Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

“ When is the end of socialism? when is the return of capital? We were in France, before February, half a dozen utopians: at present, he is a conservative who does not have his system. The revolution blows you away. It is already that you are obliged to rely on the Constitution, that you are making opposition to the pope, that you cover yourself, but by turning over the mantle, with the policy of the montagnards! You would even vote, and heartily, if you thought you were getting away with so little, for the income tax. ”

“ Yes, this licentious and sacrilegious society trembles at the idea of another life; it dares not to laugh at God, it believes that we must believe in Something! These adulterers revolt at the idea of communitarian polygamy; these public thieves are the glorifiers of labor. Catholicism has died in all these hearts: the religious sentiment is more alive than ever. Continence afflicts them: they adore chastity. Not a hand that is pure for the good of others: all hate the doctrine of self-interest. ”

“ What was there in my speech, under these new formulas of gratuitous and reciprocal credit, the suppression of interest, the continual increase of well-being by the progressive reduction of wages and income, social liquidation, etc., etc.? There was this: without a capitalist aristocracy, no more authority; and without authority, no more government. Labor emancipated from the suzerainty of capital, the people cannot wait for the initiative of the government: all these proposals are homologous and solidary. Socialism, as I profess it, is the reverse of the socialism of Louis Blanc. ”

“ They persisted in judging the affairs of society on the appearances of private relations, not conceiving that economic phenomena, seen from the top down, are exactly the opposite of what they seem, seen from the bottom up. — You will never make us understand, said Mr. Thiers, how the more of his income the proprietor gives up, the more he earns, and how the more of his wages the worker loses, the more rich he becomes! — No doubt, I replied; as long as you refuse to balance between what he pays with one hand and what he has to receive with the other! ”

“ It is necessary to raise the morale of the workers, to avenge the June insurrection of the calumnies of the reaction; to pose, with a redoubling of energy, with a sort of terrorism, the social question; to expand it, by making it traditional and European; to consolidate the Revolution, by forcing the conservatives to make themselves of democracy for the defense of their privileges, and by rejecting, by that means, monarchy on a secondary plane. ”

“ Does circulation stop?
This would mean that the rentier, for whatever reason, refuses to advance his funds to the State, and even sells his debts at a loss; — that the banker refuses to discount the values of dealers; — the capitalist, to sponsor the industrialist and to lend to the laborer; — the merchant, to take charge of goods, without guarantee of a market; — the manufacturer, to produce without orders; — that the proprietor, uncertain of his return, can no longer sustain his expenses, and that the worker without work no longer consumes. ”

“ For, as it knows no better the reason of what exists than the reason of what might be, it always seems to it that the world will collapse: it is like a man who would see through his body the play of his organs, and who would tremble at every instant to see them break. If the Finance Committee had lived in the time of Sesostris, it would have halted humanity from the Egyptian civilization. ”

“ There is no middle ground: universal suffrage, henceforth indestructible, is a contradiction to the subordination of labor to capital. According to the mutualist principle of revolution by the co-operation and solidarity of the citizens, you have, under an ineluctable democracy, no other alternative than this: the taxation of the proletariat or the murder of the poor; the partition of income, or jacquerie. ”

“ That on the contrary, the more credit increases, in other words, the more the rent or wages, both of the capitalists, proprietors and entrepreneurs and of the workers, diminish, the more society, and therefore the individual, becomes enriched. — Lower wages for the same quantity of labor, or an augmentation of labor for the same wage, is the same thing. ”

“ Since, the figure of wages is the expression of the dividend accruing to each citizen on the totality of products, and this totality, as has just been said, being increased, the result is that a general decline in wages equals for each an augmentation of wealth.
Let us add that the proposed system demanding the concurrence and participation of all, implies by this very fact general conciliation. Citizens learn to act collectively, rather than to make laws and to exploit. Class hatred is extinguished in this initiative of the masses, instead of being exalted by the dispute of power. ”

“ It is understood that the creditors of society, proprietors, capitalists, workers, are, as well as farmers, merchants and the State, representatives of society.
But it is evident that the society that receives is the same moral being as the society that lends: whence it follows that what the proprietor calls leasing, the banker discount, the capitalist sponsorship, the usurer loan, etc., brought back to a general formula, is an exchange, or as the theologians say mutuum, mutuality. ”

“ The movement or transport of values, of the citizens to each other, which results from this exchange, is therefore circulation, the great economic function of society. The special conditions which give rise to this exchange create for each species of creditor and debtor a particular system of relations, the science of which, according to the point of view in which it is envisaged, constitutes the domestic economy or the social economy. From the point of view of the domestic economy, the proprietor lends his land by means of rent ”

“ Since, thanks to governmental fanaticism, civilization is like barbarism a state of war, there is no legislation, constitution, theory, experience which stands: as long as we fight for power, the victors will not lack pretexts for oppressing the vanquished: the statesmen will find reasons to renounce their principles, and everyone will always be right. ”

“ When we consider society as a whole, we see that circulation is reduced to the following operation: A certain number of citizens make to society, represented by the farmers, the advance of the land: that is the proprietors; — another class of citizens makes to the same society, represented by merchants and industrialists, the advance of capital and money: that is the bankers and capitalists ”

“ The Finance Committee has never had any theory, either of taxation, of wages, of money, of foreign trade, of credit and circulation, of value, or of anything to do with the science of a finance committee. ”

“ In 89, the fear of imaginary brigands, who were said to have traveled the countryside, to destroy the wheat, had the whole nation at arms, and the revolution was made. In 1848, the fear of socialism, which, it was asserted, would take all properties, forced everybody to reflect on the conditions of labor and property, and the revolution was made. Pretenders may come, majorities attempt coups d'état: nothing will have been done, order will be compromised more and more in the towns and the countrysides, until the question of the worker has been answered. ”

“ From the point of view of the social economy, the services of the citizens are merely exchanged for one another, according to a rule of proportion, which constitutes their relative value; deduction does not exist. ”

“ What does this sensualist, greedy world say, in its heart, of utilitarian theory? Are these Malthusians, who neither want to deprive themselves of pleasure, nor to accept the products, disciples of Fourier or Saint-Simon? in what do they believe the most, passion or free will? ”

“ Not only does it do nothing; it does not allow others to think, it cannot stand discussing the status quo, even to conserve it. Mr Thiers is the philosopher of this immobilism, Mr. Léon Faucher is the fanatic. ”

“ Circulation will increase from all for which each debtor shall have obtained a discharge from the creditor.
As the measure, to arrive at the highest degree of efficiency and justice, must reach all citizens, rentiers, capitalists, proprietors, functionaries, merchants, industrialists, workers, etc., without exception, it follows:
1. That, by the generality of the credit given and received, a compensation is established for everyone, and that, each contributing to the sacrifice, no one loses anything ”

“ But, in having followed the account of my socialist meditations with that of my political acts, I am merely continuing the same story, the story of a thinker drawn in spite of himself into the somnambulism of his nation. And besides, to pass from speculation to action is not to change roles: to act is always to think ”