" so displeased the government finally, that it trans- ferred him to DouUens, where he was secretly confined for some time. Afterwards taken back to Paris, to appear before the assizes of the Seine in reference to an article in " La Voix du Peuple," he w^s defended by M. Cremieux and acquitted. From the Conciergerie he went again to Sainte-P^lagie, where he ended his three years in prison on the 6th of June, 1852.
" La Voix du Peuple," suppressed before the promulgation of the law of the 31st ctf May, had been replaced by a weekly sheet, "Le Peuple" of 1850. Established by the aid of the principal members of the Mountain, this journal soon met with the fate of its predecessors.
In 1851, several months before the coup d'Etat, Proudhon published the " General Idea of the Revolution of the Nine- teenth Century," in which, after having shown the logical series of unitary governments, — from monarchy, which is the first term, to the direct government of the people, which is the last, — he opposes the ideal of an-archy or self-government to the communistic or governmental ideal.
At this period, the Socialist party, discouraged by the elections of 1849, which resulted in a greater conservative triumph than those of 1848, and justly angry with the national representative body which had just passed the law of the
XXXll p. J, PROUDHON.
31st of May, 1850, demanded direct legislation and direct government. Proudhon, who did not want, at any price, the plebiscitary system which he had good reason to regard as destructive of liberty, did not hesitate to point out, to those of his friends who expected every thing from direct legislation, one of the antinomies of universal suffrage. In so far as it is an institution intended to achieve, for the benefit of the greatest number, the social reforms to which landed suffrage is opposed, universal suffrage is powerless ; especially if it pretends to legislate or govern directly. For, until the social reforms are accomplished, the greatest number is of necessity the least enlightened, and consequently the least capable of understanding and effecting reforms. In regard to the antinomy, pointed out by him, of liberty and government, — whether the latter be monarchic, aristocratic, or democratic in form, — Proudhon, whose chief desire was to preserve liberty, naturally sought the solution in the free contract. But though the free contract may be a practical solution of purely economical questions, it cannot be made use of in politics. Proudhon recognized this ten years later, when his beautiful study on "War and Peace" led him to find in the federative principle the exact equilibrium of liberty and government.
** The Social Revolution Demonstrated by the Coup d'Etat " appeared in 1852, a few months after his release from prison. At that time, terror prevailed to such an extent that no one was willing to publish his book without express permission from the government. He succeeded in obtaining this per- mission by writing to Louis Bonaparte a letter which he published at the same time with the work. The latter being offered for sale, Proudhon was warned that he would not be
\
•4
HIS LIFE AND WORKS. XXXIU
allowed to publish any more books of the same character. At that time he entertained the idea of writing a universal history entitled " Chronos." This project was never fulfilled.
Already the father of two children, and about to be pre- sented with a third, Proudhon was obliged to devise some im- mediate means of gaining a living ; he resumed his labors, and published, at first anonymously, the " Manual of a Speculator in the Stock-Exchange." Later, in 1857, after having com- pleted the work, he did not hesitate to sign it, acknowledg- ing in the preface his indebtedness to his collaborator, G. Duch^ne.
Meantime, he vainly sought permission to establish a jour- nal, or review. This permission was steadily refused him. The imperial government always suspected him after the pub- lication of the " Social Revolution Demonstrated by the Coup d'Etat."
Towards the end of 1853, Proudhon issued in Belgium a pamphlet entitled "The Philosophy of Progress." Entirely inoffensive as it was, this pamphlet, which he endeavored to send into France, was seized on the frontier. Proudhon*s complaints were of no avail.
The empire gave grants after grants to large companies. A financial society, having asked for the grant of a railroad in the east of France, employed Proudhon to write several me- moirs in support of this demand. The grant was given to another company. The author was offered an indemnity as compensation, to be paid (as was customary in such cases) by the company which received the grant. It is needless to say that Proudhon would accept nothing. Then, wishing to explain to the public, as well as to the government, the end which he
XXXIV p. J. PROUDHON.
had in view, he published the work entitled " Reforms to be Effected in the Management of Railroads."
Towards the end of 1854, Proudhon had already begun his book on " Justice," when he had a violent attack of cholera, from which he recovered with great difficulty. Ever after- wards his health was delicate.
At last, on the 22d of April, 1858, he published, in three large volumes, the important work upon which he had labored since 1854. This work had two titles : the first, "Justice in the Revolution and in the Church ; " the second, " New Prin- ciples of Practical Philosophy, addressed to His Highness Mon- seigneur Mathieu, Cardinal-Archbishop of Besan^on." On the 27th of April, when there had scarcely been time to read the work, an order was issued by the magistrate for its seizure ; on the 28th the seizure was effected. To this first act of the magistracy, the author of the incriminated book replied on the nth of May in a strongly-motived petition^ demanding a re- vision of the concordat of 1802; or, in other words, a new adjustment of the relations between Church and State. At bottom, this petition was but the logical consequence of the work itself. An edition of a thousand copies being published on the 17th of May, the " Petition to the Senate " was regarded by the public prosecutor as an aggravation of the offence or offences discovered in the body of the work to which it was an appendix, and was seized in its turn on the 23d. On the first of June, the author appealed to the Senate in a second " Petition," which was deposited with the first in the office of the Secretary of the Assembly, the guardian and guarantee, according to the constitution of 1852, of the principles of '89. On the 2d of June, the two processes being united, Proudhon
HIS LIFE AND WORKS. XXXV
appeared at the bar with his publisher, the printer of the book, and the printer of the petition, to receive the sentence of the police magistrate, which condemned him to three years' im- prisonment, a fine of four thousapd francs, and the suppres- sion of his work. It is needless to say that the publisher and printers were also condemned by the sixth chamber.
Proudhon lodged an appeal ; he wrote a memoir which the law of 1819, in the absence of which he would have been liable to a new prosecution, gave him the power to publish previous to the hearing. Having decided to make use of the means which the law permitted, he urged in vain the printers who were prosecuted with him to lend him their aid. He then demanded of Attorney-General Chaix d'Est Ange a statement to the effect that the twenty-third article of the law of the 17th of May, 18 19, allows a written defence, and that a printer runs no risk in printing it. The attorney-general flatly refused. Proudhon then started for Belgium, where he printed his defence, which could not, of course, cross the French frontier. This memoir is entitled to rank with the best of Beaumarchais's ; it is entitled : " Justice prosecuted by the Church ; An Appeal from the Sentence passed upon P. J. Proudhon by the Police Magistrate of the Seine, on the 2d of June, 1858." A very close discussion of the grounds of the judgment of the sixth chamber, it was at the same time an excellent risum^ of his great work.
Once in Belgium, Proudhon did not fail to remain there. In 1859, after the general amnesty which followed the Italian war, he at first thought himself included in it. But the im- perial government, consulted by his friends, notified him that, in its opinion, and in spite of the contrary advice of M. Faus-
XXXVl
p. J. PROUDHON.
/
tin H61ie, his condemnation was not of a political character. Proudhon, thus classed by the government with the authors of immoral works, thought it beneath his dignity to protest, and >yaited patiently for the advent of 1863 to allow him to return to France.
In Belgium, where he was not slow in forming new friend- ships, he published in 1859-60, in separate parts, a new edi- tion of his great work on "Justice." Each number contained, in addition to the original text carefully reviewed and cor- rected, numerous explanatory notes and some " Tidings of the Revolution." In these tidings, which form a sort of review of the progress of ideas in Europe, Proudhon sorrowfully asserts that, after having for a long time marched at the head of the progressive nations, France has become, without appearing to suspect it, the most retrogressive of nations ; and he considers her more than once as seriously threatened with moral death.
The Italian war led him to write a new work, which he pub- lished in 1 86 1, entitled " War and Peace." This work, in which, running counter to a multitude of ideas accepted until then without examination, he pronounced for the first time against the restoration of an aristocratic and priestly Poland, and against the establishment of a unitary government in Italy, created for him a multitude of enemies. Most of his friends, disconcerted by his categorical affirmation of a right of force, notified him that they decidedly disapproved of his new pub- lication. " You see," triumphantly cried those whom he had
«
always combated, " this man is only a sophist."
Led by his previous studies to test every thing by the ques- tion of right, Proudhon asks, in his " War and Peace," whether there is a real right of which war is the vindication, and vie-
\
HIS LIFE AND WORKS. XXXVIl
tory the demonstration. This right, which he roughly calls the right of the strongest or the right of force, and which is, after all, only the right of the most worthy to the preference in certain definite cases, exists, says Proudhon, independently of war. It cannot be legitimately vindicated except where necessity clearly demands the subordination of one will to another, and within the limits in which it exists; that is, without ever involving the enslavement of one by the other. Among nations, the right of the majority, which is only a corollary of the right of force, is as unacceptable as universal monarchy. Hence, until equilibrium is established and recog- nized between States or national forces, there must be war. War, says Proudhon, is not always necessary to determine which side is the strongest ; and he has no trouble in proving this by examples drawn from the family, the workshop, and elsewhere. Passing then to the study of war, he proves that it by no means corresponds in practice to that which it ought to be according to his theory of the right of force. The systematic horrors of war naturally lead him to seek a.cause for it other than the vindication of this right ; and then only does the economist take it upon himself to denounce this cause to those who, like himself, want peace. The necessity of find- ing abroad a compensation for the misery resulting in every nation from the absence of economical equilibrium, is, accord- ing to Proudhon, the ever real, though ever concealed, cause of w^ar. The pages devoted to this demonstration and to his theory of poverty, which he clearly distinguishes from misery and pauperism, shed entirely new light upon the philosophy of history. As for the author's conclusion, it is a very simple one. Since the treaty of Westphalia, and especially since the
/
• • •
XXXVUl p. J. PROUDHON.
treaties of 1815, equilibrium has been the international law of Europe. It remains now, not to destroy it, but, while main- taining it, to labor peacefully, in every nation protected by it, for the equilibrium of economical forces. The last line of the book, evidently written to check imperial ambition, is: " Humanity wants no more war."
In 1 86 1, after Garibaldi's expedition and the battle of Cas- telfidardo, Proudhon immediately saw that the establishment of Italian unity would be a severe blow to European equilib- rium. It was chiefly in order to maintain this equilibrium that he pronounced so energetically in favor of Italian federa- tion, even though it should be at first only a federation of monarchs. In vain was it objected that, in being established by France, Italian unity would break European equilibrium in our favor. Proudhon, appealing to history, showed that every State which breaks the equilibrium in its own favor only causes the other States to combine against it, and thereby diminishes its influence and power. He added that, nations beings essentially selfish, Italy would not fail, when opportu- nity offered, to place her interest above her gratitude.
To maintain European equilibrium by diminishing great States and multiplying small ones ; to unite the latter in or- ganized federations, not for attack, but for defence ; and with these federations, which, if they were not republican already, would quickly become so, to hold in check the great military monarchies, — such, in the beginning of 1861, was the politi- cal prftgramme of Proudhon.
The object of the federations, he said, will be to guarantee, as far as possible, the beneficent reign of peace ; and they will have the further effect of securing in every nation the triumph
HIS LIFE AND WORKS. XXXIX
of liberty over despotism. Where the largest unitary State is, there liberty is in the greatest danger ; further, if this State be democratic, despotism without the counterpoise of majori- ties is to be feared. With the federation, it is not so. The universal suffrage of the federal State is checked by the uni- versal suffrage of the federated States ; and the latter is offset in its turn by property^ the stronghold of liberty, which it tends, not to destroy, but to balance with the institutions of mutualism.
All these ideas, and many others which were only hinted at in his work on " War and Peace," were developed by Proudhon in his subsequent publications, one of which has for its motto, " Reforms always, Utopias never." The thinker had evidently finished his evolution.
The Council of State of the canton of Vaud having offered prizes for essays on the question of taxation, previously dis- cussed at a congress held at Lausanne, Proudhon entered the ranks and carried off the first prize. His memoir was pub- lished in 1 86 1 under the title of "The Theory of Taxation."
About the same time, he wrote at Brussels, in " L'Office de Publicity," some remarkable articles on the question of liter- ary property, which was discussed at a congress held in Bel- gium. These articles must not be confounded with " Literary Majorats," a more complete work on the same subject, which was published in 1863, soon after his return to France.
Arbitrarily excepted from the amnesty in 1859, Proudhon was pardoned two years later by a special act. He did not wish to take advantage of this favor, and seemed resolved to remain in Belgium until the 2d of June, 1863, the time when he was to acquire the privilege of prescription, when an absurd
xl p. J. PROUDHON.
and ridiculous riot, excited in Brussels by an article published by him on federation and unity in Italy, induced him to hasten his return to France. Stones were thrown against the house in which he lived, in the Faubourg d'lxelles. After having placed his wife and daughters in safety among his friends at Brussels, he arrived in Paris in September, 1862, and pub- lished there, " Federation and Italian Unity," a pamphlet which naturally commences with the article which served as a pretext for the rioters in Brussels.
Among the works begun by Proudhon while in Belgium, which death did not allow him to finish, we ought to mention a " History of Poland,*' which will be published later ; and, "The Theory of Property," which appeared in 1865, before "The Gospels Annotated," and after the volume entitled "The Principle of Art and its Social Destiny."
The publications of Proudhon, in 1863, were: i. "Literary Majorats : An Examination of a Bill having for its object the Creation of a Perpetual Monopoly for the Benefit of Authors, Inventors, and Artists;" 2. "The Federative Principle and the Necessity of Re-establishing the Revolutionary party ; " 3. " The Sworn Democrats and the Refractories ; " 4. "Whether the Treaties of 181 5 have ceased to exist? Acts of the Future Congress."
The disease which was destined to kill him grew worse and worse ; but Proudhon labored constantly ! . . . A series of arti- cles, published in 1864 in " Le Messager de Paris," have been collected in a pamphlet under the title of " New Observations on Italian Unity." He hoped to publish during the same year his work on " The Political Capacity of the Working Classes," but was unable to write the last chapter. . . . He grew weaker
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HIS LIFE AND WORKS. xH
continually. His doctor prescribed rest. In the month of August he went to Franche-Comt6, where he spent a month. Having returned to Paris, he resumed his labor with diffi- culty. . . . From the month of December onwards, the heart disease made rapid progress ; the oppression became insup- portable, his legs were swollen, and he could not sleep. . . .
On the 19th of January, 1865, he died, towards two o'clock in the morning, in the arms of his wife, his sister-in-law, and the friend who writes these lines. . . .
The publication of his correspondence, to which his daughter Catherine is faithfully devoted, will tend, no doubt, to increase his reputation as a thinker, as a writer, and as an honest man.
J. A. LANGLOIS.
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PREFACE.
