{"id":66,"date":"2025-10-15T16:01:28","date_gmt":"2025-10-15T16:01:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/anarchistfaq.org\/anarcho\/?p=66"},"modified":"2025-10-19T09:21:33","modified_gmt":"2025-10-19T09:21:33","slug":"the-poverty-of-marxs-philosophy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/anarchistfaq.org\/anarcho\/the-poverty-of-marxs-philosophy\/","title":{"rendered":"The Poverty of (Marx\u2019s) Philosophy"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A review of Marx’s The Poverty of Philosophy<\/em> which indicates various distortions of Proudhon’s work. It also discusses how Marx in 1867 applied the methodology he had attacked Proudhon for using twenty years earlier. It appeared in Anarcho-Syndicalist Review<\/em> R No. 70 (Summer 2017)<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

The Poverty of (Marx\u2019s) Philosophy<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

This year (2017) marks the 170th<\/sup> anniversary of the publication of Karl Marx\u2019s The Poverty of Philosophy<\/em>, written in \u201creply\u201d to Pierre-Joseph Proudhon\u2019s System of Economic Contradictions<\/em> published the year before. The book\u2019s title is a play on the subtitle of Proudhon\u2019s two volumes (\u201cor, the Philosophy of Poverty\u201d) and for Trotskyist Ernest Mandel \u201cthe prototype of that sort of implacable polemical writing which has often inspired the pens of Marx\u2019s followers\u201d. (The formation of the economic thought of Karl Marx<\/em> [London: N.L.B., 1971], 53)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Given its age and stature, some may wonder why bother to review it? There are two reasons why this is no esoteric act.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

First, it has played a key role in how the French anarchist is viewed. So, from an anarchist perspective, it is useful to see whether the criticism is valid or not \u2013 particularly given that much of the \u201cconventional wisdom\u201d about Proudhon can be traced to it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Second, it allows radicals today to re-evaluate Proudhon\u2019s ideas and their relevance. As Kropotkin suggested, it is a \u201cwork which, of course, lost none of its considerable merit on account of Marx\u2019s malignant pamphlet\u201d. (Direct Struggle Against Capital<\/em> [Edinburgh\/Oakland\/Baltimore: AK Press, 2014], 214)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Method of Marx\u2019s Poverty<\/em><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

This is a work which is very difficult to review. Not only do you need to have also read Proudhon\u2019s work, Marx\u2019s usually fails to reference his quotes which makes comparing what he suggests Proudhon argued to what he wrote difficult. It would take a book in itself to address all of Marx\u2019s claims and so we will concentrate on a few of the most important and indicative ones but before addressing these, a few general points.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

First, Marx wilfully ignores Proudhon\u2019s use of irony. For example, he makes much play of Proudhon\u2019s use of the expression \u201ceternal justice.\u201d Yet Proudhon uses it twice in his two volumes and both times in an ironic fashion. Marx uses it four times \u2013 once in a quote which he attributes to Proudhon (\u201ccries M. Proudhon\u201d) but which he simply made-up. Interestingly, the editors of the Marx-Engels Collected Works<\/em> removed the quotation marks which existed in the 1847 original. Why? Seeking to make the definitive edition, they sought to reference all Marx\u2019s quotes and as this was an invention on his part they had little option. This illustrates two aspects of Marx\u2019s method \u2013 selective quoting and pure invention.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Second, Marx repeatedly invokes authority in lieu of genuine debate. Indeed, he does it so often it seems more about proving how many books he has read rather than contributing to the argument. Often the authors are quoted without indicating whether Marx agreed with them or, indeed, whether their opinions actually matter \u2013 quoting someone who is wrong does not do your case any good. Similarly, his book is full of quotes from other authors but whose actual relevance is often null as Proudhon did not argue the point Marx is refuting by them. Still, this does allow Marx to give himself the appearance of a learned critique. For example, after noting how Proudhon \u201cpersonifies society\u201d he then states that \u201cProudhon reproaches the economists with not having understood the personality of this collective being\u201d before having the \u201cpleasure in confronting him with [\u2026] an American economist, who accuses the economists of just the opposite.\u201d Marx does not bother to indicate whether this work of Thomas Cooper (today he is better known, if known at all, as a successionist politician than an economist) is worth accepting or not. Does it rank, for example, with Cooper\u2019s defence of the use of slaves in certain areas of the Americas \u201cwhich incapacitates a white from labouring\u201d (Lectures on the Elements of Political Economy<\/em> [Columbia: Doyle E. Sweeny, 1826], 95-6)? Whether it is or not is ultimately an irrelevance for Proudhon did not in fact suggest what Marx attributes to him: \u201cTo the true economist, society is a living being\u2026\u201d (Syst\u00e8me des contradictions \u00e9conomiques<\/em> [Paris: Guillaumin, 1846] I: 74).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Third, Marx\u2019s reply is often self-contradictory. This is to be expected with Marx\u2019s mud-flinging approach \u2013 while some of it will stick, it can hardly be expected to be consistent. The most obvious example is on Proudhon\u2019s position on competition: in the first chapter his attacks on Proudhon\u2019s \u201cConstituted Value\u201d are premised on the (false) assertion that \u201cthere is no more competition\u201d while in chapter two he attacks Proudhon for \u201cdefending the eternal necessity of competition\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fourth, Marx is keen to portray Proudhon as yet another utopian seeking to create a perfect system. Yet the \u201csystem\u201d of Proudhon\u2019s title is capitalism<\/em> and Proudhon spends the bulk of the book critiquing it. Discussion of what should replace capitalism is fleeting and based on looking at the tendencies within capitalism which point beyond it. This explains his opposition to the actual<\/em> utopian socialists who simply denounce capitalism while inventing ideal systems to replace it. It \u201cis important, then, that we should resume the study of economic facts and practices, discover their meaning, and formulate their philosophy\u201d for the \u201cerror of socialism has consisted hitherto in perpetuating religious reverie by launching forward into a fantastic future instead of seizing the reality which is crushing it.\u201d He rejects \u201coffering a priori<\/em> arguments as solutions of the formidable problems of the organisation of labour and the distribution of wealth\u201d in favour of \u201cinterrogat[ing] political economy as the depositary of the secret thoughts of humanity\u201d for \u201cto unfold the system of economical contradictions is to lay the foundations of universal association; to show how the products of collective labour come out<\/em> of society is to explain how it will be possible to make them return<\/em> to it; to exhibit the genesis of the problems of production and distribution is to prepare the way for their solution.\u201d (Syst\u00e8me<\/em> I: 89, 92)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fifth, while for Proudhon civilisation \u201caims to constitute the value of products and organise labour\u201d, Marx distorts the former and ignores the latter. Thus the reader of his \u201creply\u201d would be unaware of Proudhon\u2019s discussion of the associations which would replace wage-labour (and so end labour as a commodity). In these members \u201cstraightway enjoy the rights and prerogatives of associates and even managers\u201d, \u201chave a deliberative voice in the council\u201d and so are \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 Hence \u201cthe socialisation of capital and property\u201d for \u201cit is necessary that [\u2026] all appropriated wealth again become collective wealth, that the capital taken from society returns to society\u201d for \u201cthere is supremacy and dependence\u201d between the worker and the capitalist and \u201ccapital introduces into society an inevitable feudalism\u201d. (Syst\u00e8me<\/em> II: 204; I: 272-8, 217, 88; II: 168) Unlike the utopian socialists, he rejected the idea of organising labour and instead argued that labour would organise itself<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Still, ignoring this allows Marx to suggest in all seriousness that Proudhon \u201c[t]o save his system, he consents to sacrifice its basis\u201d for \u201che forgets that his whole system rests on labour as a commodity\u201d! Perhaps this lack of discussion of a key aspect of Proudhon\u2019s ideas may be less surprising when we realise that, as one Marxist summarises, \u201cMarx\u2019s picture of life and organisation in the first stage of communism is very incomplete. There is no discussion of such obviously important developments as workers\u2019 control. We can only guess how much power workers enjoy in their enterprises\u201d. (Bertell Ollman, Social and Sexual Revolution <\/em>[Montreal: Black Rose Books, 1978], 65-6) History suggests that we do not have to guess.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

