Read Demanding the Impossible: A History of Anarchism Online
Authors: Peter Marshall
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The sovereignty of reason having been substituted for that of revelation; the notion of contract succeeding to that of compulsion; economic critique revealing that political institutions must now be absorbed into the industrial organism: we fearlessly conclude that the revolutionary formula can no longer be direct government or any kind of government, but must be: no more government.
54
Proudhon makes clear that instead of law he would have free contract or voluntary agreement which he considers to be the negation of authority. Such a contract would be based not on distributive justice, or distribution according to need, but on commutative justice, that is, on mutual exchange. It would take the form of contracts in which the parties would undertake mutual obligations and reciprocal guarantees for exchanging goods of equal value. It would be subject to no outside authority and impose no obligations on the contracting parties except those resulting ‘from their personal promise of reciprocal service’.
55
This was to become the basis of his mature anarchism.
Proudhon was freed from prison in 1852, but the atmosphere of repression under Napoleon III made it almost impossible for socialists to publish their ideas. In 1854, the prolific and irrepressible author reluctantly confessed to an old friend ‘The literary career is now more or less closed to me. No printer, no bookseller in Paris would dare publish or sell anything of mine … it seems that Society, really convinced that I am its greatest enemy, has excommunicated me.
Terra et qua interdictus sum!’
56
But he was far from finished. Four years later, he was inspired by a Catholic pamphleteer to write his greatest work on ethics,
Justice in the Revolution and the Church
(1858). In it, he laid out the ethical principles which were implicit in all his earlier works and clarified his view of human nature.
Although like Godwin, Proudhon believed that human beings are potentially rational, progressive and just, he starts from a very different position. To begin with, he believed that human nature is constant and unchangeable. The first characteristic of our nature is that we are individuals; society comes after the individual. But it is only in the abstract that the individual may be regarded in a state of isolation; he is ‘an integral part of collective existence’.
57
Society is as real a thing as the individuals who compose it. The collectivity or group thus is the fundamental condition of all existence and society like the individual has a ‘force, will and consciousness of its own’.
58
Proudhon thus went beyond the atomistic approach of Godwin and Stirner, and argued that individuals in a group create a ‘collective force’ and a ‘collective reason’ which are over and above the sum of individual forces and intelligences which compose the group. He also saw the family as the most important socializing agency in society, the source of our moral sentiments and social capacities.
Our social being does not however prevent us from being aggressive. It is our pugnacity which gives rise to conflict and war. According to Proudhon, man is naturally free and selfish. He is capable of self-sacrifice for love and friendship but as a rule selfishly pursues his own interest and pleasure.
59
The result is that left to himself he will inevitably try to gain power over others.
To avoid conflict Proudhon suggests that primitive men sought a leader and created a social hierarchy. This led to the exploitation of the weak by the strong. To constrain social conflict religion was first used but when it proved insufficient it was supported by the coercive force of government. But the drastic remedy of government for conflict eventually became an additional cause for its existence: ‘Government was progressive when it
defended a society against savages. There are no more savages: there are only workers whom the government treats like savages.’
60
Thanks to our potential rationality, there is however a way out of this apparent impasse. As Proudhon wrote in his
Confessions
, ‘in society as well as in the individual, reason and reflection always triumph over instinct and spontaneity. This is the characteristic feature of our species and it accounts for the fact that we progress. It follows that Nature in us seems to retreat while Reason comes to the fore.’
61
As man develops his reasoning powers and matures morally, he is therefore able to rebel against religious and political authority and reaches a stage where the artificial restrictions of government and law can be done away with. Liberation is within reach.
In his ethics, Proudhon rejected the sanction of both Church and State. He had of course long thrown off his childhood Catholicism and had concluded that ‘God is evil’. Although the statement assumes the existence of God and his moral nature, Proudhon in fact had become a convinced atheist. Man cannot therefore rely on some providence to ensure progress; indeed, ‘Each step in our progress represents one more victory in which we annihilate the Deity.’
62
But Proudhon did not conclude like Stirner that only human beings create moral values. He still held firm to the idea that justice is immanent in the world and innate in human consciousness. We can therefore count on a sure guide and ultimate standard in our attempts to create a better world.
It is our social being which makes us capable of morality:
Man is an integral part of collective existence and as such he is aware both of his own dignity and that of others. Thus he carries within himself the principles of a moral code that goes beyond the individual … They constitute his essence and the essence of society itself.
63
Like Kant, Proudhon based his case for intrinsic goodness in the world and man on
a priori
intuition: ‘There are things that I judge good and praiseworthy
a priori
, even though I do not yet have a clear idea of them.’
64
The propositions that the universe is founded on the laws of justice and that justice is organized in accordance with the laws of the universe are therefore present ‘in the human soul not only as ideas or concepts but as emotions or feelings’.
65
In addition, Proudhon believed intrinsic values are not means to an end, but ends in themselves.
Like Godwin, he argued that each individual is the judge of right and wrong and is ‘empowered to act as an authority over himself and all others’. But while each person has a right to private judgement, there is only one
single inherent good: Justice. Proudhon devotes long, rapturous passages to this capitalized principle; indeed, having boldly overthrown the Christian God, he reintroduces him in the different guise of Justice: ‘Justice is the supreme God,’ we are told, ‘it is the living God’.