T
HE following letter served as a preface to the first edition of this memoir ; —
" To the Members of the AccuUmy of Besanqon. •
" Paris, June 30, 1840.
" Gentlemen, — In the course of your debate of the 9th of May, 1833, in regard to the triennial pension established by Madame Suard, you expressed the following wish : —
" ' The Academy requests the titulary to present it annually, during the first fortnight in July, with a succinct and logical statement of the various studies which he has pursued during the year which has just expired.'
" I now propose, gentlemen, to discharge this duty.
" When I solicited your votes, I boldly avowed my intention to bend my efforts to the discovery of some means of ameliorating the physical^ morale and intellectual condition of the more numerous and poorer classes. This idea, foreign as it may have seemed to the object of my candidacy, you received favorably ; and, by the precious distinction with which it has been your pleasure to honor me, you changed this formal offer into an inviolable and sacred obligation. Thenceforth I understood with how worthy and honorable a society I had to deal : my regard for its enlight- enment, my recognition of its benefits, my enthusiasm for its glory, were unbounded.
** Convinced at once that, in order to break loose from the beaten paths of opinions and systems, it was necessary to proceed in my study of man and society by scientific methods, and in a rigorous manner, I devoted one year to philology and grammar ; linguistics, or tne natural history of speech, being, of all the sciences, that which was best suited to the char- acter of my mind, seemed to bear the closest relation to the researches which I was about to commence. A treatise, written at this period upon
2 PREFACE.
one of the most interesting questions of comparative grammar,^ if it did not reveal the astonis!ung success, at least bore witness to the thorough- ness, of my labors.
"Since that time, metaphysics and moral science have been my only studies ; my perception of the fact that these sciences, though badly de- fined as to their object and not confined to their sphere, are, like the natural sciences, susceptible of demonstration and certainty, has already rewarded my efforts.
" But, gentlemen, of all the masters whom I have followed, to none do I owe so much as to you. Your co-operation, your programmes, your instructions, in agreement with my secret wishes and most cherished hopes, have at no time failed to enlighten me and to point out my road ; this memoir on property is the child of your thought.
" In 1838, the Academy of Besan^on proposed the following question : To what causes must we attribute the continually increasing number of suicides, and what are the proper means for arresting the effects of this moral contagion ?
" Thereby it asked, in less general terms, what was the cause of the social evil, and what was its remedy ? You admitted that yourselves, gen- tlemen, when your committee reported that the competitors had enumer- ated with exactness the immediate and particular causes of suicide, as well as the means of preventing each of them ; but that from this enu- meration, chronicled with more or less skill, no positive information had been gained, either as to the primary cause of the evil, or as to its remedy.
" In 1839, yo^r programme, always original and varied in its academical expression, became more exact. The investigations of 1838 had pointed out, as the causes or rather as the symptoms of the social malady, the neglect of the principles of religion and morality, the desire for wealth, the passion for enjoyment, and political disturbances. All these data were embodied by you in a single proposition : The utility of the celebration of Sunday as regards hygiene, morality, and social and political relatione.
" In a Christian tongue you asked, gentlemen, what was the true sys- tem of Society. A competitor ^ dared to maintain, and believed that he
1 " An Inquiry into Grammatical Classifications.** By P. J. Proudhon. A treatise which received honorable mention from the Academy of Inscriptions, May 4, 1839. Out of print.
^ "The Utility of the Celebration of Sunday," &c. By P. J. Proudhon. Besan9on, 1839, i2mo; 2d edition, Paris, 1841, i8mo.
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PREFACE. 3
had proved, that the institution of a day of rest at weekly intervals is inseparably bound up with a political system based on the equality of con- ditions ; that without equality this institution is an anomaly and an im- possibility ; that equality alone can revive this ancient and mysterious keeping of the seventh day. This argument did not meet with your appro- bation, since, without denying the relation pointed out by the competitor, you judged, and rightly, gentlemen, that the principle of equality of con- ditions not being demonstrated, the ideas of the author were nothing more than hypotheses.
" Finally, gentlemen, this fundamental principle of equality you pre- sented for competition in the following terms : The economical and moral consequences in France up to the present time^ and those which seem likely to appear in future^ of the law concerning the equal division of hereditary property between the children.
'* Instead of confining one to common places without breadth or signi- ficance, it seems to me that your question should be developed as fol- lows : —
*Mf the law has been able to render the right of heredity common to all the children of one father, can it not render it equal for all his grandchil- dren and great-grandchildren ?
" If the law no longer heeds the age of any member of the family, can It not, by the right of heredity, cease to heed it in the race, in the tribe, in the nation ?.
" Can equality, by the right of succession, be preserved between citi- zens, as well as between cousins and brothers ? In a word, can the prin- ciple of succession become a principle of equality ?
** To sum up all these ideas in one inclusive question : What is the principle of heredity ? What are the foundations of inequality ? What is property ?
" Such, gentlemen, is the object of the memoir that I offer you to day.
" If 1 have rightly grasped the object of your thought ; if I succeed in bringing to light a truth which is indisputable, but, from causes which I am bold enough to claim to have explained, has always been misunder- stood ; if, by an infallible method of investigation, I establish the dogma of equality of conditions ; if I determine the principle of civil law, the essence of justice, and the form of society ; if I annihilate property for- ever,— to you, gentlemen, will redound all the glory, for it is to your aid and your inspiration that I owe it.
** iVIy purpose in this work is the application of method to the prob- lems of philosophy; every other intention is foreign to and even abusive of it.
4 PREFACE.
" I have spoken lightly of jurisprudence : I had the right ; but I should be unjust did I not distinguish between this pretended science and the men who practise it. Devoted to studies both laborious and severe, en- titled in all respects to the esteem of their fellow-citizens by their knowl- edge and eloquence, our legists deserve but one reproach, that of an ex- cessive deference to arbitrary laws.
" I have been pitiless in my criticism of the economists : for them I confess that, in general, I have no liking. The arrogance and the empti- ness of their writings, their impertinent pride and their unwarranted blunders, have disgusted me. Whoever, knowing them, pardons them, may read them.
" I have severely blamed the learned Christian Church : it was my duty. This blame results from the facts which I call attention to : why has the Church decreed concerning things which it does not understand ? The Church has erred in dogma and in morals ; physics and mathemat- ics testify against her. It may be wrong for me to say it, but surely it is unfortunate for Christianity that it is true. To restore religion, gentle- men, it is necessary to condemn the Church.
" Perhaps you will regret, gentlemen, that, in giving all my attention to method and evidence, I have too much neglected form and style : in vain should I have tried to do better. Literary hope and faith I have none. The nineteenth century is, in my eyes, a genesic era, in which new prin- ciples are elaborated, but in which nothing that is written shall endure. That is the reason, in my opinion, why, among so many men of talent, France to-day counts not one great writer. In a society like ours, to seek for literary glory seems to me an anachronism. Of what use is it to in- voke an ancient sibyl when a muse is on the eve of birth ? Pitiable ac- tors in a tragedy nearing its end, that which it behooves us to do is to pre- cipitate the catastrophe. The most deserving among us is he who plays best this part. Well, I no longer aspire to this sad success !
" Why should I not confess it, gentlemen ? I have aspired to your suffrages and sought the title of your pensioner, hating all which exists and full of projects for its destruction ; I shall finish this investigation in a spirit of calm and philosophical resignation. I have derived more peace from the knowledge of the truth, than anger from the feeling of oppression ; and the most precious fruit that I could wish to gather from this memoir would be the inspiration of my readers with that tranquillity of soul which arises from the clear perception of evil and its cause, and which is much more powerful than passion and enthusiasm. My hatred of privilege and human authority was unbounded ; perhaps at times I
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PREFACE. 5
have been guilty, in my indignation, of confounding persons and things ; at present I can only despise and complain; to cease to hate I only needed to know.
"It is for you now, gentlemen, whose mission and character are the proclamation of the truth, it is for you to instruct the people, and to tell them for what they ought to hope and what they ought to fear. The peo- ple, incapable as yet of sound judgment as to what is best for them, applaud indiscriminately the most opposite ideas, provided that in them they get a taste of flattery : to them the laws of thought are like the confines of the possible ; to-day they can no more distinguish between a savant and a sophist, than formerly they could tell a physician from a sorcerer. * Inconsiderately accepting, gathering together, and accumulating every- thing that is new, regarding all reports as true and indubitable, at the breath or ring of novelty they assemble like bees at the sound of a basin.' *
'* May you, gentiemen, desire equality as I myself desire it ; may you, for the eternal happiness of our country, become its propagators and its heralds ; may I be the last of your pensioners ! Of all the wishes that I can frame, that, gendemen, is the most worthy of you and the most hon- orable for me.
" I am, with the profoundest respect and the most earnest gratitude,
" Your pensioner,
"P. J. Proudhon."
Two months after the receipt of this letter, the Academy, in its debate of August 24th, replied to the address of its pen- sioner by a note, the text of which I give below : —
" A member calls the attention of the Academy to a pamphlet, pub- lished last June by the titulary of the Suard pension, entitled, " What is property?" and dedicated by the author to the Academy. He is of the opinion that the society owes it to justice, to example, and to its own dig- nity, to publicly disavow all responsibility for the anti-social doctrines contained in this publication. In consequence he demands :
*' I. That the Academy disavow and condemn, in the most formal man- ner, the work of the Suard pensioner, as having been published without its assent, and as attributing to it opinions diametrically opposed to the prin- ciples of each of its members ;
* Charron, on " Wisdom," Chapter xviii.
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6 PREFACE.
" 2. That the pensioner be charged, in case he should publish a second edition of his book, to omit the dedication ;
" 3. That this judgment of the Academy be placed upon the records. " These three propositions, put to vote, are adopted."
After this ludicrous decree, which its authors thought to render powerful by giving it the form of a contradiction, I can only beg the reader not to measure the intelligence of my compatriots by that of our Academy.
While my patrons in the social and political sciences were \
fulminating anathemas against my brochure, a man, who was a stranger to Franche-Comt6, who did not know me, who might even have regarded himself as personally attacked by the too sharp judgment which I had passed upon the econo- mists, a publicist as learned as he was modest, loved by the people whose sorrows he felt, honored by the power which he sought to enlighten without flattering or disgracing it, M. Blanqui — member of the Institute, professor of political economy, defender of property — took up my defence before his associates and before the ministry, and saved me from the blows of a justice which is always blind, because it is always ignorant.
It seems to me that the reader will peruse with pleasure the letter which M. Blanqui did me the honor to write to me upon the pubUcation of my second memoir, a letter as hon- orable to its author as it is flattering to him to whom it is addressed.
"Parts, May i, 1841.
*' Monsieur, — I hasten to thank you for forwarding to me your sec- ond memoir upon property. I have read it with all the interest that an acquaintance with the first would naturally inspire. I am very glad that you have modified somewhat the rudeness of form which gave to a work of such gravity the manner and appearance of a pamphlet ; for you quite frightened me, sir, and your talent was needed to reassure me in regard to your intentions. One does not expend so much real knowledge with the
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PREFACE. 7
purpose of inflaming his country. This proposition, now coming into notice — property is robbery! — was of a nature to repel from your book even those serious minds who do not judge by appearances, had you persisted in maintaining it in its rude simplicity. But if you have softened the form, you are none the less faithful to the ground-work of your doctrines : and although you have done me the honor to give me a share in this perilous teaching, I cannot accept a partnership which, as far as talent goes, would surely be a credit to me, but which would compromise me in all other respects.
" I agree with you in one thing only ; namely, that all kinds of property get too frequently abused in this world. But I do not reason from the abuse to the abolition, — an heroic remedy too much like death, which cures all evils. I will go farther : I will confess that, of all abuses, the most hateful to me are those of property ; but once more, there is a remedy for this evil without violating it, all the more without destroying it. If the present laws allow abuse, we can reconstruct them. Our civil code is not the Koran ; it is not wrong to examine it. Change, then, the laws which govern the use of property, but be sparing of anathemas; for, logically, where is the honest man whose hands are entirely clean ? Do you think that one can .be a robber without knowing it, without wishing it, without suspecting it ? Do you not admit that society in its present state, like every man, has in its constitution all kinds of virtues and vices inherited from our ancestors 1 Is property, then, in your eyes a thing so simple and so abstract that you can re-knead and equalize it, if \ may so speak, in your metaphysical mill ? One who has said as many excellent and practical things as occur in these two beautiful and paradoxical im- provisations of yours cannot be a pure and unwavering utopist. You are too well acquainted with the economical and academical phraseology to play with the hard words of revolutions. I believe, then, that you have handled property as Rousseau, eighty years ago, handled letters, with a magnificent and poetical display of wit and knowledge. Such, at least, is my opinion.
"That is what I said to the Institute at the time when I presented my report upon your book. I knew that they wished to proceed against you in the courts ; you perhaps do not know by how narrow a chance I suc- ceeded in preventing them.^ What chagrin I should always have felt, if
1 M. Vivien, Minister of Justice, before commencing proceedings against the "Memoir upon Property," asked the opinion of M. Blanqui ; and it was on the strength of the observations of this honorable academician that he spared a book
4
8 PREFACE,
the king's counsel, that is to say, the intellectual executioner, had followed in my very tracks to attack your book and annoy your person ! I actually passed two terrible nights, and I succeeded in restiaining the secular arm only by showing that your book was an academical dissertation, and not the manifesto of an incendiary. Your style is too lofty ever to be of ser- vice to the madmen who, in discussing the gravest questions of our social order, use paving-stones as their weapons. But see to it, sir, that ere long they do not come, in spite of you, to seek for ammunition in this formida- ble arsenal, and that your vigorous metaphysics falls not into the hands of some sophist of the market-place, who might discuss the question in the presence of a starving audience : we should have pillage for conclusion and peroration.
** I feel as deeply as you, sir, the abuses which you point out ; but I have so great an affection for order, — not that common and strait-laced order with which the police are satisfied, but the majestic and i^nposing order of human societies, — that I sometimes find myself embarrassed in attacking certain abuses. I like to rebuild with one hand when I am compelled to destroy with the other. In pruning an old tree, we guard against destruction of the buds and fruit. You know that as well as any one. You are a wise and learned man ; you have a thoughtful mind. The terms by which you characterize the fanatics of our day are strong enough to reassure the most .suspicious imaginations as to your intentions ; but you conclude in favor of the abolition of property ! You wish to abolish the most powerful motor of the human mind ; you attack the paternal senti- ment in its sweetest illusions ; with one word you arrest the formation of capital, and we build henceforth upon the sand instead of on a rock. That I cannot agree to ; and for that reason I have criticised your book, so full of beautiful pages, so brilliant with knowledge and fervor !