More could be written about the overall nature of Marx\u2019s \u201creply\u201d but it becomes obvious when we address specific subjects. To avoid repeating ourselves, we turn to a few illustrative examples.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Constituted Value<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The \u201cconventional wisdom\u201d is that Proudhon advocated labour-notes, the pricing of commodities by the time (hours and minutes) taken to produce them. This notion has its source in Marx\u2019s \u201creply\u201d and he spends some time mocking it and showing its flaws. Yet he does not present any evidence that Proudhon advocates such an idea \u2013 and ignores much which clearly shows he did not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Marx states that \u201c[v]alue (marketable value) is the corner-stone of the economic structure. \u2018Constituted\u2019 value is the corner-stone of the system of economic contradictions.\u201d Yet the \u201csystem of economic contradictions\u201d is capitalism and, for Proudhon, the market (value) is not identical to it. Marx begins with a false dichotomy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He then describes Proudhon\u2019s \u201cown invention\u201d which he \u201chas discovered in political economy\u201d, namely that the \u201cconstituted value of a product is purely and simply the value which is constituted by the labour time incorporated in it.\u201d Marx contrasts Ricardo who \u201ctakes his starting point from present-day society to demonstrate to us how it constitutes value\u201d to Proudhon whom, he claims, \u201ctakes constituted value as his starting point to construct a new social world with the aid of this value\u201d. The former is \u201cthe scientific interpretation of actual economic life\u201d while the latter is \u201cthe utopian interpretation of Ricardo\u2019s theory\u201d. It is utopian because Proudhon thinks that \u201cmarketable value [should be] determined a priori<\/em> by labour time\u201d resulting in \u201cthe sale of a given product at the price of its cost of production\u201d:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

\u201cSuppose for a moment that there is no more competition and consequently no longer any means to ascertain the minimum of labour necessary for the production of a commodity; what will happen? It will suffice to spend six hours\u2019 work on the production of an object, in order to have the right, according to M. Proudhon, to demand in exchange six times as much as the one who has taken only one hour to produce the same object.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Marx then \u2013 with copious quotes from Ricardo \u2013 shows that the price (market value) must differ from the value (labour-time) in order for a commodity\u2019s supply and demand to finally approximate by means of competition:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

\u201cIf M. Proudhon admits that the value of products is determined by labour time, he should equally admit that it is the fluctuating movement alone that in society founded on individual exchanges make labour the measure of value. There is no ready-made constituted \u2018proportional relation,\u2019 but only a constituting movement.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

This applies to labour: \u201cIs your hour\u2019s labour worth mine? That is a question which is decided by competition.\u201d Proudhon, however, \u201cinverts the order of things\u201d and goes from \u201cmeasuring the relative value of a product by the quantity of labour embodied in it\u201d in order that \u201csupply and demand will infallibly balance one another\u201d and also \u201ctakes for granted the equivalence of the working days of different workers\u201d in order to \u201carrive at equal payment for the workers\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What is striking about this critique \u2013 beyond its admittedly amusing use of withering scorn \u2013 is the complete lack of supporting evidence. The reason is simple as Proudhon\u2019s \u201cConstituted Value\u201d is precisely<\/em> the \u201cconstituting movement\u201d Marx describes. To show this we need simply do what Marx failed to do \u2013 quote Proudhon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rather than Ricardo\u2019s \u201cexchange value\u201d being the market value of a good, Proudhon suggests that there are three elements to value \u2013 useful value (valeur utile<\/em>), exchangeable value (valeur \u00e9changeable<\/em>) and constituted value (valeur constitu\u00e9e<\/em>). The first is what the buyer prices the good (rooted in utility), the second is what the seller prices the good (rooted in costs) and the third is the price agreed between the two. (Syst\u00e8me<\/em> I: 48) It is competition which drives the latter towards the labour cost of the commodity:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

\u201cCompetition is necessary to the constitution of value, that is, to the very principle of distribution, and consequently to the advent of equality. As long as a product is supplied only by a single manufacturer, its real value remains a mystery, either through the producer\u2019s misrepresentation or through his neglect or inability to reduce the cost of production to its utmost limit. [\u2026] an exact knowledge of value [\u2026] can be discovered only by competition, not at all by communistic institutions or by popular decree.\u201d (Syst\u00e8me<\/em> I: 188-9)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Rather that proclaim that goods must be priced at their labour-time cost, his constituted value explains how market price is regulated<\/em> by cost (ultimately labour) and this was \u201cthe centre around which useful and exchangeable value oscillate\u201d, the \u201cabsolute, unchangeable law which regulates economic disturbances\u201d for \u201cwhoever says oscillation<\/em> necessarily supposes a mean direction toward which value\u2019s centre of gravity continually tends\u201d. (Syst\u00e8me<\/em> I: 62, 23) This was inherently dynamic:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

\u201cThe idea of value socially constituted [\u2026] serves to explain [\u2026] how, by a series of oscillations between supply and demand, the value of every product constantly seeks a level with cost and with the needs of consumption, and consequently tends to establish itself in a fixed and positive manner\u201d (Syst\u00e8me<\/em> I: 87)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

So rather than there being \u201cno more competition\u201d as Marx asserts, Proudhon was very clear that work \u201cdiffers in quantity and quality with the producer\u201d and that \u201ccompetition between workers\u201d was \u201ca necessity\u201d and every utopia \u201cever imagined [\u2026] cannot escape this law\u201d. (Syst\u00e8me<\/em> I: 55, 189). He explicitly opposed the idea of pronouncing a priori<\/em> prices (and pricing by labour-time cannot be anything else):<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

\u201cSuppose for a moment that all producers should sell at a fixed price: there would be some who, producing at less cost and in better quality, would get much, while others would get nothing. [\u2026] Do you wish [\u2026] to limit production strictly to the necessary amount? That would be a violation of liberty: for, in depriving me of the power of choice, you condemn me to pay the highest price; you destroy competition, the sole guarantee of cheapness\u201d (Syst\u00e8me<\/em> I: 40-1)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

What of Marx\u2019s other claims? Proudhon never argued that workers should exchanging according to time<\/em> rather \u201c[p]roducts are bought only with products\u201d<\/em> and notes that \u201c[i]n economic science, we have said after Adam Smith, the point of view from which all values are compared is labour; as for the unit of measure, that adopted in France is the FRANC.\u201d A worker\u2019s income would reflect the price achieved on the market for \u201call wages [will] be equal to product\u201d. (Syst\u00e8me <\/em>I: 246, 67-8, 305) There would be social equality (no classes, only workers) but not equality of income for that depended on labour and competition:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

\u201cEnsure that for each of us well-being results exclusively from labour, so that the measure of work becomes the exact measure of well-being, and that the product of labour is like a second and incorruptible conscience, whose testimony punishes or rewards each man\u2019s actions, according to merit or demerit.\u201d (Syst\u00e8me<\/em> II: 383)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Is Proudhon\u2019s term \u201cvaleur constitu\u00e9e<\/em>\u201d and related discussion, as Marx suggest, less clear than Ricardo\u2019s? Perhaps \u2013 but then Ricardo is not critiquing the workings of capitalism by exposing its contradictions. But disliking flowery language is hardly a firm basis for a critique \u2013 but it would be more accurate than the one Marx provides:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

