Part 2 (2/2)
is our own Ideal, the pure essence of Humanity.... The human soul does not become conscious of its Ego through premeditated contemplation, as the psychologists put it; the soul perceives something outside itself, as if it were a different Being face to face with itself, and it is this inverted image which it calls G.o.d. Thus morality, justice, order, law, are no longer things revealed from above, imposed upon our free will by a so-called Creator, unknown and ununderstandable; they are things that are proper and essential to us as our faculties and our organs, as our flesh and our blood. In two words religion and society are synonymous terms, man is as sacred to himself as if he were G.o.d.”
Belief in authority is as primitive, as universal as belief in G.o.d.
Whenever men are grouped together in societies there is authority, the beginning of a government. From time immemorial men have asked themselves, What is authority? Which is the best form of government? And replies to these questions have been sought for in vain. There are as many governments as there are religions, as many political theories as systems of philosophy. Is there any way of putting an end to this interminable and barren controversy? Any means of escape from this _impa.s.se_! a.s.suredly! We have only to follow the example of Kant. We have only to ask ourselves whence comes this idea of authority, of government? We have only to get all the information we can upon the legitimacy of the political idea. Once safe on this ground and the question solves itself with extraordinary ease.
”Like religion, government is a manifestation of social spontaneity, a preparation of humanity for a higher condition.”
”What humanity seeks in religion and calls G.o.d, is itself.” ”What the citizen seeks in Government and calls king, emperor, or president, is again himself, is liberty.” ”Outside humanity there is no G.o.d; the theological concept has no meaning:--outside liberty no government, the political concept has no value.”
So much for the ”biography” of the political idea. Once grasped it must enlighten us upon the question as to which is the best form of government.
”The best form of government, like the most perfect of religions, taken in a literal sense, is a contradictory idea. The problem is not to discover how we shall be best governed, but how we shall be most free.
Liberty commensurate and identical with Order,--this is the only reality of government and politics. How shall this absolute liberty, synonymous with order, be brought about? We shall be taught this by the a.n.a.lysis of the various formulas of authority. For all the rest we no more admit the governing of man by man than the exploitation of man by man.”[16]
We have now climbed to the topmost heights of Proudhon's political philosophy. It is from this that the fresh and vivifying stream of his Anarchist thought flows. Before we follow the somewhat tortuous course of this stream let us glance back at the way we have climbed.
We fancied we were following Kant. We were mistaken. In his ”Critique of Pure Reason” Kant has demonstrated the impossibility of proving the existence of G.o.d, because everything outside experience must escape us absolutely. In his ”Critique of Practical Reason” Kant admitted the existence of G.o.d in the name of morality. But he has never declared that G.o.d was a topsy-turvy image of our own soul. What Proudhon attributes to Kant, indubitably belongs to Feuerbach. Thus it is in the footsteps of the latter that we have been treading, while roughly tracing out the ”biography” of the political Idea. So that Proudhon brings us back to the very starting point of our most unsentimental journey with Stirner.
No matter. Let us once more return to the reasoning of Feuerbach.
It is only itself that humanity seeks in religion. It is only himself, it is liberty that the citizen seeks in Government.... Then the very essence of the citizen is liberty? Let us a.s.sume this is true, but let us also note that our French ”Kant” has done nothing, absolutely nothing, to prove the ”legitimacy” of such an ”Idea.” Nor is this all.
What is this liberty which we are a.s.suming to be the essence of the citizen? Is it political liberty which ought in the nature of things to be the main object of his attention? Not a bit of it! To a.s.sume this would be to make of the ”citizen” an ”authoritarian” democrat.
It is the _absolute liberty of the individual_, which is at the same time _commensurate and identical with_ Order, that our citizen seeks in Government. In other words, it is the Anarchism of Proudhon which is the essence of the ”citizen.” It is impossible to make a more pleasing discovery, but the ”biography” of this discovery gives us pause. We have been trying to demolish every argument in favour of the Idea of Authority, as Kant demolished every proof of the existence of G.o.d. To attain this end we have--imitating Feuerbach to some extent, according to whom man adored his own Being in G.o.d--a.s.sumed that it is liberty which the citizen seeks in Government. And as to liberty we have in a trice transformed this into ”absolute” liberty, into Anarchist liberty.
Eins, zwei, drei; Geschwindigkeit ist keine Hexerei![17]
Since the ”citizen” only seeks ”absolute” liberty in Government the State is nothing but a fiction (”this fiction of a superior person, called the 'State'”), and all those formulas of government for which people and citizens have been cutting one another's throats for the last sixty centuries, are but the ”phantasmagoria of our brain, which it would be the first duty of free reason to relegate to the museums and libraries.” Which is another charming discovery made _en pa.s.sant_. So that the political history of humanity has, ”for sixty centuries,” had no other motive power than a phantasmagoria of our brain!
To say that man adores in G.o.d his own essence is to indicate the _origin_ of religion, but it is not to work out its ”biography.” To write the biography of religion is to write its history, explaining the evolution of this essence of man which found expression in it. Feuerbach did not do this--could not do it. Proudhon, trying to imitate Feuerbach, was very far from recognising the insufficiency of his point of view.
All Proudhon has done is to take Feuerbach for Kant, and to ape his Kant-Feuerbach in a most pitiful manner. Having heard that Divinity was but a fiction, he concluded that the State is also a figment: since G.o.d does not exist, how can the State exist? Proudhon wished to combat the State and began by declaring it non-existent. And the readers of the ”Voix du Peuple” applauded, and the opponents of M. Proudhon were alarmed at the profundity of his philosophy! Truly a tragi-comedy!
