Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

“ If she rises, the people rise with her; if she falls, they fall. No liberty can be conquered without her; no conspiracy of despotism would prevail against her. Let us study the causes of our grandeur and of our decadence, that we may be strong, in the future, in our resolutions, and that the people, sure of our support, form together with us, without fear, the holy alliance of Liberty and Equality.
I shall seek the causes that have brought us democracy's misfortune, and that prevent us from achieving the promises that we made for her. ”

“ It is necessary to vanquish power, by not demanding anything of it; to prove the parasitism of capital, by supplying it with credit; to establish the liberty of individuals by organizing the initiative of the masses.
It is necessary, in a word, that there must be a deuteration of the revolutionary idea, a new manifestation of socialism.
God forbid that I wish to augment my role! I recount my dreams. I know how little the thought of one man weighs in the resolutions of society; I myself am a living proof of the slowness with which the idea penetrates the masses. ”

“ What Louis Blanc said of the removal of the troops is true. The people demanded it with insistence: only Louis Blanc does not realize that the second motif contradicts the other. What was there, in fact, for the people in the removal of the troops? The disarmament of power, the impotence of government. The people, when they are given over to their own instinct, always see more justly than when they are driven by the policy of their leaders: they sensed, and it was for them an old saying, that the government is never better than when it is without virtue. Our enemy is our master! ”

“ “Power, the instrument of collective puissance, created in society to mediate between labor and capital, is fatally chained to capital, and directed against the proletariat. No political reform can resolve this contradiction, since, by the admission of the politicians themselves, such a reform would only serve to give more energy and extension to power, and that unless the hierarchy were overthrown and society dissolved, power cannot affect the prerogatives of monopoly. ”

“ Now, that no one may imagine that the liberty of buying and selling is the sole basis of the equality of wages, and that society’s sole protection against superiority of talent lies in a certain force of inertia which has nothing in common with right, I shall proceed to explain why all capacities are entitled to the same reward, and why a corresponding difference in wages would be an injustice. I shall prove that the obligation to stoop to the social level is inherent in talent; and on this very superiority of genius I will found the equality of fortunes. ”

“ We must penetrate to the very heart of ancient institutions, plunge into the social depths, and uncover this indestructible leaven of equality which the God of justice breathed into our souls, and which manifests itself in all our works.
Labor is man’s contemporary; it is a duty, since it is a condition of existence: “In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread.” It is more than a duty, it is a mission: “God put the man into the garden to dress it.” I add that labor is the cause and means of equality. ”

“ When, then, society—faithful to the principle of the division of labor—intrusts a work of art or of science to one of its members, allowing him to abandon ordinary labor, it owes him an indemnity for all which it prevents him from producing industrially; but it owes him nothing more. If he should demand more, society should, by refusing his services, annihilate his pretensions. Forced, then, in order to live, to devote himself to labor repugnant to his nature, the man of genius would feel his weakness, and would live the most distasteful of lives. ”

“ It is to please the bourgeoisie that royalty makes itself unpopular. It is the bourgeoisie which is troubled at the hopes of the people, and which hinders reform. The journals of the bourgeoisie are the ones which preach morality and religion to us, while reserving scepticism and indifference for themselves; which attack personal government, and favor the denial of the electoral privilege to those who have no property. The bourgeoisie will accept any thing rather than the emancipation of the proletariat. ”

“ Property is the right to use and abuse. If, then, government is economy,—if its object is production and consumption, and the distribution of labor and products,—how is government possible while property exists? And if goods are property, why should not the proprietors be kings, and despotic kings—kings in proportion to their facultés bonitaires? And if each proprietor is sovereign lord within the sphere of his property, absolute king throughout his own domain, how could a government of proprietors be any thing but chaos and confusion? ”

“ Thank Heaven! equality of conditions is taught in the public schools; let us fear revolutions no longer. The most implacable enemy of property could not, if he wished to destroy it, go to work in a wiser and more effective way. Courage, then, ministers, deputies, economists! make haste to seize this glorious initiative; let the watchwords of equality, uttered from the heights of science and power, be repeated in the midst of the people; let them thrill the breasts of the proletaires, and carry dismay into the ranks of the last representatives of privilege! ”

“ If I have rightly grasped the object of your thought; if I succeed in bringing to light a truth which is indisputable, but, from causes which I am bold enough to claim to have explained, has always been misunderstood; if by an infallible method of investigation, I establish the dogma of equality of conditions; if I determine the principle of civil law, the essence of justice, and the form of society; if I annihilate property forever,—to you, gentlemen, will redound all the glory, for it is to your aid and your inspiration that I owe it. ”

“ There has been no true revolution, says M. Cousin, without its idea; so that where an idea does not exist, or even fails of a formal expression, revolution is impossible. There are mobs, conspirators, rioters, regicides. There are no revolutionists. Society, devoid of ideas, twists and tosses about, and dies in the midst of its fruitless labor.
Nevertheless, you all feel that a revolution is to come, and that you alone can accomplish it. What, then, is the idea which governs you, proletaires of the nineteenth century?—for really I cannot call you revolutionists. ”