\u201cProudhon\u2019s idea has often been contrasted with Robert Owen\u2019s labour notes, and with the scheme prepared by Mr Bray [\u2026] Proudhon\u2019s circulating notes have nothing in common with the labour notes described by these writers. The circulating notes represent commercial goods produced for the purpose of private exchange. Prices are freely fixed by buyer and seller, and they bear no relation to the labour time, as is the case with the labour notes. The final result, doubtless, was expected to be the same. Proudhon hoped that in this way the price of goods [\u2026] would equal cost of production. This result was to be obtained indirectly.\u201d (Charles Gide and Charles Rist, A History of Economic Doctrines<\/em> [London: Harrap, 1948], 322-3)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Finally, we must note that Marx\u2019s attempts to suggest that Proudhon had plagiarised Ricardo (for suggesting, correctly, that \u2013 in context, French<\/em> \u2013 economists had opposed the labour theory of value for \u201cthe last 40 years\u201d) while, simultaneously, \u201che talks about him, he talks at length about him, he keeps coming back to him, and concludes by calling his system \u2018trash.\u2019\u201d Yet Proudhon is extremely complementary about Ricardo and lists him amongst the few economists whose works have \u201cmost to be commended\u201d. (Syst\u00e8me<\/em> I: 146) He does dismiss (Syst\u00e8me<\/em> II: 138) Ricardo\u2019s ideas on banking and money with the word \u201cnonsense\u201d (absurdit\u00e9<\/em> rather than fatras<\/em> as Marx invents) but then Marx later also dismisses Ricardo\u2019s \u201cerroneous theory of money\u201d. (Theories of Surplus Value<\/em> [London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1969] II: 164)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Proudhon, rightly and like Ricardo, notes \u201cthe honour of first mention belong[s] to Adam Smith, Remuneration is in proportion not to USE VALUES which the producer brings to the market but TO THE WORK INCORPORATED in these use values<\/em>\u201d His theory of value \u201cis not a revelation that we pretend to offer to the world, or a novelty that we bring into science\u201d for it \u201cis, as we might prove easily by innumerable quotations, a common idea running through the works on political economy\u201d and rejected \u201cpretensions to originality\u201d. This applies to how value is constituted and rather than \u201clabour-notes\u201d it \u201cis determined in society by a series of oscillations between supply and demand\u201d (Syst\u00e8me<\/em> II: 84; I: 52; II: 209) Ironically, Marxists later appropriated Proudhon\u2019s term \u2013 \u201cthe law of value\u201d (Syst\u00e8me<\/em> I: 60) \u2013 to summarise how the market price of goods oscillates around their prices of production (labour cost).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So rather than attack Proudhon for not going beyond the market (for the products of labour), Marx invents the notion of an \u201cutopian interpretation of Ricardo\u2019s theory\u201d and so both misses a fruitful line of critique and wastes his reader\u2019s time with absurdit\u00e9<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Money<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Marx\u2019s attack on Proudhon\u2019s \u201cConstituted Value\u201d extends into a discussion of his views on money. This is significant for it shows how wrong Marx\u2019s assertions about \u201clabour notes\u201d were and the shoddiness of his method for here Marx inflicts an invention onto his readers, namely the tampering of quotations. He asserts that \u201cProudhon has not yet exhausted all the so-called economic reasons\u201d for the use of gold as money for there \u201cis one of sovereign, irresistible force\u201d and quotes him as follows:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cMoney is born of sovereign consecration: the sovereigns take possession of gold and silver and affix their seal to them.\u201d (\u00ab C\u2019est de la cons\u00e9cration souveraine na\u00eet la monnaie : les souverains s\u2019en emparent et y apposent leur sceau. \u00bb)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

From these damning words Marx proclaims \u201cthe whim of sovereigns is for M. Proudhon the highest reason in political economy.\u201d This shows his poverty for \u201cone must be destitute of all historical knowledge not to know that it is the sovereigns who in all ages have been subject to economic conditions, but they have never dictated laws to them. Legislation, whether political or civil, never does more than proclaim, express in words, the will of economic relations.\u201d Marx fails to provide a page reference for Proudhon\u2019s words, presumably because of what Proudhon actually<\/em> wrote:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cLittle by little the sovereigns took possession of them and affixed their seal to them: and of this sovereign consecration was born money (\u00ab Peu \u00e0 peu les souverains s\u2019en emparent et y apposent leur sceau : et de cette cons\u00e9cration souveraine na\u00eet la monnaie \u00bb). (Syst\u00e8me<\/em> I: 69)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

We can see why Marx changes Proudhon\u2019s words, for Proudhon\u2019s sketch of how money developed is the same as his: \u201cIn the patriarchal period, gold and silver were still bartered and exchanged in ingots but even then they showed a visible tendency to become dominant and received a marked degree of preference. Little by little the sovereigns took possession of them and affixed their seal to them: and of this sovereign consecration was born money, that is, the commodity par excellence\u201d. (Syst\u00e8me<\/em> I: 69) Nor must we forget that come 1867 the \u201cbusiness of coining, like the establishing of a standard measure of prices, is an attribute proper to the State.\u201d (Marx, Capital<\/em> [London, Penguin Books, 1976] I: 221-2)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Proudhon\u2019s discussion of money is also noteworthy due to what it says about his views on \u201cConstituted Value.\u201d Proudhon started by stating that gold and silver \u201cwere the first commodities to have their value constituted.\u201d (Syst\u00e8me<\/em> I: 69) Marx quotes this passage yet he made no attempt to reconcile it with his earlier proclamation that Proudhon\u2019s \u201cconstituted value\u201d was labour-notes. He does not because he could not \u2013 for to do so would be to suggest that Proudhon thought gold and silver were currently<\/em> priced in terms of hours worked to produce them, an obvious nonsense.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So rather than a system of labour-time pricing, Proudhon\u2019s \u201cconstitution of value\u201d is simply the recognition that because all goods are \u201ca representative of labour\u201d this meant that they \u201ccan be exchanged for some other\u201d and can become exchangeable like money for \u201cthe monetisation of gold and silver\u201d was \u201cthe consecration of the law of proportionality, the first act in the constitution of values\u201d. The aim was to ensure that \u201call products of labour must be submitted to a proportional measure which makes all of them equally exchangeable\u201d for up to now \u201cthis attribute of absolute exchangeability\u201d was given just \u201cto a special product [i.e., gold and silver], which shall become the type and model of all others.\u201d (Syst\u00e8me<\/em> I: 68-73)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If the too short discussion of money in chapter two Proudhon\u2019s work was not enough, he also raises it in the chapter on credit (Syst\u00e8me<\/em> II: 109-111) and concludes that \u201cthe price stipulated and accepted for sold goods can become currency in the form of a bill of exchange.\u201d Likewise in the chapter on international trade, which argued for \u201call values\u201d to be \u201cdetermined and constituted like money\u201d and for \u201ceach good\u201d to be \u201cimmediately and without loss, accepted in exchange for another\u201d. This was because \u201c[m]oney, as we said in chapter II, is a variable value, but CONSTITUTED\u201d and so \u201cthese goods remain the only one acceptable in payment, the suzerain of all the others, one whose value, by a temporary but real privilege [\u2026], is socially and regularly determined in its oscillations [\u2026] Until, by a radical reform in the industrial organisation, all produced values have been constituted and determined like currency [\u2026] money preserves its royalty, and it is of it alone which one can say that to accumulate wealth is to accumulate power.\u201d In short: \u201censure that all goods are equivalent to money.\u201d (Syst\u00e8me<\/em> II: 141, 27, 32, 50-1)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This did not stop Marx ignoring that this was obviously the case by asserting \u201cfor M. Proudhon [gold and silver are] the example par excellence<\/em> of the application of value constituted\u2026 by labour time.\u201d Needless to say, he does not quote Proudhon stating that gold and silver were currently priced\u2026 in the hours and minutes they had taken to produce.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Marx ends by proclaiming that gold and silver \u201care always proportional because, alone of all commodities, they serve as money, the universal agent of exchange, whatever their quantity in relation to the sum total of wealth.\u201d Which was Proudhon\u2019s whole point. This is so obvious that Marx cannot help but contradict what came before by noting that this idea of all goods \u201cattain[ing] the status of money is not new\u201d and can be found \u201cin the writings of Boisguillebert, one of the oldest of French economists\u201d and so we apparently see \u201cthat the first illusions of the bourgeoisie are also their last.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sadly, Proudhon never claimed to be saying anything original and asserting ideas to be \u201cillusions\u201d is not the same as proving it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Surplus of Labour<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Marx\u2019s discussion of Proudhon\u2019s \u201csurplus of labour\u201d both hits the target and misses the point. The hit is minor, namely a mathematical error which \u2013 presumably because it is an actual point rather than an invention \u2013 Marx milks for far more than its worth. He misses the point because he ignores Proudhon\u2019s actual theory of how exploitation occurs in production<\/em> as a result of wage-labour in favour of asserting exploitation is rooted in exchange as such<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Proudhon\u2019s mathematical error was made in relation to showing that \u201clabour must leave a surplus for each producer\u201d. It is made in the context of Proudhon invoking \u201cPrometheus,\u201d the personification of society, an admittedly over-egged and unclear analogy to show, as he put it elsewhere, \u201cin society the profits of speculation are equal to the losses\u201d. Regardless of Marx\u2019s mockery, Proudhon does so not to deny the reality of class society but rather to expose it for he discusses how this surplus does not enrich the worker for while in theory \u201cby the progress of collective industry, each individual day\u2019s labour yields a greater and greater product, and while, by necessary consequence, the worker, receiving the same salary, must grow ever richer, there exist in society classes which thrive<\/em> and classes which perish\u201d.<\/em> (Syst\u00e8me<\/em> II: 87; I: 50, 80) However, he does not explain in that discussion how this happens. Instead, his theory must be constructed from his analysis of the contradictions of specific elements of capitalism (machinery, monopoly, property, etc.).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

