Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

“ Vanquish power, that is, place power under the control of the people by the separate centralization of political and social functions; vanquish capital by the mutual guarantee of circulation and credit: that is the policy of democracy. Is that so difficult to understand?
In March, in April, in May, instead of organizing yourselves for labor and liberty, taking advantage of the political advantages conferred upon you by the February victory, you ran to the Government, you demanded of it what you alone could give you, and you reversed the revolution in three steps. ”

“ Paris is the principal seat of these infamous intrigues; Paris will not become the capital of disorder. Let the national guard, which is the first guardian of public peace and property, understand well that it is above all its concern, its interests, its credit, its honor. ”

“ I knew nothing about the situation of the national workshops, nor the politics of government, nor the intrigues that were intersecting the Assembly. One must have lived in this booth, called the National Assembly, to conceive how the men who are the most completely ignorant of the state of a country are almost always those who represent it. ”

“ The Provisional Government had guaranteed, in the most formal way, the right to work. This guarantee it had given by virtue of its pretended initiative, and the people accepted it as such. The commitment had been made on both sides in good faith: how many men in France, on 24 February, even among the most fierce adversaries of socialism, would have thought it impossible for a State so strongly organized as ours, so abundantly endowed with resources, to ensure work to a few hundreds of thousands of workers? ”

“ Most of my colleagues on the left and on the extreme left were in the same perplexity of mind, in the same ignorance of the everyday occurances. The national workshops were spoken of only with a sort of terror: for the fear of the people is the evil of all those who belong to authority; the people, for power, are the enemy. ”

“ The February Revolution therefore means nothing! said the workers with trepidation. Must we die yet to have done it?
The Provisional Government, being unable either to organize labor or to give credit, besides what was routine to all governments, had hoped that with time and order it could restore confidence, that labor would restore itself, that it would be sufficient to offer to the working masses, who could not be abandoned to their distress, an alimentary subsidy. ”

“ So that the government was entangled in a double circle, cornered in the face of geminate impossibilities, whether it wished to procure work for the workers, or merely give them credit, or desired to sent them home, or decided, for a time, to feed them.
The reaction was all the more intractable, because they thought, not without reason, that the national workshops, counting more than 100,000 men, were the boulevard to Socialism; that this army, once dispersed, would have been a good bargain to democracy, to the Executive Commission ”

“ They affected not to understand that the sacrifices made to labor were of less profit to the worker than to the patron, and that, after all, the bourgeoisie is still the party most interested in this tutelary resumption of labor. — “200 million to lay off an army of 100,000 men!” exclaimed the baron and calculator, Charles Dupin. — As if the 100,000 men of the national workshops had not been a small fraction of the working class without work. Ah! if instead of the workers, it had been a question of a railroad company!... ”

“ But the revolutionary series in the midst of which the modern world is engaged, a series which itself results from the conditions of the human spirit, being a datum, more a prejudice, admitted by the whole world and fought at the same time by the whole world, according to which it is to the authority constituted over the nation to take the initiative of the reforms and to direct the movement, I say that the events which were to be deduced from them, whatever they might be, whether happy or unhappy, could only be the expression of the struggle between tradition and the Revolution. ”

“ Let us reason therefore; and, since the facts abound, let us quote facts. 17 March, 16 April, and 15 May have not convinced you: I will recount to you a story that will give you some thought. But first, let us know a little of what history is like.
There are two ways to study history: one which I will call the providential method, the other, which is the philosophical method. ”

“ In the providential theory, on the contrary, history is no more than a romantic imbroglio, without principle, without reason, without aim; an argument for superstition as well as for atheism, the scandal of the spirit and of the conscience. ”

“ Everyday we voted new subsidies for the national workshops, shuddering at the incapacity of power and our impotence.
Disastrous apprenticeship! The effect of this representative mess wherein I had to live was that I had no intelligence for anything; that on the 23rd, when Flocon declared in full rostrum that the movement was directed by political factions and bribed by the foreigner, I allowed myself to be taken to this ministerial canard; and that on the 24th I was still wondering whether the insurrection really had as a motive the dissolution of the national workshops!!! ”

“ The national workshops have been an inevitable necessity for some time: now they are an obstacle to the re-establishment of industry and work. It is therefore important, in the most pressing interest of the workers themselves, that the workshops should be dissolved; and we are persuaded that the workers will understand it without difficulty, thanks to the good sense and the intelligent patriotism which they have so often shown.”
On 22 June, the government informed the workers that, under existing law, enlistments could not be contracted until they were 18 years of age ”

