Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

“ The exploitation of man by man, someone said, is theft. Well! the government of man by man is servitude; and all positive religion, leading to the dogma of papal infallibility, is itself nothing other than the worship of man by man, idolatry.
Absolutism, blending at once the power of the altar, of the throne, and of the strongbox, has multiplied, as a network, the chains of humanity. ”

“ Equality arrives to us by a succession of tyrannies and governments, in which Liberty is continually grappling with absolutism, like Israel with Jehovah. Equality is thus continually born for us from inequality; Liberty has for its father Government.
When the first men assembled at the edge of forests to found society, they did not say to themselves, as would the shareholders of a partnership: Organize our rights and duties, in such manner as to provide for each and all the greatest sum of well-being, and fetch at one time our equality and our independence. ”

“ And it does not intend, with the radicals and the doctrinaires, that one might proceed with this reform by legislative authority; it does not admit that anyone has the right to procure the good of the people in spite of the people, that it is licit to make free a nation that wants to be governed. Philosophy only gives its confidence to reforms emanating from the free will of societies: the only revolutions that it avows are those which proceed from the initiative of the masses: it denies, in the most absolute manner, the revolutionary competence of governments. ”

“ A little bit of reflection revealed to us the principle and the significance of parties: it is all about knowing the aim and the end.
All men are equal and free: society, by nature and destination, is therefore autonomous, as it were, ungovernable. The sphere of activity of each citizen being determined by the natural division of labor and the choice he makes of a profession, social functions combined in a manner to produce a harmonious effect, order is the result of the free action of all: there is no government. ”

“ Rather than teaching the people to organize themselves, than appealing to their experience and reason, they demand power from them! How are they different from despots? So they are utopians as all despots: the latter leave, the former cannot take root.
It implies that Government can ever be revolutionary, and this for the very simple reason that it is government. Society alone, the mass imbued with intelligence, can revolutionize itself, because it alone can rationally deploy is spontaneity, analyze, explain the mystery of its destiny and its origin, change its faith and its philosophy ”

“ In the eyes of reason, governments and parties are merely the mise en scène of the fundamental concepts of society, a realization of abstractions, a metaphysical pantomime, from which the direction is Liberty. ”

“ That is why, says the philosopher, all parties, without exception, as they affect power, are varieties of absolutism, and there will only be liberty for the citizens, order for society, union among the workers, when the renunciation of authority will have replaced in the political catechism faith in authority. ”

“ We do not question that faith, the schism of society appears as the terrible effect of the original downfall of man. This is what Greek mythology has expressed by the fable of the warriors born of the serpent's teeth, and who all killed each other after their birth. God, according to this myth, has left in the hands of antagonistic parties the government of humanity, so that discord might establish his kingdom on earth, and that man might learn, under a perpetual tyranny, to postpone his thought to another sojourn. ”

“ Philosophy consequently affirms, contrary to faith, that the constitution of an authority over the people is only a transitional establishment; that power is not a conclusion of science, but a product of spontaneity, vanishing as soon as it is discussed; that, far from fortifying and growing over time, as is surmised by the rival parties who besiege it, it must be reduced indefinitely and be absorbed into the industrial organization; consequently, it must not be placed over, but under society ”

“ It is in this way that we could understand, on 10 December 1848, our farmers, when they gave their votes to Louis Bonaparte. The voice of the people is the voice of power, until it becomes the voice of liberty. ”

“ When, through philosophical analysis, one wants to become aware of authority, its principles, its forms, its effects, one soon recognizes that the constitution of authority, spiritual and temporal, is nothing but a preparatory organism, essentially parasitic and corruptible, incapable by itself of producing anything else, whatever its form, some idea of what it represents, that being tyranny and misery. ”

“ Everything for the people, and everything by the people, even the government? — Everything for the people: Agriculture, commerce, industry, philosophy, religion, police, etc. Everything by the people: government and religion as well as agriculture and trade.
Democracy is the abolition of all power, spiritual and temporal ”

“ It would be necessary that they previously pass their knowledge onto the people, that they obtain the consent of the citizens: this is to misunderstand the nature of authority and power.
The facts come forth to confirm the theory. The freest nations are those where power has the least initiative, where its role is the most restrained: for example the United States of America, Switzerland, England, Holland. On the contrary, the most enslaved nations are those where power is the best organized and strongest, we witness. ”

“ All revolutions, from the coronation of the first king to the Declaration of the Rights of Man, have been accomplished by the spontaneity of the people: governments have always prevented, always compressed, always struck down ”

“ Their role is not to provide the movement, but to restrain it. Just the same, it is repugnant, they could have revolutionary science, social science, they could not apply these, they do not have the right. ”