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 [573] “In the Italian and the Hanseatic cities, in Holland and
England, in France and America, we find the powers of production
and consequently the wealth of individuals growing in proportion
to the liberties enjoyed, to the degree of perfection of political
and social institutions, while these, on the other hand, derive
material and stimulus for their further improvement from the
increase of the material wealth and the productive power of
individuals.” (National System, p. 87.)
[574] He defines “political or national economy” as “that which,
emanating from the idea and nature of the nation, teaches how a
given nation, in the present state of the world and its own special
national relations, can maintain and improve its economical
condition.” (Ibid., p. 99.)
[575] It was the example of England that gave List the idea,
but the whole conception is based upon a historical error. England
possessed a navy, had founded colonies and developed her
international trade long before she became a manufacturing
nation. Since the time of List various categories of national
development have been proposed. Hildebrand speaks of periods
of natural economy, of money economy, and of credit economy
(Jahrbücher für National Oekonomie, vol. ii, pp. 1-24). Bücher
proposed the periods of domestic economy, of town economy,
and of national economy as a substitute (Die Entstehung der
Volkswirtschaft, 3rd ed., p. 108). Sombart, in his turn, has very
justly criticised this classification in his book Der moderne
Kapitalismus (vol. i, p. 51; Leipzig, 1902). But would that which
he proposes himself be much better?
No one, we believe, has as yet remarked that List borrowed
this enumeration of the different economic states, almost word
for word, from Adam Smith. In chap. 5 of Book II, speaking of
the various employments of capital, Smith clearly distinguished
between three stages of evolution—the agricultural state, the
agricultural-manufacturing, and the agricultural-manufacturing-
commercial. Smith considered that this last stage was the most
desirable, but in his opinion its realisation must depend upon the
natural course of things.
[576] The term “normal” is one of the vaguest and most
equivocal we have in political economy. It would be well if we
were rid of it altogether. What controversies have not raged
around the ideas of a normal wage or a normal price! One of the
chief merits of the Mathematical school lies in the success with
which it has effected the substitution of the idea of an equilibrium
price. The idea of a normal nation is about as vague as that of a
normal wage, and it is curious that our author describes as
normal a whole collection of characteristics which, according to
his own account, were at the moment when he wrote only
realised by one nation, namely, England.
[577] P. 292. The idea of national power is, moreover, not
completely lost sight of by Smith, as is proved by the following
passages: “The riches and, so far as power depends upon riches,
the power of every country must always be in proportion to the
value of its annual produce.… But the great object of the political
economy of every country is to increase the riches and power of
that country.” (Wealth of Nations, Book II, chap. 5; Cannan’s
edition, vol. i, p. 351.)
[578] On the question of the industrial vocation of the
temperate zone and the agricultural vocation of the torrid
compare National System, Book II, chap. 4.
[579] “The German nation will at once obtain what it is now in
need of, namely, fisheries and naval power, maritime commerce
and colonies.” (National System, p. 143.) List has no difficulty in
allying his patriotic idealism with the practical side of his nature.
[580] List deliberately distinguishes between exchange values
and productive forces; but the distinction is by no means a happy
one. For a policy which aims at encouraging productive forces has
no other way of demonstrating its superiority than by showing an
increase of exchange value. The two notions are not opposed to
one another, and in reckoning a nation’s wealth we must take
some account of its present state as well as of its future
resources. In his Letters to Ingersoll (cf. Letter IV, referred to
above) he distinguishes between “natural and intellectual capital”
on the one hand and “material productive capital” on the other
(Adam Smith’s idea of capital). “The productive powers of the
nation depend not only upon the latter, but also and chiefly upon
the former.”
[581] National System, p. 117.
[582] Unjustly as we think, for on more than one occasion
Smith did take account of moral forces. He dated the prosperity
of English agriculture from the time when farmers were freed
from their long servitude and became henceforth independent of
the proprietors. He remarks that towns attain prosperity quicker
than the country, because a regular government is earlier
established there. “The best effect which commerce and
manufactures have is the gradual introduction and establishment
of order and good government, and with them the liberty and
security of individuals among the inhabitants of the country. This,
though it has been the least observed, is by far the most
important of their effects. Mr. Hume is the only writer who so far
as I know has hitherto taken notice of it.” (Book III, chap. 4;
Cannan, vol i, p. 383.) Speaking of the American colonies, Smith
(Cannan, vol. ii, p. 73) makes the remark that although their
fertility is inferior to the Spanish, Portuguese, and the French
colonies, “the political institutions of the English colonies have
been more favourable to the improvement and cultivation of this
land than those of any of the other three nations.” How could List
have forgotten the celebrated passage in which Smith attributes
the prosperity of Great Britain largely to its legal system, which
guarantees to each individual the fruits of his toil and which must
be reckoned among the definitive achievements of the Revolution
of 1688? “That security which the laws in Great Britain give to
every man that he shall enjoy the fruits of his own labour is alone
sufficient to make any country flourish, notwithstanding these
and twenty other absurd regulations of commerce; and this
security was perfected much about the same time that the bounty
was established.” (Book IV, chap. 5; Cannan, vol. ii, pp. 42-43.)
[583] National System, chap. 17, beginning.
[584] Compare chapters 7 and 15, where he treats of the
manufacturing industry in its relation to each of the great
economic forces of the country.
[585] Ibid., p. 87.
[586] National System, p. 150.
