Laying the foundations: Proudhon\u2019s contribution to anarchist economics<\/strong><\/h1>\n\n\n\nAnyone sketching the positive vision of libertarian economics would, undoubtedly, include such features as common ownership of land, socialisation of industry, workers\u2019 self-management of production and federations of workers\u2019 councils. Such a vision can be found in the works of such noted revolutionary anarchists as Michael Bakunin, Peter Kropotkin and Rudolf Rocker.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What may be less well known is that these ideas can be found in the works of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (1809-65), the first person to proudly proclaim himself an anarchist and, consequently, the founder of anarchism as a named socio-economic theory: \u201cthe land is indispensable to our existence, \u2013 consequently a common thing\u201d; \u201call accumulated capital being social property, no one can be its exclusive proprietor\u201d; \u201cdemocratically organised workers\u2019 associations\u201d; \u201cindustrial democracy\u201d; \u201cthat vast federation of companies and societies woven into the common cloth of the democratic and social Republic\u201d; \u201can agricultural-industrial federation<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\nAs with later anarchists, Proudhon rejected the twin evils of capitalism (\u201cmonopoly and what follows\u201d) and nationalisation (\u201cexploitation by the State\u201d) in favour of \u201ca solution based upon equality, \u2013 in other words, the organisation of labour, which involves the negation of political economy and the end of property.\u201d This insight, from 1846, is at the heart of anarchism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
First a point of clarification. The term anarchist economics contains two, related, concepts. One is the anarchist critique of capitalism, the other the suggestions for how an anarchist economy would function. Both are interrelated. What we are opposed to in capitalism will be reflected in our visions of a libertarian economy just as our hopes and dreams of a free society will inform our analysis of the current system. Both need to be understood as both are integral to each other.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This dual perspective can be found in the ideas of Proudhon. Here we will sketch both aspects of the Frenchman\u2019s anarchist economics, showing how the critique of property fed into his positive vision of libertarian socialism and vice versa. In so doing, we will also be shedding light on a key anarchist thinker who is better known for a few quotes than for his substantial contributions to both the critique of capitalism and of our visions of anarchy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWhat is Property?\u201d<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Proudhon\u2019s fame and influence was secured in 1840 when he wrote \u201cWhat is Property?\u201d<\/strong> and answered \u201ctheft.\u201d This book contains a searing critique of private property as well as sketches of a new, free, society: anarchy. Rejecting both capitalism and (authoritarian) communism, Proudhon called for a \u201csynthesis of communism and property,\u201d a \u201cunion\u201d which \u201cwill give us the true form of human association.\u201d \u201cThis third form of society,\u201d he stated, \u201cwe will call liberty<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\nProudhon\u2019s critique rested on two key concepts. Firstly, property allowed the owner to exploit its user (\u201cproperty is theft\u201d). Secondly, that property created oppressive social relationships between the two (\u201cproperty is despotism\u201d). These are interrelated, as it is the relations of oppression that property creates which allows exploitation to happen and the appropriation of our common heritage by the few gives the rest little alternative but to agree to such domination and let the owner appropriate the fruits of their labour.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Proudhon\u2019s genius and the power of his critique was that he took all the defences of, and apologies for, property and showed that, logically, they could be used to attack that institution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To claims that property was a natural right, he explained that the essence of such rights was their universality and that private property ensured that this right could not be extended to all. To those who argued that property was required to secure liberty, Proudhon rightly objected that \u201cif the liberty of man is sacred, it is equally sacred in all individuals; that, if it needs property for its objective action, that is, for its life, the appropriation of material is equally necessary for all.