First<\/em>, labour did not have a value but what it created did and so labour produces value only as active<\/em> labour engaged in the production process:<\/p>\n\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 [\u2026] it becomes a reality through its product. When, therefore, we say: This man\u2019s labour is worth five francs per day, it is as if we should say: The daily product of this man\u2019s labour is worth five francs\u201d (Syst\u00e8me<\/em> I: 61)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Second<\/em>, capitalism is marked by private property in the means of production and this creates an institutional inequality between the working class and the owning class (landlords and capitalists). Any equality between the two \u201cwas bound to disappear through the advantageous position of the master and the dependence of the wage-workers. In vain does the law assure to each the right of enterprise, as well as the faculty to labour alone and sell one\u2019s products directly\u201d for \u201cthe object of the workshop [is] to annihilate isolated labour. [\u2026] When an establishment has had the time to grow, enlarge its foundations, ballast itself with capital, and assure itself customers, what can the worker who has only his arms do against a power so superior?\u201d Those without property, \u201cwithin whose reach competition never comes, are hirelings of the competitors\u201d as \u201ccompetition cannot by itself become the common condition\u201d because \u201c[b]y the formation of the company [\u2026] competition is an exceptional matter, a privilege\u201d. (Syst\u00e8me<\/em> I: 163-4, 213)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Third<\/em>, this inequality of conditions means that workers have no access to the means of production and so they \u201chave sold their arms and parted with their liberty\u201d to those who own them. (Syst\u00e8me<\/em> I: 267) Capitalism\u2019s defining feature was not markets or exchange (which predate it) but rather labour as a commodity:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

\u201cThe period through which we are now passing \u2014 that of machinery \u2014 is distinguished by a special characteristic: WAGE-LABOUR.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

\n

\u201cWage-labour stems from the use of machinery \u2013 that is, [\u2026] from the economic fiction by which capital becomes an agent of production. [\u2026] The first, the simplest, the most powerful of machines is the workshop<\/em>. [\u2026] The machine, or the workshop, after having degraded the worker by giving him a master, completes his degeneracy by reducing him from the rank of artisan to that of common labourer. [\u2026] Machinery plays the leading role in industry, man is secondary: all the genius displayed by labour tends to the degradation of the proletariat. [\u2026]<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

\n

\u201cWith machinery and the workshop, divine right \u2013 that is, the principle of authority \u2013 makes its entrance into political economy. Capital, Mastership [\u2026] such are, in economic language, the various names of [\u2026] Power, Authority, Sovereignty [\u2026] the workshop with its hierarchical organisation, and machinery [\u2026] serv[es] exclusively the interests of the least numerous, the least industrious, and the wealthiest class\u201d (Syst\u00e8me<\/em> I: 161-6)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Fourth<\/em>, the workers labour under the control of their bosses and so \u201cthey have executed with their hands what the thought of the employers had conceived\u201d. (Syst\u00e8me<\/em> I: 267) Property produces despotism in production:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

\u201cThus, property, which should make us free, makes us prisoners. What am I saying? It degrades us, by making us servants and tyrants to one another.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

\n

\u201cDo you know what it is to be a wage-worker? To work under a master, watchful of his prejudices even more than of his orders [\u2026] Not to have any thought of your own, to study without ceasing the thought of others, to know no stimulus except your daily bread, and the fear of losing your job!<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

\n

\u201cThe wage-worker is a man to whom the proprietor who hires his services gives this speech: What you have to do does not concern you at all: you do not control it, you do not answer for it. Every observation is forbidden to you; there is no profit for you to hope for except from your wage, no risk to run, no blame to fear.\u201d (Syst\u00e8me<\/em> II: 295)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Fifth<\/em>, the employer keeps the product of the workers\u2019 labour:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

\u201cHere, then, is the proposition which the speculator makes to those who he wishes to collaborate with: I guarantee to you [the worker] in perpetuity the distribution [placement<\/em>] of your products, if you will accept me as purchaser or intermediary [\u2026] the entrepreneur will have more opportunity for selling, since, producing cheaply, he can lower his price; finally his profits will be larger because of the mass of the investments.\u201d (Syst\u00e8me<\/em> I: 162)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Sixth<\/em>, this allows capitalists to appropriate the difference between what workers create and what they receive in wages. The \u201cco-operation of numerous workers\u201d produces \u201can effect of collective power\u201d and so \u201cthe question is to ascertain whether the amount of individual wages paid by the entrepreneur is equivalent to th[is] collective effect\u201d. The answer is no: it goes to the boss \u201cgratuitously\u201d for he \u201chas paid nothing for that immense power which results from the union of workers\u201d but rather \u201chas paid as many times one day\u2019s wage as he has employed workers \u2013 which is not at all the same thing.\u201d He \u201callots to himself the benefit of the collective power\u201d which \u201cis usurpation on his part\u201d and so the axiom \u201c[e]very product is worth what it costs<\/em>\u201d is \u201cviolated\u201d. (Syst\u00e8me<\/em> I: 266)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Exploitation occurred in production as the employer appropriated the collective force and surplus of labour of the wage-workers embodied within the products they create for them:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

\u201cI have proven, in dealing with value, that every labour must leave a surplus; so that in supposing the consumption of the labourer to be always the same, his labour should create, on top of his subsistence, a capital always greater. Under the regime of property, the surplus of labour, essentially collective, passes entirely [\u2026] to the proprietor: now, between that disguised appropriation and the fraudulent usurpation of a communal good, where is the difference?<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\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 [\u2026] political economy, that upholds and advocates that regime, is the theory of theft.\u201d (Syst\u00e8me<\/em> II: 315)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

So in \u201cthis system of interlocked monopolies\u201d the worker \u201cis no longer anything more than a serf\u201d to whom \u201cthe holder of the instruments of production seems to say [\u2026]: You will work as long as your labour leaves me a surplus\u201d. This explains \u201cthe reason why wealth and poverty are correlative, inseparable, not only in idea, but in fact; this is the reason why they exist concurrently [\u2026] the wage-worker [\u2026] finds that, though promised [\u2026] hundred, he has really been given but seventy-five.\u201d This results in a system that ensures that \u201cthe subordinated worker should lose, together with his legitimate salary [i.e., his product], even the exercise of the industry which supported him\u201d. (Syst\u00e8me<\/em> II: 54; I: 258-9, 366)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In short: \u201cPROPERTY IS THEFT\u201d (Syst\u00e8me<\/em> II: 234)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Marx ignores all this and instead invokes the authority of Ricardo to dispute Proudhon\u2019s basis as well as suggesting that it is exchange \u2013 not wage labour<\/em> \u2013 that is the problem: \u201crelative value, measured by labour time, is inevitably the formula of the present enslavement of the worker\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He starts by arguing that the egalitarian consequences Proudhon \u201cdeduces from Ricardo\u2019s doctrine are based on a fundamental error. He confounds the value of commodities measured by the quantity of labour embodied in them with the value of commodities measured by \u2018the value of labour.\u2019\u201d Ricardo \u201cexposes this error\u201d in Smith\u2019s work while Proudhon \u201cgoes one better than Adam Smith in error by identifying the two things which the latter had merely put in juxtaposition.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To see the flaw in Marx\u2019s argument, we need simply quote an authority Marx should recognise, his later self:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

\u201cIt is Adam Smith\u2019s great merit that [\u2026] where he passes from simple commodity exchange and its law of value to exchange between materialised and living labour, to exchange between capital and wage-labour [\u2026] he feels some flaw has emerged. He senses that somehow [\u2026] in the actual result the law is suspended: more labour is exchanged for less labour (from the labourer\u2019s standpoint)\u201d (Theories of Surplus Value<\/em> I: 87)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Thus \u201cfundamental error\u201d becomes \u201cgreat merit\u201d! If, for later-Marx, \u201cRicardo simply answers that this is how matters are in capitalist production. Not only does he fail to solve the problem; he does not even realise its existence in Adam Smith\u2019s work\u201d (Theories of Surplus Value<\/em> II: 396-7) then the same can be said of younger-Marx.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In short, when \u201call workers are producers of commodities\u201d the \u201cvalue of labour is therefore equal to the value of the product of labour.\u201d Thus is because \u201cas owners of commodities\u201d the \u201cquantity of social labour which they command is therefore equal to the quantity of labour contained in the commodity with which they themselves make the purchase.\u201d It only changes in \u201cthe exchange between materialised labour and living labour, between capitalist and worker\u201d. (Theories of Surplus Value<\/em> I: 71-2, 77) In other words, wage-labour.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So rather than Proudhon \u201cconfus[ing] the two measures, measure by the labour time needed for the production of a commodity and measure by the value of the labour\u201d and thinking \u201ca certain quantity of labour embodied in a product is equivalent to the worker\u2019s payment,\u201d the opposite is the case under capitalism. This can be seen from the passage Marx selectively quotes as evidence for his claim: \u201c\u2018Any man\u2019s labour,\u2019 he says, \u2018can buy the value it contains.\u2019\u201d In fact, Proudhon is taunting the bourgeois economists:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