[587] “It may in general be assumed that where any technical
industry cannot be established by means of an original protection
of 40 to 60 per cent., and cannot continue to maintain itself under
a continued protection of 20 to 30 per cent., the fundamental
conditions of manufacturing power are lacking.” (Ibid., p. 251.)
[588] “Solely in nations of the latter kind, namely, those which
possess all the necessary mental and material conditions and
means for establishing a manufacturing power of their own and
of thereby attaining the highest degree of civilisation and
development of material prosperity and political power, but which
are retarded in their progress by the competition of a foreign
manufacturing Power which is already farther advanced than their
own—only in such nations are commercial restrictions justified for
the purpose of establishing and protecting their own
manufacturing power.” (Ibid., p. 144.)
[589] Ibid., p. 240.
[590] “Everyone knows,” says he (quoted by Hirst, pp. 231 et
seq.), “that the cost of production of a manufactured good
depends very largely upon the quantity produced—that is, upon
the operation of the law of increasing returns. This law exercises
considerable influence upon the rise and fall of manufacturing
power.… An English manufacturer producing for the home market
has a regular sale of 10,000 yards at 6 dollars a yard.… His
expenses being thus guaranteed by his sales in the home market,
the cost of producing a further quantity of 10,000 yards for the
foreign market will be considerably reduced and would yield him a
profit even were he to sell for 3 or 4 dollars a yard. And even
though he should not be making any profit just then, he can feel
pretty confident about the future when he has ruined the foreign
producer and driven him out of the field altogether.” List thinks
that this shows how impossible it is for manufacturers in a new
country without any measure of protection to compete with other
countries whose industry is better established. But this is one of
the arguments that has been most frequently used by British
manufacturers in recent years in demanding protection against
American competition. We would like to know what List would
have thought of this.
[591] National System, p. 144, and the whole of chap. 16 of
Book II. He considered that “it would be a further error if France,
after her manufacturing power has become sufficiently strong and
established, were not willing to revert gradually to a more
moderate system of Protection and by permitting a limited
amount of competition incite her manufacturers to emulation.”
(Ibid., p. 249.)
[592] Ibid., p. 253, and especially p. 162, etc., where with a
sudden change of front he declares himself in favour of Free
Trade in agriculture, and employs the arguments which Free
Traders had applied to all products. Compare again p. 230, where
he declares that agriculture “by the very nature of things is
sufficiently well protected against foreign competition.”
 [593] The authors were unable to find a copy of Hamilton’s
works in France, but according to Bastable (Commerce of
Nations, 6th ed., London, 1912, pp. 120, 121) the principal
arguments deduced by the report to prove the advantages of
industry are that it permits of greater division of labour, prevents
unemployment, supplies a more regular market than the foreign,
and encourages immigration.
[594] It is very probable that List had read the work of another
American Protectionist, Daniel Raymond, whose Thoughts on
Political Economy appeared in 1820 and ran into four editions (cf.
Daniel Raymond, by Charles Patrick Neill, Baltimore, 1897). This
seems to be the opinion of the majority of writers who during the
last few years have especially concerned themselves with the
study of List’s opinions (Miss Hirst, in her Life of Friedrich List,
and M. Curt Kohler in his book Problematisches zu Friedrich List,
Leipzig, 1909). But to regard Raymond as his only inspirer, as is
done by Rambaud in his Histoire des Doctrines, seems to us mere
exaggeration. Apart from the facts that Raymond’s ideas are not
particularly original and that List had lived some years in America
in a Protectionist environment, List never quotes him at all. On
the other hand, he frequently and enthusiastically refers to both
Dupin and Chaptal in his Letters to Ingersoll. The expression
“productive forces” was probably borrowed from Baron Dupin’s
Situation progressive des Forces de la France (Paris, 1827), which
opens with the following words: “This forms an introduction to a
work entitled The Productive and Commercial Forces of France.
By productive forces I mean the combined forces of men,
animals, and nature applied to the work of agriculture, of
industry, or of commerce.” Again, the idea of protecting infant
industries is very neatly put by Chaptal. On p. xlvi of the
introduction to his De l’Industrie français (published in 1819) we
meet with the following words: “It does not require much
reflection to be convinced of the fact that something more than
mere desire is needed to overcome the natural obstacles in the
way of the development of industry. Everywhere we feel that
‘infant industries’ cannot struggle against older establishments
cemented by time, supported by much capital, freed from worry
and carried on by a number of trained, skilled workmen, without
having recourse to prohibition in order to overcome the
competition of foreign industries.”
It is certain that List, during his first stay in France, had read
these two authors, and had there found a confirmation of his own
Protectionist ideas. It is not less certain, from a letter written by
him in April 1825 (quoted by Miss Hirst, p. 33), that he was
converted before going to America, but that he expected to find
some new arguments there which would strengthen him in his
opposition to Smith. Marx’s assertion made in his Theorien über
den Mehrwerth, vol. i, p. 339 (published by Kautsky, Stuttgart,
1905), that List’s principal source of inspiration was Ferrier (Du
Gouvernement considéré dans ses Rapports avec le Commerce,
Paris, 1805) has not the slightest foundation. Neither has the
attempt to credit Adam Müller with being the real author of the
conception of a national system of political economy. List, we
know, was acquainted with Müller, a Catholic writer who wished
for the restoration of the feudal system. But to be a German
writer in the Germany of the nineteenth century was quite
enough to imbue one with the idea of nationality. Moreover,
Protectionists’ arguments are extremely limited in number, so that
they do not differ very much from one epoch to another, and it is
a comparatively easy task to find some precursors of Friedrich
List.
