the moment the process of the dialectic movement is reduced to the 
simple process of opposing good to bad, of posing problems tending 
to eliminate the bad, and of administering one category as an 
antidote to another, the categories are deprived of all spontaneity; 
the idea “no longer functions’; there is no life left in it. It is no longer 
posed or decomposed into categories. The sequence of categories 
has become a sort of scaffolding. Dialectics has ceased to be the 
movement of absolute reason. There is no longer any dialectics but 
only, at the most, absolutely pure morality. 

When M. Proudhon spoke of the serial relation in the understanding, 
of the logical sequence of categories, he declared positively that he did 
not want to give history according to the order in time, that is, in M. 
Proudhon’s view, the historical sequence in which the categories have 
manifested themselves. Thus for him everything happened in the pure 
ether of reason. Everything was to be derived from this ether by means 
of dialectics. Now that he has to put this dialectics into practice, his 
reason is in default. M. Proudhon’s dialectics runs counter to Hegel’s 
dialectics, and now we have M. Proudhon reduced to saying that the 
order in which he gives the economic categories is no longer the 
order in which they engender one another. Economic evolutions are 
no longer the evolutions of reason itself. 

What then does M. Proudhon give us? Real history, which is, 
according to M. Proudhon’s understanding, the sequence in which 
the categories have manifested themselves in order of time? No! His- 
tory as it takes place in the idea itself? Still less! That is, neither the 
profane history of the categories, nor their sacred history! What his- 
tory does he give us then? The history of his own contradictions. Let 
us see how they go, and how they drag M. Proudhon in their train. 

Before entering upon this examination, which gives rise to the 
sixth important observation, we have yet another, less important 
observation to make. 

Let us admit with M. Proudhon that real history, history according 
to the order in time, is the historical sequence in which ideas. 
categories and principles have manifested themselves. 

Each principle has had its own century in which to manifest itself. 
The principle of authority, for example, had the eleventh century, 
just as the principle of individualism had the eighteenth century. In 
logical sequence, it was the century that belonged to the principle, 
and not the principle that belonged to the century. In other words it 
was the principle that made the history, and not the history that 
made the principle. When, consequently, in order to save principles 
as much as to save history, we ask ourselves why a particular 
principle was manifested in the eleventh or in the eighteenth century 
rather than in any other, we are necessarily forced to examine 
minutely what men were like in the eleventh century, what they were 
like in the eighteenth, what were their respective needs, their 
productive forces, their mode of production, the raw materials of 
their production—in short, what were the relations between man 
and man which resulted from all these conditions of existence. To 
get to the bottom of all these questions—what is this but to draw up 
the real, profane history of men in every century and to present 
these men as both the authors and the actors of their own drama? 
But the moment you present men as the actors and authors of their 
own history, you arrive—by a detour—at the real starting point, 
because you have abandoned those eternal principles of which you 
spoke at the outset. 

M. Proudhon has not even gone far enough along the sideroad 
which an ideologist takes to reach the main road of history. 

Sixth Observation 

Let us take the sideroad with M. Proudhon. 

We shall concede that economic relations, viewed as immutable 
laws, eternal principles, ideal categories, existed before active and 
energetic men did; we shall concede further that these laws, 
principles and categories had, since the beginning of time, slum- 
bered “in the impersonal reason of humanity”. We have already 
seen that, with all these changeless and motionless eternities, there is 
no history left; there is at most history in the idea, that is, history 
reflected in the dialectic movement of pure reason. M. Proudhon, by 
saying that, in the dialectic movement, ideas are no longer 
differentiated’, has done away with both the shadow of movement and 
the movement of shadows, by means of which one could still have 
created at least a semblance of history. Instead of that, he imputes to 
history his own impotence. He lays the blame on everything, even the 
French language. 

The Poverty of Philosophy 171 

“It is inexact then,” says M. Proudhon the philosopher, “to say that something 
appears, that something is produced: in civilisation as in the universe, everything has 
existed, has acted, from eternity.... This applies to the whole of social economy.” (Tome 
Il. p. 102.) 

So great is the productive force of the contradictions which 
function and which make M. Proudhon function, that, in trying to 
explain history, he is forced to deny it; in trying to explain the 
successive appearance of social relations, he denies that anything can 
appear: in trying to explain production, with all its phases, he 
questions whether anything can be produced! 

Thus, for M. Proudhon, there is no longer any history: no longer 
any sequence of ideas. And yet his book still exists; and it is precisely 
that book which 1s, to use his own expression, “history according to the 
sequence of ideas’. How shall we find a formula, for M. Proudhon isa 
man of formulas, to help him to clear all these contradictions in one 
leap? 