\u201d To claims that labour created property, he noted that most people have no property to labour on and the product of such labour was owned by capitalists and landlords rather than the workers who created it. As for occupancy, he argued that most owners do not occupy all the property they own while those who do use and occupy it do not own it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Proudhon showed that the defenders of property had to choose between self-interest and principle, between hypocrisy and logic. If it is right for the initial appropriation of resources to be made (by whatever preferred rationale) then, by that very same reason, it is right for others in the same and subsequent generations to abolish private property in favour of a system which respects the liberty of all rather than a few (\u201cIf the right of life is equal, the right of labour is equal, and so is the right of occupancy.\u201d) This means that \u201cthose who do not possess today are proprietors by the same title as those who do possess; but instead of inferring therefrom that property should be shared by all, I demand, in the name of general security, its entire abolition.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Property allows the creation of authoritarian social relationships and exploitation. For Proudhon, the notion that workers are free when capitalism forces them to seek employment was demonstrably false. He was well aware that in such circumstances property \u201cviolates equality by the rights of exclusion and increase, and freedom by despotism.\u201d It has \u201cperfect identity with robbery\u201d and the worker \u201chas sold and surrendered his liberty\u201d to the proprietor. Anarchy was \u201cthe absence of a master, of a sovereign\u201d while \u201cproprietor\u201d was \u201csynonymous\u201d with \u201csovereign\u201d for he \u201cimposes his will as law, and suffers neither contradiction nor control.\u201d Thus \u201cproperty is despotism\u201d as \u201ceach proprietor is sovereign lord within the sphere of his property\u201d and so freedom and property were incompatible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Hence the pressing need, if we really seek liberty for all, to abolish property and the oppressive social relationships it generates. With wage-workers and tenants, property became \u201cthe right to use [something] by his neighbour\u2019s labour\u201d and so resulted in \u201cthe exploitation of man by man\u201d for to \u201clive as a proprietor, or to consume without producing, it is necessary, then, to live upon the labour of another.\u201d Like Marx, but long before him, Proudhon argued that workers produced more value than they received in wages:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWhoever labours becomes a proprietor . . . And when I say proprietor, I do not mean simply (as do our hypocritical economists) proprietor of his allowance, his salary, his wages, \u2013 I mean proprietor of the value he creates, and by which the master alone profits . . . The worker retains, even after he has received his wages, a natural right in the thing he has produced.<\/strong><\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe capitalist also unjustly appropriates the additional value (termed \u201ccollective force\u201d) produced by co-operative activity:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cA force of one thousand men working twenty days has been paid the same wages that one would be paid for working fifty-five years; but this force of one thousand has done in twenty days what a single man could not have accomplished, though he had laboured for a million centuries. Is the exchange an equitable one? Once more, no; when you have paid all the individual forces, the collective force still remains to be paid . . . which you enjoy unjustly.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Property meant \u201canother shall perform the labour while [the proprietor] receives the product.\u201d So the \u201cfree worker produces ten; for me, thinks the proprietor, he will produce twelve\u201d and so to \u201csatisfy property, the worker must first produce beyond his needs.\u201d Little wonder \u201cproperty is theft!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
His classic work did not limit itself to critique and gave a few sketches of an anarchist economy. Property would be socialised as the \u201cland cannot be appropriated\u201d and \u201call capital, whether material or mental, being the result of collective labour, is, in consequence, collective property.\u201d People \u201care proprietors of their products \u2014 not one is proprietor of the means of production.\u201d Thus \u201cright to product is exclusive\u201d while \u201cthe right to means is common.\u201d Workers\u2019 control would prevail as managers \u201cmust be chosen from the workers by the workers themselves, and must fulfil the conditions of eligibility. It is the same with all public functions, whether of administration or instruction.\u201d So whether on the land or in industry, Proudhon\u2019s aim was to create a society of \u201cpossessors without masters\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The following year saw Proudhon pen a second memoir<\/em> (\u201cLetter to M. Blanqui\u201d<\/strong>) in which he clarified certain issues raised in the first memoir<\/em> and answered his critics. He again argued for socialised property and use rights for \u201cwealth, produced by the activity of all<\/em>, is by the very fact of its creation collective<\/em> wealth, the use of which, like that of the land, may be divided, but which as property remains undivided<\/em>.