[595] Published in a volume entitled Outlines of a New System
of Political Economy, in a Series of Letters addressed by F. List to
Charles Ingersoll (Philadelphia, 1827). This publication did not
find a place in the collected edition published by Häusser, but the
whole of it has been incorporated in the interesting Life of
Friedrich List by Margaret E. Hirst (London, 1909).
[596] This was the consideration that influenced him in
adopting a Protectionist attitude, although hitherto he had
regarded himself as a disciple of Smith and Say. (Letters to
Ingersoll, p. 173.)
[597] National System, preface, p. 54.
[598] The Zollvereinsblatt, which was published by him towards
the end of 1843.
[599] National System, p. 230. We do not by any means imply
that the Germany of List’s day was in greater need of Protection
than the Germany of to-day. Indeed, if we accept Chaptal’s view,
we may well deny this, for, writing in 1819, he said that Saxony
occupied a place in the front rank of European nations in the
matter of industry. Speaking of Prussia, he declared that the
industry of Aix-la-Chapelle alone was enough to establish the
fame of any nation (De l’Industrie française, vol. i, p. 75). We
must also recall the fact that the basis of the present prosperity
of Germany was laid under a régime of much greater freedom.
[600] “Neither is it at all necessary that all branches of industry
should be protected in the same degree. Only the most important
branches require special protection, for the working of which
much outlay of capital in building and management, much
machinery and therefore much technical knowledge, skill, and
experience, and many workmen are required, and whose
products belong to the category of the first necessaries of life and
consequently are of the greatest importance as regards their total
value as well as regards national independence (as, for example,
cotton, woollen, and linen manufactures, etc.). If these main
branches are suitably protected and developed, all other less
important branches of manufacture will rise up around them
under a less degree of protection.” (National System, p. 145.)
[601] On Carey see infra, Book III.
[602] Carey, Principles of Social Science.
[603] Carey, Principles of Social Science.
[604] National System, Book II, chap. 3.
[605] Principles of Political Economy, Book V, chap. 10, § 1.
[606] “Of all the things required for the purposes of man, the
one that least bears transportation, and is, yet, of all the most
important, is manure. The soil can continue to produce on the
condition, only, of restoring to it the elements of which its crop
had been composed. That being complied with, the supply of
food increases, and men are enabled to come nearer together
and combine their efforts—developing their individual faculties,
and thus increasing their wealth; and yet this condition of
improvement, essential as it is, has been overlooked by all
economists.” (Principles of Social Science, vol. i, pp. 273-274.)
[607] Principles of Political Economy, Book V, chap. 10, § 1.
[608] On this point see Jenks, Henry C. Carey als
Nationalökonom, chap. 1 (Jena, 1885).
[609] Compare the long passage in the Principles, Book V,
chap. 10, § 1, which begins: “The only case in which on mere
principles of political economy protecting duties can be defensible
is when they are imposed temporarily (especially in a young and
rising nation) in hopes of naturalising a foreign industry, in itself
perfectly suitable to the circumstances of the country. The
superiority of one country over another in a branch of production
often varies only from having begun it sooner.” Stuart Mill,
however, does not refer to List, and one wonders whether the
paragraph owes anything to his influence.
[610] We must make an exception of M. Cauwès, whose
Protectionism, on the contrary, is a quite logical adaptation of
List’s idea, viz. the superiority of nations possessing a complex
economy. This is the only scientific system of Protection that we
are to-day acquainted with. But it must be confessed that the
majority of writers are very far removed from Cauwès’ point of
view. Compare his Cours d’ Économie politique, 3rd ed., vol. iii.
[611] Such, e.g., are the economists who are always speaking
of a “commercial deficit,” i.e. of an unfavourable balance of
commerce. Despite the frequent refutations which have been
given of it, it is still frequently quoted as an axiomatic truth. List
criticised the school for its complete indifference to the balance of
imports and exports. But he did not favour the Mercantilist theory
of the balance of trade; on the contrary, he regarded that as
definitely condemned (p. 218). He regarded the question from a
special point of view, that of monetary equilibrium. When a
nation, says he, imports much, but does not export a
corresponding amount of goods, it may be forced to furnish
payment in gold, and a drainage of gold might give rise to a
financial crisis. The indifference of the school with regard to this
question of the quantity of money is very much exaggerated
(Book II, chap. 13). The policy of the great central banks of to-
day aims at easing those tensions in the money market which
appear as the result of over-importation, and in this matter they
have proved themselves much superior to any system of
Protection.
[612] Some writers go even farther. Patten (Economic
Foundations of Protection) longs to see a national type
established peculiar to each country, as the result of forcing the
inhabitants to be nourished and clothed according to the natural
resources of the country in which they live. We should, as a
consequence of this, have an American type quite superior to any
European type. “Then,” says he, “we should be able to exercise a
preponderant influence upon the fate of other nations and could
force them to renounce their present economic methods and
adopt a more highly developed social State.” Until then no foreign
goods are to enter the country. Here, as is very frequently the
case, Protectionism is confounded with nationalism or
imperialism.
[613] “A merely agricultural State is an infinitely less perfect
institution than an agricultural-manufacturing State. The former is
always more or less economically and politically dependent on
those foreign nations which take from it agricultural products in
exchange for manufactured goods. It cannot determine for itself
how much it will produce: it must wait and see how much others
will buy from it.” (National System, p. 145.)