\u201cWhy do not the economists, if they believe, as they appear to, that the labour of each should leave a surplus, use all their influence in spreading this truth, so simple and so luminous: Each man\u2019s labour can buy only the value which it contains, and this value is proportional to the services of all other workers?\u201d (Syst\u00e8me<\/em> I: 81)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

One of the aims of Proudhon\u2019s book was to show why under capitalism this was not the case<\/em>. He showed how wage-labour allowed the exploitation of labour. Marx in 1847 had no theory of exploitation within production<\/em>. \u201cNeither The Poverty of Philosophy<\/em> nor the Communist Manifesto<\/em>, nor Wage Labour and Capital<\/em>\u201d, Mandel admits (81), \u201ccontain the idea of surplus-value.\u201d Marx limits himself to appealing to the authority of Ricardo and suggesting that working class slavery is the result of commodity production rather than wage-labour. Both positions he later came to recognise were wrong. Worse, Marx in 1847 mocks the theory of exploitation he published twenty years later:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

\u201cMarx made some disparaging remarks about this passage [that Labour \u2018is a thing vague and indeterminate by nature, but defined qualitatively by its object, that is to say, it becomes a reality by the product\u2019] even though Proudhon here anticipated an idea that Marx was to develop as one of the key elements in the concept of labour power<\/em>, viz. that as a commodity<\/em>, labour produces nothing and it exists independently of and prior to the exercise of its potential to produce value as active<\/em> labour [namely, \u2018Human labour power in its fluid state, or human labour, creates value but is not in itself value. It becomes value in its coagulated state, in objective form.\u2019 (Capital<\/em> I: 142)]\u201d (Alan Oakley, Marx\u2019s Critique of Political Economy<\/em> [London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1984] 1: 118)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Marx seems unaware of the specific class foundations of capitalism and rather than root exploitation in wage-labour he places it in exchange which produces exploitation of one class by another \u2013 even if no classes exist<\/em>. For \u201c[i]ndividual exchange corresponds also to a definite mode of production which itself corresponds to class antagonism. There is thus no individual exchange without the antagonism of classes\u201d and \u201csocial relations based on class antagonism\u201d are \u201cnot relations between individual and individual, but between worker and capitalist, between farmer and landlord, etc.\u201d Yet in Proudhon\u2019s alternative, there are no capitalists or landlords, just workers and as Marx later suggested: \u201cif one eliminates the capitalists, the means of production cease to be capital.<\/em>\u201d (Theories of Surplus Value<\/em> III: 296)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So Marx is like the bourgeois economist who \u201cconfounds the most disparate things, association and wage-labour, usury and partnership\u201d. (Syst\u00e8me<\/em> II: 46) It takes him until 1867 to recognise that the \u201chistorical conditions of [capital\u2019s] existence are by no means given with the mere circulation of money and commodities. It arises only when the owner of the means of production and subsistence finds the free worker available on the market, as the seller of his own labour-power.\u201d (Capital<\/em> I: 264) But by then he had come to the same analysis as Proudhon had when he tried to belittle him twenty years previously.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Poverty of Marx\u2019s Method<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

We have addressed a few of Marx\u2019s attacks on Proudhon from the first chapter of his book and shown their fundamentally dishonest and often self-contradictory nature. Proudhon rarely argued what Marx proclaimed he did and so the bulk of his book is simply irrelevant to a critique of Proudhon. This applies to the Marx\u2019s discussion of Proudhon\u2019s methodology in the second chapter which he proclaimed as pure idealism:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

\u201cBut the moment we cease to pursue the historical movement of production relations, of which the categories are but the theoretical expression, the moment we want to see in these categories no more than ideas, spontaneous thoughts, independent of real relations, we are forced to attribute the origin of these thoughts to the movement of pure reason.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Proudhon sought a model of capitalism. Using the categories of political economy, he builds an analysis of capitalism by discussing these categories, exploring their contradictions (both internal and comparing their theory with reality) and adding them one to the other to build a more realistic model.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Marx takes umbrage at this, arguing that \u201conly drawback to this method is that when he comes to examine a single one of these phases, M. Proudhon cannot explain it without having recourse to all the other relations of society; which relations, however, he has not yet made his dialectic movement engender. When, after that, M. Proudhon, by means of pure reason, proceeds to give birth to these other phases, he treats them as if they were new-born babes. He forgets that they are of the same age as the first.\u201d So, for Marx in 1847, we must discuss every aspect of capitalism and their histories all at the same time. That this is a near to impossible task Marx inflicts on Proudhon should be obvious but not to him. The burden that this method imposes on the writer is immense and so perhaps it is unsurprising that while Marx had been trying to write a book on capitalism since the mid-1840s he would not \u2013 until he embraced Proudhon\u2019s method of using categories to organise it. He summarised his new perspective in \u201cThe Method of Political Economy\u201d subsequently published in the Grundrisse<\/em> ([London: Penguin Books, 1973], 100-8). As one Marxist academic notes:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cTo avoid limiting the cognitive process to a mere repetition of the stages of what had happened in history, it was necessary to use a process of abstraction, and therefore categories that allowed for the interpretation of society in all its complexity. [\u2026] For Marx [in 1857], it was not necessary to reconstruct the historical genesis of every economic relationship in order to understand society and then give an adequate description of it.\u201d (Marcello Musto, Foundations of the critique of political economy 150 years later<\/em> [London and New York: Routledge, 2008], 21-2)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Yet in 1847 he lambasts Proudhon as an idealist for doing precisely that. Marx argues \u2013 seriously! \u2013 that \u201cin the final abstraction\u201d when we create \u201ca logical category\u201d and \u201cwe abstract thus from every subject all the alleged accidents\u201d then \u201cthe only substance left is the logical category\u201d. For this reason Proudhon is an idealist who \u2013 like Hegel \u2013 thinks ideas create reality. Yet Proudhon continually links the need to base any model on empirical reality. He does reject pure empiricism because he is aware that a \u201cfact\u201d needs to be interpreted<\/em> and so \u201cfacts are not matter [\u2026] but visible manifestations of invisible ideas\u201d and \u201cthe value of facts is measured by the idea which they represent.\u201d While rejecting pure empiricism, \u201cit is impossible to accuse us of spiritualism, idealism or mysticism\u201d for the idea \u201cdoes not exist, as long as it is not reflected\u201d in facts. So ideas as based on facts \u2013 as Proudhon noted as regards Hegel \u201cwe have glimpsed quite quickly that even its author had only been able to construct that logic by constantly mixing in experience and taking from it his materials. All his formulas followed observation, but never preceded it\u201d (Syst\u00e8me<\/em> I: 134; II: 220-1) But generalising from empirical reality \u2013 \u201cwe abstract thus from every subject all the alleged accidents\u201d \u2013 does not mean idealism as later-Marx acknowledges:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

\u201cIf prices actually differ from value, we must first reduce the former to the latter, i.e. disregard this situation as an accidental one in order to observe the phenomenon [\u2026] and to prevent our observations from being interfered with by disturbing incidental circumstances which are irrelevant to the actual course of the process.\u201d (Capital<\/em> I: 269)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Let us step back and consider what Marx is claiming in 1847, namely that Proudhon thinks that economic relations are immutable \u2013 unchanging ideas \u2013 and existed as long as people have (\u201cwe shall concede further that these laws, principles and categories had, since the beginning of time, slumbered \u2018in the impersonal reason of humanity.\u2019\u201d). In other words, that value, division of labour, machines, competition all existed as categories \u2013 in their present form, moreover \u2013 long before humans actually laboured, exchanged, built machines, etc.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ignoring the question of why Marx thought his readers would believe this nonsense about Proudhon, it is useful to consider how did Marx arrive at such an obviously stupid assertion. Let us follow his chain of reasoning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