\u201d Proudhon aimed to \u201creduce\u201d property \u201cto the right of possession\u201d and \u201corganise industry, associate workers\u201d in order to \u201capply on a large scale the principle of collective production.\u201d He called this \u201cnon-appropriation of the instruments of production\u201d the \u201cdestruction of property.\u201d Thus use rights replace property-rights with common ownership ensuring individuals and groups controlled the product of their labour, the labour itself and as the means of production used. In short: \u201cI preach emancipation to the proletarians; association to the workers.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n\u201cSystem of Economic Contradictions\u201d<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
The next major work by Proudhon was 1846\u2019s two volume \u201cSystem of Economic Contradictions.\u201d<\/strong> It was this work which first saw his use of the term mutualism<\/em> to describe his libertarian socialism. This term was not invented by him but by workers in Lyons during the 1830s. Proudhon stayed there in 1843 and was deeply influenced by the workers\u2019 ideas and practice.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThis book is best known for Marx\u2019s 1847 reply \u201cThe Poverty of Philosophy.<\/strong>\u201d While Marx does make a few valid points against Proudhon, his distortions, selective quoting, quote tampering and other intellectually dishonest practices drain it of most of its value. Suffice to say, reading Proudhon\u2019s work quickly shows a radically different thinker than the one readers of Marx would expect.<\/p>\n\n\n\nIt must be stressed, given the prevalent myths begat by Marx to the otherwise, that Proudhon supported large-scale industry. Indeed, he explicitly rejected a return to small-scale production as \u201cretrograde\u201d and \u201cimpossible.\u201d He also supported workers\u2019 associations, unsurprisingly once you understand that Proudhon locates exploitation within capitalism firmly in production as a consequence of wage-labour. As this analysis informs his vision for an anarchist economy, it is worth discussing \u2013 particularly as, ironically, Proudhon was the first to expound many of the key concepts of Marxist economics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
First<\/em>, Proudhon stressed that labour did not have a value but what it created did and so produces value only as active<\/em> labour engaged in the production process:<\/p>\n\n\n\n\u201cLabour is said to have value, not as merchandise itself, but in view of the values supposed to be contained in it potentially. The value of labour is a figurative expression, an anticipation of effect from cause . . . it becomes a reality through its product.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Second<\/em>, consequently, when workers are hired there is no guarantee that the value of the goods produced equals their wage. Under capitalism wages cannot<\/em> equal product as the proprietor secures a profit by controlling both product and<\/em> labour:<\/p>\n\n\n\n\u201cDo you know what it is to be a wage-worker? It is to labour under a master, watchful for his prejudices even more than for his orders . . . It is to have no mind of your own . . . to know no stimulus save your daily bread and the fear of losing your job.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe wage-worker is a man to whom the property owner who hires him says: What you have to make is none of your business; you do not control it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Third<\/em>, this hierarchical relationship allowed exploitation to occur:<\/p>\n\n\n\n\u201cthe worker . . . create[s], on top of his subsistence, a capital always greater. Under the regime of property, the surplus of labour, essentially collective, passes entirely, like the revenue, to the proprietor: now, between that disguised appropriation and the fraudulent usurpation of a communal good, where is the difference?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe consequence of that usurpation is that the worker, whose share of the collective product is constantly confiscated by the entrepreneur, is always on his uppers, while the capitalist is always in profit . . . political economy, that upholds and advocates that regime, is the theory of theft.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In short, the capitalist firm \u201cwith its hierarchical organisation\u201d means that workers had \u201cparted with their liberty\u201d and \u201chave sold their arms\u201d to a boss who controls them, appropriates the product of their labour and, consequently, the \u201ccollective force\u201d and \u201csurplus of labour\u201d they create. This produced the economic contradictions Proudhon analysed. Thus, for example, the introduction of machinery within capitalism \u201cpromised us an increase of wealth\u201d but it also produced \u201can increase of poverty\u201d as well as bringing \u201cus slavery\u201d and deepening \u201cthe abyss which separates the class that commands and enjoys from the class that obeys and suffers.\u201d Such contradictions could only be resolved by abolishing the system that creates them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
