Part 3 (2/2)

Thus ”No more parties! No politics!” when it is a question of the cla.s.s struggle--and ”Hurrah for politics! Hurrah for electoral agitation!

Hurrah for State interference!” when it is a question of realising the vapid and meagre Utopia of Proudhon!

”_Destruam et aedificabo_,” says Proudhon, with the pompous vanity peculiar to him. But on the other hand--to use the phrase of Figaro--it is the truest truth of all he has ever uttered in his life. He destroys and he builds. Only the mystery of his ”destruction” reveals itself completely in his formula, ”The Contract solves all problems.” The mystery of his ”_aedificatio_” is in the strength of the social and political bourgeois reality with which he reconciled himself, the more readily in that he never managed to pluck from it any of its ”secrets.”

Proudhon will not hear of the State at any price. And yet--apart from the political propositions such as the const.i.tution of value, with which he turns to the odious ”fiction”--even theoretically he ”builds up” the State as fast as he ”destroys” it. What he takes from the ”State” he bestows upon the ”communes” and ”departments.” In the place of one great State we see built up a number of small states; in the place of one great ”fiction” a ma.s.s of little ones. To sum up, ”anarchy” resolves itself into federalism, which among other advantages has that of making the success of revolutionary movements much more difficult than it is under a centralised State.[30] So endeth Proudhon's ”General Idea of the Revolution.”

It is a curious fact that Saint Simon is the ”father” of Proudhon's anarchy. Saint Simon has said that the end of social organisation is production, and that, therefore, political science must be reduced to economics, the ”art of governing men” must give way to the art of ”administration of things.” He has compared mankind to the individual, who, obeying his parents in childhood, in his ripe age ends by obeying no one but himself. Proudhon seized upon this idea and this comparison, and with the help of the const.i.tution of value, ”built up” anarchy. But Saint Simon, a man of fertile genius, would have been the very first to be alarmed at what this Socialistic petty bourgeois made of his theory.

Modern scientific Socialism has worked out the theory of Saint Simon very differently, and while explaining the historical origin of the State, shows in this very origin, the conditions of the future disappearance of the State.

”The State was the official representative of society as a whole, the gathering of it together into a visible embodiment. But it was this only in so far as it was the State of that cla.s.s which itself represented, for the time being, society as a whole; in ancient times the State of slave-owning citizens; in the middle ages, the feudal lords; in our own time, the bourgeoisie. When at last it becomes the real representative of the whole of society, it renders itself unnecessary. As soon as there is no longer any social cla.s.s to be held in subjection; as soon as cla.s.s rule and the individual struggle for existence based on our present anarchy in production, with the collisions and excesses arising from these are removed, nothing more remains to be repressed, and a special repressive force, a State, is no longer necessary. The first act by virtue of which the State really const.i.tutes itself the representative of the whole of society, the taking possession of the means of production in the name of society, this is, at the same time, its last independent act as a State. State interference in social relations becomes, in one domain after another, superfluous, and then dies out of itself; the government of persons is replaced by the administration of things, and by the conduct of processes of production. The State is not 'abolished.' _It dies out._”[31]

FOOTNOTES:

[16] For all these quotations see the preface to the third edition of the ”Confessions d'un Revolutionnaire.” This preface is simply an article reprinted from the _Voix du Peuple_, November, 1849. It was not till 1849 that Proudhon began to ”expound” his Anarchist theory. In 1848, _pace_ Kropotkine, he only expounded his theory of exchange, as anyone can see for himself by reading the sixth volume of his complete works (Paris, 1868). This ”critique” of Democracy, written in March, 1848, did not yet expound his Anarchist theory. This ”critique” forms part of his work, ”Solution du Probleme Social,” and Proudhon proposes to bring about this solution ”without taxes, without loans, without cash payments, without paper-money, without maximum, without levies, without bankruptcy, without agrarian laws, without any poor tax, without national workshops, without a.s.sociation (!), without any partic.i.p.ation or intervention by the State, without any interference with the liberty of commerce and of industry, without any violation of property,” in a word and above all, without any cla.s.s war. A truly ”immortal” idea and worthy the admiration of all bourgeois, peace-loving, sentimental, or bloodthirsty--white, blue, or red!

[17] ”One, two, three; legerdemain isn't witchcraft.”

[18] ”Les Confessions d'un Revolutionnaire.” Vol. ix., 1868 edition of the complete works of Proudhon, pages 166 and 167.

[19] ”Confessions,” pp. 25-26.

[20] He is speaking of the two papers _Le Peuple_ and _Le Representant du Peuple_, which he had published in 1848-9 before the _Voix du Peuple_.

[21] ”Confessions,” pp. 7-8.

[22] For Proudhon the principle of a.s.sociation invoked by most schools (he means the various Socialist schools), ”a principle essentially sterile, is neither an industrial force nor an economic law ... it supposes government and obedience, two terms excluded by the Revolution.” (_Idee Generale de la Revolution au XIX Siecle_, 2 ed., Paris 1851, p. 173).

[23] ”Idee Generale de la Revolution.” Paris, 1851, pp. 124-127.

[24] ”Idee Generale,” pp. 298-299.

[25] ”Idee Generale,” p. 304.

[26] Ibid. p. 324.

[27] Ibid. p. 328.

[28] It was thus that Proudhon understood the determining of value by labour. He could never understand a Ricardo.

[29] ”Idee Generale,” p. 268.

[30] See his book, ”Du Principe Federatif.”

[31] _Socialism: Utopian and Scientific._ By F. Engels. Translated by Edward Aveling. Pp. 75-77.

CHAPTER V

BAKOUNINE

<script>