Just as the first critical moves in every science are necessarily
entangled in the assumptions of the science which they are intending to
combat, so Proudhon's work Qu'est ce que la propriété? is a
criticism of political economy from the standpoint of political
economy. Since the criticism of political economy forms the chief
subject of interest, we need not here examine the legal section of the
book, which criticizes law from the standpoint of law. Proudhon's book
is therefore scientifically surpassed by the critical school of
political economy, even of political economy as conceived by Proudhon.
This work of criticism was only rendered possible by Proudhon himself,
just as Proudhon's criticism had as its antecedents the criticism of
the mercantile system by the physiocrats, that of the physiocrats by
Adam Smith, that of Adam Smith by Ricardo, as well as the labours of
Fourier and Saint-Simon.
All the developments of political economy have private property as
their major premise. This fundamental assumption is regarded by it as
an unassailable fact, which needs no demonstration, and about which it
only chances to speak casually, as M. Say naïvely confesses.
Now Proudhon subjects private property, the basis of political
economy, to a critical examination, which is in fact the first
decisive, ruthless, and at the same time scientific analysis. This
constitutes the great scientific progress which he made, a progress
which revolutionized political economy, and first rendered possible a
real science of political economy.
Proudhon's work Qu'est ce que la propriété? has the same
significance for modern political economy as Siéyès' pamphlet:
Qu'est ce que le tiers état? has for modern politics.
If Proudhon did not conceive the various forms of private property,
as, for example, wages, trade, value, price, money, etc., as such, but
used these forms of political economy as weapons against political
economy, this was quite in accordance with his whole standpoint, as
above described and historically justified.
Political economy, which accepts the relationships of private
property as human and reasonable relationships, moves in a perpetual
contradiction to its fundamental assumption, which is private property,
a contradiction analogous to that of theology, which constantly gives a
human interpretation to religious ideas, and thereby constantly
violates its fundamental assumption, which is the supramundane
character of religion. Thus in political economy wages appear at the
outset as labour's proportionate share in the product. Wages and the
profit of capital exist in the most friendly and apparently human
relations, alternately assisting each other. Subsequently it transpired
that they stand in the most hostile, in an inverted, relationship
towards each other. In the beginning value is apparently determined on
rational principles, by the costs of production of an article and by
its social utility. Subsequently it transpires that value is a purely
accidental determination, which does not need to have any connection at
all either with the costs of production or with social utility. The
magnitude of wages is in the beginning determined by a free contract
between the free worker and the free capitalist. Subsequently it
transpires that the worker is compelled to let it be determined, just
as the capitalist is compelled to fix it as low as possible. Coercion
takes the place of the freedom of the contracting parties. The same
observation applies to trade and all the other relations of political
economy. Political economists occasionally have an intimation of these
contradictions, the development of which forms the principal content of
their mutual wrangling. When, however, they become fully aware of them,
they proceed to attack private property in one of its partial
manifestations, as the falsifier of wages which are rational in
themselves, that is, in the ideas they have formed about wages; or of
value that is rational in itself, or of commerce that is rational in
itself. Thus Adam Smith occasionally attacks the capitalists, Destutt
de Tracy attacks the money-changers, Simonde de Sismondi attacks the
factory system, Ricardo attacks landed property, and thus almost all
political economists attack the non-industrial capitalists who regard
property merely as consumable goods.
Sometimes, therefore, the political economists invest economic
conditions with a human semblance, that is, when they are attacking a
particular abuse, but at other times, which is mostly the case, they
interpret these conditions in their strict economic meaning, as
distinguished from human conditions. They reel unconsciously in this
contradiction.
Now Proudhon has made an end once for all of this unconsciousness.
He took seriously the human semblance given to economic conditions and
sharply confronted it with their inhuman reality. In all seriousness he
accepted the human gloss which the political economists had put upon
economic conditions, and sharply compared it with their inhuman
reality. He demanded that these conditions should be in reality what
they are in fancy. In other words, the ideas which have been formed of
them should be abandoned and their veritable inhumanity should be
acknowledged. He was therefore consistent in plainly representing
private property in its most universal aspect to be the falsifier of
economic relationships, and not this or that kind of private property,
to a partial degree, as did most of the other political economists. He
achieved everything that could be achieved by the criticism of
political economy from the standpoint of political economy.
All political economy hitherto has taken as its starting-point the
wealth which the movement of private property ostensibly creates for
the nations, in order to reach its conclusions in support of private
property.
Proudhon starts out from the reverse side, which is sophistically
covered up in political economy, that is, from the poverty created by
the movement of private property, in order to reach his conclusions,
which are unfavourable to private poverty. The first criticism of
private property was naturally prompted by the phenomenon which
embodies its essence in the most striking and clamorous form, a form
which directly violates human feeling—by the phenomenon of poverty.
The critics of Proudhon cannot deny that Proudhon also perceives an
inner connection between the facts of poverty and of property, as he
proposes to abolish property on account of this connection, in order to
abolish poverty. Proudhon has done even more. He has demonstrated in
detail how the movement of capital creates poverty. The critics of
Proudhon, on the other hand, will not enter into such trivialities.
They perceive only that poverty and private property are opposites:
which is fairly obvious.
Proletariat and wealth are antitheses. As such they constitute a
whole; both are manifestations of the world of private property. The
question to be considered is the specific position which both occupy in
the antithesis. To describe them as two sides of a whole is not a
sufficient explanation. Private property as private property, as
wealth, is compelled to preserve its own existence, and along with it
that of its antithesis, the proletariat. Private property satisfied in
itself is the positive side of the antithesis. The proletariat, on the
other hand, is obliged, as proletariat, to abolish itself, and along
with it private property, its conditioned antithesis, which makes it
the proletariat.
It is a negative side of the antithesis, the internal source of
unrest, the disintegrated and disintegrating proletariat.
The possessing class and the proletarian class represent the same
human self-estrangement. But the former class feels perfectly satisfied
with this self-estrangement, knowing that in this estrangement resides
its own power, and possesses therein the semblance of a human
existence; the latter class feels itself to be destroyed by the
estrangement, perceives therein its impotence and the reality of an
inhuman existence.
Within the antithesis, therefore, the owner of private property is
the conservative, and the proletarian is the destructive party. From
the former proceeds the action of maintaining the antithesis, from the
latter the action of destroying it. From the point of view of its
national, economic movement, private property is, of course,
continually being driven towards its own dissolution, but only by an
unconscious development which is independent of it, and which exists
against its will, and is limited by the nature of things; only, that
is, by creating the proletariat as proletariat, poverty conscious of
its own physical and spiritual poverty, and demoralized humanity
conscious of its own demoralization and consequently striving against
it.
The proletariat fulfils the judgment which private property by the
creation of the proletariat suspends over itself, just as it fulfils
the judgment which wage-labour suspends over itself in creating alien
riches and its own condemnation. If the proletariat triumphs, it does
not thereby become the absolute side of society, for it triumphs only
by abolishing itself and its opposite. In this way both the proletariat
and its conditioned opposite, private property, are done away with.