To this end he has invented a new reason, which is neither the 
pure and virgin absolute reason, nor the common reason of men 
living and acting in different periods, but a reason quite apart—the 
reason of the person-society—of the subject, humanity—which under 
the pen of M. Proudhon figures at times also as “social genius’, 
“general reason’, or finally as “human reason”. This reason, decked 
out under so many names, betrays itself nevertheless, at every 
moment, as the individual reason of M. Proudhon, with its good and 
its bad side, its antidotes and its problems. 

“Human reason does not create truth”, hidden in the depths of 
absolute, eternal reason. It can only unveil it. But such truths as it 
has unveiled up to now are incomplete, insufficient and consequent- 
ly contradictory. Hence, economic categories, being themselves 
truths discovered, revealed by human reason, by social genius, are 
equally incomplete and contain within themselves the germ of 
contradiction. Before M. Proudhon, social genius saw only the 
antagonistic elements, and not the synthetic formula, both hidden 
simultaneously in absolute reason. Economic relations, which merely 
realise on earth these insufficient truths, these incomplete categories, 
these contradictory notions, are consequently contradictory in 
themselves, and present two sides, one good, the other bad. 

To find complete truth, the notion, in all its fullness, the synthetic 
formula that is to annihilate the antinomy, this is the problem of 
social genius. This again is why, in M. Proudhon’s illusion, this same 
social genius has been carried from one category to another without 
ever having been able, despite all its battery of categories, to snatch 
from God, from absolute reason, a synthetic formula. 

“At first, society” (social genius) “poses a primary fact, puts forward a hypothesis... 
a veritable antinomy, whose antagonistic results develop in the social economy in the 
same way as its consequences could have been deduced in the mind; so that industrial 
movement, following in all things the deduction of ideas, splits up into two currents, 
one of useful effects, the other of subversive results.... To bring harmony into 
the constitution of this two-sided principle, and to solve this antinomy, society gives 
rise to a second, which will soon be followed by a third; and the progress of social genius 
will take place in this manner, until, having exhausted all its contradictions—I sup- 
pose, but it is not proved that there is a limit to human contradictions—it returns in 
one leap to all its former positions and in a single formula solves all its problems.” 
(Tome I, p. 133.) 

Just as the antithesis was before turned into an antidote, so now the 
thesis becomes a hypothesis. This change of terms, coming from M. 
Proudhon, has no longer anything surprising for us! Human reason, 
which is anything but pure, having only incomplete vision, 
encounters at every step new problems to be solved. Every new thesis 
which it discovers in absolute reason and which is the negation of the 
first thesis, becomes for it a synthesis, which it accepts rather naively 
as the solution of the problem in question. It is thus that this reason 
frets and fumes in ever renewing contradictions until, coming to the 
end of the contradictions, it perceives that all its theses and syntheses 
are merely contradictory hypotheses. In its perplexity, “human 
reason, social genius, returns in one leap to all its former positions 
and in a single formula solves all its problems”. This unique formula, 
by the way, constitutes M. Proudhon’s true discovery. It is constituted 
value. 

Hypotheses are made only in view of some aim. The aim that social 
genius, speaking through the mouth of M. Proudhon, set itself in the 
first place, was to eliminate the bad in every economic category, in 
order to have nothing left but the good. For it, the good, the 
supreme good, the real practical aim, is equality. And why did the 
social genius aim at equality rather than inequality, fraternity, Catholi- 
cism, or any other principle? Because “humanity has successively 
realised so many separate hypotheses only in view of a superior 
hypothesis” [I 12], which precisely is equality. In other words: 
because equality is M. Proudhon’s ideal. He imagines that the 
division of labour, credit, the workshop—all economic rela- 
tions—were invented merely for the benefit of equality, and yet they 
always ended up by turning against it. Since history and the fiction of 
M. Proudhon contradict each other at every step, the latter concludes 
that there is a contradiction. If there is a contradiction, it exists only 
between his fixed idea and real movement. 

Henceforth the good side of an economic relation is that which 
affirms equality; the bad side, that which negates it and affirms 

The Poverty of Philosophy 173 

inequality. Every new category is a hypothesis of the social genius to 
eliminate the inequality engendered by the preceding hypothesis. In 
short, equality is the primordial intention, the mystical tendency, the 
providential aim that the social genius has constantly before its eyes as 
it whirls in the circle of economic contradictions. Thus Providence is 
the locomotive which makes the whole of M. Proudhon’s economic 
baggage move better than his pure and volatilised reason. He has 
devoted to providence a whole chapter, which follows the one on 
taxes.! 

