Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
1846
Translated by Iain McKay
it is labour that must be paid for and exchanged, not the gratuitous utility of the land... In such conditions, the most absolute freedom of exchange is always advantageous, and can never become harmful. But monopolies, but the privileges of industry, but the prelibation of the capitalist, but the seigneurial rights of property, have you abolished them? do you even have a means of abolishing them? do you even believe in the possibility, in the necessity of their abolition?... As long as the privilege of national territory and individual property are implied by you, the law of exchange in your mouth will be a lie; as long as there is no association and solidarity agreed between the producers of all countries, that is to say, a community of the gifts of nature and an exchange only of the products of labour, foreign trade will only reproduce between races the phenomenon of enslavement and dependence that the division of labour, wage labour, competition and all economic agents produce between individuals; your free trade will be a deception, if you do not prefer that I say a theft exercised by force.
– “Chapter IX: Sixth Epoch – Balance of Trade”, System of Economic Contradictions
Let us remember that in the current period of social antinomies that we call credit, and from which we are led to expect such pompous wonders, nothing is yet organised: labour is delivered to fragmented division; the workshop, to master and wage labour; the market, to competition and monopoly; society, to fiscal and parliamentary hypocrisy... We must therefore return to the general observation that we first made: for credit to become a true means of equilibrium, equilibrium must first be established in the workshop, on the market, in the State; in a word, labour must be organised. But this organisation does not exist…
– “Chapter X: Seventh Epoch – Credit”, System of Economic Contradictions
For credit can and must be based only on realities, not on expectations; credit is real, not personal, as the lawyers say. In order for this rule to be overthrown and reversed, it is necessary that by the reaction of labour against capital all appropriated wealth has become collective wealth again, that capital taken out of society has returned to society; it is necessary, in a word, that the antinomy be resolved. But then credit will be no more than a secondary organ of progress; it will have disappeared in the universal association
– “Chapter X: Seventh Epoch - Credit”, System of Economic Contradictions
So by the very fact that society, forced by credit, has recognised the monopolist’s right to borrow on the mortgage of his monopoly without rendering an account to his fellow workers, it has made him the owner. Property is the postulate of credit, as credit had been the postulate of commerce, and monopoly the postulate of competition. In practice, all these things are inseparable and simultaneous; but in theory they are distinct and consecutive; and property is no more monopoly than machinery is the division of labour, although monopoly is almost always and almost necessarily accompanied by property, as division almost always and almost necessarily presupposes the use of machinery.
– “Chapter XI: Eight Epoch – Property”, System of Economic Contradictions
Finally, a critic came who, proceeding with the aid of a new argument, said:
Property, in fact and in right, is essentially contradictory and it is for this very reason that it is anything at all. In fact,
Property is the right of occupancy; and at the same time the right of exclusion.
Property is the reward of labour; and the negation of labour.
Property is the spontaneous product of society; and the dissolution of society.
Property is an institution of justice; and property IS THEFT.
From all this it follows that one day property transformed will be a positive idea, complete, social and true; a property that will abolish the former property, and will become equally effective and beneficent for everyone. And what proves this is once again that property is a contradiction.
– “Chapter XI: Eighth Epoch – Property”, System of Economic Contradictions
Whoever appeals to power and capital to organise labour has lied,
Because the organisation of labour must be the downfall of capital and power.
– “Chapter XII: Ninth Epoch – Community”, System of Economic Contradictions
Now, we have enumerated and critiqued these forms or categories of labour. They are: the division of labour, machines, competition, monopoly, the state or centralisation, free trade, credit, property, and community. Our analysis has shown that if labour possesses within itself the means of creating wealth, these means, through the antagonism that is specific to them, are likely to become so many new causes of poverty; and as political economy is nothing other than the affirmation of this antagonism, it is thereby proven that political economy is the affirmation and organisation of pauperism. The question is therefore no longer how labour will drive out primitive poverty, which has long since disappeared; but how we will eliminate the pauperism that results from the inherent defect of labour, or, to put it better, from the false organisation of labour, from political economy.
