Friedrich Engels

[Proudhon]

*
Paris.  
Yesterday we spoke of the Montagnards and the Socialists, of the candidacy of Ledru-Rollin and the candidacy of Raspail, of the “Réforme” and the “Peuple” of Citizen Proudhon. We promised to return to Proudhon.

Who is Citizen Proudhon?

Citizen Proudhon is a peasant from Franche-Comté, who has passed through various branches of industry and various studies. He first attracted public attention through a pamphlet published in 1842: “What Is Property?” The answer ran: “Property is theft.”

The surprising repartee struck the French. The Government of Louis Philippe, the austère <stern> Guizot, who has no organ for calembour, was obtuse enough to bring Proudhon to trial. But in vain. For a paradox so piquant one can count on acquittal from any French jury. And so it happened. The Government was disgraced, and Proudhon became a famous man.

As for the book itself, it corresponded throughout to the above summary. Each chapter summed itself up in a remarkable paradox, in a manner that the French had not yet encountered.

For the rest, it contained partly juridico-moral, partly economico-moral treatises, each of which sought to prove that property runs into a contradiction. As regards the juridical points, this may be admitted, in so far as nothing is easier than to demonstrate that the whole of jurisprudence, taken as a whole, runs into nothing but contradictions. As regards the economic treatises, they contain little that is new, and what

is new they contain rests on false calculations. The rule of three is everywhere shamefully mishandled.

Nevertheless, the French could not cope with the book. To the jurists it was too economic, to the economists too juridical, and to both too moral. Après tout, they said finally, c’est un ouvrage remarquable. <However, they said finally, it is a remarkable work.>

But Proudhon strove for greater triumphs. After various small writings that disappeared without trace, his Philosophie de la misère at last appeared in 1846, in two enormous volumes. In this work, which was to establish his fame for ever, Proudhon applied a grievously mishandled Hegelian philosophical method to an oddly misunderstood political economy, and sought, by means of all sorts of transcendental leaps, to found a new socialist system of free workers’ association. This system was so new that in England, under the name of the Equitable Labour Exchange Bazaars or Offices, it had already gone bankrupt ten times in ten different towns ten years previously.

This ponderous, pedantic, bulky work, in which in the end not only all previous economists but also all previous socialists were treated to the greatest rudeness, made absolutely no impression on the frivolous French. This manner of speaking and reasoning was something they had not yet encountered, and far less to their taste than the curious paradoxes of Proudhon’s earlier work. Paradoxes of that sort were, indeed, not lacking here either (thus Proudhon very seriously declared himself “as the personal enemy of Jehovah”), but they were as good as buried under the allegedly dialectical baggage. The French again said: C’est un ouvrage remarquable, and laid it aside. In Germany the work was naturally received with great reverence.

At that time Marx issued a counter-writing, as witty as it was thorough (Misère de la philosophie, réponse à la Philosophie de la misère, de M. Proudhon. Par Karl Marx, Bruxelles et Paris 1847), which is a thousand times more French in its mode of thought and language than Proudhon’s pretentious monstrosity.

As regards the actual content of both of Proudhon’s writings in terms of criticism of existing social conditions, one can, after reading both, say with a clear conscience that it reduces itself to zero.

As for his proposals for social reform, they have, as already said, the advantage that they already proved their worth brilliantly in England some time ago through repeated bankruptcy.

That was Proudhon before the Revolution. While he was still busy bringing into being a daily paper, “Le Représentant du peuple”, without capital but by means of a calculation that in its contempt of the rule of three seeks its equal, the Paris workers bestirred themselves, drove away Louis-Philippe, and founded the Republic.

By virtue of the Republic Proudhon first became a “citizen”; by virtue of the election of the Paris workers on the strength of his honest socialist name he then became a representative of the people.

Thus the Revolution had hurled Citizen Proudhon out of theory into practice, out of his sulking-corner onto the forum. How did the stubborn, arrogant autodidact, who treated all authorities before him, jurists, academicians, economists, and socialists, with equal contempt, who declared all previous history to be twaddle and set himself up, so to speak, as a new Messiah — how did he conduct himself when he was himself to help make history?

We must say to his credit that he began by taking his seat on the extreme Left among those very socialists, and voting with those very socialists, whom he had so deeply despised and so violently attacked as ignorant, arrogant blockheads.

It is true, to be sure, that the word goes round that in the party meetings of the Montagne he renewed his old violent attacks on his bygone opponents with fresh vehemence, that he declared them all without exception to be ignoramuses and phrase-mongers who did not understand the ABC of what they were talking about.

This we readily believe. We even readily believe that Proudhon’s economic paradoxes, served up with the dry passion and self-assurance of doctrinairism, caused the Montagnard gentlemen no little embarrassment. The fewest among them are economic theoreticians, and rely more or less on little Louis Blanc; and little Louis Blanc, although a far more significant mind than the infallible Proudhon, is yet too intuitive a nature to cope with the economically erudite pretension, the alien transcendence, and the apparently mathematical logic of Proudhon. Besides, he soon had to flee, and his flock, at a loss on the field of economy, was left defenceless to the merciless claws of the wolf Proudhon.

That Proudhon, despite all these triumphs, is yet a most feeble economist, hardly needs to be repeated. Only his weak side does not lie precisely in the realm of the multitude of French socialists.

Proudhon won his greatest triumph of all, however, on the tribune of the National Assembly. On some occasion, I no longer recall which, he took the floor and enraged the bourgeois of the Assembly for an hour and a half with an uninterrupted series of truly Proudhonian paradoxes, each madder than the last, but each calculated to shock the most sacred and dearest feelings of his listeners in the coarsest manner. And all this delivered with his dry professorial indifference, in the toneless, professorial Franc-Comtois dialect, in the driest, most imperturbable style in the world — the effect, the St. Vitus’s dance of the raging bourgeois, was really not bad. <See “Proudhon’s Speech against Thiers”>

But that was also the shining point of Proudhon’s public activity. Meanwhile he went on, through the “Représentant du Peuple”, which had gradually come into being, and after bitter experiences with the rule of three, soon transformed itself simply into the “Peuple”, as well as in the clubs, working upon the workers with his theory of happiness. He did not remain without success. On ne le comprend pas, the workers said, mais c’est un homme remarquable. <They do not understand him, the workers said, but he is a remarkable man.>

Written at the beginning of December 1848.

From the manuscript.