Providence, providential aim, this is the great word used today to 
explain the march of history. In fact, this word explains nothing. It is 
at most a rhetorical form, one of the various ways of paraphrasing 
facts. 

It is a fact that in Scotland landed property acquired a new value 
through the development of English industry. This industry opened 
up new outlets for wool. In order to produce wool on a large scale, 
arable land had to be transformed into pastures. To effect this 
transformation, the estates had to be concentrated. To concentrate 
the estates, small holdings had first to be abolished, thousands of 
tenants had to be driven from their native soil and a few shepherds 
in charge of millions of sheep to be installed in their place. Thus, by 
successive transformations, landed property in Scotland has resulted 
in men being driven out by sheep. Now say that the providential 
aim of the institution of landed property in Scotland was to have 
men driven out by sheep, and you will have made providential 
history. 

Of course, the tendency towards equality belongs to our century. 
To say now that all former centuries, with entirely different needs, 
means of production, etc., worked providentially for the realisation 
of equality is, first of all, to substitute the means and the men of our 
century for the men and the means of earlier centuries and to 
misunderstand the historical movement by which the successive 
generations transformed the results acquired by the generations that 
preceded them. Economists know very well that the very thing that 
was for the one a finished product was for the other but the raw 
material for new production. 

Suppose, as M. Proudhon does, that social genius produced, or 
rather improvised, the feudal lords with the providential aim of 
transforming the settlers into responsible and equally-placed workers: 
and you will have effected a substitution of aims and of persons 
worthy of the Providence that instituted landed property in 
Scotland, in order to give itself the malicious pleasure of having men 
driven out by sheep. 

But since M. Proudhon takes such a tender interest in Providence, 
we refer him to the Histoire de l'économie politique of M. de 
Villeneuve-Bargemont, who likewise goes in pursuit of a providen- 
tial aim. This aim, however, is not equality, but Catholicism. 

Seventh and Last Observation 

Economists have a singular method of procedure. There are only 
two kinds of institutions for them, artificial and natural. The 
institutions of feudalism are artificial institutions, those of the 
bourgeoisie are natural institutions. In this they resemble the 
theologians, who likewise establish two kinds of religion. Every 
religion which is not theirs is an invention of men, while their own is 
an emanation from God. When the economists say that present-day 
relations—the relations of bourgeois production—are natural, they 
imply that these are the relations in which wealth is created and 
productive forces developed in conformity with the laws of nature. 
These relations therefore are themselves natural laws independent 
of the influence of time. They are eterna] laws which must always 
govern society. Thus there has been history, but there is no longer 
any. There has been history, since there were the institutions 
of feudalism, and in these institutions of feudalism we find 
quite different relations of production from those of bourgeois 
society, which the economists try to pass off as natural and as such, 
eternal. 

Feudalism also had its proletariat—serfage, which contained all 
the germs of the bourgeoisie. Feudal production also had two 
antagonistic elements which are likewise designated by the name of 
the good side and the bad side of feudalism, irrespective of the fact 
that it is always the bad side that in the end triumphs over the good 
side. It is the bad side that produces the movement which makes 
history, by providing a struggle. If, during the epoch of the 
domination of feudalism, the economists, enthusiastic over the 
knightly virtues, the beautiful harmony between rights and duties, 
the patriarchal life of the towns, the prosperous condition of 
domestic industry in the countryside, the development of industry 
organised into corporations, guilds and fraternities, in short, every- 
thing that constitutes the good side of feudalism, had set themselves 
the problem of eliminating everything that cast a shadow on this 
picture—serfdom, privileges, anarchy—what would have happened? 
All the elements which called forth the struggle would have been 

The Poverty of Philosophy 175 

destroyed, and the development of the bourgeoisie nipped in the 
bud. One would have set oneself the absurd problem of eliminating 
history. 

After the triumph of the bourgeoisie there was no longer any 
question of the good or the bad side of feudalism. The bourgeoisie 
took possession of the productive forces it had developed under 
feudalism. All the old economic forms, the corresponding civil 
relations, the political system which was the official expression of the 
old civil society, were smashed. 

Thus feudal production, to be judged properly, must be 
considered as a mode of production founded on antagonism. It must 
be shown how wealth was produced within this antagonism, how the 
productive forces were developed at the same time as class 
antagonisms, how one of the classes, the bad side, the drawback of 
society, went on growing until the material conditions for its 
emancipation had attained full maturity. Is not this as good as saying 
that the mode of production, the relations in which productive forces 
are developed, are anything but eternal laws, but that they 
correspond to a definite development of men and of their 
productive forces, and that a change in men’s productive forces 
necessarily brings about a change in their’ relations of production? 
As the main thing is not to be deprived of the fruits of civilisation, of 
the acquired productive forces, the traditional forms in which they 
were produced must be smashed. From this moment the revolu- 
tionary class becomes conservative. 