First, Proudhon analyses the capitalist economy and builds a series of categories. Second, a category is a generalisation, an abstraction \u2013 and so an idea. Third, Proudhon is quoted as \u201cnot giving a history according to the order in time, but according to the sequence of ideas. Economic phases or categories are in their manifestation sometimes contemporary, sometimes inverted\u201d. (Syst\u00e8me<\/em> I: 145) Fourth, Marx concludes that when Proudhon writes of categories manifesting themselves he means that the ideas manifest themselves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is easy to see how Marx is misled \u2013 or seeks to mislead his reader \u2013 for when Proudhon writes that the categories \u201care in their manifestation sometimes contemporary, sometimes inverted\u201d he is not talking about the abstractions used to build his model but rather the actual facts upon which his abstractions are based. Marx\u2019s feigns to proclaim in all honesty that Proudhon thinks the ideas produce the facts when, in reality, Proudhon is at pains to stress that his model and its abstractions are rooted in observation, the analysis of experience. As his marginal note on his copy of The Poverty of Philosophy<\/em> states:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cHave I ever said that PRINCIPLES are anything other than the intellectual representation, not the generative cause, of facts?\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Marx confuses a means of presentation with idealism. Proudhon creates an abstract model of capitalism by taking specific aspects (categories) of that system in isolation in order to draw out their contradictions. He builds up his model by adding more categories and applying the same analysis. In this way he makes his model more reflective of reality but, it is important to stress, he never forgets that it is a model<\/em>, an abstraction \u2013 \u201cwe attain knowledge only by a sort of scaffolding<\/em> of our ideas. But truth in itself is independent of these dialectical symbols and freed from the combinations of our minds.\u201d Nor does he forget while \u201cin the theory they [the categories] are distinct and consecutive\u201d in reality \u201call these things are inseparable and simultaneous\u201d. (Syst\u00e8me<\/em> II: 97, 250-1) Yet Marx quotes Proudhon on his \u201cscaffolding\u201d and proclaims he is \u201creduced to saying that the order in which he gives the economic categories is no longer the order in which they engender one another\u201d! Talk about (wilfully?) missing the point.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We cannot address everything Marx proclaims against Proudhon. Suffice to say, this chapter draws the bulk of Proudhon\u2019s ire in his marginal notes \u2013 a combination of outrage (\u201clie\u201d, \u201cslander\u201d, \u201cPrattle\u201d) and incredulity (\u201cDoes Marx have the pretentiousness to claim all of this as his own, in opposition to something contrary which I am supposed to have said?\u201d, \u201cBut all that it is me!\u201d, \u201cPlagiarism of my first chapter\u201d, \u201cWhat! Come on now<\/em>! But the preceding pages are copies of my own\u201d). It is easy to see why when the works are compared. However, we will address three aspects of Marx\u2019s critique before turning to two illustrative examples.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

First, Marx proclaims that by using the categories of capitalism to analyse capitalism means to fail to recognise that \u201cthe ideas, these categories, are as little eternal as the relations they express\u201d and are in fact \u201chistorical and transitory products<\/em>\u201d. As if Proudhon were not aware that \u201cthe radical vice of political economy, consists, in general terms, in affirming as a definitive state a transitory condition \u2013 namely, the division of society into patricians and proletarians\u201d and that \u201cin its present form, the organisation [of labour] is inadequate and transitory\u201d (Syst\u00e8me<\/em> I: 26, 14) So much for Proudhon \u201cborrows from the economists the necessity of eternal relations\u201d!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Second, Marx proclaims that \u201cProvidence is the locomotive which makes the whole of M. Proudhon\u2019s economic baggage move better than his pure and volatized reason\u201d to which he has \u201cdevoted [\u2026] a whole chapter\u201d but as George Sorel noted, it is \u201cobvious that Marx must have read this chapter very superficially (if at all), for Proudhon rejected [it] as clearly as possible\u201d. (The Illusions of Progress<\/em> [California: University of California, 1973], 141) A Catholic scholar also shows more comprehension skills than Marx and summarised Proudhon\u2019s actual position (\u201cAgainst the \u2018Myth of Providence\u2019\u201d), namely as a critique of those economists who invoked it for \u201cit was Property in particular which called upon Providence to consolidate its interests.\u201d (Henri du Lubac, The Un-Marxian Socialist<\/em> [New York: Octagon Books, 1978], 185). Did Marx really fail to see sarcasm and irony when it is literally in front of his face?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Third, in 1847 Proudhon is attacked for producing an abstract analysis of capitalism rather than writing a history book yet in Capital<\/em> Marx fails to produce the work he demanded of Proudhon twenty years previously. Instead he produces an abstract analysis of capitalism based on exploring the contradictions of the various categories of capitalism, as Proudhon was denounced for doing in 1847. Then abstraction by definition meant idealism, now it was the case that \u201c[i]n the analysis of economic forms neither microscopes nor chemical reagents are of assistance. The power of abstraction must replace them both\u201d (Capital<\/em> I: 90)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Still, we must acknowledge that Marx realised what he had demanded in 1847 \u2013 the simultaneous discussion of every category of capitalism and their histories \u2013 was near impossible. We need not bother too much with Marx\u2019s attempt to portray Proudhon as an idealist like Hegel for he later rejected his opposition to this methodology:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cMarx here tackles differently the thorny question of the order to be assigned to the economic categories. He had already addressed it in The Poverty of Philosophy<\/em>, where, in opposition to Proudhon\u2019s wish to follow not \u2018history in accordance with the order of events, but in accordance with the succession of ideas\u2019, he had criticized the idea of \u2018constructing the world by the movement of thought\u2019. Thus in 1847, in his polemic with the logical-dialectical method employed by Proudhon and Hegel, Marx had preferred a rigorously historical sequence. But ten years later, in the \u2018Introduction\u2019 [in the Grundrisse<\/em>], his position changed: he rejected the criterion of chronological succession for the scientific categories, in favour of a logical method with historical-empirical checks [\u2026] setting out the categories in a precise logical order and the working of real history do not coincide with each other [\u2026]<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cMarx, then, arrived at his own synthesis by diverging from the empiricism of the early economists, which yielded a dissolution of concrete elements into abstract definitions; from the method of the classical economists, which reduced thought about reality to reality itself; from philosophical idealism [\u2026] which he accused of giving thought the capacity to produce the concrete [\u2026] and, finally, from his own conviction in The Poverty of Philosophy <\/em>that he was essentially following \u2018the march of history\u2019\u201d (Musto, 20-1)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

So any claim that Marx\u2019s book is still of use \u2013 if we can ignore the distortions \u2013 because of its method fails as this was soon rejected. We now know the answer Proudhon\u2019s marginal note: \u201cSo tell me, how will you set about speaking in turn on matters of Pol[itical] Econ[omy]?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Division of Labour and Machinery<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Marx seeks to apply his methodology by first berating Proudhon for abstracting and generalising on the division of labour and so \u201chav[ing] no need to study the numerous influences which give the division of labour a definitive character in every epoch.\u201d However, not providing a detailed historical account for every society and its corresponding division of labour is hardly a valid criticism given both its impossibility and its irrelevance to developing a critique of capitalism. Suffice to say, come 1867 and the publication of Capital<\/em>, such a study urged twenty-years before is nowhere to be found.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Marx then states that for Proudhon \u201cJ. B. Say was the first<\/em> to recognise \u2018that in the division of labour the same cause that produces the good engenders the bad.\u2019\u201d Marx provides no page number so making it harder to discover what Proudhon actually wrote:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

\u201cSay goes so far as to recognise that in the division of labour the same cause which produces the good engenders the evil\u201d. (Syst\u00e8me<\/em> I: 96)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

