"Despite the violence which we witness, I do not believe that hereafter liberty will need to use force to claim its rights and avenge its wrongs. Reason will serve us better; and patience, like the Revolution, is invincible."[192]
2. But how shall we convince men, "how popularize the idea, if the bourgeoisie remains hostile; if the populace, brutalized by servitude, full of prejudices and bad instincts, remains plunged in indifference; if the professors, the academicians, the press, are calumniating you; if the courts are truculent; if the powers that be muffle your voice? Don't worry. Just as the lack of ideas makes one lose the most promising games, war against ideas can only push forward the Revolution. Do you not see already that the régime of authority, of inequality, of predestination, of eternal salvation, and of reasons of State, is daily becoming still more intolerable for the well-to-do classes, whose conscience and reason it tortures, than for the mass, whose stomach cries out against it?"[193]
3. The most effective means for convincing men, according to Proudhon, is to present to the people, within the State and without violating its law, "an example of centralization spontaneous, independent, and social," thus applying even now the principles of the future constitution of society.[194] "Rouse that collective action without which the condition of the people will forever be unhappy and its efforts powerless. Teach it to produce wealth and order with its own hands, without the help of the authorities."[195]
Proudhon sought to give such an example by the founding of the People's Bank.[196]
The People's Bank was to "insure work and prosperity to all producers by organizing them as beginning and end of production with regard to one another,—that is, as capitalists and as consumers."[197]
"The People's Bank was to be the property of all the citizens who accepted its services, who for this purpose furnished money to it if they thought that it could not yet for some time do without a metallic basis, and who, in every case, promised it their preference in discounting paper, and received its notes as cash. Accordingly the People's Bank, working for the profit of its customers themselves, had no occasion to take interest for its loans nor to charge a discount on commercial paper; it had only to take a very slight allowance to cover salaries and expenses. So credit was GRATUITOUS!—The principle being realized, the consequences unfolded themselves ad infinitum."[198]
"So the People's Bank, giving an example of popular initiative alike in government and in public economy, which thenceforth were to be identified in a single synthesis, was becoming for the prolétariat at once the principle and the instrument of their emancipation; it was creating political and industrial liberty. And, as every philosophy and every religion is the metaphysical or symbolic expression of social economy, the People's Bank, changing the material basis of society, was ushering in the revolution of philosophy and religion; it was thus, at least, that its founders had conceived of it."[199]
All this can best be made clear by reproducing some provisions from the constitution of the People's Bank.
Art. 1. By these presents a commercial company is founded under the name of Société de la Banque du Peuple, consisting of Citizen Proudhon, here present, and the persons who shall give their assent to this constitution by becoming stockholders.
Art. 3.... For the present the company will exist as a partnership in which Citizen Proudhon shall be general partner, and the other parties concerned shall be limited partners who shall in no case be responsible for more than the value of their shares.
Art. 5.... The firm name shall be P. J. Proudhon & Co.
Art. 6. Besides the members of the company proper, every citizen is invited to form a part of the People's Bank as a co-operator. For this it suffices to assent to the bank's constitution and to accept its paper.
Art. 7. The People's Bank Company being capable of indefinite extension, its virtual duration is endless. However, to conform to the requirements of the law, it fixes its duration at ninety-nine years, which shall commence on the day of its definitive organization.
Art. 9.... The People's Bank, having as its basis the essential gratuitousness of credit and exchange, as its object the circulation, not the production, of values, and as its means the mutual consent of producers and consumers, can and should work without capital.
This end will be reached when the entire mass of producers and consumers shall have assented to the constitution of the company.
Till then the People's Bank Company, having to conform to established custom and the requirements of law, and especially in order more effectively to invite citizens to join it, will provide itself with capital.
Art. 10. The capital of the People's Bank shall be five million francs, divided into shares of five francs each.
... The company shall be definitively organized, and its business shall begin, when ten thousand shares are taken.
Art. 12. Stock shall be issued only at par. It shall bear no interest.
Art. 15. The principal businesses of the People's Bank are, 1, to increase its cash on hand by issuing notes; 2, discounting endorsed commercial paper; 3, discounting accepted orders (commandes) and bills (factures); 4, loans on personal property; 5, loans on personal security; 6, advances on annuities and collateral security; 7, payments and collections; 8, advances to productive and industrial enterprises (la commande).
To these departments the People's Bank will add: 9, the functions of a savings bank and endowment insurance; 10, insurance; 11, safe deposit vaults; 12, the service of the budget.[200]
Art. 18. In distinction from ordinary bank notes, payable in specie to some one's order, the paper of the People's Bank is an order for goods, vested with a social character, rendered perpetual, and is payable at sight by every stockholder and co-operator in the products or services of his industry or profession.
Art. 21. Every co-operator agrees to trade by preference, for all goods which the company can offer him, with the co-operators of the bank, and to reserve his orders exclusively for his fellow stockholders and fellow co-operators.
In return, every producer or tradesman co-operating with the bank agrees to furnish his goods to the other co-operators at a reduced price.
Art. 62. The People's Bank has its headquarters in Paris.
Its aim is, in the course of time, to establish a branch in every arrondissement and a correspondent in every commune.
Art. 63. As soon as circumstances permit, the present company shall be converted into a corporation, since this form allows us to realize, according to the wish of the founders, the threefold principle, first, of election; second, of the separation and the independence of the branches of work; third, of the personal responsibility of every employee.[201]