His analysis of how exploitation occurred in production and the oppressive nature of the capitalist workplace feeds directly into Proudhon\u2019s arguments for workers\u2019 associations and socialisation (\u201cto unfold the system of economic contradictions is to lay the foundations of universal association\u201d). As \u201call labour must leave a surplus, all wages [must] be equal to product\u201d and \u201c[b]y virtue of the principle of collective force, workers are the equals and associates of their leaders.\u201d The association of the future would be based on free access (\u201cshould allow access to all who might present themselves\u201d) and self-management (\u201cto straightway enjoy the rights and prerogatives of associates and even managers\u201d). Hence \u201cit is necessary to destroy or modify the predominance of capital over labour, to change the relations between employer and worker, to solve, in a word, the antinomy of division and that of machinery; it is necessary to ORGANISE LABOUR.\u201d Here we see how critique feeds directly into the vision of a free economy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This argument was rooted in Proudhon\u2019s awareness that societies change and develop. He denounced \u201cthe radical vice of political economy\u201d of \u201caffirming as a definitive state a transitory condition, \u2013 namely, the division of society into patricians and proletaires<\/em>.\u201d The \u201cperiod through which we are now passing\u201d was \u201cdistinguished by a special characteristic: WAGE-LABOUR.\u201d Just as capitalism had replaced feudalism, so capitalism and its system of property rights would be replaced by an economy based on associated<\/em> labour and socialised property: mutualism.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThese two volumes were primarily a work of critique, with positive visions few and far between. What there is shows a keen understanding of the necessity to transform the relations of production, to seek a solution at the point of production<\/em> to the exploitation and oppression of capitalism. However, the work\u2019s focus was destructive and not constructive \u2013 he explicitly stated that he would \u201creserve\u201d discussion on the organisation of labour \u201cfor the time when, the theory of economic contradictions being finished, we shall have found in their general equation the programme of association, which we shall then publish in contrast with the practice and conceptions of our predecessors.\u201d The February revolution of 1848 forced him to do just that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\u201cSolution of the Social Question\u201d<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Proudhon considered his work of the 1840s as essentially critique, although tantalising glimpses of his vision of libertarian socialism do come through. The February revolution of 1848 saw him develop his positive theories on anarchist economics and politics as he sought to influence it towards libertarian ends or, as his first work after the revolution put it, to formulate the \u201cSolution of the Social Question.\u201d<\/strong> For, as he correctly predicted, \u201ceither property will overrule the Republic or the Republic will overrule property.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\nHe stressed that to be permanent the revolution had to move from just political changes to economic transformation. He urged that \u201ca provisional committee be set up to orchestrate exchange, credit and commerce between workers\u201d and this would \u201cliaise with similar committees\u201d across France in order that \u201ca body representative of the proletariat be formed . . . in opposition to the bourgeoisie\u2019s representation.\u201d And so \u201ca new society [would] be founded in the heart of the old society\u201d, created only \u201cfrom below\u201d as \u201cthe organisation of labour must not emanate from the powers-that-be; it ought to be SPONTANEOUS.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This would be achieved by means of a \u201cBank of the People\u201d. Its aim was \u201cto organise credit democratically\u201d and this \u201corganisation of credit\u201d was considered as the means to achieve the organisation of labour, with socialised credit producing socialised property. Thus \u201cthe Exchange Bank is the organisation of labour\u2019s greatest asset\u201d and allowed \u201cthe new form of society to be defined and created among the workers.\u201d Significantly he linked his ideas to the working-class self-activity going on around him, pointing to those workers who \u201chave organised credit among themselves\u201d and the \u201clabour associations\u201d which have grasped \u201cspontaneously\u201d that the \u201corganisation of credit and organisation of labour amount to one and the same.\u201d By organising both, the workers \u201cwould soon have wrested alienated capital back again, through their organisation and competition.