Proudhon and His Interpreters

This book interprets Proudhon as a political theorist, through close analysis of his most systematic writings, and consequently differs in both method and aim from the standard studies of his thought. It differs in method by examining the consistency, truth, and meaning of Proudhon's ideas, without looking into their historical origins and effects. It differs in aim by arguing for the inherent merit of his theory, apart from its bearing on his personality or on the intellectual climate of his time.

The thesis of the book is that Proudhon, though a radical, was a realist and a moralist as well. His theory can therefore be regarded as an attempt to integrate these three divergent orientations toward politics into a tolerably coherent whole. The difficulties Proudhon encountered in this attempt are not his alone; they arise for any radical who faces facts and has a conscience. An analytic study of his writings should therefore clarify the problems of a sober and scrupulous kind of radicalism that will always be of interest.

The analytic approach to Proudhon adopted here is bound to arouse misgivings in those acquainted with the main interpretations of his thought, all of which, for different reasons, suggest that his ideas are too mistaken or confused to merit analytic treatment. Hence a helpful start for such a treatment is a review of the interpretations that seem to stand in its way.

Among economists, Proudhon has long been known as a self-taught dilettante, prolific in schemes for abolishing interest on money, but incompetent at economic science. Joseph Schumpeter well summarized this verdict: Proudhon realizes that his findings are "absurd," but, "instead of inferring from this that there is something wrong with his methods, [he] infers that there must be something wrong with the object of his research so that his mistakes are, with the utmost confidence, promulgated as results."

Like the other interpretations to be examined, this one has more than a grain of truth. Many of Proudhon's explanations of social and economic facts are either untestable or else invalid by empirical scientific standards. But the weakness of his thought as social science does not disqualify it for analytic treatment. Proudhon does more than explain the facts; he makes conjectures and moral judgments about them. These non-empirical aspects of his thought show that standards other than those of science may be applied to it, which may well reveal that Proudhon's ideas are correct enough to merit analytic study despite their weaknesses from a scientific viewpoint.

Dismissal of Proudhon as an inept theorist is not widespread, except among economists. Most commentators make no overt appraisal of his work and so cannot expressly call it worthless, but they disagree so much about its purpose that they too make critical analysis seem misplaced. When the most disparate goals have been plausibly ascribed to a theorist, it is natural to regard him as too muddled for analytic treatment.

The first goal ascribed to Proudhon was revolution. Those who did so saw him as a ferocious, atheistic, leveler, out to destroy bourgeois institutions, by violence if necessary, and to replace them with equal power and wealth for all. Proudhon's early pronouncements about property being theft occasioned this revolutionary image; his actions in 1848 confirmed it. Then, by siding with the proletariat against the bourgeoisie, and by extolling "the sublime ghastliness" of the insurrectionary "cannonade," he became known as l'homme-terreur. In a play of the period he figured as the snake, inciting Adam and Eve to revolt. A Daumier cartoon shows him, pickax in hand, demolishing the roofs of Paris. The caption reads: "The only way to destroy property." Conservative writers have worked hard to perpetuate this image. As late as 1905 a book was written to expose Proudhon's subversive aim and to denounce his anti-clericalism.

To Marxists, Proudhon's aim has seemed quite different: to thwart a revolution, not to make one. The source of this contention is their master's dictum that Proudhon was a petty bourgeois. Marx never clarified his epithet, but this only made it more persuasive. Generally, the Marxists have claimed that whereas they want to press the class struggle to a definitive proletarian victory, "the petty bourgeois Proudhon opts for equilibrium, for mutual support of conflicting forces: the bourgeoisie is not to be abolished, but preserved by means of class collaboration."To defend this reading they cite Proudhon's conciliatory attitude toward class conflict, his opposition to strikes, his qualified defense of private property (something the conservatives usually overlook), and his sympathy for les petits — those whose means of livelihood are independent but modest. This view of Proudhon as a bourgeois counterrevolutionary seems more popular than any other and is accepted by many non-Marxists. Its popularity is no doubt due to the wide diffusion of Marxist ideas, which leave their mark even on those who reject them.

Still another goal has been ascribed to Proudhon by French reactionaries, who say his purpose was the same as theirs. This thesis was first suggested in 1909 by the anti-Semitic Edouard Drumont when he certified that "because of [Proudhon's] instinctive loathing of cosmopolites, he was the first of the nationalists." A year later Charles Maurras confirmed this judgment: "Except in his ideas, Proudhon instinctively favored French [i.e. Maurrassien] policy." Such pronouncements could hardly be convincing, since they deliberately ignored Proudhon's ideas. But this oversight did not last long. In 1912 the Cercle Proudhon, a leftish front for the Action françhise, began publishing its Cahiers, in which it tried to prove that its namesake was a forebear. The Cercle's most cogent spokesman was Georges Valois, then, as ever, eager to blur the line between left and right. "The core of Proudhon ... is the artisanal, military and Christian thought of traditional, Catholic, classical France," he claimed. At the center of this "core" Valois and his Cercle put Proudhon's patriarchic views on marriage and family life, his criticism of democracy, his peasant regionalism, and, above all, his French nationalism as typified by his stand with the pope against Italian unification. As for aspects of his thought that do not agree with this interpretation, "these outbursts are merely ... an echo of contemporary ideas that he gave up bit by bit." The Proudhon who emerges from this treatment may not be the most orthodox reactionary, but he seeks almost everything that they seek, except a restoration of the king.

The ideology most recently attributed to Proudhon has been fascism; the case for it rests partly on points made by the reactionaries and partly on points omitted by them. Among the latter are Proudhon's occasional anti-Semitic remarks, his qualified support of Negro...