– “Chapter XIII: Tenth Epoch – Population”, System of Economic Contradictions
In other words, in an organised society, production increases as the square of the number of workers. It is political economy itself that teaches us this: all its books are full of it; and if Malthus, preoccupied with a fixed idea, that of the doubling of the population, had forgotten it, why did his colleagues not remember it? For it is obvious that the ratio of increase determined by Malthus between the population and subsistence can only be understood in an inorganic society, where industry, that is to say division, machinery, competition, exchange, etc., are absolutely null; where collective force does not exist: in no way in an interlocking society, founded on the separation of industries and on exchange, and where each man, producing for millions of consumers, is served in turn by millions of producers.
– “Chapter XIII: Tenth Epoch – Population”, System of Economic Contradictions
Unfortunately, the antagonism of economic institutions does not allow them to produce their effect without friction: hence the mishaps of labour, hence the upsets of misery. Thus, competition, by its positive and social side, has indeed as its aim to reduce indefinitely the price of things, consequently to increase unceasingly the sum of values and to put production in advance of the population; but, by its negative and selfish side, competition turns from wealth to poverty, since the reduction in price that it brings about, on the one hand only benefits the victors, on the other leaves the vanquished without work and without resources. Competition, says the theory, must enrich everyone. But, by the imperfection of the social organism, practice proves that where competition has become general, there are just as many unfortunates as enriched: this is what it is impossible to doubt, after the criticism that we have made.
– “Chapter XIII: Tenth Epoch – Population”, System of Economic Contradictions
and when we..., taking up the difficult task, abandoned by you, of A. Smith, Ricardo, J. B. Say, even Malthus, we reveal to your eyes the despoiling principle; when we demonstrate to you that humanity is always struck before it fails in bread and land; when we develop in your presence the mechanism of proprietary usurpation, of capitalist fiction and of mercantile theft, you close your eyes so as not to see, your ears so as not to hear, your heart so as not to yield to conviction! The iniquity of the century is more precious to you than the rights of the poor, and the interests of your clique come before those of science! Well! as long as you cry out against imprudence and against population, we will cry out on our side against hypocrisy and brigandage; We will point you out to the distrust of the workers, and it is you, you alone that we will hold responsible for the exploitation that is killing us and the infamy that is defiling us. We will repeat everywhere, with a clap of thunder: Political economy is the organisation of misery; and the apostles of theft, the purveyors of death, are the economists.
– “Chapter XIII: Tenth Epoch – Population”, System of Economic Contradictions
Virgin country! Certainly, it is not from the burning of these eternal forests that the English, Swiss, German pioneer lived and multiplied; it is from work, work, I say, at first suitably divided, then gradually accompanied by capital and machines, increasing in value through circulation, and not yet made sterile by parasitism and monopoly. A proof of this is that political economy, imported from Europe, having begun to function a little too early in this country where, land and space being lacking to no one, work paid for itself without passing through the servitude of capital, the mediation of the banker and the surveillance of the police, the people had to let political economy run its course, and turn its gears alone.
– ““Chapter XIII: Tenth Epoch – Population””, System of Economic Contradictions
It seems, then, that machines are going to repair the deficit caused by division, and triumph over misery. This is not the case. With machines begins the distinction between masters and wage-earners, between capitalists and workers. The worker, whom machinery was supposed to pull out of the stupefaction to which fragmented work had reduced him, sinks deeper and deeper into it: he loses his human character, his freedom, and falls into the condition of a tool. Well-being increases for the bosses, evil for the subordinates; the distinction of castes begins, and a monstrous tendency is declared, that which consists, by multiplying men, in wanting to do without men. Thus universal embarrassment worsens: already announced by fragmented division, poverty officially enters the world; from this moment it becomes the soul and nerve of society.
– “Chapter XIII: Tenth Epoch – Population”, System of Economic Contradictions