[614] “A nation which has already attained manufacturing
supremacy can only protect its own manufactures and merchants
against retrogression and indolence by the free importation of
means of subsistence and raw materials, and by the competition
of foreign manufactured goods.” (National System, p. 153.) Hence
the appeal to England in the name of this theory to abolish her
tariffs, but to gracefully allow France, Germany, and the United
States to continue theirs.
[615] See M. Pareto’s Economia Politica (Milan, 1906) for a
demonstration that international exchange is not necessarily
advantageous for both parties (chap. 9, § 45).
[616] But the line is sometimes difficult to follow. Latterly
statesmen have been concerned not so much with the
exportation of goods as with the migration of capital. Ought the
Minister for Foreign Affairs to veto the raising of a loan in the
home market on behalf of a foreign Power or an alien company?
To what extent ought bankers and capitalists to accept his
advice? Such are some of the questions that for some years past
have been repeatedly asked in France, England, and Germany.
And it seems in almost every case that political economy has had
to bow before political necessity, and not vice versa.
[617] It is very remarkable that List’s greatest admirer,
Dühring, in his Kritische Geschichte der Nationalökonomie und
des Sozialismus (2nd ed., p. 362), insists on the fact that
Protection is not an essential element, but a mere temporary form
of the principle of national economic solidarity, which is List’s
fundamental conception, and which must survive all forms of
Protection. Dühring is the only real successor of List and Carey.
He has developed their ideas with a great deal of ability and has
shown himself a really scientific thinker. But what he chiefly
admires in both writers is not their Protection, but their effort to
lay hold of the material and moral forces which lie below the
mere fact of exchange, and upon which a nation’s prosperity
really depends. His Kursus der National- und Sozial-oekonomie
(Berlin, 1873) is very interesting reading.
[618] Except the Saint-Simonians nobody seems to have
conceived of the State’s responsibility for a nation’s productive
forces. List refers to them sympathetically, especially to those
who, like Michel Chevalier, “sought to discover the connection of
these doctrines with those of the premier schools, and to make
their ideas compatible with existing circumstances” (National
System, p. 287). But List differs from them in his love of
individual liberty and in the importance which he attaches to
moral, political, and intellectual liberty as elements of productive
efficiency.
[619] Philosophie du Progrès, Œuvres, vol. xx, p. 19: “Growth
is essential to thought, and truth or reality whether in nature or in
human affairs is essentially historical, at one time advancing, at
another receding, evolving slowly, but always undergoing some
change.” In his Contradictions économiques he defines social
science as “the systematised study of society, not merely as it
was in the past or will be in the future, but as it is in the present
in all its manifold appearances, for only by looking at the whole of
its activities can we hope to discover intelligence and order.” (Vol.
i, p. 43.) “If we apply this conception to the organisation of labour
we cannot agree with the economists when they say that it is
already completely organised, or with the socialists when they
declare that it must be organised, but simply that it is gradually
organising itself; that is, that the process of organisation has
gone on since time immemorial and is still going on, and that it
will continue to go on. Science should always be on the look-out
for the results that have already been achieved or are on the
point of realisation.” (Vol. i, p. 45.)
[620] A vigorous exposition of his other ideas is given in
Bouglé’s La Sociologie de Proudhon (Paris, 1911).
[621] The following are Proudhon’s principal works: 1840,
Qu’est-ce que la Propriété? (studies in ethics and politics); 1846,
Système des Contradictions économiques (the “philosophy of
destitution”); 1848, Organisation du Crédit et de la Circulation et
Solution du Problème social; 1848, Résumé de la Question
sociale, Banque d’Échange; 1849, Les Confessions d’un
Révolutionnaire; 1850, Intérêt et Principal (a discussion between
M. Bastiat and M. Proudhon); 1858, De la Justice dans la
Révolution et dans l’Église (three volumes); 1861, La Guerre et la
Paix; 1865, De la Capacité politique des Classes ouvrières. Our
quotations are taken from the Œuvres complètes, published in
twenty-six volumes by Lacroix (1867-70).
[622] “Do you happen to know, madam, what my father was?
Well, he was just an honest brewer whom you could never
persuade to make money by selling above cost price. Such gains,
he thought, were immoral. ‘My beer,’ he would always remark,
‘costs me so much, including my salary. I cannot sell it for more.’
What was the result? My dear father always lived in poverty and
died a poor man, leaving poor children behind him.” (Letter to
Madame d’Agoult, Correspondance, vol. ii, p. 239.)
[623] It has been said that Proudhon borrowed this formula
from Brissot de Warville, the author of a work entitled Recherches
philosophiques sur le Droit de Propriété et sur le Vol, considérés
dans la Nature et dans la Société. It was first published in 1780,
and reappeared with some modifications in vol. vi, pp. 261 et
seq., of his Bibliothèque philosophique du Législateur (1782). But
this is a mistake. Proudhon declares that the work was unknown
to him (Justice, vol. i, p. 301); and, moreover, the formula is not
there at all. Brissot’s point of view is entirely different from
Proudhon’s. The former believes that in a state of nature the right
of property is simply the outcome of want, and disappears when
that want is satisfied; that man, and even animals and plants, has
a right to everything that can satisfy his wants, but that the right
disappears with the satisfaction of the want. Consequently theft
perpetrated under the pressure of want simply means a return to
nature. The rich are really the thieves, because they refuse to the
culprit the lawful satisfaction of his needs. The result is a plea for
a more lenient treatment of thieves. But Brissot is very careful not
to attack civil property, which is indispensable for the growth of
wealth and the expansion of commerce, although it has no
foundation in a natural right (p. 333). There is no mention of
unearned income. Proudhon, on the other hand, never even
discusses the question as to whether property is based upon want
or not. He would certainly have referred to this if he had read
Brissot.