\u201d Mutual banks would support \u201call efforts of associations of workers, and organisations of workers\u201d to ensure that \u201call the workshops are owned by the nation, even though they remain and must always remain free.\u201d Workers\u2019 control would \u201cmake every citizen simultaneously, equally and to the same extent capitalist, worker and expert or artist\u201d, this being \u201cthe first principle of the new economy, a principle full of hope and of consolation for the worker . . . but a principle full of terror for the parasite and for the tools of parasitism, who see reduced to naught their celebrated formula: Capital, labour, talent!<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\nProudhon took care to base his arguments not on abstract ideology but on the actual practices he saw around him. He was well aware that banks issued credit and so increased the money supply in response to market demand. As such, he was an early exponent of the endogenous theory of the money supply. He recognised that a money economy, one with an extensive banking and credit system, operates in a fundamentally different way than the barter economy assumed by most economics. He saw that income from property violated the axiom that products exchanged for products and that interest reflected no sacrifice which required payment as the rich person \u201clends it . . . precisely because the loan is not a deprivation to him; he lends it because he has no use for it himself, being sufficiently provided with capital without it.\u201d For both economic and ethical reasons we \u201cmust destroy the royalty of gold; we must republicanise specie, by making every product of labour ready money.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It must be stressed that in today\u2019s economies neither credit nor money is backed by gold. So Proudhon has been vindicated when he mocked bourgeois political economy for arguing that \u201cthe idea of abolishing specie is supremely absurd, as absurd as the thought of abolishing property\u201d! Only partially, though, as credit has not been republicanised via a mutual bank to achieve the organisation of labour.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For all his talk of \u201cthe organisation of credit\u201d, the socialisation of property and organisation of labour remained his goals with the mutual bank seen as a means to achieve that end. In December 1849 he irately denied that he sought the \u201cindividual ownership and non-organisation of the instruments of labour\u201d stating categorically that he had \u201cnever penned nor uttered any such thing\u201d and \u201chave argued the opposite a hundred times over.\u201d He \u201cden[ied] all kinds of proprietary domain\u201d and so did \u201cprecisely because I believe in an order wherein the instruments of labour will cease to be appropriated and instead become shared.\u201d The previous year he had publicly presented this vision in a manifesto:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cUnder the law of association, transmission of wealth does not apply to the instruments of labour, so cannot become a cause of inequality . . . We are socialists . . . under universal association, ownership of the land and of the instruments of labour is social<\/em> ownership . . . We want the mines, canals, railways handed over to democratically organised workers\u2019 associations . . . We want these associations to be models for agriculture, industry and trade, the pioneering core of that vast federation of companies and societies woven into the common cloth of the democratic and social Republic.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\nAs in the Paris Commune of 1871, this \u201corganising [of] the workers\u2019 mutual solidarity\u201d would be based on elected delegates whom the voters can \u201crecall and dismiss\u201d for the \u201cimperative mandate and permanent revocability are the most immediate and incontestable consequences of the electoral principle.\u201d Like the Commune, any assembly would \u201cexercise executive power, just the way it exercises legislative power through its joint deliberations and votes\u201d, through \u201corganisation of its committees\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
All through the revolutionary period we see the interplay between critique and vision, with each informing the other. Under capitalism \u201ca worker, without property, without capital, without work, is hired by [the capitalist], who gives him employment and takes his product\u201d and his wages fail to equal the price of the products he produces. \u201cIn mutualist society\u201d, however, \u201cthe two functions\u201d of worker and capitalist \u201cbecome equal and inseparable in the person of every worker\u201d and so he \u201calone profits by his products\u201d and the \u201csurplus\u201d he creates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cGeneral Idea of the Revolution\u201d<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Proudhon\u2019s hectic activity during the revolution saw him vilified by the right and imprisoned on spurious charges. In prison he wrote another classic of libertarian politics, 1851\u2019s \u201cGeneral Idea of the Revolution in the Nineteenth Century.