66
This
idée princesse
, as Proudhon calls justice, is never clearly defined. It is often associated with equality, but would seem closer to respect. Proudhon tries to define it as: ‘the respect, spontaneously felt and reciprocally guaranteed, of human dignity, in whatsoever person and in whatsoever circumstance it may be compromised, and to whatsoever risk its defence may expose us’.
67
Yet even his definition is not entirely clear. In practice, Proudhon would appear to mean that we should respect others as we would wish to be respected if we were in their place — a principle which is not very different from the Christian golden rule. In the social and economic field, it means that all men should receive according to their worth.
Justice for Proudhon further entails the duty to respect others simply as moral beings and to defend their dignity and freedom. It flows not from a spontaneous sense of benevolence but from a rational calculation of desert: altruism is ‘an instinctive feeling, which it is useful and laudable to cultivate, but which, far from engendering respect and dignity, is strictly incompatible with them’.
68
But this position left Proudhon with a basic ethical problem.
On the one hand, it would seem that I am to be the sole judge of my actions and others should respect my right to choose and act as I see fit. On the other hand, others have a duty to ensure that I behave morally. Society has its ‘own functions, foreign to our individuality, its ideas which it communicates to us, its judgements which resemble ours not at all, its will, in diametrical opposition to our instincts’.
69
It follows that there will be an inevitable conflict between our personal morality and the moral conventions of society. Proudhon fails to resolve this central ambivalence in his ethics. Sometimes he celebrates tolerance, yet he can also write: ‘Conformity is just and deviance is reprehensible’.
70
This moral and cultural relativism leads him to defend practices like slavery in a society where it was generally accepted.
Proudhon’s theoretical confusion comes to a head at the end of
Justice in the Revolution and the Church
where he introduces social pressure or public opinion as the means to bring about the triumph of virtue: ‘society’ should ‘use the powerful stimuli of collective conscience to develop the moral sense of all its members’. He tries to mitigate its disrespectful tendency by arguing that unlike the decrees of God, rulers or scientists who impose pressure from without, social pressure can only operate if internalized in the individual like ‘a sort of secret commandment from himself to himself’.
71
But this recourse has no logical connection with the rest of
Proudhon’s theory. It is also false since all social pressure by its very nature must be disrespectful to the individual.
To make matters worse, in an unpublished
Treatise on Political Economy
(1849–55) Proudhon even contemplated a secret band of vigilantes to enforce public opinion. This puritanical elite would ensure that the individual conscience would be taught to identify with the social conscience for the sake of social survival. The vigilantes would be involved in the private execution of the wicked as well as punishing treason and adultery. Proudhon here reached his lowest ebb. In his published work on justice, he finally rejected vigilante justice but chiefly on practical rather than on moral grounds. It would simply be too difficult to find men pure enough to perform their task and their rule could easily degenerate into a reign of terror or pious moralizing. The result is that Proudhon never managed to resolve successfully in his ethics the tension between private judgement and public opinion and between moral autonomy and convention.
The outspoken attack on Church and State in
Justice in the Revolution and Church
led once again to its author’s prosecution. Proudhon was sentenced to three years’ imprisonment, but this time discretion was the better part of valour. He went into exile in Belgium where he remained until he was pardoned in an amnesty in 1860. He returned to France only two years later when the hostility of the local population obliged him to leave after he had written a critical article on nationalism.
Whilst living in Belgium, Proudhon wrote
War and Peace
which was to have such a profound influence on Tolstoy. The work bears witness to the paradoxical nature of Proudhon’s mind. At first sight, he glorifies war to such an extent that he appears as an apologist for the right of force. This was partly due to his bellicose temperament which led him to celebrate struggle: ‘To act is to fight’, he declared.
72
But Proudhon also believed war was rooted in our being: ‘War is divine, that is to say it is primordial, essential to life and to the production of men and society. It is deeply seated in human consciousness and its idea embraces all human relationships.’
73
War is nothing less than ‘the basis of our history, our life and our whole being’; without it, mankind would be in a state of ‘permanent siesta’.
74
Indeed, Proudhon goes so far as to represent war as a revelation of ideal justice since it is a great leveller and eliminates the weak. War will endure as long as humanity endures.
Sometimes Proudhon offers a psychological explanation of human conflict and suggests that ‘our irascible appetite pushes us towards war’.
75
On other occasions, he gives an economic explanation and argues that its primary cause is poverty. But he also depicts war in logical terms as ‘the abstract formulation of the dialectic’.
76
In the final analysis, Proudhon is no economic determinist like Marx for he argues that poverty is essentially
a psychological fact and sees aggression as an innate part of unchanging human nature.
It does not follow however that we are forever condemned to a Hobbesian nightmare of the war of all against all. There comes a time in human development according to Proudhon when war can give way to peace. Again reason provides the key out of the impasse. In the course of history repressive institutions gradually perform the task of educating conscience and reason so that belligerent impulses can be transformed into creative ones. Proudhon felt that this stage had been reached in the middle of the nineteenth century and that no one could begin an aggressive war without being subject to ‘foul suspicion’. But even this admission went against the grain: ‘God forbid that I should preach the gentle virtues and joys of peace to my fellow man!’, Proudhon exclaimed.
77
Like Milton’s Satan, Proudhon seems to reserve his best rhetoric for war not peace.