[624] Contradictions, vol. i, pp. 219, 221.
[625] Résumé de la Question sociale, p. 29. We meet with the
same idea in other passages. “Property under the influence of
division of labour has become a mere link in the chain of
circulation, and the proprietor himself a kind of toll-gatherer who
demands a toll from every commodity that passes his way.
Property is the real thief.” (Banque d’Échange, p. 166.) We must
also remember that Proudhon did not consider that taking
interest was always illegal. In the controversy with Bastiat he
admits that it was necessary in the past, but that he has found a
way of getting rid of it altogether.
[626] We must distinguish between this and Marx’s doctrine.
Marx believed that all value is the product of labour. Proudhon
refuses to admit this. He thinks that value should in some way
correspond to the quantity of labour, but that this is not the case
in present-day society. Marx was quite aware of the fact that
Proudhon did not share his views (see Misère de la Philosophie).
Proudhon follows Rodbertus, who taught that the products only
and not their values are provided by labour.
[627] Propriété, 1er Mémoire, pp. 131-132. It is true that
Proudhon adds that without land and capital labour would be
unproductive. But he soon forgets his qualifications when he
proceeds to draw conclusions, especially when he comes to give
an exposition of the Exchange Bank, where we meet with the
following sentence: “Society is built up as follows: All the raw
material required is gratuitously supplied by nature, so that in the
economic world every product is really begot of labour, and
capital must be considered unproductive.” Elsewhere he writes:
“To work is not necessarily to produce anything.” (Solution du
Problème social, Œuvres, vol. vi, pp. 361 et seq., and p. 187.)
[628] Propriété, 1er Mémoire, p. 133.
[629] L. von Stein, Geschichte der sozialen Bewegung in
Frankreich, vol. iii, p. 362 (Leipzig, 1850). A remarkable piece of
work altogether.
[630] It is true that Proudhon’s attack is entirely directed
against the ethics of private property. He shows how every
justification that is usually offered, such as right of occupation,
natural right, or labour, cannot justify the institution as it is to-
day. Private property as we know it is confined to the few,
whereas on these principles it ought to be widely diffused.
Criticism of this kind is not very difficult, perhaps, but it does
nothing to weaken the arguments of those who would justify
property on the grounds of social utility. The criticism of the
Saint-Simonians, who approach it from the point of view of utility
and productiveness rather than from the ethical standpoint,
seems to be much more profound. This is why we have regarded
them as the critics of private property.
[631] “This is the fundamental idea of my first Mémoire.”
(Quoted by Sainte-Beuve, P. J. Proudhon, p. 90.) Later on he
complains that the suggestion was never even discussed.
[632] Propriété, 1er Mémoire, p. 94.
[633] Ibid., p. 91.
[634] Blanqui’s letter dated May 1, 1841, in reply to a
communication from Proudhon concerning the second Mémoire
on property.
[635] Cf. Sainte-Beuve, P. J. Proudhon, pp. 202, 203; and see
on this point Proudhon’s amusing letters to Guillaumin
(Correspondance, vol. ii).
[636] Propriété, 1er Mémoire, p. 203.
[637] An article in Le Peuple, in 1848. Proudhon’s attacks are
more especially directed against Fourier. Fourier’s was at this time
the only socialist school that had any influence, and this was
largely due to the active propaganda of Victor Considérant. See
Contradictions, vol. ii, p. 297, and Propriété, 1er Mémoire, pp. 153
et seq.
[638] Contradictions, vol. ii, p. 285. For the attack on Cabet,
Louis Blanc, and the communists see the whole of chap. 12 of the
Contradictions. Louis Blanc “has poisoned the working classes
with his ridiculous formulæ” (Idée générale de la Révolution, p.
108). Louis Blanc himself is summed up as follows: “He seriously
thought that he was the bee of the Revolution, but he turned out
to be only a grasshopper.” (Ibid.)
[639] “I believe that I am the first person possessed of a full
knowledge of the phenomena in question who has dared to
uphold the doctrine that instead of restraining economic forces
whose strength has been so much exaggerated we ought to try
to balance them against one another in accordance with the little
known and less perfectly understood principle that contraries, far
from being mutually destructive, support one another just
because of their contrary nature.” (Justice, vol. i, pp. 265-266.)
The same idea also finds expression on pp. 302-303. Elsewhere
he remarks that what society is in search of is a way of balancing
the natural forces that are contained within itself (Révolution
démontrée par le Coup d’État, p. 43).
 [640] “Division of labour, collective force, competition,
exchange, credit, property, and even liberty—these are the true
economic forces, the raw materials of all wealth, which, without
actually making men the slaves of one another, give entire
freedom to the producer, ease his toil, arouse his enthusiasm, and
double his produce by creating a real solidarity which is not based
upon personal considerations, but which binds men together with
ties stronger than any which sympathetic combination or
voluntary contract can supply.” (Idée générale de la Révolution au
XIXe Siècle, p. 95.) The economic forces are somewhat differently
enumerated in chap. 13 of La Capacité des Classes ouvrières.
Association and mutuality are mentioned; but while recognising
the prestige of the word “association,” especially among working
men, Proudhon concludes that the only real association is
mutuality—not in the sense of a mutual aid society, which he
thinks is altogether too narrow.