\u201d<\/strong> This was considered by Proudhon as a constructive summary for social change, the positive complement to the critiques of 1846.<\/p>\n\n\n\nIts aim was modest: \u201cCapitalist and landlord exploitation stopped everywhere, wage labour abolished, equal and just exchange guaranteed.\u201d As would be expected, \u201cthe organisation of credit, the deprivation of the power of increase of money\u201d was a focal point of his book but it was just one<\/em> part of a series of reforms which included \u201cthe limitation of property\u201d and \u201cthe establishment of workers companies.\u201d Proudhon, Marxist myths notwithstanding, did not aim just<\/em> to abolish interest, he aimed to abolish the extraction of surplus from the workers in all<\/em><\/strong> its forms.<\/p>\n\n\n\nSocialisation still played a key part of his vision of a free society and Proudhon made various suggestions on how to achieve it. Rental payments \u201cshall be carried over to the account of the purchase\u201d of the resource used and once the property \u201chas been entirely paid for, it shall revert immediately to the commune.\u201d In the case of housing, such payments would result in \u201ca proportional undivided share in the house he lives in, and in all buildings erected for rental, and serving as a habitation for citizens.\u201d Thus land and housing would become socialised as the property \u201cthus paid for shall pass under the control of the communal administration\u201d and for \u201crepairs, management, and upkeep of buildings, as well as for new constructions, the communes shall deal with bricklayers companies or building workers associations.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Proudhon spent considerable space arguing for workers associations (while attacking centralised state-run Association). Either, he argued, the worker \u201cwill be simply the employee of the proprietor-capitalist-entrepreneur; or he will participate in . . . the establishment, he will have a voice in the council, in a word, he will become an associate.\u201d Under capitalism, \u201cthe worker is subordinated, exploited: his permanent condition is one of obedience and poverty.\u201d Under libertarian socialism, \u201che resumes his dignity as a man and citizen, he may aspire to comfort, he forms a part of the producing organisation, of which he was before but the slave . . . he forms a part of the sovereign power, of which he was before but the subject.\u201d Without association people \u201cwould remain related as subordinates and superiors, and there would ensue two industrial castes of masters and wage-workers, which is repugnant to a free and democratic society.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In short, \u201call workers must associate, inasmuch as collective force and division of labour exist everywhere, to however slight a degree\u201d and so \u201cassociation, due to the immorality, tyranny and theft suffered, seems to me absolutely necessary and right.\u201d Otherwise, capitalists would continue to \u201cplunder the bodies and souls of the wage-workers\u201d which would be \u201ca violation of the rights of the public, an outrage upon human dignity and personality.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Significantly, his practical suggestions for workplace self-management map exactly<\/em><\/strong> to his previous arguments (particularly his comments from 1846). Thus \u201cevery individual employed in the association . . . has an undivided share in the property of the company\u201d as well as \u201cthe right to fill any position\u201d for \u201call positions are elective, and the by-laws subject to the approval of the members.\u201d Wages would be equal to output as \u201ceach member shall participate in the gains and in the losses of the company, in proportion to his services\u201d and \u201cthe collective force, which is a product of the community, ceases to be a source of profit to a small number of managers and speculators: it becomes the property of all the workers.\u201d Thus there would be a new form of economic organisation based on \u201cthe co-operation of all who take part in the collective work\u201d with \u201cequal conditions for all members\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\nPublic utilities would be under the \u201cinitiative of communes and departments\u201d with \u201cworkers companies . . . carrying the works out.\u201d This decentralisation, this \u201cdirect, sovereign initiative of localities, in arranging for public works that belong to them, is a consequence of the democratic principle and the free contract.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This associative socialism would be universal, for there \u201cwill no longer be nationality, no longer fatherland, in the political sense of the words: they will mean only places of birth. Whatever a man\u2019s race or colour, he is really a native of the universe; he has citizen\u2019s rights everywhere.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe Federative Principle\u201d<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