** I wish sir. that my impaired health would permit me to examine with you, page by page, the memoir which you have done me the honor to ad-
which had already excited the indignation of the magistrates. M. Vivien is not the only official to whom I have been indebted, since my first publication, for assistance and protection ; but such generosity in the political arena is so rare that one may acknowledge' it graciously and freely. I have always thought, for my part, that bad institutions made bad magistrates ; just as the cowardice and hypocrisy of certain bodies results solely from the spirit which governs them. Why, for instance, in spite of the virtues and talents for which they are so noted, are the academies generally centres of intellectual repression, stupidity, and base intrigue } That question ought to be proposed by an academy : there would be no lack of competitors.
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PREFACE. 9
dress to me publicly and personally ; I think I could offer some important criticisms. For the moment, I must content myself with thanking you for the kind words in which you have seen fit to speak of me. We each pos- sess the merit of sincerity ; I desire also the merit of prudence. You know how deep-seated is the disease under which the working-people are suffer- ing ; I know how many noble hearts beat under those rude garments, and I feel an irresistible and fraternal sympathy with the thousands of brave people who rise early in the morning to labor, to pay their taxes, and to make our country strong. I try to serve and enlighten them, whereas some endeavor to mislead them. You have not written directly for them. You have issued two magnificent manifestoes, the second more guarded than the first ; issue a third more guarded than the second, and you will take high rank in science, whose first precept is calmness and impar- tiality.
"Farewell, sir! No man's esteem for another can exceed mine for
you.
" Blanqui."
I should certainly take some exceptions to this noble and eloquent letter ; but I confess that I am more inclined to real- ize the prediction with which it terminates than to augment needlessly the number of my antagonists. So much contro- versy fatigues and wearies me. The intelligence expended in the warfare of words is like that employed in battle : it is intelligence wasted. M. Blanqui acknowledges that property is abused in many harmful ways ; I call property the sum of these abuses exclusively. To each of us property seems a polygon whose angles need knocking off ; but, the operation performed, M. Blanqui maintains that the figure will still be a polygon (an hypothesis admitted in mathematics, although not proven), while I consider that this figure will be a circle. Honest people can at least understand one another.
For the rest, I allow that, in the present state of the ques- tion, the mind may legitimately hesitate before deciding in favor of the abolition of property. To gain the victory for one's cause, it does not suffice simply to overthrow a principle
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lO PREFACE.
generally recognized, which has the indisputable merit of sys- tematically recapitulating our political theories ; it is also necessary to establish the opposite principle, and to formulate the system which must proceed from it. Still further, it is necessary to show the method by which the new system will satisfy all the moral and political needs which induced the establishment of the first. On the following conditions, then, of subsequent evidence, depends the correctness of my pre- ceding arguments : —
Thte discovery of a system of absolute equality in which all existing institutions, save property, or the sum of the abuses of property, not only may find a place, but may themselves serve as instruments of equality : individual liberty, the division of power, the public ministry, the jury system, admin- istrative and judicial organization, the unity and completeness of instruction, marriage, the family, heredity in direct and collateral succession, the right of sale and exchange, the right to make a will, and even birthright, — a system which, better than property, guarantees the formation of capital and keeps up the courage of all ; which, from a superior point of view, explains, corrects, and completes the theories of association hitherto proposed, from Plato and Pythagoras to Babeuf, Saint Simon, and Fourier ; a system, finally, which, serving as a means of transition, is immediately applicable.
A work so vast requires, I am aware, the united efforts of twenty Montesquieus ; nevertheless, if it is not given to a single man to finish, a single one can commence, the enter- prise. The road that he shall traverse will suffice to show the end and assure the result.
1
WHAT IS PROPERTY?
OR,
AN INQUIRY INTO THE PRINCIPLE OF RIGHT AND
OF GOVERNMENT.
FIRST MEMOIR.
Adversus hostem aterna auctoritas esto. Against the enemy, revendication is eternal.
Law of the Twelve Tables.
CHAPTER I.
METHOD PURSUED IN THfS WORK. — THE IDEA OF A
REVOLUTION.
TF I were asked to answer the following question : What is slavery ? and I should answer in one word, // is mtrrder, my meaning would be understood at once. No extended argument would be required to show that the power to take from a man his thought, his will, his personality, is a power of life and death ; and that to enslave a man is to kill him. Why, then, to this other question : What is property? may I not likewise answer, // is robbery, without the certainty of being misunderstood ; the second proposition being no other than a transformation of the first }
I undertake to discuss the vital principle of our government and our institutions, property : I am in my right. I may be mistaken in the conclusion which shall result from my investi- gations : I am in my right. I think best to place the last thought of my book first : still am I in my right.
N.
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12 WHAT IS PROPERTY?
Such an author teaches that property is a civil right, born of occupation and sanctioned by law ; another maintains that it is a natural right, originating in labor, — and both of these doctrines, totally opposed as they may seem, are encouraged and applauded. I contend that neither labor, nor occupation, nor law, can create property ; that it is an effect without a cause : am I censurable ?
But murmurs arise ! • Property is robbery ! That is the war-cry of '93 ! That is the signal of revolutions !
Reader, calm yourself : I am no agent of discord, no fire- brand of sedition. I anticipate history by a few days ; I dis- close a truth whose development we may try in vain to arrest ; I write the preamble of our future constitution. This propo- sition which seems to you blasphemous — property is rob- bery— would, if our prejudices allowed us to consider it, be recognized as the lightning-rod to shield us from the coming thunderbolt ; but too many interests stand in the way ! . . . Alas. ! philosophy will not change the course of events : des- tiny will fulfill itself regardless of prophecy. Besides, must not justice be done and our education be finished }
Property is robbery! . . . What a revolution in human ideas ! Proprietor and robber have been at all times expres- sions as contradictory as the beings whom they designate are hostile ; all languages have perpetuated this opposition. On what authority, then, do you venture to attack universal consent, and give the lie to the human race ? Who are you, that you should question the judgment of the nations and the ages.?
Of what consequence to you, reader, is my obscure individ- uality } I live, like you, in a century in which reason submits only to fact and to evidence. My name, like yours, is truth-
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FIRST MEMOIR. 1 3
SEEKER.^ My mission is written in these words of the law : Speak without fiatred and without fear ; tell that which thou knowest ! The work of our race is to build the temple of science, and this science includes man and Nature. Now, truth reveals itself to all ; to-day to Newton anr' ^scal, to- morrow to the herdsman in the valley and the ]o /aeyman in the shop. Each one contributes his stone to the c/ifice ; and, his task accomplished, disappears. Eternity precedes us, eternity follows us : between two infinites, of what account is one poor mortal that the century should inquire about him ?
Disregard then, reader, my title and my character, and attend only to my arguments. It is in accordance with universal consent that I undertake to correct universal error ; from the opinion of the human race I appeal to its faith. Have the courage to follow me ; and, if your will is untram- melled, if your conscience is free, if your mind can unite two propositions and deduce a third therefrom, my ideas will inevitably become yours. In beginning by giving you my last word, it was my purpose to warn you, not to defy you ; for I am certain that, if you read me, you will be compelled to assent. The things of which I am to speak are so simple and clear that you will be astonished at not having perceived them before, and you will say : " I have neglected to think." Others offer you the spectacle of genius wresting Nature's secrets from her, and unfolding before you her sublime mes- sages ; you will find here only a series of experiments upon justice and right, a sort of verification of the weights and measures of your conscience. The operations shall be con- ducted under your very eyes ; and you shall weigh the result.
1 In Greek, tf-iccvTucos, examiner ; a philosopher whose business is to seek the truth.
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14 WHAT IS PROPERTY?
Nevertheless, I build no system. I ask an end to privilege, the abolition of slavery, equality of rights, and the reign of law. Justice, nothing else ; that is the alpha and omega of my argu- ment : to others I leave the business of governing the world.
One d^v ^.. asked myself : Why is there so much sorrow and misery in Jt :iety t Must man always be wretched } And not satisfied wi*i the explanations given by the reformers, — these attributing the general distress to governmental cowardice and incapacity, those to conspirators and Scutes, still others to ignorance and general corruption, — and weary of the interminable quarrels of the tribune and the press, I sought to fathom the matter myself. I have consulted the masters of science ; I have read a hundred volumes of philosophy, law, political economy, and history: would to God that I had lived in a century in which so much read- ing had been useless ! I have made every effort to obtain exact information, comparing doctrines, replying to objections, continually constructing equations and reductions from argu- ments, and weighing thousands of syllogisms in the scales of the most rigorous logic. In this laborious work, I have col- lected many interesting facts which I shall share with my friends and the public as soon as I have leisuce. But I must say that I recognized at once that we had never understood the meaning . of these words, so common and yet so sacred : Justice, equity, liberty ; that concerning each of these prin- ciples our ideas have been utterly obscure ; and, in fact, that this ignorance was the sole cause, both of the poverty that devours us, and of all the calamities that have ever afflicted the human race.
My mind was frightened by this strange result : I doubted my reason. What ! said I, that which eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor insight penetrated, you have discovered!
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FIRST MEMOIR. 1 5
Wretch, mistake not the visions of your diseased brain for the truths of science ! Do you not know (great philosophers have said so) that in points of practical morality universal error is a contradiction ? ft
I resolved then to test my arguments ; and in er ^ng upon this new labor I sought an answer to the foUowi^ ^ questions : Is it possible that humanity can have been so -}bng and so universally mistaken in the application of moral principles ? How and why could it be mistaken? How can its error, being universal, be capable of correction ?
These questions, on the solution of which depended the certainty of my conclusions, offered no lengthy resistance to analysis. It will be seen, in chapter V. of this work, that in morals, as in all other branches of knowledge, the gravest errors are the dogmas of science ; that, even in works of justice, to be mistaken is a privilege which ennobles man ; and that whatever philosophical merit may attach to me is infinitely small. To name a thing is easy : the difficulty is to discern it before its appearance. In giving expression to the last stage of an idea, — an idea which permeates all minds, which to-morrow will be proclaimed. by another if I fail to announce it to-day, — I can claim no merit save that of priority of utterance. Do we eulogize the man who first perceives the dawn }
Yes : all men believe and repeat that equality of conditions is identical with equality of rights ; that property and robbery are synonymous terms ; that every social advantage accorded, or rather usurped, in the name of superior talent or service, is iniquity and extortion. All men in their hearts, I say, bear witness to these truths ; they need only to be made to under- stand it.
Before entering directly upon the question before me, I must
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1 6 WHAT IS PROPERTY?
say a word of the road that I shall traverse. When Pascal approached a geometrical problem, he invented a method of solution ; to solve a problem in philosophy a method is equally necessary. • Well, by how much do the problems of which philosopi -treats surpass in the gravity of their results those discussed" ^ .geometry ! How much more imperatively, then, do they d^^rhand for their solution a profound and rigorous analysis !
It is a fact placed for ever beyond doubt, say the modern psychologists, that every perception received by the mind is determined by certain general laws which govern the mind ; is moulded, so to speak, in certain types pre-existing in our understanding, and which constitutes its original condition. Hence, say they, if the mind has no innate ideas ^ it has at least innate /^rwi". Thus, for example, every phenomenon is of necessity conceived by us as happening in time a.nd space^ — that compels us to infer a cause of its occurrence ; every thing which exists implies the ideas of substance, mode, relation, number, &c. ; in a word, we form no idea which is not related to some one of the general principles T)f reason, independent of which nothing exists.
These axioms of the understanding, add the psychologists, these fundamental types, by which all our judgments and ideas are inevitably shaped, and which our sensations serve only to illuminate, are known in the schools as categories. Their pri- mordial existence in the mind is to-day demonstrated ; they need only to be systematized and catalogued. Aristotle recognized ten ; Kant increased the number to fifteen ; M. Cousin has reduced it to three, to two,, to one ; and the indisputable glory of this professor will be due to the fact that, if he has not dis- covered the true theory of categories, he has, at least, seen more clearly than any one else the vast importance of this
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question, — the greatest and perhaps the only one with which metaphysics has to deal.
I confess that I disbelieve in the innateness, not only of ideas, but also of forms or laws of our understanc'ing ; and I
hold the metaphysics of Reid and Kant to be ^ 1 farther
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removed from the truth than that of Aristotle. 1 i)wever, as I do not wish to enter here into a discussion of ifie mind, a task which would demand much labor and be of no interest to the public, I shall admit the hypothesis that our most gen- eral and most necessary ideas — such as time, space, substance, and cause — exist originally in the mind ; or, at least, are derived immediately from its constitution.
But it is a psychological fact none the less true, and one to which the philosophers have paid too little attention, that habit, like a second nature, has the power of fixing in the mind new categorical forms derived from the appearances which impress us, and by them usually stripped of objective reality, but whose influence over our judgments is no less predetermining than that of the original categories. Hence we reason by the eternal and absolute laws of our mind, and at the same time by the sec- ondary rules, ordinarily faulty, which are suggested to us by imperfect observation. This is the most fecund source of false prejudices, and the permanent and often invincible cause of a multitude of errors. The bias resulting from these prejudices is so strong that often, even when we are fighting against a principle which our mind thinks false, which is repugnant to our reason, and which our conscience disapproves, we defend it without knowing it, we reason in accordance with it, and we obey it while attacking it. Enclosed within a circle, our mind revolves about itself, until a new observation, creating within us new ideas, brings to view an external principle which delivers us from the phantom by which our imagination is possessed.
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1 8 WHAT IS PROPERTY?
Thus, we know to-day that, by the laws of a universal mag- netism whose cause is still unknown, two bodies (no obstacle intervening) tend to unite by an accelerated impelling force which weicall gravitation. It is gravitation which causes unsuppo^ \ bodies to fall to the ground, which gives them weight, a^j v/hich fastens us to the earth on which we live. Ignorancenf this cause was the sole obstacle which prevented the ancients from believing in the antipodes. " Can you not see," said St. Augustine after Lactantius, " that, if there were men under our feet, their heads would point downward, and that they would fall into the sky.^" The bishop of Hippo, who thought the earth flat because it appeared so to the eye, supposed in consequence that, if we should connect by straight lines the zenith with the nadir in different places, these lines would be parallel with each other ; and in the direction of these lines he traced every movement from above to below. Thence he naturally concluded that the stars were rolling torches set in the vault of the sky ; that, if left to themselves, they would fall to the earth in a shower of fire ; that the earth was one vast plain, forming the lower portion of the world, &c. If he had been asked by what the world itself was sus- tained, he would have answered that he did not know, but that to God nothing is impossible. Such were the ideas of St. Augustine in regard to space and movement, ideas fixed within him by a prejudice derived from an appearance, and which had become with him a general and categorical rule of judgment. Of the reason why bodies fall his mind knew noth- ing ; he could only say that a body falls because it falls.