The bourgeoisie begins with a proletariat which is itself a relic of 
the proletariat? of feudal times. In the course of its historical 
development, the bourgeoisie necessarily develops its antagonistic 
character, which at first is more or less disguised, existing only in a 
latent state. As the bourgeoisie develops, there develops in its bosom 
a new proletariat, a modern proletariat; there develops a struggle 
between the proletarian class and the bourgeois class, a struggle 
which, before being felt, perceived, appreciated, understood, 
avowed and proclaimed aloud by both sides, expresses itself, to start 
with, merely in partial and momentary conflicts, in subversive acts. 

* In the 1847 edition the word “leurs” (“their”) is not used; in the copy with 
corrections in Marx’s hand and the one presented to N. Utina the word “leurs” is 
inserted instead of “les” (“the”). The correction was reproduced in the German 
edition of 1885 and the French edition of 1896.— Ed. 

> In the copy with corrections in Marx’s hand the words “du proletariat” (“of the 
proletariat”) are underscored and the words “de la classe travailleuse” (‘‘of the class of 
workers”) are written in Engels’ hand in the margin. These latter words are 
reproduced in the copy presented to N. Utina.— Ed. 

176 ‘Karl Marx 

On the other hand, if all the members of the modern bourgeoisie 
have the same interests inasmuch as they form a class as against 
another class, they have opposite, antagonistic interests inasmuch as 
they stand face to face with one another. This opposition of interests 
results from the economic conditions of their bourgeois life. From 
day to day it thus becomes clearer that the production relations in 
which the bourgeoisie moves have not a simple, uniform character, 
but a dual character; that in the selfsame relations in which wealth is 
produced, poverty is produced also; that in the selfsame relations in 
which there is a development of the productive forces, there is also a 
force producing repression; that these relations produce bourgeois 
wealth, i. e., the wealth of the bourgeois class, only by continually 
annihilating the wealth of the individual members of this class and by 
producing an ever-growing proletariat. 

The more the antagonistic character comes to light, the more the 
economists, the scientific representatives of bourgeois production, 
find themselves in conflict with their own theory; and different 
schools arise. 

We have the fatalist economists, who in their theory are as 
indifferent to what they call the drawbacks of bourgeois production 
as the bourgeois themselves are in practice to the sufferings of the 
proletarians who help them to acquire wealth. In this fatalist school 
there are Classics and Romantics. The Classics, like Adam Smith and 
Ricardo, represent a bourgeoisie which, while still struggling with the 
relics of feudal society, works only to purge economic relations of 
feudal taints, to increase the productive forces and to give a new 
upsurge to industry and commerce. The proletariat that takes part in 
this struggle and is absorbed in this feverish labour experiences only 
passing, accidental sufferings, and itself regards them as such. 
Economists like Adam Smith and Ricardo, who are the historians of 
this epoch, have no other mission than that of showing how wealth is 
acquired in bourgeois production relations, of formulating these 
relations into categories, into laws, and of showing how superior 
these laws, these categories, are for the production of wealth to the 
laws and categories of feudal society. Poverty is in their eyes merely 
the pang which accompanies every childbirth, in nature as in 
industry. 

The Romantics belong to our own age, in which the bourgeoisie is 
in direct opposition to the proletariat; in which poverty is 
engendered in as great abundance as wealth. The economists now 
pose as blasé fatalists, who, from their elevated position, cast a 
proudly disdainful glance at the human machines who manufacture 
wealth. They copy all the developments given by their predecessors, 

The Poverty of Philosophy 177 

and the indifference which in the latter was merely naiveté becomes 
in them coquetry. 

Next comes the humanitarian school, which takes to heart the bad 
side of present-day production relations. It seeks, by way of easing its 
conscience, to palliate even if slightly the real contrasts; it sincerely 
deplores the distress of the proletariat, the unbridled competition of 
the bourgeois among themselves; it counsels the workers to be 
sober, to work hard and to have few children; it advises the bour- 
geois to put a judicious ardour into production. The whole theory 
of this school rests on interminable distinctions between theory 
and practice, between principles and results, between idea 
and application, between content and form, between essence and 
reality, between law and fact, between the good side and the bad 
side. 