With the revolution crushed, first by the onslaught of the right and then by President Louis-Napoleon\u2019s coup d\u2019\u00e9tat of December 1851, Proudhon\u2019s work was naturally affected as there was little working class self-activity to inspire him as well as being constantly under the watchful eyes of the Emperor\u2019s censors and police.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
His first major work, published anonymously initially, was the \u201cStock Exchange Speculator\u2019s Manual\u201d<\/strong> whose title hid a subversive message \u2013 the abolition of wage-labour, the end of the capitalist company and the advocacy of producer and consumer associations. It asked how \u201cthe ownership and management of companies\u201d instead \u201cof remaining individual\u201d could become \u201ccollective\u201d so ensuring the \u201cemancipation\u201d of the workers and \u201ca revolution in the relationship between labour and capital.\u201d It concluded:<\/p>\n\n\n\n\u201cWorkers\u2019 associations are the home of a new principle and model of production that must replace current corporations . . . There is mutuality . . . when in an industry, all the workers, instead of working for an owner who pays them and keeps their product, work for each other and thereby contribute to a common product from which they share the profit . . . extend the principle of mutuality that unites the workers of each association to all the workers\u2019 associations as a unit, and you will have created a form of civilisation that, from all points of view \u2014 political, economic, aesthetic \u2014 differs completely from previous civilisations.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The message of 1840, one of the core concepts of anarchist economists, remained at the fore of Proudhon\u2019s ideas and the Frenchman added another expression to the arsenal of hope within anarchist theory: \u201cindustrial democracy.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Proudhon\u2019s next work was his magus opus<\/em>, 1858\u2019s Justice in the Revolution and in the Church<\/em>. Economic justice required that labour be \u201cby its free nature with capital and property, from which wage-labour banished it.\u201d This meant: \u201cThe land to those who cultivate it\u201d; \u201cCapital to those who use it\u201d; \u201cThe product to the producer.\u201d Such a self-managed economy \u201ccannot cause a distinction of classes\u201d and \u201cmakes society, as well as [economic] science, safe from any contradiction.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe early 1860s saw Proudhon turn increasingly to political issues, notably the questions of federalism, centralism and nationalism. However, he always recognised the links between the economy and the political structure and so 1863\u2019s \u201cThe Federative Principle\u201d<\/strong> discusses economic reforms in a federal system as \u201cpolitical right must have the buttress of economic right.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\nBuilding on his previous ideas for \u201cuniversal association\u201d, he argued for the necessity of an \u201cagricultural-industrial federation\u201d as \u201cindustries are sisters; they are parts of the same body; one cannot suffer without the others suffering because of it. I wish that they federate then, not to absorb one another and merge, but to mutually guarantee the conditions of prosperity that are common to them all and that none can claim the monopoly of.\u201d Without this, there would be \u201ceconomic serfdom or wage-labour, in a word, the inequality of conditions and fortunes.\u201d The agricultural-industrial federation \u201ctends to approximate more and more equality\u201d as well as \u201cguaranteeing work and education\u201d and \u201callow[ing] each worker to evolve from a mere labourer to a skilled worker or even an artist, and from a wage-earner to their own master.\u201d He termed \u201cthis political-economic guaranteeism\u201d and considered it both as \u201cthe highest expression of federalism\u201d and \u201cthe strongest barrier to feudalism of the land and capital, toward which unitary powers inevitably go.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Proudhon died in January 1865. On his deathbed, enthused by the rebirth of the labour movement, he dictated \u201cThe Political Capacity of the Working Classes.\u201d<\/strong> He outlined the economics and politics of mutualism, his continued support for \u201cthe mutualist and federative theory of Property, the critique of [property] which I published twenty-five years ago\u201d and reaffirmed the necessity for free access and association:<\/p>\n\n\n\n\u201cin virtue of the principle which characterises it, the ranks of the Association are open to whomever, having recognised the spirit and the goal, asks to join; exclusion is contrary to it, and the more it grows in number the more advantages it gains. From the point of view of personnel, the mutualist association is therefore by nature unlimited, which is the opposite of all other associations. . . . [It] admits . . . everyone in the world, and tends towards universality . . . one is required to contribute neither money nor other valuables . . . the only condition demanded is to be faithful to the mutualist pact; \u2013 once formed, its nature is to generalise itself and to have no end.