With us the idea of a fall is more complex : to the general ideas of space and movement which it implies, we add that of at- traction or direction towards a centre, which gives us the higher idea of cause. But if physics has fully corrected our judgment
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in this respect, we still make use of the prejudice of St. Augus- tine ; and when we say that a thing \izs fallen, we do not mean simply and in general that there has been an effect of gravita- tion, but specially and in particular that it is towards the earth, 2Xi.Afrom above to below, that this movement has ta^ .^ place. Our mind is enlightened in vain ; the imaginatior^fprevails, and our language remains forever incorrigible. Tt) descend front heaven is as incorrect an expression as to mount to heaven ; and yet this expression will live as long as men use language.
All these phrases — from above to below ; to descend from heaven ; to fall from the clouds ^ &c. — are henceforth harmless, because we know how to rectify them in practice ; but let us deign to consider for a moment how much they have retarded the progress of science. If, indeed, it be a matter of little importance to statistics, mechanics, hydrodynamics, and ballistics, that the true cause of the fall of bodies should be known, and that our ideas of the general movements in space should be exact, it is quite otherwise when we undertake to explain the system of the universe, the cause of tides, the shape of the earth, and its position in the heavens : to understand these things we must leave the circle of appearances. In all ages there have been ingenious mechanicians, excellent architects, skilful artillery- men : any error, into which it was possible for them to fall in regard to the rotundity of the earth and gravitation, in no wise retarded the development of their art ; the solidity of their buildings and accuracy of their aim was not affected by it. But sooner or later they were forced to grapple with phe- nomena, which the supposed parallelism of all perpendiculars erected from the earth's surface rendered inexplicable : then also commenced a struggle between the prejudices, which for ceiUuries had sufficed in daily practice, and the unpre-
20 WHAT IS PROPERTY?
cedented opinions which the testimony of the eyes seemed to contradict.
Thus, on the one hand, the falsest judgments, whether based on isolat^ facts or only on appearances, always embrace some truths v{ *«se sphere, whether large or small, affords room for a certair? .number of inferences, beyond which we fall into absurdity: The ideas of St. Augustine, for example, contained the following truths : that bodies fall towards the earth, that they fall in a' straight line, that either the sun or the earth moves, that either the sky or the earth turns, &c. These general facts always have been true ; our science has added nothing to them. But, on the other hand, it being necessary to account for every thing, we are obliged to seek for princi- ples more and more comprehensive : that is why we have had to abandon successively, first the opinion that the world was flat, then the theory which regards it as the stationary centre of the universe, &c.
If we pass now from physical nature to the moral world, we still find ourselves subject to the same deceptions of- appear- ance, to the same influences of spontaneity and habit. But the distinguishing feature of this second division of our knowledge is, on the one hand, the good or the evil which we derive from our opinions ; and, on the other, the obstinacy with which we defend the prejudice which is tormenting and killing us.
Whatever theory we embrace in regard to the shape of the earth and the cause of its weight, the physics of the globe does not suffer; and, as for us, our social economy can derive therefrom neither profit nor damage. But it is in us and through us that the laws of our moral nature work; now, these laws cannot be executed without our deliberate aid, and, con- sequently, unless we know them. If, then, our science of
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moral laws is false, it is evident that, while desiring our own good, we are accomplishing our own evil ; if it is only incom- plete, it may suffice for a time for our social progress, but in the long run it will lead us into a wrong road, and will finally precipitate us into an abyss of calamities.
Then it is that we need to exercise our highest judgments ; and, be it said to our glory, they are never found wanting : but then also commences a furious struggle between old prej- udices and new ideas. Days of conflagration and anguish ! We are told of the time when, with the same beliefs, with the same institutions, all the world seemed happy : why complain of these beliefs ; why banish these institutions ? We are slow to admit that that happy age served the precise purpose of developing the principle of evil which lay dormant in society ; we accuse men and gods, the powers of earth and the forces of Nature. Instead of seeking the cause of the evil in his mind and heart, man blames his masters, his rivals, his neigh- bors, and himself ; nations arm themselves, and slay and ex- terminate each other, until equilibrium is restored by the vast depopulation, and peace again arises from the ashes of the combatants. So loath is humanity to touch the customs of its ancestors, and to change the laws framed by the founders of communities, and confirmed by the faithful observance of the ages.
Nihil motum ex antiqtio probabile est: Distrust all inno- vations, wrote Titus Livius. Undoubtedly it would be better were man not compelled to change : but what ! because he is born ignorant, because he extsts only on condition of gradual self-instruction, must he abjure the light, abdicate his reason, and abandon himself to fortune } Perfect health is better than convalescence : should the sick man, therefore, refuse to be cured } Reform, reform ! cried, ages since, John the Bap-
22 WHAT IS PROPERTY?
tist and Jesus Christ. Reform, reform ! cried our fathers, fifty years ago ; and for a long time to come we shall shout, Reform, reform !
Seeing the misery of my age, I said to myself : Among the principles that support society, there is one which it does not understand, which its ignorance has vitiated, and which causes all the evil that exists. This principle is the most ancient of all ; for it is a characteristic of revolutions to tear down the most modern principles, and to respect those of long-stand- ing. Now the evil by which we suffer is anterior to all revo- lutions. This principle, impaired by our ignorance, is honored and cherished ; for if it were not cherished it would harm no- body, it would be without influence.
But this principle, right in its purpose, but misunder- stood : this principle, as old as humanity, what is it ? Can it be religion ^
All men believe in God: this dogma belongs at once to their conscience and their mind. To humanity God is a fact as primitive, an idea as inevitable, a principle as necessary as are the categorical ideas of cause, substance, time, and space to our understanding. God is proven to us by the conscience prior to any inference of the mind ; just as the sun is proven to us by the testimony of the senses prior to all the argu- ments of physics. We discover phenomena and laws by observation and experience ; only this deeper sense reveals to us existence. Humanity believes that God is ; but, in believing in God, what does it believe } In a word, what is God.^
The nature of this notion of Divinity, — this primitive, uni- versal notion, born in the race, — the human mind has not yet fathomed. At each step that we take in our investigation of Nature and of causes, the idea of God is extended and
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exalted ; the farther science advances, the more God seems to grow and broaden. Anthropomorphism and idolatry con- stituted of necessity the faith of the mind in its youth, the theology of infancy and poesy. A harmless error, if they had not endeavored to make it a rule of conduct, and if they had been wise enough to respect the liberty of thought. But having made God in his own image, man wished to appropriate him still farther ; not satisfied with disfiguring the Almighty, he treated him as his patrimony, his goods, his possessions. God, pictured in monstrous forms, became throughout the world the property of man and of the State. Such was the origin of the corruption of morals by religion, and the source of pious feuds and holy wars. Thank Heaven ! we have learned to allow every one his own beliefs ; we seek for moral laws outside the pale of religion. Instead of legis- lating as to the nature and attributes of God, the dogmas of theology, and the destiny of our souls, we wisely wait for sci- ence to tell us what to reject and what to accept. God, soul, religion, — eternal objects of our unwearied thought and our most fatal aberrations, terrible problems whose solution, for ever attempted, for ever remains unaccomplished, — concern- ing all these questions we may still be mistaken, but at least our error is harmless. With liberty in religion, and the separa- tion of the spiritual from the temporal power, the influence of religious ideas upon the progress of society is purely nega- tive ; no law, no political or civil institution being founded on religion. Neglect of duties imposed by religion may increase the general corruption, but it is not the primary cause ; it is only an auxiliary or result. It is universally ad- mitted, and especially in the matter which now engages our attention, that the cause of the inequality of conditions among men — of pauperism, of universal misery, and of gov-
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24 WHAT IS PROPERTY?
ernmental embarrassments — can no longer be traced to relig- ion : we must go farther back, and dig still deeper.
But what is there in man older and deeper than the relig- ious sentiment ?
There is man himself ; that is, volition and conscience, free^ will and law, eternally antagonistic. Man is at war with him- self: why?
" Man," say the theologians, " transgressed in the begin- ning; our race is guilty of an ancient offence. For this transgression humanity has fallen ; error and ignorance have become its sustenance. Read history, you will find universal proof of this necessity for evil in the permanent misery of nations. Man suffers and always will suffer ; his disease is hereditary and constitutional. Use palliatives, employ emol- lients; there is no remedy."
Nor is this argument peculiar to 'the theologians ; we find it expressed in equivalent language in the philosophical writ- ings of the materialists, believers in infinite perfectibility. Destutt de Tracy teaches formally that poverty, crime, and war are the inevitable conditions of our social state ; neces- sary evils, against which it would be folly to revolt. So, call it necessity of ei'il or original depravity, it is at bottom the same philosophy.
"The first man transgressed." If the votaries of the Bible interpreted it faithfully, they would say : man originally transgressed^ that is, made a mistake ; for to transgress, to faily to make a mistake, all mean the same thing.
" The consequences of Adam's transgression are inherited by the race ; the first is ignorance." Truly, the race, like the individual, is born ignorant ; but, in regard to a multitude of questions, even in the moral and political spheres, this igno- rance of the race has been dispelled : who says that it will
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not depart altogether? Mankind makes continual progress toward truth, and light ever triumphs over darkness. Our disease is not, then, absolutely incurable, and the theory of the theologians is worse than inadequate ; it is ridiculous, since it is reducible to this tautology : " Man errs, because he errs." While the true statement is this : " Man errs, because he learns." Now, if man arrives at a knowledge of all that he needs to know, it is reasonable to believe that, ceasing to err, he will cease to suffer.
But if we question the doctors as to this law, said to be engraved upon the heart of man, we shall immediately see that they dispute about a matter of which they know noth- ing; that, concerning the most important questions, there are almost as many opinions as authors; that we find no two agreeing as to the best form of government, the principle of authority, and the nature of right ; that all sail hap-hazard upon a shoreless and bottomless sea, abandoned to the guid- ance of their private opinions which they modestly take to be right reason. And, in view of this medley of contradictory opinions, we say: "The object of our investigations is the law, the determination of the social principle. Now, the poli- ticians, that is, the social scientists, do not understand each other; then the error lies in themselves; and, as every error has a reality for its object, we must look in their books to find the truth which they have unconsciously deposited there."
Now, of what do the lawyers and the publicists treat ? Of justice, equity, liberty, natural law, civil laws, &c. But what is justice t What is its principle, its character, its formula }
To this question our doctors evidently have no reply; for
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otherwise their science, starting with a principle clear and well-defined, would quit the region of probabilities, and all disputes would end.
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What is justice ? The theologians answer : " All justice comes from God." That is true ; but we know no more than before.
The philosophers ought to be better informed : they have argued so much about justice and injustice! Unhappily, an examination proves that their knowledge amounts to nothing, and that with them — as with the savages whose every prayer to the sun is simply Of O ! — it is a cry of admiration, love, and enthusiasm ; but who does not know that the sun attaches little meaning to the interjection O ! That is exactly our posi- tion toward the philosophers in regard to justice. Justice, they say, is a daughter of Heaven ; a light which illumines every man that comes into the world; the most beautiful prerogative of our nature ; that which distinguishes us from the beasts ^ and likens us to God, — and a thousand other similar things. What, I ask, does this pious litany amount to .? To the prayer of the savages: Of
All the most reasonable teachings of human wisdom con- cerning justice are summed up in that famous adage: Do unto others that which you would that others should do unto you; Do not unto others that which you would not that others should do unto you. But this rule of moral practice is unscientific: what have I a right to wish that others should do or not do to me ? It is of no use to tell me that my duty is equal to my right, unless I am told at the same time what my right is.
Let us try to arrive at something more precise and pos- itive.
Justice is the central star which governs societies, the pole around which the political world revolves, the principle and the regulator of all transactions. Nothing takes place be- tween men save in the name of right; nothing without the invocation of justice. Justice is not the work of the law : on
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Tje contrary, the law is only a declaration and application of \tice in all circumstances where men are liable to come in \ / jntact. If, then, the idea that we form of justice and right were ill-defined, if it were imperfect or even false, it is clear that all our legislative applications would be wrong, our institutions vicious, our politics erroneous : consequently there would be disorder and social chaos.
This hypothesis of the perversion of justice in our minds, and, as a necessary result, in our acts, becomes a demonstrated fact when it is shown that the opinions of men have not borne a constant relation to the notion of justice and its applica- tions ; that at different periods they have undergone modifi- cations : in a word, that there has been progress in ideas. Now, that is what history proves by the most overwhelming testimony.
Eighteen hundred years ago, the world, under the rule of the Caesars, exhausted itself in slavery, superstition, and voluptu- ousness. The people — intoxicated and, as it were, stupefied by their long-continued orgies — had lost the very notion of right and duty : war and dissipation by turns swept them away ; usury and the labor of machines (that is of slaves), by depriv- ing them of the means of subsistence, hindered them from continuing the species. Barbarism sprang up again, in a hideous form, from this mass of corruption, and spread like a devouring leprosy over the depopulated provinces. The wise foresaw the downfall of the empire, but could devise no remedy. What could they think indeed } To save this old society it would have been necessary to change the objects of public esteem and veneration, and to abolish the rights affirmed by a justice purely secular ; they said : " Rome has conquered through her politics and her gods ; any change in theology and public opinion would be folly and sacrilege.
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Rome, merciful toward conquered nations, though binding them in chains, spared their lives ; slaves are the most fer- tile source of her wealth ; freedom of the nations would be the negation of her rights and the ruin of her finances. Rome, in fact, enveloped in the pleasures and gorged with the spoils of the universe, is kept alive by victory and gov- ernment ; her luxury and her pleasures are the price of her conquests : she can neither abdicate nor dispossess herself." Thus Rome had the facts and the law on her side. Her pre- tensions were justified by universal custom and the law of nations. Her institutions were based upon idolatry in relig- ion, slavery in the State, and epicurism in private life; to touch those was to shake society to its foundations, and, to use our modern expression, to open the abyss of revolutions. So the idea occurred to no one ; and yet humanity was dying in blood and luxury.
All at once a man appeared, calling himself The Word of God, It is not known to this day who he was, whence he came, nor what suggested to him his ideas. He went about proclaiming everywhere that the end of the existing society was at hand, that the world was about to experience a new birth ; that the priests were vipers, the lawyers ignoramuses, and the philosophers hypocrites and liars ; that master and slave were equals, that usury and every thing akin to it was robbery, that proprietors and idlers would one day burn, while the poor and pure in heart would find a haven of peace.
This man — TheWord of God — was denounced and arrested as a public enemy by the priests and the lawyers, who well
understood how to induce the people to demand his death.