As for Marx\u2019s reference to Lemontey to refute something Proudhon did not write, it comes as no surprise to discover Proudhon writing how \u201c[m]ore than thirty years ago, Lemontey, developing a remark of Smith, exposed the demoralising and homicidal influence of the division of labour. What has been the reply; what investigations have been made; what remedies proposed; has the question even been understood?\u201d And as for mentioning Sismondi to refute Proudhon\u2019s comment that \u201call economists have insisted far more on the advantages than on the drawbacks of the division of labour,\u201d well he was hardly a typical economist and is the exception that proves the rule. (Syst\u00e8me<\/em> I: 121, 95)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After a weak start, Marx\u2019s critique gets worse. He denounces Proudhon for not showing \u201cthe drawbacks of the division of labour in general, of the division of labour as a category\u201d and instead criticising the harmful effects of it under capitalism. No, rather than understand the dynamics of capitalism \u2013 where \u201cit is necessary that the poor should perish to secure the proprietor his fortune\u201d (Syst\u00e8me<\/em> I: 97) \u2013 Marx thinks we need to study all of history! Yet this example shows the limitations of his demand. He proclaims \u201cit is slapping history in the face to want to begin by the division of labour in general, in order to get subsequently to a specific instrument of production, machinery\u201d for he later does precisely that by arguing that the \u201cworkshop, the product of division of labour in manufacture, produced in its turn \u2013 machines.\u201d (Capital<\/em> I: 490-1) as well as repeating Proudhon\u2019s schema of division of labour leading to machinery in chapters 14 (\u201cThe Division of Labour and Manufacture\u201d) and 15 (\u201cMachinery and Large-Scale Industry\u201d) not to mention elsewhere: \u201cmachinery, by and large, arose [\u2026] through the division of labour\u201d. (The Grundrisse<\/em>, 704)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Marx berates Proudhon for not understanding that the \u201cmachine is a unification of the instruments of labour, and by no means a combination of different operations for the worker himself\u201d yet for Proudhon \u201cthe machine is the division of labour\u201d and \u201cdivision almost always and almost necessarily supposes the use of machines.\u201d He thinks that Proudhon is providing a history when he is showing the economists how under capitalism \u201cmachines promised us an increase of wealth\u201d while \u201cat the same time endowing us with an increase of poverty\u201d and they \u201cpromised us liberty\u201d but \u201chave brought us slavery.\u201d (Syst\u00e8me<\/em> II: 250-1; I: 160) Ironically, Marx in Capital<\/em> also eschews the actual history he denounced Proudhon for ignoring:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

\u201cWhy this free worker confronts him in the sphere of circulation is a question which does not interest the owner of money [\u2026] And for the present it interests us just as little. We confine ourselves to the fact theoretically, as he does practically.\u201d (Capital<\/em> I: 273)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Marx\u2019s irrelevant lecturing about history in 1847 does show the dangers of replacing economic analysis with historical commentary as new research can overturn previous conclusions. So twenty years after denouncing Proudhon for not recognising that history itself showed that there was \u201cnot one single example\u201d of it being sufficient \u201cto assemble\u201d all \u201cthe different branches of one and the same craft\u201d to form a workshop, Marx admitted that manufacturing originated \u201c[b]y the assembling together in one workshop, under the control of a single capitalist, of workers belonging to various independent handicrafts\u201d. (Capital<\/em> I: 455)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And talking of history, it must be noted that Marx wasted his reader\u2019s time attacking Proudhon for ignoring how the \u201cautomatic workshop opened its career with acts which were anything but philanthropic\u201d by being used by employers against their workers \u2013 for Proudhon did not. (Syst\u00e8me<\/em> I: 150-2) Similarly, after suggesting Proudhon eulogises machinery and its uses, Marx ends by proclaiming he \u201chas not gone further than the petty-bourgeois ideal\u201d and seeks \u201cto take us back to the journeyman or, at most, to the master craftsman of the Middle Ages\u201d based on a discussion of something \u2013 \u201csynthetic labour\u201d \u2013 which Proudhon does not<\/em> specify but explicitly rejects<\/em> (Syst\u00e8me<\/em> I: 127-8) what Marx claims he meant, namely the worker \u201csuccessfully [making] all 12 parts\u201d of a product. Nor did Proudhon reject the use and necessity of modern machinery:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

\u201cSismondi, like all men of patriarchal ideas, would like the division of labour, with machinery and manufactures, to be abandoned, and each family to return to the system of primitive indivision \u2013 that is, to each one by himself, each one for himself<\/em>, in the most literal meaning of the words. That would be to retrograde; it is impossible.\u201d (Syst\u00e8me<\/em> I: 167)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

In short, Marx attacks Proudhon for both being completely uncritical about modern machinery and its uses and<\/em> wishing to get rid of it to return to the Middle Ages. The facts are otherwise for it is important to remember that while he did suggest that machinery \u201cis the antithesis<\/em> of the division of labour, the synthesis<\/em> restoring unity to divided labour.\u201d but is this only potentially<\/em>. If groups of workers controlled their workplaces then, surely, they would introduce machinery which improves their working life? It is this potential for machinery which Proudhon eulogies in the first section of the chapter on Machinery while the second section shows how this is turned into its opposite under capitalism and so \u201cfar from freeing humanity, securing its leisure\u201d mechanical progress has \u201cno other effect than to multiply labour\u201d, \u201cmake the chains of serfdom heavier\u201d and \u201cdeepen the abyss which separates the class that commands and enjoys from the class that obeys and suffers.\u201d (Syst\u00e8me<\/em>, I: 170)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The State and Taxation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Our last example starts with Marx presenting a heavily edited \u2013 with no indication of this editing \u2013 unreferenced quote as support for how Proudhon achieved \u201cthe dialectical transition to the taxes which come after monopoly\u201d and \u201ctalks to us about the social genius which\u201d creates and uses taxation with \u201cno other object in view than that of destroying the bourgeois by taxes, whereas taxes are the very means of giving the bourgeois the wherewithal to preserve themselves as the ruling class\u201d. He then summarises:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

\u201cMerely to give a glimpse of the manner in which M. Proudhon treats economic details, it suffices to say that, according to him, the tax on consumption<\/em> was established with a view to equality, and to relieve the proletariat.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Marx does not inform his reader of what Proudhon immediately states after the passage he almost quotes:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

\u201cWe have to prove that society could neither think better nor act worse [\u2026] Every measure of general police, every administrative and commercial regulation, like every law of taxation, is at bottom but one of the innumerable articles of this ancient bargain, ever violated and ever renewed, between the patriciate and the proletariat.\u201d (Syst\u00e8me<\/em> I: 285)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Marx, then, quasi-quotes Proudhon completely out of context to attribute ideas which are the complete opposite of his actual position. The rest of Proudhon\u2019s chapter explains how \u201canalysis and the facts demonstrate [\u2026] the tax upon monopoly, instead of being paid by those who possess, is paid almost entirely by those who do not possess\u201d and \u201cthe tax on provisions agitates and tortures the poor proletarian in a thousand ways\u201d. To \u201cconduct this offensive and defensive war against the proletariat a public force was indispensable: the executive power grew out of the necessities of civil legislation, administration, and justice.\u201d (Syst\u00e8me<\/em> I: 296, 317, 356)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The comments Marx quasi-quotes is Proudhon recounting how taxation is presented<\/em> not what he believes it actually is. They reflect how Adam Smith recounts various expenses of the State and how they are \u201cfor the general benefit of the whole society.\u201d (The Wealth of Nations<\/em>, [Chicago: University of Chicago, 1976] Volume II, 339). Likewise, John Locke suggested that the liberal social contract was advantageous to even the servant class. Proudhon, in contrast, is very clear on the class nature of the State:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

\u201cSuch is the war that you have to sustain: a war of labour against capital; a war of liberty against authority; a war of the producer against the non-producer; a war of equality against privilege. [\u2026] Now, to combat and reduce power, to put it in its proper place in society, it is of no use to change the holders of power or introduce some variation into its workings: an agricultural and industrial combination must be found by means of which power, today the ruler of society, shall become its slave. [\u2026] Thus power, the instrument of collective might, created in society to serve as a mediator between labour and privilege, finds itself inevitably enchained to capital and directed against the proletariat. No political reform can solve this contradiction [\u2026] The problem before the labouring classes, then, consists, not in capturing, but in subduing both power and monopoly \u2013 that is, in generating from the bowels of the people, from the depths of labour, a greater authority, a more potent fact, which shall envelop capital and the State and subjugate them.\u201d (Syst\u00e8me<\/em> I: 362-4)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Significantly, Proudhon argues that the State cannot be captured by the working class and used as an instrument for emancipation. Marx, in contrast, continued to have illusions that universal suffrage gave the working class political power and so the State could be used to transform society. History has shown that Proudhon was correct.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Marx ends his comments by proclaiming that \u201c[t]his brief summary will suffice to give the reader a true idea of M. Proudhon\u2019s lucubrations on the police or on taxes, the balance of trade, credit, communism, and population. We defy the most indulgent criticism to treat these chapters seriously.\u201d Given how Marx distorts Proudhon\u2019s ideas by selectively quoting a few ironic comments and completely ignoring the rest of the chapter on the State, in reality this \u201cbrief summary\u201d simply gives the reader \u201ca true idea\u201d of Marx\u2019s so-called \u201creply.\u201d We defy the most sycophantic Marxist to compare what Proudhon actually wrote to what Marx claimed he did and take Marx\u2019s so-called critique seriously.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Marx\u2019s Alternative<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Given the pains he takes to mock Proudhon, we must quickly discuss Marx\u2019s alternative to both capitalism and the (brief outlines of) market socialism Proudhon presents, central planning:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