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He, as before, attacked both capitalism and state socialism as neither expressed \u201cthe great hopes that the workers\u2019 Democracy had placed in the idea of the association.\u201d Instead he urged self-management and re-iterated \u201cthe importance accorded in the New Democracy to workers\u2019 associations which are deemed to constitute economic agencies and mutual institutions.\u201d Co-operatives (\u201cworkers\u2019 companies\u201d) continued to play a key role in his vision of a free economy: \u201cThe revolution, in democratising us, has launched us on the paths of industrial democracy.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Conclusion: From Proudhon to Kropotkin<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Anyone familiar with Proudhon\u2019s work can quickly see the debt later anarchists owe him. His placing of anti-capitalism alongside anti-statism defined anarchism. His critique of property, his analysis of exploitation occurring in production, his rejection of wage-labour all fed into revolutionary anarchist (and Marxist) analysis of capitalism. His arguments for self-management, socialisation, possession, use-rights and socio-economic federalism are all found in the works of Bakunin, Kropotkin and other revolutionary anarchists. As he summarised in 1851:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201csocialism is . . . the elimination of misery, the abolition of capitalism and of wage-labour, the transformation of property, the decentralisation of government, the organisation of universal suffrage, the effective and direct sovereignty of the workers, the equilibrium of economic forces, the substitution of the contractual regime for the legal regime, etc.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The key differences with libertarian communist theory are on means (revolution replacing reform) and on the extension of the critique of wage-labour<\/em> into an opposition to the wages-system<\/em>. This involved developing a stronger critique of competition and a greater awareness of the problems associated with market forces than can be found in Proudhon (who, myths notwithstanding, was well aware of the negative sides of markets and so recommended various institutional means of limiting them and their impact). It also meant raising ethical objections to distribution by labour-cost, recognising that needs are not proportional to a person\u2019s ability to labour and that some, due to illness and age, simply cannot work at all.<\/p>\n\n\n\nBy the mid-1870s, most anarchists had embraced distribution according to need<\/em> rather than Proudhon\u2019s according to deed<\/em> (labour). The rationales for this move to (libertarian) communism were elegantly and convincingly expounded by Kropotkin in many works (most obviously, \u201cThe Conquest of Bread\u201d<\/strong>). Yet in terms of the critiques of capitalism, property and wage-labour and of the positive vision of a decentralised, self-managed, associated and federated libertarian socialism the links are obvious. The only significant difference is the rejection of Proudhon\u2019s socialism based on a market in the products<\/em> of labour in favour of one inspired by the maxim \u201cfrom each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\nIt is for these reasons that Bakunin proclaimed Proudhon \u201cthe master of us all\u201d and his own ideas simply \u201cProudhonism widely developed and pushed right to these, its final consequences.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This is an introduction to Proudhon\u2019s economic ideas and their influence on revolutionary anarchism. It is a chapter from the new book The Accumulation of Freedom: Writings on Anarchist Economics (AK Press, 2012) and its blurb (in part) states: \u201cThe only crisis of capitalism is capitalism itself\u2026 The Accumulation of Freedom brings together economists, historians, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-60","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-proudhon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/anarchistfaq.org\/anarcho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/anarchistfaq.org\/anarcho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/anarchistfaq.org\/anarcho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anarchistfaq.org\/anarcho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anarchistfaq.org\/anarcho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=60"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/anarchistfaq.org\/anarcho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":61,"href":"https:\/\/anarchistfaq.org\/anarcho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60\/revisions\/61"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/anarchistfaq.org\/anarcho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=60"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anarchistfaq.org\/anarcho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=60"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anarchistfaq.org\/anarcho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=60"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}