[641] It is true that Fourier was not a communist. Proudhon
shows that on the one hand his Phalanstère would abolish
interest, while it would give a special remuneration to talent on
the other, simply because “talent is a product of society rather
than a gift of nature.” (Propriété, 1er Mémoire, p. 156.)
[642] Proudhon’s opposition to the principle of association is
very remarkable. He refers to it more than once, but especially in
the Idée générale de la Révolution. “Can association be regarded
as an economic force? For my own part I distinctly say, No. By
itself it is sterile, even if it does not check production, because of
the limits it puts upon the liberty of the worker.” (P. 89.)
“Association means that everyone is responsible for someone
else, and the least counts as much as the greatest, the youngest
as the oldest. It gets rid of inequality, with the result that there is
general awkwardness and incapacity.” (Ibid.)
[643] La Révolution démontrée par le Coup d’État, pp. 53, 54.
Elsewhere: “When you speak of organising labour it seems as if
you would put out the eyes of liberty.” (Organisation du Crédit et
de l’Échange, Œuvres, vol. vi, p. 91.)
[644] Programme révolutionnaire. To the electors of the Seine,
in the Représentant du Peuple. (Œuvres, vol. xvii, pp. 45, 46.)
[645] “I should like everybody to have some property. We are
anxious that they should have property in order to avoid paying
interest, because exorbitant interest is the one obstacle to the
universal use of property.” (Le Peuple, September 2, 1849.)
 [646] Propriété, 1er Mémoire, p. 204.
[647] Contradictions, vol. ii, p. 203.
[648] Organisation du Credit et de la Circulation, p. 131.
Elsewhere: “To adopt Hegelian phraseology, the community is the
first term in social development—the thesis; property the
contradictory term—the antithesis. The third term—the synthesis
—must be found before the solution can be considered complete.”
(Propriété, 1er Mémoire, p. 202.) That term will be possession
pure and simple—the right of property with no claim to unearned
income. “Get rid of property, but retain the right of possession,
and this very simple change of principle will result in an alteration
of the laws, the method of government, and the character of a
nation’s economic institutions. Evil of every kind will be entirely
swept away.” Proudhon employed Hegelian terminology as early
as 1840, four years before Karl Grün’s visit to Paris. For
Proudhon’s relation to Grün see Sainte-Beuve’s P. J. Proudhon.
[649] Justice dans la Révolution, vol. i, pp. 182-183.
[650] Ibid., p. 269. “It is easy to show how the principle of
mutual respect is logically convertible with the principle of
reciprocal service. If men are equal in the eyes of justice they
must also have a common necessity, and whoever would place his
brothers in a position of inferiority, against which it is the chief
duty of society to fight, is not acting justly.”
[651] This idea of mutual service is further developed,
especially in Organisation du Crédit et de la Circulation (Œuvres,
vol. vi, pp. 92-93), and in Idée générale, p. 97.
[652] That is how the problem is put in the preface to the first
Mémoire.
[653] Contradictions, vol. ii, p. 414.
[654] Le Droit au Travail et le Droit de Propriété, pp. 4, 5, 58
(1848).
[655] Every historian is agreed on this point, which Louis Blanc
has dealt with at great length in his Histoire de la Révolution de
1848 (chap. 11). The testimony of contemporaries, especially
Lamartine in his Histoire de la Révolution de 1848 (vol. ii, p. 120),
is also very significant. “These national workshops were placed
under the direction of men who belonged to the anti-socialist
party, whose one aim was to spoil the experiment, but who
managed to keep the sectaries of the Luxembourg and the rebels
of the clubs apart until the meeting of the National Assembly.
Paris was disgusted with the quantity and the character of the
work accomplished, but it little thought that these men had on
more than one occasion defended and protected the city. Far
from being in the pay of Louis Blanc, as some people seem to
think, they were entirely at the beck and call of his opponents.” É.
Thomas in his Histoire des Ateliers nationaux (pp. 146-147)
relates how Marie sent for him on May 23 and secretly asked him
whether the men in the workshops could be relied upon. “Try to
get them strongly attached to you. Spare no expense. If there is
any need we shall give you plenty of money.” Upon Thomas
asking what was the purpose of all this, Marie replied: “It is all in
the interest of public safety. Make sure of the men. The day is not
far distant when we shall need them in the streets.”
[656] These addresses were afterwards published in a volume
entitled Le Droit au Travail.
[657] Louis Blanc, Histoire de la Révolution de 1848, vol. ii, p.
135.
[658] See the addresses in his La Révolution de Février au
Luxembourg (Paris, 1849).
[659] Moniteur, April 27, May 2, 3, and 6, 1848. The dismissal
of the commission meant an interruption of the Exposé général,
but Vidal in his work Vivre en travaillant! Projets, Voires, et
Moyens de Réformes sociales (1848) continued the exposition. It
contains a plan for agricultural credit, a State land purchase
scheme in order to get rid of rent, a proposal for buying up
railways and mines and for erecting cheap dwellings. It affords an
interesting example of State Socialism in 1848 which seems to
have struck many people then as being very amusing.
[660] Cf. supra, p. 297, note 3.
[661] Cf. supra, “The Associative Socialists.”
[662] “I need hardly say that this measure of fiscal reform
[namely, the abolition of private property] must be carried out
without any violence or robbery. There must be no spoliation, but
ample compensation must be given.” (Résumé de la Question
sociale, p. 27.)
