Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 401, March 1849

M. PRUDHON. – CONTRADICTIONS ECONOMIQUES. ⁵

If we wished to convert some inveterate democrat – some one of those eternal agitators of political and social revolutions – whose reasonings, though perhaps unconsciously to themselves, are all based on a far too sanguine view of the probable destinies of human society – there is no text-book we should more willingly select than this mad and apparently destructive work of M. Prudhon's. The bold development of those fundamental truths which have hitherto determined the framework of society, and, still more, the display it presents of the utter impotence of the wit of man, and all his speculative ingenuity, to reshape and reorganise the social world, must have, on every mind accustomed to reflection, a most sobering and conservative influence. What it was intended to teach is another matter; but to a mind well constituted it would convey this grave lesson – to recognise and submit to the inevitable; to be content to labour for partial remedies and limited results; to be satisfied with doing good, though it be something short of organic change; to think it sufficient ambition to be of that "salt of the earth" which preserves whatever is pure and excellent, without aspiring to be that consuming flame which is to fuse and recast the world.

Such was the reflection with which we closed the perusal of the Contradictions Economiques; and this reflection has led us to the present notice of a work which was not originally taken up with the intention of bringing it before our readers. We were referred to it as the work in which a man who has obtained unenviable notoriety had most systematically developed his ideas. Whether it is so, or not, we do not pledge ourselves to decide: we have had enough of Prudhonerie. But after a perusal, induced by mere curiosity, it occurred to us that some brief account of the book, and of the train of thought which it had suggested to us, and would probably suggest to most English readers, would not be unacceptable.

It is worthy of remark, that it is not uniformly from the most perfect works that we derive the greatest stimulant to thinking, or the largest supply of food for reflection. Many an important step in intellectual progress has been due to an author, not one of whose views have been finally adopted, or would have borne perhaps a searching examination. The startling effect of paradox – the conflict with it – the perplexing entanglement of known truth with manifest error, – all this has supplied a more bracing and vigorous exercise for the mind, than lucid tenets lucidly set forth by writers of unimpeachable good sense. God forbid that any one should accuse us of saying, that it is better to read a bad book than a good one; this would be the greatest of all absurdities; but there are eras in our mental progress when much is gained by the contest with bold and subtle fallacies. There is not a book in our own language more replete with paradox and sophistry, with half truths and tortuous reasonings, than Godwin's Political Justice; yet we doubt not there are those living who would acknowledge that the perusal of that once, and for a short time, celebrated treatise, did more, by the incessant combat it provoked, to make evident to them the real constitution of human society, than the smooth sagacity of a hundred Paleys could have done.

Indeed, when we compare the Political Justice with the reveries of Communism, so rife amongst our neighbours, we feel proud of our English dreamer. Godwin's scheme was somewhat as if one of the ancient stoics, not content with imposing upon his wise man rules of conduct quite independent of all human passions and affections, had resolved that the whole multitude of the species should demean themselves according to the same impracticable rules, and should learn to live, and labour, and enjoy, like reasoning automata. Under the light diffused upon them by the author of the Political Justice, men were to set aside all selfishness – all their natural, and even kindly affections – and to act in unceasing conformity to certain abstractions of the reasoning faculty; were, in short, neither to love nor to hate; but, sitting in eternal judgment over themselves, were simply to reason and to act. Like the iron figures that formerly stood elevated above the living crowd of Fleet Street, on either side of the venerable clock of St Dunstan's, they were to keep their eye fixed on the dial-plate of a most well-regulated conscience; and ever, as the hour came round, they were to rise and strike, and then subside into their metallic repose. Still, however, the great sentiment of justice, to which Godwin made his appeal, afforded him a far more noble and manly topic than the affected philanthropy on which so many Frenchmen have been descanting. Justice, though not understood after the manner of Mr Godwin, is a sentiment which really lives and moves in the very heart of society. Men respond to an appeal to their sense of justice; they become ungovernable if that sense of justice is long outraged; they work upon this sentiment; they can labour and endure according to its dictates: but for this philanthropy, or fraternity, of which we hear so much – what has it ever done? It never regulated the transactions of a single day; never produced a grain of corn, or a shred of apparel; produces nothing but theories. It is a vain, importunate, idle, and clamorous sentiment: it is justice all on one side; it demands incessantly, it gives never; it has hands to petition with, to clutch with, to rob with, to murder with, but not to work with; it has no hand that holds the plough, or strikes upon the anvil.