“ The proprietor who lays up products will neither allow others to enjoy them, nor enjoy them himself; for him there is neither possession nor property. Like the miser, he broods over his treasures: he does not use them. He may feast his eyes upon them; he may lie down with them; he may sleep with them in his arms: all very fine, but coins do not breed coins. No real property without enjoyment; no enjoyment without consumption; no consumption without loss of property,—such is the inflexible necessity to which God’s judgment compels the proprietor to bend. A curse upon property! ”

“ For my part, if I had the ear of this nation, to which I am attached by birth and predilection, with no intention of playing the leading part in the future republic, I would instruct the laboring masses to conquer property through institutions and judicial pleadings; to seek auxiliaries and accomplices in the highest ranks of society, and to ruin all privileged classes by taking advantage of their common desire for power and popularity. The petition for the electoral reform has already received two hundred thousand signatures, and the illustrious Arago threatens us with a million. ”

“ The old civilization has run its race; a new sun is rising, and will soon renew the face of the earth. Let the present generation perish, let the old prevaricators die in the desert! the holy earth shall not cover their bones. Young man, exasperated by the corruption of the age, and absorbed in your zeal for justice!—if your country is dear to you, and if you have the interests of humanity at heart, have the courage to espouse the cause of liberty! Cast off your old selfishness, and plunge into the rising flood of popular equality! ”

“ No more protectors, no more emperors, no more consuls. Better manage our affairs ourselves than through agents. Better associate our industries than beg from monopolies; and, since the republic cannot dispense with virtues, we should labor for our reform.
This, therefore, is my line of conduct. I preach emancipation to the proletaires; association to the laborers; equality to the wealthy. I push forward the revolution by all means in my power,—the tongue, the pen, the press, by action, and example. My life is a continual apostleship. ”

“ In giving expression to the last stage of an idea,—an idea which permeates all minds, which to-morrow will be proclaimed by another if I fail to announce it to-day,—I can claim no merit save that of priority of utterance. Do we eulogize the man who first perceives the dawn?
Yes: all men believe and repeat that equality of conditions is identical with equality of rights; that property and robbery are synonymous terms; that every social advantage accorded, or rather usurped, in the name of superior talent or service, is iniquity and extortion. ”

“ I venture to hope, sir, that, after you have read this letter, if your prudence still restrains you, your fairness will induce you to do me justice.
Men, equal in the dignity of their persons and equal before the law, should be equal in their conditions,—such is the thesis which I maintained and developed in a memoir bearing the title, “What is Property? or, An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government.”
The idea of social equality, even in individual fortunes, has in all ages besieged, like a vague presentiment, the human imagination. ”

“ The nineteenth century is, in my eyes, a genesic era, in which new principles are elaborated, but in which nothing that is written shall endure. That is the reason, in my opinion, why, among so many men of talent, France to-day counts not one great writer. In a society like ours, to seek for literary glory seems to me an anachronism. Of what use is it to invoke an ancient sibyl when a muse is on the eve of birth? Pitiable actors in a tragedy nearing its end, that which it behooves us to do is to precipitate the catastrophe. ”

“ Communism is oppression and slavery. Man is very willing to obey the law of duty, serve his country, and oblige his friends; but he wishes to labor when he pleases, where he pleases, and as much as he pleases. He wishes to dispose of his own time, to be governed only by necessity, to choose his friendships, his recreation, and his discipline; to act from judgment, not by command; to sacrifice himself through selfishness, not through servile obligation. Communism is essentially opposed to the free exercise of our faculties, to our noblest desires, to our deepest feelings. ”

“ His claims are to be measured by his own productive capacity, not that of others. Property is the right of increase, not a poll-tax. How could a man, hardly capable of cultivating even a few acres by himself, demand of a community, on the ground of its use of ten thousand acres of his property, ten thousand times as much as he is incapable of producing from one acre? Why should the price of a loan be governed by the skill and strength of the borrower, rather than by the utility sacrificed by the proprietor? ”

“ Of what consequence to you, reader, is my obscure individuality? I live, like you, in a century in which reason submits only to fact and to evidence. My name, like yours, is Truth-seeker. [1] My mission is written in these words of the law: Speak without hatred and without fear; tell that which thou knowest! The work of our race is to build the temple of science, and this science includes man and Nature. Now, truth reveals itself to all; to-day to Newton and Pascal, tomorrow to the herdsman in the valley and the journeyman in the shop. Each one contributes his stone to the edifice; ”

“ But the more they work to-day, the more idle will they be hereafter; the more they laugh, the more they shall weep. Under the rule of property, the flowers of industry are woven into none but funeral wreaths. The laborer digs his own grave.
If the factory stops running, the manufacturer has to pay interest on his capital the same as before. He naturally tries, then, to continue production by lessening expenses. Then comes the lowering of wages; the introduction of machinery; the employment of women and children to do the work of men; bad workmen, and wretched work. ”