[663] Solution du Problème social (Œuvres, vol. vi, p. 32).
[664] Œuvres, vol. xviii, pp. 6-7. See also the letter dated
February 25, 1848 (Correspondance, vol. ii, p. 280): “France will
certainly accomplish it, whether it remains a republic or not. It
might even be carried out by the present decadent Government,
at a trifling cost.” This thought did not prevent his taking a hand
in the Revolution.
[665] In a pamphlet entitled Organisation du Crédit et de la
Circulation, and dated March 31, 1848, he expounds the principle
of the scheme and indicates some of its general features. The
scheme is dealt with in a number of articles contributed to Le
Représentant du Peuple for April, afterwards published in book
form by Darimon, under the title of Résumé de la Question
sociale. The plan differs slightly from the statutes of the People’s
Bank as they appear in vol. vi of the Œuvres, but the guiding
principle is much the same. A further exposition was given in Le
Peuple in February and March 1849, just when the Bank was
being founded. There is still another account contained in the
volume entitled Intérêt et Principal: Discussion entre M. Proudhon
and M. Bastiat sur l’Intérêt du Capitaux (Paris, 1880). This
controversy was carried on in the columns of La Voix du Peuple
from October 1849 to October 1850. Proudhon frequently refers
to the same idea in his other works, notably in Justice dans la
Révolution, vol. i, pp. 289 et seq., and in Idée générale, pp. 197
et seq.
[666] See Solution du Problème social, pp. 178, 179.
[667] Intérêt et Principal, p. 112.
[668] “Money is simply a supplementary kind of capital, a
medium of exchange or a credit instrument. If this is the case
what claim has it to payment? To think of remunerating money
for the service which it gives!” (Ibid., p. 113.)
[669] Cf. Résumé de la Question sociale, p. 39.
[670] Moreover, the advances will take the form of discount.
The entrepreneur who has some scheme which he wishes to
carry out “will in the first place collect orders, and on the strength
of those orders get hold of some producer or dealer who has
such raw material or services at his disposal. Having obtained the
goods, he pays for them by means of promissory notes, which
the bank, after taking due precaution, will convert into circulation
notes.” The consumer is really a sleeping partner in the business,
and between him and the entrepreneur there is no need for the
intervention of money at all. (Organisation du Crédit, Œuvres, vol.
vi, p. 123.) Discount was the fundamental characteristic of the
bank, and no criticism is directed against this feature of its
operations.
[671] “How to resolve the bourgeoisie and the proletariat into
the middle class, the class which lives upon its income and that
which draws a salary into a class which has neither revenue nor
wages, but lives by inventing and producing valuable commodities
to exchange them for others. The middle class is the most active
class in society, and is truly representative of a country’s activity.
This was the problem in February 1848.” (Révolution démontrée
par le Coup d’État, p. 135.)
[672] “Reciprocity means a guarantee on the part of those who
exchange commodities to sell at cost price.” (Idée générale de la
Révolution, pp. 97-98.)
[673] “The very existence of the State implies antagonism or
war as the essential or inevitable condition of humanity, a
condition that calls for the intervention of a coercive force which
shall put an end to the struggle continually waging between the
weak and the strong.” (Voix du Peuple, December 3, 1849;
Œuvres, vol. xix, p. 23.) “When economic development has
resulted in the transformation of society even despite itself, then
the weak and the strong will alike disappear. There will only be
workers; and industrial solidarity, and a guarantee that their
products will be sold, will tend to make them equal both in
capacity and wealth.” (Ibid., p. 18.)
[674] “Consequently we consider ourselves anarchists and we
have proclaimed the fact more than once. Anarchy is suitable for
an adult society just as hierarchy is for a primitive one. Human
society has progressed gradually from hierarchy to anarchy.”
(Œuvres, vol. xix, p. 9.) A little later, in Idée générale de la
Révolution, he states that the aim of the Revolution was “to build
up a property constitution and to dissolve or otherwise cause the
disappearance of the political or government system by reducing
or simplifying, by decentralising and suppressing the whole
machinery of the State.” This idea was borrowed from Saint-
Simon, and Proudhon has acknowledged the debt in his Idée
générale. This conception of industrial society rendering
government useless or reducing it to harmless proportions is a
development, though perhaps somewhat extravagant, of the
economic Liberalism of J. B. Say. The first edition of the Mémoire
sur la Propriété contains an admission of anarchical tendencies.
“What are you, then? I am an anarchist.—I understand your
doubts on this question. You think that I am against the
Government.—That is not so. You asked for my confession of
faith. Having duly pondered over it, and although a lover of order,
I have come to the conclusion that I am in the fullest sense of the
word an anarchist.”
[675] “The whole problem of circulation is how to make the
exchange note universally acceptable, how to secure that it shall
always be exchangeable for goods and services and convertible at
sight.” (Organisation du Crédit, Œuvres, vol. vi, pp. 113, 114.)
[676] Organisation du Crédit.
[677] Proudhon always maintained that his reform merely
consisted in transforming a credit sale into a cash one. But he
might as well have said that black was white. Far from giving
mutual benefit, the borrower will be the one who will gain most
advantage. Elsewhere he says that to give credit is merely to
exchange. This is true enough, but discount is employed just to
equalise different credit transactions.
[678] In the Idée générale de la Révolution au XIXe Siècle, p.
