French and German Socialism in Modern Times

by Richard T. Ely

What positive measures of reform are proposed to bring about equality associated with anarchy? One is a great national bank, in which product shall be exchanged against product without any intermediaries, so that money-mongers shall not be able to stop the circulation and thereby the production of goods. Paper money is to be given in exchange for whatever is brought to this place of deposit. This paper is a check, which indicates labor-time. It may be exchanged for anything else of the same value, which has cost the same labor. Products are exchanged for products, and what is received has the same value as what is given. Property must be abolished, and no landlord or capitalist may intervene and, by exacting toll, make what I receive cost me more than it is worth.

What Proudhon proposed in the National Assembly was a bank which should effect exchanges of this sort. It was to be established by funds derived from a part of the proceeds of a tax of one third, or thirty-three and a third per cent. on revenues derived from property, and from a progressive tax on salaries of government officers. Branches were to be established in every part of France, and all were to be furnished with gratuitous credit. Interest has shown a tendency to decrease, which may be traced back for centuries.[131] Its normal rate is zero, and the national bank is to assist in bringing it down to this point. Everybody wants credit and everybody will be benefited by the measure.[132] All the world will give and receive credit. Rights and duties, privileges and obligations, are mutual. We may call this scheme mutualism.[133]

But when interest becomes zero, it follows naturally and inevitably that rents and profits become nil. Credit enabling every one to obtain the instruments of labor without price, it is self-evident that no one will pay anything to landlord or capitalist for their use. The problem of abolishing the class of idlers is therefore solved. Henceforward property does not exist. The laborer receives all, and products cost no more than they are worth. This is the highest and the only true form of sociabilité. All men are associated on terms of equality; no one is subject to another.

Proudhon rejected communism. His ground of opposition was of a twofold nature. First, communism is based on property—not the property of an individual, but of the community. We have in it, consequently, the same kind of slavery as in our present society, save that we have many masters instead of one. “The members of a community, it is true, have nothing which is individual; but the community is proprietor, and proprietor not only of goods, but of persons and of wills. It is according to this principle of sovereign property that in every community labor, which ought to be for man only a condition imposed by nature, became a human command, and thereby odious.”[134] Second, communism is unjust, because it is unequal. It is the robbery of the strong by the weak.

We have to ask, then, what is the equality which Proudhon desired? If he did not wish to place all on the same level as regards recompense, what did he wish? He tells us that “equality consists in the equality of conditions—that is, of means—not in the equality of well-being, which with equal means ought to be the work of the laborer.”[135] Was he not, then, a Saint-Simonian? did he not wish to proportion reward to services? He tells us distinctly, No.[136] He combats Saint-Simonism as unjust and impracticable. He also speaks of equality as the corner-stone of his system. The highest stage of society towards which we are moving he calls liberty—that is, the synthesis of the thesis, community, and the antithesis, property—but “liberty is equality, because liberty exists only in the social state, and outside of equality there is no society.” And he again and again condemns inequality of wages and recompense in his new society. Some writers, dwelling merely upon his condemnation of community, have said that he was not in favor of equality. This is a mistake. But how are we to reconcile his statements? They are contradictories. Where is the synthesis? It is found in the fact that all will hereafter produce alike. When possession takes the place of property, each one will labor equally, and the products, being measured by labor-time, will be equal in value. Equality of conditions becomes absolute equality. “On the one hand, the task of each laborer being easy and short, and the means of performing it successfully being equal, how could there, then, be great and small producers? On the other hand, the functions all being equal, either by the real equivalence of talents and capacities or by social co-operation, how can a functionary, arguing from the excellence of his work, demand a proportional salary?” (i.e., a remuneration larger than the remuneration of others, in proportion to the superiority of his work).

“But what do I say? In equality the salaries are always proportional to faculties. But what is the salary or remuneration received? It is that which composes the reproductive consumption of the laborer. The act itself by which the laborer produces is then this consumption, equal to his production. When the astronomer produces observations, the poet verses, the savant experiences, they consume instruments, books, travels, etc.; now, if society provides for this consumption, what other proportionality of honors can the astronomer, the savant, and the poet demand? Let us conclude, then, that in equality, and in equality alone, the adage of Saint-Simon, ‘To each one according to his capacity, to each capacity according to its works,’ finds its full and complete application.”[137]

In intention, then, Proudhon was a communist in the sense of the definition given in this work. No man ever preached more plainly and unreservedly absolute equality as an ideal. He was not a communist in the sense of favoring communities such as we see in a few places at present, because they involve control and authority. He was, on the contrary, in favor of anarchic equality. The distinction might be made by saying that he was a communist, but not a communitarian.

I have, nevertheless, spoken of him several times as a socialist, because the entire tendency of every positive proposal which he made was socialistic, and not communistic. Equality has no logical connection with his projects. He proposed to transform property into possession, which means simply limiting very materially the rights of property. Now, how could this change be so restricted without allowing inequalities to arise? Each one cultivates his land as he pleases and works as he will, all authority being banished from the face of the earth. Can any one, without resorting to some supernatural and unwarranted theory, suppose that all would derive the same products from the same instruments? Then let us take up the case of gratuitous credit. Will all avail themselves of it with equal profit in anarchy? What is to prevent my accumulating labor receipts if my production exceeds consumption? Or shall the state or some outside body prevent my taking more than I consume from the magazines or banks, whatever they are called? If so, do we not have all the interference and control of the hated community? It is thus seen that Proudhon is inconsistent as well as paradoxical, and is unable to effect his synthesis.

The following ten statements contain, in Proudhon’s own words, a résumé of the system which we have just examined:

“I. Individual possession is the condition of social life; ... Property is the suicide of society....