But this judicial murder, though it put the finishing stroke to
their crimes, did not destroy the doctrinal seeds which T/ie
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Word of God had sown. After his death, his original disci- ples travelled about in all directions, preaching what they called the good news^ creating in their turn millions of mis- sionaries; and, when their task seemed to be accomplished, dying by the sword of Roman justice. This persistent agita- tion, the war of the executioners and martyrs, lasted nearly three centuries, ending in the conversion of the world. Idol- atry was destroyed, slavery abolished, dissolution made room for a more austere morality, and the contempt for wealth was sometimes pushed almost to privation. Society was saved by the negation of its own principles, by a revolution in its religion, and by violation of its most sacred rights. In this revolution, the idea of justice spread to an extent that had not before been dreamed of, never to return to its original limits. Heretofore justice had existed only for the masters ;^ it then commenced to exist for the slaves.
Nevertheless, the new religion at that time had borne by no means all its fruits. • There was a perceptible improvement of the public morals, and a partial release from oppression ; but, other than that, the seeds sown by the Son of Man, having fallen into idolatrous hearts, had produced nothing save innu- merable discords and a quasi-poetical mythology. Instead of developing into their practical consequences the principles of morality and government taught by The Word of God, his followers busied themselves in speculations as to his birth, his origin, his person, and his actipns ; they discussed his parables, and from the conflict of the most extravagant
^ Religion, laws, marriage, were the privileges of freemen, and, in the begin- ning, of nobles only. Dii majorum gentium — gods of the patrician families ; jui gentium — right of nations ; that is, of families or nobles. The slave and the plebeian had no families ; their children were treated as the offspring of ani« mals. Beasts they were born, beasts they must live.
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opinions upon unanswerable questions and texts which no one understood, was born theology, — which may be defined as the science of the infinitely absurd.
The truth of Christianity did not survive the age of the apostles ; the Gospel, commented upon and symbolized by the Greeks and Latins, loaded with pagan fables, became literally a mass of contradictions ; and to this day the reign of the infallible Church has been a long era of darkness. It is said that the gates of hell will not always prevail, that The Word of God will return, and that one day men will know truth and justice ; but that will be the death of Greek and Roman Catholicism, just as in the light of science disap- peared the caprices of opinion.
The monsters which the successors of the apostles were bent on destroying, frightened for a moment, reappeared gradually, thanks to the crazy fanaticism, and sometimes the deliberate ^connivance, of priests and theologians. The his- tory of the enfranchisement of the French communes offers constantly the spectacle of the ideas of justice and liberty spreading among the people, in spite of the combined efforts of kings, nobles, and clergy. In the year 1789 of the Chris- tian era, the French nation, divided by caste, poor and op- pressed, struggled in the triple net of royal absolutism, the tyranny of nobles and parliaments, and priestly intolerance. There was the right of the king and the right of the priest, the right of the patrician and the right of the plebeian ; there were the privileges of birth, province, communes, corpora- tions, and trades ; and, at the bottom of all, violence, immo- rality, and misery. For some time they talked of reformation ; those who apparently desired it most favoring it only for their own profit, and the people who were to be the gainers expect- ' ing little and saying nothing. For a long time these poor
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people, either from distrust, incredulity, or despair, hesitated to ask for their rights : it is said that the habit of serving had taken the courage away from those old communes, which in the middle ages were so bold.
Finally a book appeared, summing up the whole matter in these two propositions: What is the third estate f — Noth- ing, What ought it to be? — Every thing. Some one added by way of comment : What is the kingl — The servant of the people.
This was a sudden revelation : the veil was torn aside, a
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thick bandage fell from all eyes. The people commenced to reason thus : —
If the king is our servant, he ought to report to us ;
If he ought to report to us, he is subject to control ;
If he can be controlled, he is responsible ;
If he is responsible, he is punishable ;
If he is punishable, he ought to be punished according to his merits ;
If he ought to be punished according to his merits, he can be punished with death.
Five years after the publication of the brochure of SieySs, the third estate was every thing ; the king, the nobility, the clergy, were no more. In 1793, the nation, without stopping at the constitutional fiction of the inviolability of the sover- eign, conducted Louis XVI. to the scaffold ; in 1830, it ac- companied Charles X. to Cherbourg. In each case, it may have erred, in fact, in its judgment of the offence ; but, in right, the logic which led to its action was irreproachable. The people, in punishing their sovereign, did precisely that which the government of July was so severely censured for failing to do when it refused to execute Louis Bonaparte after the affair of Strasburg : they struck the true culprit. It was an applica-
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tion of the common law, a solemn decree of justice enforcing the penal laws.^
The spirit which gave rise to the movement of '89 was a spirit of negation; that, of itself, proves that the order of things which was substituted for the old system was not methodical or well-considered ; that, born of anger and hatred, it could not have the effect of a science based on observation and study ; that its foundations, in a word, were not derived from a profound knowledge of the laws of Nature and society. Thus the people found that the republic, among the so-called new institutions, was acting on the very princi- pies against which they had fought, and was swayed by all the prejudices which they had intended to destroy. We con- gratulate ourselves, with inconsiderate enthusiasm, on the glorious French Revolution, the regeneration of 1789, the great changes that have been effected, and ,the reversion of institutions : a delusion, a delusion !
When our ideas on any subject, material, intellectual, or social, undergo a thorough change in consequence of new observations, I call that movement of the mind revolution. If the ideas are simply extended or modified, there is only progress. Thus the system of Ptolemy was a step in astro- nomical progress, that of Copernicus was a revolution. So, in 1789, there was struggle and progress ; revolution there was none. An examination of the reforms which were attempted proves this.
The nation, so long a victim of monarchical selfishness,
^ If the chief of the executive power is responsible, so must the deputies be also. It is astonishing that this idea has never occurred to any one ; it might be made the subject of an interesting essay. But I declare that I would not, for all the world, maintain it ; the people are yet much too logical for me to furnish them with arguments.
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thojight to deliver itself for ever by declaring that it alone was sovereign. But what was monarchy ? The sovereignty of one man. What is democracy ? The sovereignty of the nation, or, rather, of the national majority. But it is, in both cases, the sovereignty of man instead of the sovereignty of the law, the sovereignty of the will instead of the sovereignty of the reason ; in one word, the passions instead of justice. Un- doubtedly, when a nation passes from the monarchical to the democratic state, there is progress, because in multiplying the sovereigns we increase the opportunities of the reason to sub- stitute itself for the will ; but in reality there is no revolu- tion in the government, since the principle remains the same. Now, we have the proof to-day that, with the most perfect democracy, we cannot be free.^
Nor is that all. The nation-king cannot exercise its sover- eignty itself ; it is obliged to delegate it to agents : this is constantly reiterated by those who seek to win its favor. Be these agents five, ten, one hundred, or a thousand, of what consequence is the number ; and what matters the name ? It is always the government of man, the rule of will and caprice. I ask what this pretended revolution has revolu- tionized ?
We know, too, how this sovereignty was exercised ; first by the Convention, then by the Directory, afterwards confiscated by the Consul. As for the Emperor, the strong man so much adored and mourned by the nation, he never wanted to be dependent on it ; but, as if intending to set its sovereignty at defiance, he dared to demand its suffrage : that is, its abdica-
> Sec Dc Tocquevillc, "Democracy in the United States;" and Michel Chevalier, " Letters on North America." Plutarch tells us, " Life of Pericles," that in Athens honest people were obliged to conceal themselves while study- ing, fearing they would be regarded as aspirants for office.
34 WHAT IS PROPERTY?
tion, the abdication of this inalienable sovereignty ; and. he obtained it.
But what is sovereignty ? It is, they say, Xht power to make
• laws} Another absurdity, a relic of despotism. The nation had long seen kings issuing their commands in this form : for such is our pleasure; it wished to taste in its turn the pleasure
• of making laws. For fifty years it has brought them forth by myriads ; always, be it understood, through the agency of representatives. The play is far from ended.
The definition of sovereignty was derived from the defini- tion of the law. The law, they said, is the expression of the will of the sovereign : then, under a monarchy, the law is the expression of the will of the king ; in a republic, the law is the expression of the will of the people. Aside from the dif- ference in the number of wills, the two systems are exactly identical : both share the same error, namely, that the law is the expression of a will ; it ought to be the expression of a fact. Moreover they followed good leaders : they took the citizen of Geneva for their prophet, and the contrat social for their Koran.
Bias and prejudice are apparent in all the phrases of the new legislators. The nation had suffered from a multitude of exclusions and privileges ; its representatives issued the fol- lowing declaration : All men are equal by nature and before the law ; an ambiguous and redundant declaration. Men are equal by nature: does that mean that they are equal in size, beauty, talents, and virtue } No ; they meant, then, political and civil equality. Then it would have been sufficient to have said : All men are equal before the law,
A " Sovereignty," according to Toullier, " is human omnipotence." A ma- terialistic definition : if sovereignty is any thing, it is a rights not a force or a faculty. And what is human omnipotence ?
\
FIRST MEMOIR. 35
But what is equality before the law ? Neither the constitu- tion of 1790, nor that of '93, nor the granted charter, nor the accepted charter, have defined it accurately. All imply an inequality in fortune and station incompatible with even a shadow of equality in rights. In this respect it may be said that all our constitutions have been faithful expressions of the popular will : I am going to prove it.
Formerly the people were excluded from civil and military offices ; it was considered a wonder when the following high- sounding article was inserted in the Declaration of Rights : " All citizens are equally eligible to office ; free nations know no qualifications in their* choice of officers save virtues and talents."
They certainly ought to have admired so beautiful an idea : they admired a piece of nonsense. Why ! the sovereign peo- ple, legislators, and reformers, see in public offices, to speak plainly, only opportunities for pecuniary advancement. And, because it regards them as a source of profit, it decrees the eligibility of citizens. For of what use would this precaution
s
be, if there were nothing to gain by it '( No one would think of ordaining that none but astronomers and geographers should be pilots, nor of prohibiting stutterers from acting at the thea- tre and the opera. The nation was still aping the kings : like them it wished to award the lucrative positions to its friends and flatterers. Unfortunately, and this last feature completes the resemblance, the nation did not control the list of livings ; that was in the hands of its agents and representatives. They, on the other hand, took care not to thwart the will of their gracious sovereign.
This edifying article of the Declaration of Rights, retained in the charters of 18 14 and 1830, implies several kinds of civil inequality ; that is, of inequality before the law : inequality of
/
36 WHAT IS PROPERTY?
Station, since the public functions are sought only for the con- sideration and emoluments which they bring ; inequality of wealth, since, if it had been desired to equalize fortunes, pub- lic service would have been regarded as a duty, not as a re- ward ; inequality of privilege, the law not stating what it means by talents and virtues. Under the empire, virtue and talent consisted simply in military bravery and devotion to the em- peror ; that was shown when Napoleon created his nobility, and attempted to connect it with the ancients. To-day, the man who pays taxes to the amount of two hundred francs is virtuous ; the talented man is the honest pickpocket : such truths as these are accounted trivial.
The people finally legalized property. God forgive them, for they knew not what they did ! For fifty years they have suffered for their miserable folly. But how came the people, whose voice, they tell us, is the voice of God, and whose con- science is infallible, — how came the people to err } How hap- pens it that, when seeking liberty and equality, they fell back into privilege and slavery } Always through copying the ancient regime.
Formerly, the nobility and the clergy contributed towards the expenses of the State only by voluntary aid and gratuitous gift ; their property could not be seized even for debt, — while the plebeian, overwhelmed by taxes and statute-labor, was con- tinually tormented, now by the king's tax-gatherers, now by those of the nobles and clergy. He whose possessions were subject to mortmain could neither bequeath nor inherit prop- erty ; he was treated like the animals, whose services and offspring belong to their master by right of accession. The people wanted the conditions of ownership to be alike for all ; they thought that every one should enjoy and freely dispose of his possessions t his income^ and the fruit of his labor and in--
FIRST MEMOIR. 37
dustry. The people did not invent property ; but as they had not the same privileges in regard to it, which the nobles and clergy possessed, they decreed that the right should be exer- cised by all under the same conditions. The more obnoxious forms of property — statute-labor, mortmain, mattrise, and ex- clusion from public office — have disappeared ; the conditions of its enjoyment have been modified: the principle still re- mains the same. There has been progress in the regulation of the right ; there has been no revolution.
These, then, are the three fundamental principles of modern society, established one after another by the movements of 1789 and 1830: I. Sovereignty of the human will; in short, despotism. 2. Inequality of wealth and rank, 3. Property — above justice, always invoked as the guardian angel of sov- ereigns, nobles, and proprietors ; justice, the general, primi- tive, categorical law of all society.
*
We must ascertain whether the ideas of despotism^ civil inequality, and property, are in harmony with the primitive notion of justice^ and necessarily follow from it, — assuming various forms according to the condition, position, and rela- tion of persons ; or whether Jhey are not rather the illegiti- mate result of a confusion of different things, a fatal association of ideas. And since justice deals especially with the questions of government, the condition of persons, and the possession of things, we must ascertain under what conditions, judging by universal opinion and the progress of the human mind, gov- ernment is just, the condition of citizens is just, and the pos- session of things is just ; then, striking out every thing which fails to meet these conditions, the result will at once tell us what legitimate government is, what the legitimate condition of citizens is, and what the legitimate possession of things is ; and finally, as the last result of the analysis, what justice is.
38 WHAT IS PROPERTY?
Is the authority of man over man just ?
Everybody answers, " No ; the authority of man is only the authority of the law, which ought to be justice and truth." The private will counts for nothing in government, which consists, first, in discovering truth and justice in order to make the law ; and, second, in superintending the execution of this law. I do not now inquire whether our constitutional form of gov- ernment satisfies these conditions ; whether, for example, the will of the ministry never influences the declaration and inter- pretation of the law ; or whether our deputies, in their debates, are more intent on conquering by argument than by force of numbers : it is enough for me that my definition of a good government is allowed to be correct. This idea is exact. Yet we see that nothing seems more just to the Oriental nations than the despotism of their sovereigns ; that, with the ancients and in the opinion of the philosophers themselves, slavery was just ; that in the middle ages the nobles, the priests, and the bishops felt justified in holding slaves ; that Louis XIV. thought that he was right when he said, " The State ! I am the State ; " and that Napoleon deemed it a crime for the State to oppose his will. The idea of justice, then, applied to sover- eignty and government, has not always been wh^t it is to-day ; it has gone on developing and shaping itself by degrees, until it has arrived at its present state. But has it reached its last phase ? I think not : only, as the last obstacle to be overcome arises from the institution of property which we have kept intact, in order to finish the reform in government and consummate the revolution, this very institution we must attack.
Is political and civil inequality just ?