198: “The citizens of France have a right to demand and if need
be to join together for the establishment of bakehouses, butchers’
shops, etc., which will sell them bread and meat and other
articles of consumption of good quality at a reasonable price,
taking the place of the present chaotic method, where short
weight, poor quality, and an exorbitant price seem to be the
order. For a similar reason they have the right to establish a bank,
with the amount of capital which they think fit, in order to get the
cash which they need for their transactions as cheaply as
possible.”
[679] “Association avoids the waste of the retail system. M.
Rossi recommends it to those small householders who cannot
afford to buy wholesale. But this kind of association is wrong in
principle. Give the producer, by helping him to exchange his
products, an opportunity of supplying them with provisions at
wholesale prices, or, what comes to the same thing, organise the
retail trade so as to leave only just the same advantage as in the
case of the wholesale transaction, and ‘association’ will be
unnecessary.” (Idée générale de la Révolution, p. 92.)
[680] This system was criticised by Marx in his Misère de la
Philosophie, published in 1847 (Giard and Brière’s edition, 1896,
pp. 92 et seq.). A more recent and more complete exposition is
given in Foxwell’s introduction to Anton Menger’s The Right to the
Whole Produce of Labour, pp. lxv, etc.
[681] Mazel gave an exposition of his scheme in a series of
pamphlets written in very bombastic language, but only of very
slight interest to the economist. Another bank known as
Bonnard’s Bank was established at Marseilles in 1838, and
afterwards at Paris. The ideas are somewhat similar, but much
more practical. Both branches are still in active operation.
Proudhon refers to this bank in his Capacité politique des Classes
ouvrières. Courcelle-Seneuil gives a very eulogistic account of it in
his Traité des Banques, and in an article in the Journal des
Économistes for April 1853. The modus operandi is explained in
three brochures, which may be seen in the Bibliothèque
Nationale. One of these is entitled Liste des Articles disponibles à
la Banque; the other two describe the mechanism of the bank.
Darimon, one of Proudhon’s disciples, in his work De la Réforme
des Banques (Paris, Guillaumin, 1856), gives an account of a
large number of similar institutions which were founded during
this period. Several systems of the kind have also been discussed
by M. Aucuy in his Systèmes socialistes d’Échange (Paris, 1907).
But we cannot accept his interpretation of various points.
Bonnard’s Bank differs from the others in this way. The client of
the bank, instead of bringing it some commodity or other which
may or may not be sold by the bank, gets from the bank some
commodity which he himself requires, promising to supply the
bank with a commodity of his own production whenever the bank
requires it. The bank charges a commission on every transaction.
Its one aim is to bring buyer and seller together, and the notes
are simply bills, payable according to the conditions written on
them. But they cannot be regarded as substitutes for bank bills.
Cf. Banque d’Échange de Marseille, C. Bonnard et Cie., fondée par
Acte du 10 Janvier, 1849 (Marseilles, 1849).
[682] “I repudiate Mazel’s system root and branch,” he declares
in an article contributed to Le Peuple of December 1848 (Œuvres,
vol. xvii, p. 221). He also adds that when he wrote first he had no
acquaintance of any kind with Mazel. “It was M. Mazel who on his
own initiative revealed his scheme to me and gave me the idea.”
In one of his projects, published on May 10, 1848, Proudhon
seems inclined to adopt this idea, just for a moment at any rate.
Article 17 seems to hint at this. “The notes will always be
exchangeable at the bank and at the offices of members, but only
against goods and services, and in the same way commodities
and services can always be exchanged for notes.” (Résumé de la
Question sociale, p. 41.) This article justifies the interpretation
which Courcelle-Seneuil puts on it, in his Traité des Operations de
Banque (9th ed., 1899, p. 470), and which Ott accepts in his
Traité d’Économie sociale (1851), which, moreover, contains a
profound analysis and some subtle criticism of Proudhon’s idea.
But we think that this article was simply an oversight on
Proudhon’s part; for beyond a formal refutation of Mazel’s idea
there is no reference to it in any of his other works, not even in
the scheme of the People’s Bank. Moreover, it seems to contradict
the statement that the notes would be issued against
commodities which had been actually sold and delivered, as well
as other articles of the scheme—e.g. Article 30, dealing with
buying and selling. It also conflicts with the idea that the
discounting of goods is the prime and essential operation of the
bank. In our opinion, Diehl in his book on Proudhon (P. J.
Proudhon, Seine Lehre u. seine Leben, vol. ii, p. 183) is wrong in
thinking that the Exchange Bank would issue notes against all
kinds of goods without taking the trouble to discover whether
they had been sold or not.
[683] Annales de l’Institut Solvay, vol. i, p. 19.
[684] Ibid., p. 25.
[685] Cf. Principes d’Orientation sociale, a résumé of Solvay’s
studies in productivism and accounting (Brussels, 1904).
[686] Although Solvay’s scheme seems very different from
Proudhon’s, it possesses features that received the highest
commendation from the Luxembourg Commission. In L’Exposé
général de la Commission de Gouvernement pour les Travailleurs,
which appeared in Le Moniteur of May 6, 1848, we read: “When
in the future association has become complete, there will be no
need for notes even. Every transaction will be carried on by
balancing the accounts. Book-keepers will take the place of
collecting clerks. Money, both paper and metallic, is largely
superfluous even in present-day society.” The author then
proceeds to outline a scheme of clearing-houses.
[687] A hit at Proudhon’s Philosophie de la Misère, which was
the sub-title of his Contradictions économiques.
[688] In a letter written to Karl Marx on May 17, 1846
(Correspondance, vol. ii, p. 199), à propos the expression “at the
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