It is hardly necessary for modern readers to add that in taking the State for a fiction we make it altogether impossible to understand its ”essence” or to explain its historical evolution. And this was what happened to Proudhon.
”In every society I distinguish two kinds of const.i.tution,” says he; ”the one which I call _social_, the other which is its _political_ const.i.tution; the first innate in humanity, liberal, necessary, its development consisting above all in weakening, and gradually eliminating the second, which is essentially fact.i.tious, restrictive, and transitory. The social const.i.tution is nothing but the equilibration of interests based upon free contract and the organisation of the economic forces, which, generally speaking, are labour, division of labour, collective force, compet.i.tion, commerce, money, machinery, credit, property, equality in transactions, reciprocity of guarantees, etc. The principle of the political const.i.tution is authority. Its forms are: distinction of cla.s.ses, separation of powers, administrative centralisation, the judicial hierarchy, the representation of sovereignty by elections, etc. The political const.i.tution was conceived and gradually completed in the interest of order, for want of a social const.i.tution, the rules and principles of which could only be discovered as a result of long experience, and are even to-day the object of Socialist controversy. These two const.i.tutions, as it is easy to see, are by nature absolutely different and even incompatible: but as it is the fate of the political const.i.tution to constantly call forth and produce the social const.i.tution something of the latter enters into the former, which, soon becoming inadequate, appears contradictory and odious, is forced from concession to concession to its final abrogation.”[18]
The social const.i.tution is innate in humanity, necessary. Yet it could only be discovered as the result of long experience, and for want of it humanity had to invent the political const.i.tution. Is not this an entirely Utopian conception of human nature, and of the social organisation peculiar to it? Are we not coming back to the standpoint of Morelly who said that humanity in the course of its history has always been ”outside nature?” No--there is no need to come back to this standpoint, for with Proudhon we have never, for a single instant, got away from it. While looking down upon the Utopians searching after ”the best form of government,” Proudhon does not by any means censure the Utopian point of view. He only scoffs at the small perspicacity of men who did not divine that the best political organisation is the absence of all political organisation, is the social organisation, proper to human nature, necessary, immanent in humanity.
The nature of this social const.i.tution is absolutely different from, and even incompatible with, that of the political const.i.tution. Nevertheless it is the fate of the political const.i.tution to constantly call forth and produce the social const.i.tution. This is tremendously confusing! Yet one might get out of the difficulty by a.s.suming that what Proudhon meant to say was that the political const.i.tutions act upon the evolution of the social const.i.tution. But then we are inevitably met by the question.
Is not the political const.i.tution in its turn rooted--as even Guizot admitted--in the social const.i.tution of a country? According to our author _no_; the more emphatically _no_, that the social organisation, the true and only one, is only a thing of the future, for want of which poor humanity has ”invented” the political const.i.tution. Moreover, the ”Political Const.i.tution” of Proudhon covers an immense domain, embracing even ”cla.s.s distinctions,” and therefore ”non-organised” property, property as it ought not to be, property as it is to-day. And since the whole of this political const.i.tution has been invented as a mere stop-gap until the advent of the anarchist organisation of society, it is evident that all human history must have been one huge blunder. The State is no longer exactly a fiction as Proudhon maintained in 1848; ”the governmental formulas” for which people and citizens have been cutting one another's throats for sixty centuries are no longer a ”mere phantasmagoria of our brain,” as the same Proudhon believed at this same period; but these formulas, like the State itself, like every political const.i.tution, are but the product of human ignorance, the mother of all fictions and phantasmagorias. At bottom it is always the same. The main point is that Anarchist (”social”) organisation could only be discovered as the result of ”many experiences.” The reader will see how much this is to be regretted.
The political const.i.tution has an unquestionable influence upon the social organisation; at any rate it calls it forth, for such is its ”fate” as revealed by Proudhon, master of Kantian philosophy and social organisation. The most logical conclusion to be drawn therefrom is that the partisans of social organisation must make use of the political const.i.tution in order to attain their end. But logical as this deduction is, it is not to the taste of our author. For him it is but a phantasmagoria of our brain. To make use of the political const.i.tution is to offer a burnt offering to the terrible G.o.d of authority, to take part in the struggle of parties. Proudhon will have none of this. ”No more parties,” he says; ”no more authority, absolute liberty of the man and the citizen--in three words, such is our political and social profession of faith.”[19]
Every cla.s.s-struggle is a political struggle. Whosoever repudiates the political struggle by this very act, gives up all part and lot in the cla.s.s-struggle. And so it was with Proudhon. From the beginning of the Revolution of 1848 he preached the reconciliation of cla.s.ses. Here _e.g._, is a pa.s.sage from the Circular which he addressed to his electors in Doubs, which is dated 3rd April of this same year: ”The social question is there; you cannot escape from it. To solve it we must have men who combine extreme Radicalism of mind with extreme Conservatism of mind. Workers, hold out your hands to your employers; and you, employers, do not deliberately repulse the advances of those who were your wage-earners.”
The man whom Proudhon believed to combine this extreme Radicalism of mind with extreme Conservatism of mind, was himself--P. J. Proudhon.
There was, on the one hand, at the bottom of this belief, a ”fiction,”
common to all Utopians who imagine they can rise above cla.s.ses and their struggles, and navely think that the whole of the future history of humanity will be confined to the peaceful propagation of their new gospel. On the other hand, this tendency to combine Radicalism and Conservatism shows conclusively the very ”essence” of the ”Father of Anarchy.”
<script>