Some say yes ; others no. To the first I would reply that, when the people abolished all privileges of birth and caste.
FIRST MEMOIR. 39-
they did it, in all probability, because it was for their advan* tage ; why then do they favor the privileges of fortune more than those of rank and race ? Because, say they, poKtical in- equality is a result of property ; and without property society is impossible : thus the question just raised becomes a ques- tion of property. To the second I content myself with this remark : If you wish to enjoy political equality, abolish prop- erty ; otherwise, why do you complain ?
Is property just ?
Everybody answers without hesitation, "Yes, property is just." I say everybody, for up to the present time no one who thoroughly understood the meaning of his words has answered no. For it is no easy thing to reply understandingly to such a question ; only time and experience can furnish an answer. Now, this answer is given ; it is for us to understand it. I undertake to prove it. ,
We are to proceed with the demonstration in the following order : —
I. We dispute not at all, we refute nobody, we deny noth- ing ; we accept as sound all the arguments alleged in favor of property, and confine ourselves to a search for its principle, in order that we may then ascertain whether this .principle is faithfully expressed by property. In fact, property being defensible on no ground save that of justice, the idea, or at least the intention, of justice must of necessity underlie all the arguments that have been made in defence of property ; and, as on the other hand the right of property is only exer- cised over those things which can be appreciated by the senses, justice, secretly objectifying itself, so to speak, must take the shape of an algebraic formula. By this method of investigation, we soon see that every argument which has been invented in behalf of property, w/tatever it may be.
40 WHAT IS PROPERTY?
always and of necessity leads to equality ; that is, to the negation of property.
The first part covers two chapters : one treating of occu- pation, the foundation of our right ; the other, of labor and talent, considered as causes of property and social inequality.
The first of these chapters will prove that the right of occupation obstructs property ; the second that the right of labor destroys it.
II. Property, then, being of necessity conceived as existing only in connection with equaUty, it remains to find out why, in spite of this necessity of logic, equality does not exist. This new investigation also covers two chapters : in the first, considering the fact of property in itself, we inquire whether this fact is real, whether it exists, whether it is possible ; for it would imply a contradiction, were these two opposite forms of society, equality and inequality, both possible. Then we discover, singularly enough, that property may indeed mani- fest itself accidentally ; but that, as an institution and princi- ple, it is mathematically impossible. So that the axiom of the school — ab actii ad posse valet consecutio : from the actual to the possible the inference is good — is given the lie as far as property is concerned.
Finally, in the last chapter, calling psychology to our aid, and probing man's nature to the bottom, we shall disclose the principle of 7«.f//V^ — its formula and character; we shall state with precision the organic law of society ; we shall explain the origin of property, the causes of its establishment, its long life, and" its approaching death ; we shall definitively establish its identity with robbery. And, after having shown that these three prejudices — the sovereignty of man, the ine* quality of conditions, and property — are one and the same ; that they may be taken for each other, and are reciprocally
FIRST MEMOIR. 4 1
convertible, — we shall have no trouble in inferring therefrom, by the principle of contradiction, the basis of government and right. There our investigations will end, reserving the right to continue them in future works.
The importance of the subject which engages our atten- tion is recognized by all minds.
"Property," says M. Hennequin, "is the creative and conservative principle of civil society. Property is one of those basic institutions, new theories concerning which cannot be presented too soon ; for it must not be forgotten, and the publicist and statesman must know, that on the answer to the question whether property is the principle or the result of social order, whether it is to be considered as a cause or an effect, depends all morality,. and, consequently, all the authority of human institutions."
These words are a challenge to all men of hope and faith ; but, although the cause of equality is a noble one, no one has yet picked up the gauntlet thrown down by the advocates of property ; no one has been courageous enough to enter upon the struggle. The spurious learning of haughty juris- prudence, and the absurd aphorisms of a political economy controlled by property have puzzled the most generous minds; it is a sort of password among the most influential friends of liberty and the interests of the people that equality is a chi- mera! So many false theories and meaningless analogies influence minds otherwise keen, but which are unconsciously controlled by popular prejudice. Equality advances every day — Jit aequalitas. Soldiers of liberty, shall we desert our flag in the hour of triumph.^
A defender of equality, I shall speak without bitterness and without anger ; with the independence becoming a philos- opher, with the courage and firmness of a free man. May I, in this momentous struggle, carry into all hearts the light with which I am filled ; and show, by the success of my argu- ment, that equality failed to conquer by the sword only that • it might conquer by the pen !
42 WHAT IS PROPERTY?
CHAPTER 11.
PROPERTY CONSIDERED AS A NATURAL RIGHT. — OCCUPATION AND CIVIL LAW AS EFFICIENT BASES OF PROPERTY.
DEFINITIONS.
nPHE Roman law defined property as the right to use and abuse one's own within the limits of the law — jus utendi et abutendi re sud, quatenus juris ratio patitur. A justifica- tion of the word abuse has been attempted, on the ground that it signifies, not senseless and immoral abuse, but only absolute domain. Vain distinction ! invented as an excuse for property, and powerless against the frenzy of possession, which it neither prevents nor represses. The proprietor may, if he chooses, allow his crops to rot under foot ; sow his field with salt ; milk his cows on the sand ; change his vineyard into a desert, and use his vegetable-garden as a park: do these things constitute abuse, or not } In the matter of property, use and abuse are necessarily indistinguishable.
According to the Declaration of Rights, published as a preface to the Constitution of '93, property is " the right to enjoy and dispose at will of one's goods, one's income, and the fruit of one's labor and industry."
Code Napol6on, article 544 : " Property is the right to enjoy and dispose of things in the most absolute manner, provided we do not overstep the limits prescribed by the laws and regulations."
FIRST MEMOIR. 43
These two definitions do not differ from that of the Roman law : all give the proprietor an absolute right over a thing ; and as for the restriction imposed by the code, — provided we do not overstep the limits prescribed by the laws and regula- iiotiSy — its object is not to limit property, but to prevent the domain of one proprietor from interfering with that of another. That is a confirmation of the principle, not a limi- tation of it.
There are different kinds of property: i. Property pure and simple, the dominant and seigniorial power over a thing ; or, as they term it, naked property. 2. Possession. " Posses- sion," says Duranton, "is a matter of fact, not of right." Toullier : " Property is a right, a legal power ; possession is a fact" The tenant, the farmer, the commandite, the usufruc- tuary, are possessors ; the owner who lets and lends for use, the heir who is to come into possession on the death of a usufructuary, are proprietors. If I may venture the com- parison : a lover is a possessor, a husband is a proprietor.
This double definition of property — domain and possession — is of the highest importance ; and it must be clearly under- stood, in order to comprehend what is to follow.
From the distinction between possession and property arise two sorts of rights : the jns in re, the right /;/ a thing, the right by which I may reclaim the property which I have acquired, in whatever hands I find it ; and the jus ad rem, the right to a thing, which gives me a claim to become a pro- prietor. Thus the right of the partners to a marriage over each other's person is the jus in re; that of two who are betrothed is only the jus ad rem. In the first, possession and property are united ; the second includes only naked property. With me who, as a laborer, have a right to the possession of the products of Nature and my own industry, — and who, as a
WHAT IS PROPERTY?
proletaire, enjoy none of them, — it is by virtue of the jus ad rem that I demand admittance to the jus in re.
This distinction between the jus in re and the jus ad retn is the basis of the famous distinction between possessoire and petitoire, — actual categories of jurisprudence, the whole of which is included within their vast boundaries. Petitoire refers to every thing relating to property ; possessoire to that relating to possession. In writing this memoir against property, I bring against universal society an action petitoire : I prove that those who do not possess to-day are proprietors by the same title as those who do possess ; but, instead of inferring therefrom that property should be shared by all, I demand, in the name of general security, its entire abolition. If I fail to win my case, there is nothing left for us (the prole- tarian class and myself) but to cut our throats : we can ask nothing more from the justice of nations ; for, as the code of procedure (art. 26) tells us in its energetic style, the plaintiff who has been non-suited in an action petitoire^ is debarred thereby from bringing an action possessoire. If, on the con- trary, I gain the case, we must then commence an action possessoire^ that we may be reinstated in the enjoyment of. the wealth of which we are deprived by property. I hope that we shall not be forced to that extremity ; but these two actions cannot be prosecuted at once, such a course being prohibited by the same code of procedure.
Before going to the heart of the question, it will not be useless to offer a few preliminary, remarks.
§ I. — Property as a Natural Right,
The Declaration of Rights has placed property in its list of the natural and inalienable rights of man, four in all : liberty, equality^ property^ security. What rule did the legislators of
FIRST MEMOIR. 45
'93 follow in compiling this list ? None. They laid down principles, just as they discussed sovereignty and the laws ; from a general point of view, and according to their own opinion. They did every thing in their own blind way.
If we can believe TouUier : " The absolute rights can be reduced to three : security^ liberty, property,'' Equality is eliminated by the Rennes professor ; why } Is it because liberty implies it, or because property prohibits it 1 On this point the author of " Droit Civil Expliqu6" is silent : it has not even occurred to him that the matter is under discussion.
Nevertheless, if we compare these three or four rights with each other, we find that property bears no resemblance what- ever to the others ; that for the majority of citizens it exists only potentially, and as a dormant faculty without exercise ; { that for the others, who do enjoy it, it is susceptible of certain
; transactions and modifications which do not harmonize with
■ *
the idea of a natural right ; that, in practice, governments, tri- bunals, and laws do not respect it ; and finally that everybody, spontaneously and with one voice, regards it as chimerical.
Liberty is inviolable. I can neither sell nor alienate my liberty ; every contract, every condition of a contract, which has in view the alienation or suspension of liberty, is null :
the slave, when he plants his foot upon the soil of liberty, at
•
that moment becomes a free man. When society seizes a malefactor and deprives him of his liberty, it is a case of legitimate defence : whoever violates the social compact by the commission of a crime declares himself a public enemy ; in attacking the liberty of others, he compels them to take away his own. Liberty is the original condition of man ; to renounce liberty is to renounce the nature of man ', after that, how could we perform the acts of man }
Likewise, equality before the law suffers neither restriction
46 WHAT IS PROPERTY?
nor exception. All Frenchmen are equally eligible to office : consequently, in the presence of this equality, condition and family have, in many cases, no influence upon choice. The poorest citizen can obtain judgment in the courts against one occupying the most exalted station. Let the millionaire, Ahab, build a ch&teau upon the vineyard of Naboth : the court will have the power, according to the circumstances, to order the destruction of the chdteau, though it has cost millions ; and to force the trespasser to restore the vineyard to its original state, and pay the damages. The law wishes all property, that has been legitimately acquired, to be kept inviolate without regard to value, and without respect for persons. '
The charter demands, it is true, for the exercise of certain political rights, certain conditions of fortune and capacity ; but all publicists know that the legislator's intention was not to establish a privilege, but to take security. Provided the conditions fixed by law are complied with, every citizen may be an elector, and every elector eligible. The right, once acquired, is the same for all; the law compares neither persons nor votes. I do not ask now whether this system is the best ; it is enough that, in the opinion of the charter and in the eyes of every one, equality before the law is absolute, and, like liberty, admits of no compromise.
It is the same with the right of security. Society promises its members no half-way protection, no sham defence ; it binds itself to them as they bind themselves to it. It does not say to them, " I will shield you, provided it costs me nothing ; I will protect you, if I run no risks thereby.'* It says, " I will defend you against everybody ; I will save and avenge you, or perish myself." The whole strength of the State is at the service of each citizen ; the obligation which binds them together is absolute.
\
FIRST MEMOIR. 47
How different with property ! Worshipped by all, it is acknowledged by none : laws, morals, customs, public and private conscience, all plot its death and ruin.
To meet the expenses of government, which has armies to support, tasks to perform, and officers to pay, taxes are needed. Let all contribute to these expenses : nothing more just. But why should the rich pay more than the poor ? That is just, they say, because they possess more. I confess that such justice is beyond my comprehension.
Why are taxes paid ? To protect all in the exercise of their natural rights — liberty, equality, security, and property ; to maintain order in the State ; to furnish the public with useful and p!easant conveniences.
Now, does it cost more to defend the rich man's life and liberty thani the poor man's ? Who, in time of invasion, fam- ine, or plague, causes more trouble, — the large proprietor who escapes the evil without the assistance of the State, or the laborer who. sits in his cottage unprotected from danger ?
Is public order endangered more by the worthy citizen, or by the artisan and journeyman } Why, the police have more to fear from a few hundred laborers, out of work, than from two hundred thousand electors !
Does the man of large income appreciate more keenly than the poor man national festivities, clean streets, and beautiful monuments.^ Why, he prefers his country-seat to all the popular pleasures ; and when he wants to enjoy himself, he does not wait for the greased pole !
One of two things is true: either the proportional tax affords greater security to the larger tax-payers, or else it is a wrong. Because, if property is a natural right, as the Decla- ration of '93 declares, all that belongs to me by virtue of this right is as sacred as my person; it is my blood, my life,
y
48 WHAT IS PROPERTY?
myself : whoever touches it "offends the apple of my eye. My income of one hundred thousand francs is as inviolable as the grisette's daily wage of seventy-five centimes ; her attic is no more sacred than my suite of apartments. The tax is not levied in proportion to strength, size, or skill : no more should it be levied in proportion to property.
If, then, the State takes more from me, let it give me more in return, or cease to talk of equality of rights ; for otherwise, society is established, not to defend property, but to destroy it. The State, through the proportional tax, becomes the chief of robbers ; the State sets the example of systematic pillage : the State should be brought to the bar of justice at the head of those hideous brigands, that execrable mob which it now kills from motives of professional jealousy.
But, they say, the courts and the police force are established to restrain this mob ; government is a company, not exactly for insurance, for it does not insure, but for vengeance and repression. The premium which this company exacts, the tax, is divided in proportion to property ; that is, in proportion to the trouble which each piece of -property occasions the avengers and repressers paid by the government.
This is any thing but the absolute and inalienable right of property. Under this system the poor and the rich distrust, and make war upon, each other. But what is the object of the war } Property. So that property is necessarily accom- panied by war upon property. The liberty and security of the rich do not suffer from the liberty and security of the poor ; far from that, they mutually strengthen and sustain each other. The rich man's right of property, on the contrary, has to be continually defended against the poor man's desire for property. What a contradiction !