“ In all this there is only a collective thought developed with all the more zeal because each of those who expressed it had less consciousness of its fatal role, and, while using his right of initiative, could not bear responsibility for his words. Individuals are susceptive of clemency; parties are pitiless. The spirit of conciliation had been great on the side of the National Workshops: it was that they were organized, that there were men speaking on their behalf and answering for them, Trélat and Lalanne. ”

“ Foreign agents join them, excite them and pay them. It is not only civil war that they would like to arouse amongst us; it is pillage, social disorganization, it is the ruin of France that they prepare, and one can guess for what purpose. ”

“ You were the soldiers of the Republic, that is true, and the republicans did not comprehend it: but the national guards were also the soldiers of the Republic, the soldiers of order and liberty. Never accuse the most considerable portion of the people of a felony; do not be resentful of those of your deceived brothers who have fought you. ”

“ What maintains faith in Providence is the involuntary confusion of the laws of society with the accidents that form the mise en scène. The vulgar, perceiving a certain logic in general facts, and relating to the same source the facts of detail, of which he neither discovers purpose nor necessity, since in fact this necessity does not exist, concludes a Providential Will which sovereignly rules the little things and the greatest alike, the contingent and the necessary, as the school says: that which is simply a contradiction. ”

“ It would be a shame to admit that, in order to preserve the public peace, each of your 100,000 workers had to be paid a premium of 2,000 fr. We will never consent. At the very most, in pronouncing the immediate dissolution, we should give each man three months' salary, or 100 fr., a total of 10 million, which is far from 200. With this advance, the workers would without doubt retire satisfied. ”

“ Suddenly, the order was given to postpone the distribution; not one copy must leave the minister's office, the Executive Commission had so decided. It feared that the conclusions of the Report, that certain principles expressed therein, the right to work among others, would stir up violent opposition in the National Assembly. Since 15 May, hostile passions had begun to emerge: they must not be given a pretext to burst. When audacity alone could save it, the Executive Commission gave way to fear: the hour of its retreat had struck. ”

“ According to this philosophical conception of history, the general facts classify, engender one another with a rigor of deduction which nothing in the positive sciences surpasses; and as it is possible for reason to impart philosophy, it is possible for human prudence to direct the course. ”

“ The day before, at the end of the sitting, the minister of public works had submitted a request for a credit of 6 million for work to be carried out on the Chalon-Lyon railway, in the environs of Collonge. In Lyon, as in Paris, there were masses of workers who demanded work; and the minister could do no better than to employ them on this line, the implementation of which was definitely fixed. Citizen Bineau objected that the credit could not be allocated, since, as the law on redemption had not been passed, it would be irregular to begin work before the credit had been allocated. ”

“ Seeing no way out of this labyrinth, it decided to stay on the sidelines, and, at the same time that it would better provoke the reprise of business to feed the workers without work, which no one assuredly could make out to be a crime. ”

“ The blood boiled in Caussidière. “I demand,” he exclaimed, “that a proclamation be made in torchlight, and that a certain number of deputies, accompanied by a member of the Executive Commission, should go into the heart of the insurrection.” — The cries: To order! You speak as a provocator! Mr. president, suspend the sitting! welcomed the words of the Montagnard. Minister Duclerc, who would soon fall under the blows of the reaction, himself treated this proposition as insensible. ”

“ It successively presented to the minister proposals of such a nature as to reassure the workers of the intentions of power. Incentives to workers' associations, Algerian colonization on a vast scale, a law on labor courts, the organization of a system of pension funds and assistance, such was the part that it proposed to do for the legitimate exigencies of the working class. Export premiums, payroll advances, direct orders, and a guarantee on certain manufactured articles, were the measures which it indicated in favor of merchants and industrialists. ”

“ The philosophical method, while recognizing that the particular facts are not fatal, that they may vary infinitely, according to the wills which produce them, nevertheless considers them dependent upon general laws, inherent in nature and in humanity. ”

“ The people ought to know what enemies they have to deal with, and how revolutions are conjured away; the bourgeoisie ought, in its turn, to know how its terrors are exploited, and what intriguers make its sentiments of loyal moderation serve their execrable policy. ”

“ The first consists in relating the cause of events either to a superior will which directs from on high the course of things, and which is God; or to a human will momentarily placed in such a manner as to act upon events by its own free will, like God. ”

“ While the Executive Commission dealt with these urgent concerns, the Workers' Committee was buried in inquests, reports, discussions, projects, the Jesuitical reaction hassled the minister of public works, terrified the National Assembly on the communist consequences of the redemption of the railways, displayed everywhere the hand of the state lent to seize free labor and property. ”

“ One sees that this theory is nothing other than that of chance. What the believer calls Providence, the skeptic calls Fortune: it is all one. Fieschi and Alibaud, having faith in regicide to hasten the triumph of democracy ”