The philanthropic school is the humanitarian school carried to 
perfection. It denies the necessity of antagonism; it wants to turn all 
men into bourgeois; it wants to realise theory insofar as it is 
distinguished from practice and contains no antagonism. It goes 
without saying that, in theory, it is easy to make an abstraction of the 
contradictions that are met with at every moment in actual reality. 
This theory would therefore become idealised reality. The philan- 
thropists, then, want to retain the categories which express bour- 
geois relations, without the antagonism which constitutes them 
and is inseparable from them. They think they are seriously 
fighting bourgeois practice, and they are more bourgeois than the 
others. 

Just as the economists are the scientific representatives of the 
bourgeois class, so the socialists and the Communists are the 
theoreticians of the proletarian class. So long as the proletariat is not 
yet sufficiently developed to constitute itself as a class, and 
consequently so long as the very struggle of the proletariat with the 
bourgeoisie has not yet assumed a political character, and the 
productive forces are not yet sufficiently developed in the bosom of 
the bourgeoisie itself to enable us to catch a glimpse of the material 
conditions necessary for the emancipation of the proletariat and for 
the formation of a new society, these theoreticians are merely 
utopians who, to meet the wants of the oppressed classes, improvise 
systems and go in search of a regenerating science. But in the 
measure that history moves forward, and with it the struggle of the 
proletariat assumes clearer outlines, they no longer need to seek 
science in their minds; they have only to take note of what is 
happening before their eyes and to become its mouthpiece. So long 
as they look for science and merely make systems, so long as they are 

at the beginning of the struggle, they see in poverty nothing but 
poverty, without seeing in it the revolutionary, subversive side, which 
will overthrow the old society. From the moment they see this side, 
science, which is produced by the historical movement and associating 
itself consciously with it, has ceased to be doctrinaire and has become 
revolutionary. 

Let us return to M. Proudhon. 

Every economic relation has a good and a bad side; it is the one 
point on which M. Proudhon does not give himself the lie. He sees 
the good side expounded by the economists; the bad side he 
sees denounced by the socialists. He borrows from the econo- 
mists the necessity of eternal relations; he borrows from the 
socialists the illusion of seeing in poverty nothing but poverty. He is 
in agreement with both in wanting to fall back upon the authority 
of science. Science for him reduces itself to the slender pro- 
portions of a scientific formula; he is the man in search of formu- 
las. Thus it is that M. Proudhon flatters himself on having given 
a criticism of both political economy and communism: he is 
beneath them both. Beneath the economists, since, as a philos- 
opher who has at his elbow a magic formula, he thought he could 
dispense with going into purely economic details; beneath the 
socialists, because he has neither courage enough nor insight 
enough to rise, be it even speculatively, above the bourgeois 
horizon. 

He wants to be the synthesis—he is a composite error. 

He wants to soar as the man of science above the bourgeois and the 
proletarians; he is merely the petty bourgeois, continually tossed 
back and forth between capital and labour, political economy and 
communism. 

§2. DIVISION OF LABOUR AND MACHINERY 

The division of labour, according to M. Proudhon, opens the 
series of economic evolutions. 

“Considered in its essence, the divi- 

Good side of sion of labour is the manner in which 

the division of labour equality of conditions and of intelli. 
gence is realised.” (Tome I, p. 93.) 

The Poverty of Philosophy 179 

“The division of labour has become 
for us an instrument of poverty.” 
(Tome I, p. 94.) 

Variant 
Bad side of . Shee ask 

the division of labour Labour, by dividing itself according 
to the law which is peculiar to it and 
which is the primary condition of its 
fruitfulness, ends in the negation of its 
aims and destroys itself.” (Tome I, p. 
94.) 

To find the “recomposition which 
Probate BeRolied wipes out the drawbacks of the divi- 
sion, while retaining its useful effects.” 

(Tome I, p. 97.) 

The division of labour is, according to M. Proudhon, an eternal 
law, a simple, abstract category. Therefore the abstraction, the idea, 
the word must suffice for him to explain the division of labour at 
different historical epochs. Castes, corporations, manufacture, 
large-scale industry must be explained by the single word divide. 
First study carefully the meaning of “divide”, and you will have no 
need to study the numerous influences which give the division of 
labour a definite character in each epoch. 