\u201cOne hour of Peter\u2019s labour exchanges for one hour of Paul\u2019s labour. That is Mr. Bray\u2019s fundamental axiom. [\u2026] Thus, if all the members of society are supposed to be actual workers, the exchange of equal quantities of hours of labour is possible only on condition that the number of hours to be spent on material production is agreed on before hand. But such an agreement negates individual exchange. [\u2026] What is today the result of capital and the competition of workers among themselves will be tomorrow [\u2026] an actual agreement based upon the relation between the sum of productive forces and the sum of existing needs.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Marx generalises from the example of two men producing two commodities to the whole of society within an actual economy. This is undoubtedly because such an \u201cagreement\u201d is easier to visualise for the former than the latter:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

\u201ca simple problem involving 2 objectives and 2 variants will have 4 solutions. With 5 objectives and 3 variations we already have 243 solutions. With 500 objectives and 10 variants (still a very simple economic planning problem) the number of solutions is 10500 <\/sup>(i.e., a \u20181\u2019 followed by 500 zeros). This is much more than the number of atoms in the entire universe\u201d. (Geoff Hodgson, The Democratic Economy <\/em>[Harmondsworth: Penguin books, 1984], 170-1)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

So \u201can actual agreement\u201d may take some time to create and perhaps unsurprisingly how it can be reached in any real economy of millions of people and millions of products is not discussed by Marx here \u2013 or anywhere else.<\/em> As one Marxist (apparently without the slightest trace of embarrassment) admits:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

\u201cIn deciding how much of any given article to produce, the planners have to strike a balance between social need, available labour-time and the existing means of production. Although Marx recognises that demand is elastic he never doubts that his proletarian planners \u2013 whose actual planning mechanisms are never discussed \u2013 will make the right equations.\u201d (Ollman, 63)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The alert reader may wonder why Marx refers to a \u201cMr. Bray\u201d rather than Proudhon in all this. This is because Marx, without evidence, accuses Proudhon of plagiarising the ideas of the British Ricardian Socialists, specifically John Bray in whom \u201cwe think that we have discovered [\u2026] the key to the past, present and future works of M. Proudhon\u201d. Yet Bray was an advocate of central planning, not<\/em> market socialism, as shown by a passage Marx himself quotes:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

\u201cBy means of general and local boards of trade, and the directors attached to each individual company, the quantities of the various commodities required for consumption \u2013 the relative value of each in regard to each other \u2013 the number of hands required in various trades and descriptions of labour \u2013 and all other matters connected with production and distribution, could in a short time be as easily determined for a nation as for an individual company under the present arrangements\u201d (J.F. Bray, Labour\u2019s Wrongs and Labour\u2019s Remedy<\/em> [Leeds: David Green, 1839], 162)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

An individual company does not<\/em> allocate labour and products within it by means of the market but rather conscious allocation \u2013 planning. Marx himself admitted as much:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

\u201cIf one took as a model the division of labour in a modern workshop, in order to apply it to a whole society, the society best organised for the production of wealth would undoubtedly be that which had a single chief employer, distributing tasks to different members of the community according to a previously fixed rule [\u2026] inside the modern workshop the division of labour is meticulously regulated by the authority of the employer\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

That Bray advocated central planning is confirmed by other passages that Marx failed to quote. So \u201c[o]n the surface Bray\u2019s solution,\u201d notes Noel W. Thompson, \u201cwould seem to have laid the basis for some kind of market socialism. However, a closer reading of Labour\u2019s Wrongs<\/em> shows that his intention was to abolish the market and replace the motive force of competition by the conscious, rational, economic planning and decision-making of central and local authorities.\u201d (The Market and Its Critics<\/em> [London: Routledge, 1988], 110) Bray was clear: \u201cCompetition could have no existence in a change like this\u201d. (158)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So Proudhon is denounced by Marx for defending the necessity of competition and<\/em> also equated to someone who aims for its elimination.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is hardly the only contradiction for Marx\u2019s \u201creply in a few words\u201d to Bray\u2019s scheme simply repeats Bray\u2019s own words against him (luckily for Marx Bray was \u201cstill little known\u201d in Germany as in France). Worse, Marx\u2019s system is even sketchier than Bray\u2019s:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

\u201cBray was aware of the need to acquire systematically the information on which to base decisions of those who managed the means of production, though [\u2026] Bray suffered from an inability to see and a failure to confront the magnitude of the task. Thus, for example, the problem of managing a socialist economy was likened to that of overseeing an \u2018individual enterprise\u2019; a na\u00efve suggestion which could only have been born out of an ignorance of the complex functions which the market performed and which would therefore have to be fulfilled by the central and local boards which Bray proposed.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

\n

\u201cHowever, leaving aside the problem of acquiring the information upon which informed economic decisions could be based, there remained the problem of how that information, once gathered, could best be used. On what basis and by reference to what criteria would calculation proceed. [\u2026] Bray spirited away the problems he has set himself.\u201d (Thompson, 111)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The same can be said as regard Marx and his few lines of alternative to Proudhon\u2019s market socialism. Similarly, Marx singularly failed to appreciate that turning the world into a single workplace under a single economic authority would produce not the freedom of socialism but the tyranny of state-capitalism. Proudhon, in contrast, would not have been surprised by the Soviet Union and its new class system based on the bureaucracy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Comparing Marx\u2019s \u201creply\u201d to what Proudhon actually wrote, it is hard to take the former seriously. Once the various distortions and inventions are corrected, little remains. Proudhon was right to suggest Marx\u2019s work was \u201ca tissue of crudities, slanders, falsifications, and plagiarism.\u201d (Correspondance<\/em> [Paris: Lacroix, 1875] II: 267-8) Worse, Marx himself twenty years later embraces in Capital<\/em> most of the positions he attacks Proudhon for holding in 1847.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

More \u2013 much more \u2013 could be written but to do justice to all the distortions Marx inflicts on his readers would take a book in itself. We hope we have shown that rather than a masterpiece of polemical writing, Marx\u2019s \u201creply\u201d to Proudhon is a shoddy piece of work. For nothing is below Marx in his attempt to belittle and destroy Proudhon \u2013 up to, and including, inventing and tampering with quotes, selective quoting, false attribution and repeating Proudhon\u2019s own ideas as if they were his own.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The dishonesty of The Poverty of Philosophy<\/em> has distorted our view of Proudhon\u2019s ideas and the time is long overdue for a revaluation of Proudhon and his contributions to anarchism and the wider socialist movement. This does not mean that Marx does not, occasionally, presents a valid point \u2013 most obviously, Proudhon\u2019s opposition to strikes was wrong as subsequent anarchists recognised \u2013 it is just that these are frustratingly few in the midst of so much distortion. So, yes, Proudhon\u2019s mutualism \u2013 a form of market socialism based on worker-run co-operatives \u2013 does need to be critiqued but Marx\u2019s book is simply not that work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Further Reading<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

My article \u201cProudhon\u2019s constituted value and the myth of labour notes\u201d<\/a> (Anarchist Studies<\/em> 25: 1) discusses many of the issues raised in this review in more detail. I discuss Proudhon and Marx in an appendix<\/a> to my introduction for Property is Theft! A Pierre-Joseph Proudhon Anthology<\/em> (Edinburgh\/Oakland\/Baltimore: AK Press, 2011) In addition, its extracts<\/a> from Proudhon\u2019s System of Economic Contradictions<\/em> have numerous footnotes contrasting what he argued to what Marx claimed he wrote.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Finally, I must mention by debt to Ren\u00e9 Berthier\u2019s excellent Proudhon and German philosophy<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A review of Marx’s The Poverty of Philosophy which indicates various distortions of Proudhon’s work. It also discusses how Marx in 1867 applied the methodology he had attacked Proudhon for using twenty years earlier. It appeared in Anarcho-Syndicalist Review R No. 70 (Summer 2017)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,36,7,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-66","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-karl-marx","category-proudhon","category-review"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/anarchistfaq.org\/anarcho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66","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=66"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/anarchistfaq.org\/anarcho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":72,"href":"https:\/\/anarchistfaq.org\/anarcho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66\/revisions\/72"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/anarchistfaq.org\/anarcho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=66"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anarchistfaq.org\/anarcho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=66"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anarchistfaq.org\/anarcho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=66"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}