In England they have a poor-rate : they wish me to pay
FIRST MEMOIR. 49
this tax. But what relation exists between my natural and inalienable right of property and the hunger from which ten million wretched people are suffering ? When religion com- mands us to assist our fellows, it speaks in the name of charity, not in the name of law. The obligation of benevo- lence, imposed upon me by Christian morality, cannot be imposed upon me as a political tax for the benefit of any person or poor-house. I will give alms when I see fit to do so, whe^ the sufferings of others excite in me that sympathy of which philosophers talk, and in which I do not believe : I will not be forced to bestow them. No one is obliged to do more than comply with this injunction : In the exercise of your own rights do not encroach upon the rights of another ; an injunc- tion which is the exact definition of liberty. Now, my posses- sions are my own ; no one has a claim upon them : I object to the placing of the third theological virtue in the order of the day.
Everybody, in France, demands thfe conversion of the five per cent, bonds ; they demand thereby the complete sacrifice of one species of property. They have the right to do it, if public necessity requires it ; but where is the just indemnity promised by the charter } Not only does none exist, but this indemnity is not even possible ; for, if the indemnity were equal to the property sacrificed, the conversion would be useless.
The State occupies the same position to-day toward the bondholders that the city of Calais did, when besieged by Edward III., toward its notables. The English conqueror consented to spare its inhabitants, provided it would surrender to him its most distinguished citizens to do with as he pleased. Eustache and several others offered themselves ; it was noble in them, and our ministers should recommend
WHAT IS PROPERTY?
their example to the bondholders. But had the city the right to surrender them ? Assuredly not. The right to security is absolute ; the country can require no one to sacrifice himself. The soldier standing guard within the enemy's range is no exception to this rule. Wherever a citizen stands guard, the country stands guard with him : to-day it is the turn of the one, to-morrow of the other. When danger and devotion are common, flight is parricide. No one has the right to flee from danger ; no one can serve as a scapegoat. The maxjm of Caiaphas — // is right that a mati should die for his nation — is that of the populace and of tyrants ; the two extremes of social degradation.
It is said that all perpetual annuities are essentially redeem- able. This maxim of civil law, applied to the State, is good for those who wish to return to the natural equality of labor and wealth ; but, from the point of view of the proprietor, and in the mouth of conversionists, it is the language of bank- rupts. The State is n<ft only a borrower, it is an insurer and guardian of property ; granting the best of security, it assures the most inviolable possession. How, then, can it force open the hands of its creditors, who have confidence in it, and then talk to them of public order and security of property } The State, in such an operation, is not a debtor who discharges his debt ; it is a stock-company which allures its stockholders into a trap, and there, contrary to its authentic promise, exacts from them twenty, thirty, or forty per cent of the interest on their capital.
That is not all. The State is a university of citizens joined together under a common law by an act of society. This act secures all in the possession of their property ; guar- antees to one his field, to another his vineyard, to a third his rents, and to the bondholder, who might have bought real
FIRST MEMOIR. 51
estate but who preferred to come to the assistance, of the treasury, his bonds. The State cannot demand, without offer- ing an equivalent, the sacrifice of an acre of the field or a corner of the vineyard ; still less can it lower rents : why should it have the right to diminish the interest on bonds ? This right could not justly exist, unless the bondholder could invest his funds elsewhere to equal advantage; but being confined to the State, where can he find a place to invest them, since the cause of conversion, that is, the power to borrow to better advantage, lies in the State ? That is why a govern- ment, based on the principle of property, cannot redeem its annuities without the consent of their holders. The money deposited with the republic is property which it has no right to touch while other kinds of property are respected ; to force their redemption is to violate the social contract, and outlaw the bondholders. •
The whole controversy as to the conversion of bonds finally reduces itself to this : —
Question. Is it just to reduce to misery forty-five thousand families who derive an income from their bonds of one hundred francs or less }
Afiswer. Is it just to compel seven or eight millions of tax-payers to pay a tax of five francs, when they should pay only three }
It is clear, in the first place, that the reply is in reality no reply ; but, to make the wrong more apparent, let us change it thus : Is it just to endanger the lives of one hundred thousand men, when we can save them by surrendering one hundred heads to the enemy } Reader, decide !
All this is clearly understood by the defenders of the pres- ent system. Yet, nevertheless, sooner or later, the conversion will be effected and property be violated, because no other
WHAT IS PROPERTY?
course is possible ; because property, regarded as a right, and not being a right, must of right perish ; because the force of events, the laws of conscience, and physical and mathematical necessity must, in the end, destroy this illusion of our minds.
To sum up : liberty is an absolute right, because it is to man what impenetrability is to matter, — a sine qua non of existence ; equality is an absolute right, because without equality there is no society ; security is an absolute right, because in the eyes of every man his own liberty and life are as precious as another's. These three rights are absolute; that is, susceptible of neither increase nor diminution ; be- cause in society each associate receives as much as he gives, — liberty for liberty, equality for equality, security for security, body for body, soul for soul, in life and in death.
But property, in its derivative sense, and by the definitions of law, is a right outside of society ; for it is clear that, if the wealth of each was social wealth, the conditions would be equal for all, and it would be a contradiction to say : Property is a matis right to dispose at will of social property. Then if we are associated for the sake of liberty, equality, and secu- rity, we are not associated for the sake of property ; then if property is a natural right, this natural right is not social^ but anti'SociaL Property and society are utterly irreconcilable institutions. It is as impossible to associate two proprietors as to join two magnets by their opposite poles. Either soci- ety must perish, or it must destroy property.
If property is a natural, absolute, imprescriptible, and inal- ienable right, why, in all ages, has there been so much specu- lation as to its origin } — for this is one of its distinguishing characteristics. The origin of a natural right ! Good God ! who ever inquired into the origin of the rights of liberty, security, or equality.^ They exist by the same right that
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we exist ; they are born with us, they live and die with us. With property it is very different, indeed. By law, property can exist without a proprietor, like a quality without a sub- ject. It exists for the human being who as yet is not, and for the octogenarian who is no more. And yet, in spite of these wonderful prerogatives which savor of the eternal and the infinite, they have never found the origin of property; the doctors still disagree.. On one point only are they in harmony : namely, that the validity of the right of property depends upon the authenticity of its origin. But this har- mony is their condemnation. Why have they acknowledged the right before settling the question of origin ?
Certain, classes do not relish investigation into the pre- tended titles to property, and its fabulous and perhaps scan- dalous history. They wish to hold to this proposition : that property is a fact ; that it always has been, and always will be. With that proposition the savattt Proudhon ^ commenced his " Treatise on the Right of Usufruct," regarding the origin of property as a useless question. Perheips I would subscribe to this doctrine, believing it inspired by a commendable love of peace, were all my fellow-citizens in comfortable circum- stances ; but, no ! I will not subscribe to it.
The titles on which they pretend to base the right of prop- erty are two in number : occupation and labor, I shall exam- ine them successively, under all their aspects and in detail ; and I remind the reader that, to whatever authority we appeal, I shall prove beyond a doubt that property, to be just and possible, must necessarily have equality for its condition.
' The Proudhon here referred to is J. B. V. Proudhon; a distinguished French jurist, and distant relative of the author. — Translator,
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§ 2. — OccupatioHy as the Title to Property,
It is remarkable that, at those meetings of the State Coun- cil at which the Code was discussed, no controversy arose as to the origin and principle of property. All the articles of Vol. IL, Book 2, concerning property and the right of acces- sion, were passed without opposition or amendment. Bona- parte, who on other questions ha^ given his legists so much trouble, had nothing to say about property. Be not surprised at it : in the eyes of that man, the most selfish and wilful person that ever lived, property was the first of rights, just as submission to authority was the most holy of duties.
The right of occupation^ or of the first occupant^ is that which results from the actual, physical, real possession of a thing. I occupy a piece of land ; the presumption is, that I am the proprietor, until the contrary is proved. We know that originally such a right cannot be legitimate unless it is reciprocal ; the jurists say as much.
Cicero compares the earth to a vast theatre : Quemadmo- dutn theatrum cum commune sit, rede tamen dici potest ejus esse eum locum quern quisque occuparit.
This passage is all that ancient philosophy has to say about the origin of property.
The theatre, says Cicero, is common to all ; nevertheless, the place that each one occupies is called his own ; that is, it is a place possessed, not a place appropriated. This compari- son annihilates property ; moreover, it implies equality. Can I, in a theatre, occupy at the same time one place in the pit, another in the boxes, and a third in the gallery } Not unless I have three bodies, like Geryon, or can exist in different places at the same time, as is related of the magician Apol- lonius.
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According to Cicero, no one has a right to more than he needs : such is the true interpretation of his famous axiom — suum quidque cujusque sit, to each one that which belongs to him — an axiom that has been strangely applied. That which belongs to each is not that which each may possess, but that which each kas a right to possess. Now, what have we a right to possess } That which is required for our labor and consumption ; Cicero's comparison of the earth to a theatre proves it. According to that, each one may take what place he will, may beautify and adorn it, if he can ; it is allowable : but he must never allow himself to overstep the limit which separates him from another. T^e doctrine of Cicero leads directly to equality ; for, occupation being pure toleration, if the toleration is mutual (and it cannot be otherwise) the possessions are equal.
Grotius rushes into history ; but what kind of reasoning is that which seeks the origin of a right, said to be natural, else- where than in Nature } This is the method of the ancients : the fact exists, then it is necessary, then it is just, then its antecedents are just also. Nevertheless, let us look into it.
" Originally, all things were common and undivided ; they were the property of all." Let us go no farther. Grotius tells us how this original communism came to an end through ambition and cupidity ; how the age of gold was followed by the age of iron, &c. So that property rested first on war and conquest, then on treaties and agreements. But either these treaties and agreements distributed wealth equally, as did the original communism (the only method of distribution with which the barbarians were acquainted, and the only form of justice of which they could conceive ; and then the question of origin assumes this form : how did equality afterwards disappear }) — or else these treaties and agreements were forced
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by the strong upon the weak, and in that case they are null ; the tacit consent of posterity does not make .them valid, and we live in a permanent condition of iniquity and fraud.
We never can conceive how the equality of conditions, having once existed, could afterwards have passed away. What was the cause of such degeneration > The instincts of the animals are unchangeable, as well as the differences of species ; to suppose original equality in human society is to admit by implication that the present inequality is a degenera- tion from the nature of this society, — a thing which the defenders of property cannot explain. But I infer therefrom that, if Providence placed tbe first human beings in a condi- tion of equality, it was an indication of its desires, a model that it wished them to realize in other forms ; just as the religious sentiment, which it planted in their hearts, has de- veloped and manifested itself in various ways. Man has but one nature, constant and unalterable : he pursues it through instinct, he wanders from it through reflection, he returns to it through judgment ; who shall say that we are not returning now ? According to Grotius, man has abandoned equality ; according to me, he will yet return to it. How came he to abandon it ? Why will he return to it } These are questions for future consideration.
Reid writes as follows : —
" The right of property is not innate, but acquired. It is not grounded upon the constitution of man, but upon his actions. Writers on juris- prudence have explained its origin in a manner that may satisfy every man of common understanding.
" The earth is given to men in common for the purposes of life, by the bounty of Heaven. But to divide it, and appropriate one part of its produce to one, another part to another, must be the work of men who have power and und^standing given them, by which every maa may accommodate himself, without hurt to any other.
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" This common right of every man to what the earth produces, before it be occupied and appropriated by others, was, by ancient moralists, very properly compared to the right which every citizen had to the public theatre, where every man that came might occupy an empty seat, and thereby acquire a right to it while the entertainment lasted ; but no man had a right to dispossess another.
" The earth is a great theatre, furnished by the Almighty, with perfect wisdom and goodness, for the entertainment and employment of all man- kind. Here every man has a right to accommodate himself as a specta- tor, and to perform his part as an actor ; but without hurt to others.**
Consequences of Reid*s doctrine.
1. That the portion which each one appropriates may wrong no one, it must be equal to the quotient of the total amount of property to be shared, divided by the number of those who are to share it ;
2. The number of places being of necessity equal at all times to that of the spectators, no spectator can occupy two places, nor can any actor play several parts ;
3. Whenever a spectator comes in or goes out, the places of all contract or enlarge correspondingly : for, says Reid, ''the right of property is not inflate^ but acquired;'' consequently, it is not absolute ; consequently, the occupancy on which it is based, being a conditional fact, cannot endow this right with a stability which it does not possess itself. This seems to have been the thought of the Edinburgh professor when he added : —
'* A right to life implies a right to the necessary means of life ; and that justice, which forbids the taking away the life of an innocent man, forbids no less the taking from him the necessary means of life. He has the same right to defend the one as the other. To hinder another man's innocent labor, or to deprive him of the fruit of it, is an injustice of the same kind, and has the same effect as to put him in fetters or in prison, and is equally a just object of resentment"
Thus the chief of the Scotch school, without considering at
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all the inequality of skill or labor, posits a priori the equality of the means of labor, abandoning thereafter to each laborer the care of his own person, after the eternal axiom : Whoso does well, sfiall fare well.
The philosopher Reid is lacking, not in knowledge of the principle, but in courage to pursue it to its ultimate. If the right of life is equal, the right of labor is equal, and so is the right of occupancy. Would it not be criminal, were some islanders to repulse, in the name of property, the unfortunate victims of a shipwreck struggling to reach the shore ? The very idea of such cruelty sickens the imagination. The pro- prietor, like Robinson Crusoe on his island, wards off with pike and musket the proletaire washed overboard by the wave of civilization, and seeking to gain a foothold upon the rocks of property. " Give me work ! " cries he with all his might to the proprietor: "don't drive me away, I will work for you at any price." " I do not need your services," replies the proprie- tor, showing the end of his pike or the barrel of his gun. " Lower my rent at least." " I need my income to live upon." " How can I pay you, when I can get no work } " ** That is your business." Then the unfortunate proletaire abandons himself to the waves ; or, if he attempts to land upon the shore of property, the proprietor takes aim, and kills him.
We have just listened to a spiritualist ; we will now question a materialist, then an eclectic : and having completed the circle of philosophy, we will turn next to law.
According to Destutt de Tracy, property is a necessity of our nature. That this necessity involves unpleasant conse- quences, it would be folly to deny. But these consequences are necessary evils which do not invalidate the principle ; so that it as unreasonable to rebel against property on account of the abuses which it generates, as to complain of life be-
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cause it is sure to end in death. This brutal and pitiless philosophy promises at least frank and close reasoning. Let us see if it keeps its promise.
" We talk very gravely about the conditions of property, ... as if it was our province to decide what constitutes property. ... It would seem, to hear certain philosophers and legislators, that at a certain moment, spontaneously and without cause, people began to use the words thine and mine; and that they might have, or ought to have, dispensed with them. But thine and mine were never invented."