Certainly, it would be oversimplifying things to reduce them to 
M. Proudhon’s categories. History does not proceed so categorically. 
It took three whole centuries in Germany to establish the first big 
division of labour, the separation of the towns from the country. In 
proportion as this one relation of town and country was modified, 
the whole of society was modified. To take only this one aspect of the 
division of labour, you have the republics of antiquity and you have 
Christian feudalism; you have old England with its barons and you 
have modern England with its cotton lords.z In the fourteenth and 
fifteenth centuries, when there were as yet no colonies, when 
America did not yet exist for Europe, when Asia existed only 
through the intermediary of Constantinople, when the Mediterra- 
nean was the centre of commercial activity, the division of labour had 
a very different form, a very different aspect from that of the 
seventeenth century, when the Spanish, the Portuguese, the Dutch, 
the English, and the French had colonies established in all parts of 

* In the original the words “cotton lords” are given in English in parentheses after 
the French.— Ed. 

the world. The extent of the market, its physiognomy, give to the 
division of labour at different periods a physiognomy, a character, 
which it would be difficult to deduce from the single word divide, 
from the idea, from the category. 

“All economists since Adam Smith,” says M. Proudhon, “have pointed out the 
advantages and drawbacks of the law of division, but insist much more on the first than 
on the second, because that was more serviceable for their optimism, and none of 
them has ever wondered what could be the drawbacks to a law.... How does the same 
principle, pursued vigorously to its consequences, lead to diametrically opposite 
results? Not one economist before or since A. Smith has even perceived that here was a 
problem to elucidate. Say goes to the length of recognising that in the division of 
labour the same cause that produces the good engenders the bad.” [I 95-96] 

Adam Smith goes further than M. Proudhon thinks. He saw 
clearly that 

“the difference of natural talents in different men is, in reality, much less than we 
are aware of; and the very different genius which appears to distinguish men of 
different professions, when grown up to maturity, is not so much the cause as the 

wa 

effect of the division of labour’. 

In principle, a porter differs less from a philosopher than a mastiff 
from a greyhound. It is the division of labour which has set a gulf 
between them. All this does not prevent M. Proudhon from saying 
elsewhere that Adam Smith had not the slightest idea of the 
drawbacks produced by the division of labour. It is this again that 
makes him say that J. B. Say was the first to recognise “that in the 
division of labour the same cause that produces the good engenders 
the bad”’. [I 96] 

But let us listen to Lemontey; Suum cuique. 

“M. J. B. Say has done me the honour of adopting in his excellent treatise on 
political economy the principle that I brought to light in this fragment on the moral 
influence of the division of labour. The somewhat frivolous title of my book > doubtless 
prevented him from citing me. It is only to this motive that I can attribute the silence 
of a writer too rich in his own stock to disavow so modest a loan.” (Lemontey 
[,“‘Influence morale de la division du travail” ], @uvres completes, tome I, p. 245, Paris, 
1840.) 

Let us do him this justice: Lemontey wittily exposed the 
regrettable consequences of the division of labour as it is constituted 
today, and M. Proudhon found nothing to add to it. But now that, 
through the fault of M. Proudhon, we have been drawn into this 
question of priority, let us say again, in passing, that long before M. 

2 A. Smith, Recherches sur la nature et les causes de la richesse des nations, t. I, Paris, 
1802, pp. 33-34; Eng. ed., pp. 56-57.— Ed. 

bP E, Lemontey, Raison, folie, chacun son mot; petit cours de morale mis a la portée des 
vieux enfants.— Ed. 

The Poverty of Philosophy 181] 

Lemontey, and seventeen years before Adam Smith, who was a pupil 
of A. Ferguson, the last-named gave a clear exposition of the subject 
in a chapter which deals specifically with the division of labour. 
“It may even be doubted, whether the measure of national capacity increases with 
the advancement of arts. Many mechanical arts ... succeed best under a total 
suppression of sentiment and reason; and ignorance is the mother of industry as well 
as of superstition. Reflection and fancy are subject to err; but a habit of moving the 
hand, or the foot, is independent of either. Manufactures, accordingly, prosper most, 
where the mind is least consulted, and where the workshop may, without any great 
effort of imagination, be considered as an engine, the parts of which are men.... The 
general officer may be a great proficient in the knowledge of war, while the skill of the 
soldier is confined to a few motions of the hand and the foot. The former may have 
gained what the latter has lost.... And thinking itself, in this age of separations, may 

become a peculiar craft.” (A. Ferguson, Essai sur histoire de la société civile, Paris, 1783 
[II 108, 109, 110; Eng. ed., pp. 280, 281].) 

To bring this literary survey to a close, we expressly deny that “all 
economists have insisted far more on the advantages than on the 
drawbacks of the division of labour”. It suffices to mention 
Sismondi. | 

Thus, as far as the advantages of the division of labour are 
concerned, M. Proudhon had nothing further to do than to 
paraphrase more or less pompously the general propositions known 
to everybody. 

Let us now see how he derives from the division of labour, taken as 
a general law, as a category, as a thought, the drawbacks which. are 
attached to it. How is it that this category, this law implies an unequal 
distribution of labour to the detriment of M. Proudhon’s equalitarian 
system? 

‘At this solemn hour of the division of labour, the storm winds begin to blow over 
humanity. Progress does not take place for al] in an equal and uniform mannev.... It 
begins by taking possession of a small number of the privileged.... It is this preference 
for persons on the part of progress that has for so long kept up the belief in the 
natural and providential inequality of conditions, has given rise to castes, and 
hierarchically constituted all societies.” (Proudhon, tome I, p. 94.) 

The division of labour created castes. Now, castes are the 
drawbacks of the division of labour; thus it is the division of labour 
that has engendered the drawbacks. Quod erat demonstrandum. Will 
you go further and ask what made the division of labour create 
castes, hierarchical constitutions and privileged persons? M. 
Proudhon will tell you: Progress. And what made _ progress? 
Limitation. Limitation, for M. Proudhon, is discrimination of 
persons on the part of progress. 

After philosophy comes history. It is no longer either descriptive 
history or dialectical history, it is comparative history. M. Proudhon 

establishes a parallel between the present-day printing worker and 
the printing worker of the Middle Ages; between the worker of 
Creusot and the country blacksmith; between the man of letters of 
today and the man of letters of the Middle Ages, and he weighs down 
the balance on the side of those who belong more or less to the 
division of labour as the Middle Ages constituted or transmitted it. 
He opposes the division of labour of one historical epoch to the 
division of labour of another historical epoch. Was that what M. 
Proudhon had to prove? No. He should have shown us the 
drawbacks of the division of labour in general, of the division of 
labour as a category. Besides, why stress this part of M. Proudhon’s 
work, since a little later we shall see him formally retract all these 
alleged arguments? 

“The first effect of fractional labour,” continues M. Proudhon, “after the 
depravation of the soul, is the lengthening of the shifts, which grow in inverse ratio to the 
sum total of intelligence expended.... But as the length of the shifts cannot exceed 
sixteen to eighteen hours per day, since the compensation cannot be taken out of the 
time, it will be taken out of the price, and the wages will diminish.... What is certain, 
and the only thing for us to note, is that the universal conscience does not assess at the 
same rate the work of a foreman and the labour of an unskilled worker. It is therefore 
necessary to reduce the price of the day’s work; so that the worker, after having been 
afflicted in his soul by a degrading function, cannot escape being struck in his body by 
the meagreness of his remuneration.” [I 97, 98] 

We pass over the logical value of these syllogisms, which Kant 
would call paralogisms which lead astray. 

This is the substance of it: 

The division of labour reduces the worker to a degrading 
function; to this degrading function corresponds a depraved soul; to 
the depravation of the soul is befitting an ever-increasing wage 
reduction. And to prove that this reduction is befitting to a depraved 
soul, M. Proudhon says, to relieve his conscience, that the universal 
conscience wills it thus. Is M. Proudhon’s soul to be reckoned as a 
part of the universal conscience? 

Machinery is, for M. Proudhon, “the logical antithesis of the 
division of labour” [I 135], and in support of his dialectics, he begins 
by transforming the machinery into the workshop. 

After presupposing the modern workshop, in order to make 
poverty the outcome of the division of labour, M. Proudhon 
presupposes poverty engendered by the division of labour, in order 
to come to the workshop and be able to represent it as the dialectical 
negation of that poverty. After striking the worker morally by a 
degrading function, physically by the meagreness of the wage; after 
putting the worker under the dependence of the foreman, and debasing 

The Poverty of Philosophy 183 

his work to the labour of an unskilled worker, he lays the blame again on 
the workshop and the machinery for degrading the worker “by giving 
him a master’, and he completes his abasement by making him “sink 
from the rank of artisan to that of navvy’. [I 164] Excellent dialectics! 
And if he only stopped there! But no, he has to have a new history of 
the division of labour, not any longer to derive the contradictions 
from it, but to reconstruct the workshop after his own fashion. To 
attain this end he finds himself compelled to forget all he has just 
said about division. 

Labour is organised, is divided differently according to the 
instruments it has at its disposal. The hand-mill presupposes a 
different division of labour from the steam-mill. Thus it is slapping 
history in the face to want to begin with the division of labour in 
general, in order to arrive subsequently at a specific instrument of 
production, machinery. 

Machinery is no more an economic category than the bullock that 
drags the plough. Machinery is merely a productive force. The 
modern workshop, which is based on the application of machinery, is 
a social production relation, an economic category. 