A philosopher yourself, you are too realistic. Thine and mine do not necessarily refer to self, as they do when I say your philosophy, and my equality ; ior your philosophy is you philosophizing, and my equality is I professing equality. Thine and mine oftener indicate a relation, — your country, your parish, your tailor, your milkmaid ; my chamber, my seat at the theatre, my company and my batt;alion in the National Guard. In the former sense, we may sometimes say my labor, my skill, my virtue ; never my grandeur nor my majesty : in the latter sense only, my field, my house, my vine- yard, my capital, — precisely as the banker's clerk says my cash-box. In short, thine and mine are signs and expressions of personal, but equal, rights ; applied to things outside of us, they indicate possession, function, use, not property.
It does not seem possible, but, nevertheless, I shall prove, by quotations, that the whole theory of our author is based upon this paltry equivocation.
" Prior to all covenants, men are, not exactly, as Hobbes says, in a state of hostility^ but of estrangement. In this state, justice and injus- tice are unknown ; the rights of one bear no relation to the rights of another. All have as many rights as needs, and *all feel it their duty to satisfy those needs by any means at their command."
Grant it ; whether true or false, it matters not. Destutt de Tracy cannot escape equality. On this theory, men, while in
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a State of estrangement, are under no obligations to each other ; they all have the right to satisfy their needs without regard to the needs of others, and consequently the right to exercise their power over Nature, each according to his strength and ability. That involves the greatest inequality of wealth. Inequality of conditions, then, is the character- istic feature of estrangement or barbarism : the exact oppo- site of Rousseau's idea. But let us look farther: -7-
*' Restrictions of these rights and this duty commence at the time when covenants, either implied or expressed, are agreed upon. Then appears for the first time justice and injustice ; that is, the balance between the rights of one and the rights of another, which up to that time were necessarily equal."
Listen : rights were equal ; that means that each indi- vidual had the right to satisfy his needs without reference to the needs of others. In other words, that all had the right to injure each other ; that there was no right save force and cunning. They injured each other, not only by war and pil- lage, but also by usurpation and appropriation. Now, in order to abolish this equal right to use force and stratagem, — this equal right to do evil, the sole source of the inequality of benefits and injuries, — they commenced to make covettants either implied or expressed, and established a balance. Then these agreements and this balance were intended to secure to all equal comfort ; then, by the law of contradictions, if isolation is the principle of inequality, society must produce equality. The social balance is the equalization of the strong and the weak ; for, while they are not equals, they are strangers ; they can form no associations, — they live as ene- mies. Then, if inequality of conditions is a necessary evil, so is isolation, for society and inequality are incompatible with each other. Then, if society is the true condition of man's
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existence, so is equality also. This conclusion cannot be avoided.
This being so, how is it that, ever since the establishment of this balance, inequality has been on the increase ? How is it that justice and isolation always accompany each other } Destutt de Tracy shall reply : —
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" Needs and means, rights and dnties\ are products of the will. If man willed nothing, these would not exi^it. But to have needs and means, rights and duties, is to. have^ to possess, something. They are so many kinds of property, using the word in its most general sense : they are things which belong to us."
Shameful equivocation, not justified by the necessity for generalization ! The word property has two meanings : i. It designates the quality which makes a thing what it is ; the attribute which is peculiar to it, and especially distin- guishes it. We use it in this sense when we say the proper- ties of the triangle or of numbers ; the property of the magnet, &c. 2. It expresses the right of absolute control over a thing by a free and intelligent being. It is used in this sense by writers on jurisprudence. Thus, in the phrase, iron ac- quires the property of a magnet, the word property does not convey the same idea that it does in this one : I have acquired this magnet as my property. To tell a poor man that he has property because he has arms and legs, — that the hunger from which he suffers, and his power to sleep in the open air are his property, — is to play upon words, and to add insult to injury.
** The sole basis of the idea of property is the idea of personality. As soon as property is born at all, it is born, of necessity, in all its fulness. As soon as an individual knows himself, — his moral personality, his capaci- ties of enjoyment, suffering, and action, — he necessarily sees also that this telf is exclusive proprietor of the body in which it dwells, its organs,
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their powers, faculties, &c. . . . Inasmuch as artificial and conventional property exists, there must be natural property also ; for nothing can exist in art without its counterpart in Nature."
We ought to admire the honesty and judgment of philoso- phers ! Man has properties ; that is, in the first acceptation of the term, faculties. He has property ; that is, in its second acceptation, the right of domain. He has, then, the property of the property of being proprietor. How ashamed I should be to notice such foolishness, were I here considering only the authority of Destutt de Tracy ! But the entire human race, since the origination of society and language, when meta- physics and dialectics were first born, has been guilty of this puerile confusion of thought. All which man could call his own was identified in his mind with his person. He consid- ered it as his property, his wealth ; a part of himself, a mem- ber of his body, a faculty of his mind. The possession of things was likened to property in the powers of the body and mind ; and on this false analogy was based the right of prop- erty, — the imitation of Nature by art, as Destutt de Tracy so elegantly puts it.
But why did not this ideologist perceive that man is not proprietor even of his own faculties } Man has powers, attributes, capacities ; they are given him by Nature that he may live, learn, and love : he does not own them, but has only the use of them ; and he can make no use of them that does not harmonize with Nature's laws. If he had absolute mastery over his faculties, he could avoid hunger and cold ; he could eat unstintedly, and walk through fire ; he could move mountains, walk a hundred leagues in a minute, cure without medicines and by the sole force of his will, and could make himself immortal. He could say, *' I wish to produce," and his tasks would be finished with the words ; he could
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say, " I wish to know," and he would know ; " I love," and he would enjoy. What then ? Man is not master of himself, but may be of his surroundings. Let him use the wealth of Nature, since he can live only by its use ; but let him abandon his pretensions to the title of proprietor, and remember that he is called so only metaphorically.
To sum up: Destutt de Tracy classes together the external productions of Nature and art, and the pozvers or faculties of man, making both of them species of property ; and upon this equivocation he hopes to establish, so firmly that it can never be disturbed, the right of property. But of these different kinds of property some are iniiatCy as memory, imagination, strength, and beauty ; while others are acquired, as land, water, and forests. In the state of Nature or isolation, the strongest and most skilful (that is, those best provided with innate property) stand the best chance of obtaining acquired prop- erty. Now, it is to prevent this encroachment and the war which results therefrom, that a balance (justice) has been employed, and covenants (implied or expressed) agreed upon : it is to correct, as far as possible, inequality of innate property by equality of acquired property. As long as the division remains unequal, so long the partners remain enemies ; and it is the purpose of the covenants to reform this state of things. Thus we have, on the one hand, isolation, inequality, enmity, war, robbery, murder ; on the other, society, equality, fraternity, peace, and love. Choose between them !
M. Joseph Dutens — a physician, engineer, and geometri- cian, but a very poor legist, and no philosopher at all — is the author of a " Philosophy of Political Economy," in which he . felt it his duty to break lances in behalf of property. His reasoning seems to be borrowed from Destutt de Tracy, He commences with this definition of property, worthy
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of Sganarelle: ''Property is the right by which a thing is one's own." Literally translated: Property is the right of property.
After getting entangled a few times on the subjects of will, liberty, and personality; after having distinguished between immaterial-natural property, and material-natural property, a distinction similar to Destutt de Tracy's of innate and acquired property, — M. Joseph Dutens concludes with these two general propositions: i. Property is a natural and inalienable right of every man ; 2. Inequality of property is a necessary result of Nature, — which propositions are convertible into a simpler one : All men have an equal right of unequal property.
He rebukes M. de Sismondi for having taught that landed property has no other basis than law and conventionality ; and he says himself, speaking of the respect which people feel for property, that " their good sense reveals to them the nature of tKe original contract made between society .and proprietors."
He confounds property with possession, communism with equality, the just with the natural, and the natural with the possible. Now he takes these different ideas to be equivalents ; now he seems to distinguish between them, so much so that it would be infinitely easier to refute him than to understand him. Attracted first by the title of the work, " Philosophy of Political Economy," I have found, among the author's obscur- ities, only the most ordinary ideas. For that reason I will not speak of him.
M. Cousin, in his " Moral Philosophy," page 1 5, teaches that all morality, all laws, all rights are given to man with this injunction: '' Free beifig, remain free" Bravo! master; I wish to remain free if I can. He continues : —
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" Our principle is true ; it is good, it is social Do not fear to push it to its ultimate.
'* I. If the human person is sacred, its whole nature is sacred ; and particularly its interior actions, its feelings, its thoughts, its voluntary decisions. This accounts for the respect due to philosophy, religion, the arts industry, commerce, and to all the results of liberty. I say respect, not simply toleration ; for we do not tolerate a right, we respect it."
I bow my head before this philosophy.
" 2. My liberty, which is sacred, needs for its objective action an instrument which we call the body: the body participates then in the sacredness of liberty ; it is then inviolable. This is the basis of the principle of individual liberty.
*'3. My liberty needs, for its objective action, material to work upon; in other words, property or a thing. This thing or property naturally participates then iii the inviolability of my person. For instance, I take possession of an object which has become necessary and useful in the outward manifestation of my liberty. I say, * This object is mine, since it belongs to no one else ; consequently, I possess it legitimately.' So the legitimacy of possession rests on two conditions. First, I possess only as a free being. Suppress free activity, you destroy my power to labor. Now it is only by labor that I can use this property or thing, and it is only by using it that I possess it Free activity is then the principle of the right of property. But that alone does not legitimate possession. AU men are free ; all can use property by labor. Does that mean that all men have a right to all property ? Not at all. To possess legitimately, I must not only labor and produce in my capacity of a free being, but I must also be the first to occupy the property. In short, if labor and production are the principle of the right of property, the fact of first occupancy is its indispensable condition.
"4. I possess legitimately: then I have the right to use my property as I see fit I have also the right to give it away. I have also the right to bequeath it ; for if I decide to make a donation, my decision is as valid after my death as during my life."
In fact, to become a proprietor, in M. Cousin's opinion, one must take possession by occupation and labor. I maintain that the element of time must be considered also ; for if the first occupants have occupied every thing, what are the new
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comers to do ? What will become of them, having an instru- ment with which to work, but no material to work upon? Must they devour each other ? A terrible extremity, unfore- seen by philosophical prudence ; for the reason that great geniuses neglect little things.
Notice also that M. Cousin says that neither occupation nor labor, taken separately, can legitimate the right of property ; and that it is born only from the union of the two. This is one of M. Cousin's eclectic turns, which he, more than any one else, should take pains to avoid. Instead of proceeding by the method of analysis, comparison, elimina- tion, and reduction (the only means of discovering the truth amid the various forms of thought and whimsical opinions), he jumbles all systems together, and then, declaring each both right and wrong, exclaims : " There you have the truth."
But, adhering to my promise, I will not refute him. I will only prove, by all the arguments with which he justifies the right of property, the principle of equality which kills it. As I have already said, my sole intent is this : to show at the bottom of all these positions that inevitable major, equality ; hoping hereafter to show that the principle of property viti- ates the very elements of economical, moral, and govern- mental science, thus leading it in the wrong direction.
Well, is it not true, from M. Cousin's point of view, that, if the liberty of man is sacred, it is equally sacred in all indi- viduals ; that, if it needs property for its objective action, that is, for its life, the appropriation of material is equally necessary for all ; that, if I wish to be respected in my right of appropriation, I must respect others in theirs ; and, conse- quently, that though, in the sphere of the infinite, a person's power of appropriation is limited only by himself, in the sphere of the finite this same power is limited by the mathe-
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matical relation between the number of persons and the space which they occupy? Does it not follow that if one individual cannot prevent another — his fellow-man — from appropriating an amount of material equal to his own, no more can- he prevent individuals yet to come; because, while individuality passes away, universality persists, and eternal laws cannot be determined by a partial view of their manifestations ? Must we not conclude, therefore, that when- ever a person is born, the others must crowd closer together; and, by reciprocity of obligation, that if the new comer is afterwards to become an heir, the right of succession does not give him the right of accumulation, but only the right of choice ?
I have followed M. Cousin so far as to imitate his style, and I am ashamed of it. Do we need such high-sounding terms, such sonorous phrases, to say such simple things ? Man needs to labor in order to live ; consequently, he needs tools to work with and materials to work upon. His need to produce constitutes his right to produce. Now, this right is guaranteed him by his fellows, with whom he makes an agree- ment to that effect. One hundred thousand men settle in a large country like France with no inhabitants : each man has a right to jsm oi the land. If the number of possessors ) increases, each one's portion diminishes in consequence; so / that, if the number of inhabitants rises to thirty-four millions, / each one will have a right only to ipKisa- Now, so regulate/ the police system and the government, labor, exchange, in- 1 heritance, &c., that the means of labor shall be shared by all \ equally, and that each individual shall be free ; and then soci- \ ety will be perfect.
Of all the defenders of property, M. Cousin has gone the farthest. He has maintained against the economists that
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labor does not establish the right of property unless preceded by occupation, and against the jurists that the civil law can determine and apply a natural right, but cannot create it. In fact, it is not sufficient to say, " The right of property is demonstrated by the existence of property ; the function of the civil law is purely declaratory." To say that, is to con- fess that there is no reply to those who question the legiti- macy of the fact itself. Every right must be justifiable in itself, or by some antecedent right ; property is no exception. For this reason, M. Cousin has sought to base it upon the sanctity of the human personality, and the act by which the will assimilates a thing. " Once touched by man," says one of M. Cousin's disciples, " things receive from him a charac- ter which transforms and humanizes them." I confess, for my part, that I have no faith in this magic, and that I know of nothing less holy than the will of man. But this theory, fragile as it seems to psychology as well as jurisprudence, is nevertheless more philosophical and profound than those the- ories which are based upon labor or the authority of the law. Now, we have just seen to what this theory of which we are speaking leads, — to the equality implied in the terms of its statement.
But perhaps philosophy views things from too lofty a standpoint, and is not sufficiently practical ; perhaps from the exalted summit of speculation men seem so small to the metaphysician that he cannot distinguish between them ; per- haps, indeed, the equality of conditions is one of those prin- ciples which are very true and sublime as generalities, but which it would be ridiculous and even dangerous tjo attempt to rigorously apply to the customs of life and to social trans- actions. Undoubtedly, this is a case which calls for imitation of the wise reserve of moralists and jurists, who warn us
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against carrying things to extremes, and who advise us to suspect every definition ; because there is not one, they say, which cannot be utterly destroyed by developing its disastrous results — Omnis definitio in jure civili periculosa est : parunt est cnim ut non subverti possit. Equality of conditions, — a terrible dogma in the ears of the proprietor, a consoling truth at the poor-man's sick-bed, a frightful reality under the knife of the anatomist, — equality of conditions, established in the political, civil, and industrial spheres, is only an alluring im- possibility, an inviting bait, a satanic delusion.
It is never my intention to surprise my reader. I detest, as I do death, the man who employs subterfuge in his