Let us see now how things happen in M. Proudhon’s brilliant 
imagination. 

“In society, the incessant appearance of machinery is the antithesis, the inverse 
formula of the division of labour: it is the protest of the industrial genius against 
fractional and homicidal labour. What, actually, is a machine? A way of uniting different 
portions of labour which had been separated by the division of labour. Every machine 
can be defined as a summary of several operations.... Thus through the machine there 
will be a restoration of the worker.... Machinery, which in political economy places itself in 
contradiction to the division of labour, represents synthesis, which in the human mind 
is opposed to analysis.... Division merely separated the different parts of labour, 
letting each one devote himself to the speciality which most suited him; the workshop 
groups the workers according to the relation of each part to the whole.... It introduces 
the principle of authority in labour.... But this is not all; the machine or the workshop, 
after degrading the worker by giving him a master, completes his abasement by 
making him sink from the rank of artisan to that of navvy.... The period we are going 
through at the moment, that of machinery, is distinguished by a special characteristic, 
the wage system. The wage system is subsequent to the division of labour and to 
exchange.” [I 135, 136, 161, 164, 161] 

Just a simple remark to M. Proudhon. The separation of the 
different parts of labour, leaving to each one the opportunity of 
devoting himself to the speciality best suited to him—a separation 
which M. Proudhon dates from the beginning of the world—exists 
only in modern industry under the rule of competition. 

M. Proudhon goes on to give us a most “interesting genealogy”, to 
show how the workshop arose from the division of labour and the 
wage system from the workshop. 

1) He supposes a man who “noticed that by dividing up 
production into its different parts and having each one performed 
by a separate worker” the forces of production would be multi- 
plied. 

2) This man, “grasping the thread of this idea, tells himself that, 
by forming a permanent group of workers selected for the special 
purpose he sets himself, he will obtain a more sustained production, 
etc.” [I 161] 

3) This man makes a proposal to other men, to make them grasp 
his idea and the thread of his idea. 

4) This man, at the beginning of industry, deals on terms of equality 
with his companions who later become his workmen. 

5) “One realises, in fact, that this original equality had rapidly to 
disappear in view of the advantageous position of the master and the 
dependence of the wage worker.” [I 163] 

There we have another example of M. Proudhon’s historical and 
descriptive method. 

Let us now examine, from the historical and economic point of 
view, whether the workshop or the machine really introduced the 
principle of authority in society subsequently to the division of labour; 
whether it rehabilitated the worker on the one hand, while 
submitting him to authority on the other; whether the machine is the 
recomposition of divided labour, the synthesis of labour as opposed to 
its analysis. 

Society as a whole has this in common with the interior of a 
workshop, that it too has its division of labour. If one took as a model 
the division of labour in a modern workshop, in order to apply it toa 
whole society, the society best organised for the production of wealth 
would undoubtedly be that which had a single chief employer, 
distributing tasks to the different members of the community 
according to a previously fixed rule. But this is by no means the case. 
While inside the modern workshop the division of labour is 
meticulously regulated by the authority of the employer, modern 
society has no other rule, no other authority for the distribution of 
labour than free competition. 

Under the patriarchal system, under the caste system, under the 
feudal and guild system, there was division of labour in the whole of 
society according to fixed rules. Were these rules established by a 
legislator? No. Originally born of the conditions of material 
production, they were raised to the status of laws only much later. In 
this way these different forms of the division of labour became so 
many bases of social organisation. As for the division of labour in the 
workshop, it was very little developed in all these forms of society. 

The Poverty of Philosophy 185 

It can even be laid down as a general rule that the less authority 
presides over the division of labour inside society, the more the 
division of labour develops inside the workshop, and the more it is 
subjected there to the authority of a single person. Thus authority in 
the workshop and authority in society, in relation to the division of 
labour, are in inverse ratio to each other. 

The question now is what kind of workshop it is in which the 
occupations are very much separated, where each worker’s task is 
reduced to a very simple operation, and where the authority, capital, 
groups and directs the work. How was this workshop brought into 
existence? In order to answer this question we shall have to examine 
how manufacturing industry, properly so-called, has developed. I 
am speaking here of that industry which is not yet modern industry, 
with its machinery, but which is already no longer the industry of the 
artisans of the Middle Ages, nor domestic industry. We shall not go 
into great detail: we shall merely give a few main points to show that 
history cannot be made with formulas. 

One of the most indispensable conditions for the formation of 
manufacturing industry was the accumulation of capital, facili- 
tated by the discovery of America and the import of its precious 
metals.