The Système des Contradictions Economiques may lay claim to the same sort of praise we have accorded to the Political Justice: it prompts reflection; and a man of intellect sufficiently robust to profit by such rude gymnastics, will not regret its perusal. It also avoids, like the work of Godwin, the pernicious cant of universal philanthropy – pernicious when brought forward as a general motive of human actions – and looks for a renovation of society in a more enlightened sentiment of justice – determining anew the value of each man's labour, and securing to him that value – property being legitimate only (so far as we can understand our author) when it contains in it the labour of the proprietor. How Justice is to execute the task which M. Prudhon, in very vague and mysterious terms, imposes upon her, we have not the least idea; nor has an attentive perusal of his book given us the remotest conception of any practical scheme that he would even make experiment of. But, at all events, it is better to descant on the energetic sentiment of justice, which desires to earn and keep its own, than on the idle sublimities of a universal fraternity – a sentiment which relaxes the springs of industry, by teaching every man to expect everything from his neighbours, or from an omnipotent abstraction he calls the state. It is a difference of some importance, because all these schemes for the renovation of society do, in fact, end in a sort of moral or immoral preachment.

When we have said thus much, and added that M. Prudhon attacks the Communists, of all shades and descriptions, in a quite overwhelming manner, utterly crushing and annihilating them, – we have said the utmost that can be admitted, or devised, in praise of his work. It would require a much longer paragraph to exhaust all that might be justly said in its condemnation. It is strewed over, knee-deep, with metaphysical trash. It is steeped in atheism, or something worse, and infinitely more foolish; for there is a pretence of sustaining "the hypothesis" of a God, for no other ostensible reason than to provide an object for the blasphemy that follows. The rudest savages, in their first conception of a God, regard him as an enemy, and offer sacrifices to propitiate an unprovoked and wanton anger – the reflected image of their own wild passions. M. Prudhon's philosophy has actually brought him, in one respect, back to the creed of the savages. He proves, by some insane process not worth following, that the Creator of man is essentially opposed to the progress of human society, and is to be utterly deserted, desecrated, defied. He does not, indeed, sacrifice, like the savage; he rather talks rebellion, like Satan. No one would believe, who had not read the book, with what a mixture of outrage and levity he speaks of the most sacred of all beings: it is the doctrine of the rebel-fiend taught with the gesticulation of a satyr.

We shall not quote a single passage to justify this censure, for the same reason that we should not extract the indecencies of a volume in order to prove the charge of obscenity. Why should the ear be wounded, or the mind soiled and disgusted, when no end is answered except the conviction of an offender who, utterly dead to shame, rejoices to see his impurities or impieties pitched abroad?

Notwithstanding that formidable appearance of metaphysics to which we have alluded – his Kant and his Hegel, his thesis, antithesis, and synthesis, and all his pretensions to extraordinary profundity – it so happens that the very first elements of that science of political economy, which he affects to look down upon as from a higher level, are often miserably misapprehended; or – what is certainly not more to his credit – they are thrown, for a season, into a wilful oblivion. If he is discoursing upon the division of labour, and its effect upon the remuneration of the workman, he ignores, for the time being, the manifest relation between population and wages, and represents the wages as decreasing only because the nature of the work required becomes more and more simple and mechanical. If he is discoursing upon population, and its pressure upon the means of subsistence, he can venture to forget the very laws of nature. "You state," he says, "that population increases in a geometrical ratio – 1, 2, 4, 8, 16; well, I will show that capital and wealth follow a law of progression more rapid still, of which each term may be considered as the square of the corresponding number of the geometrical series, as 1, 4, 16, 64, 256."⁶ Since all our wealth is derived originally from the soil, man must, therefore, have it in his power to increase the fertility of the soil according to the above ratio. It will be something new to our farmers to learn this.

In compensation, we presume, for this occasional oblivion of the truisms of political economy – truisms, in fact, of common sense – we have, here and there, strange and novel definitions and explanations, ushered in with that pomp which an egotistical Frenchman can alone display, and turning out to be as idle verbiage as was ever penned. Take, as the first specimen we can call to mind, the following definition of labour. We cannot attempt to translate it: the English language does not easily mould itself to nonsense of this sort: – "Qu'est-ce donc que le travail? Nul encore ne l'a défini. Le travail est l'émission de l'esprit. Travailler, c'est dépenser sa vie; travailler, en un mot, c'est se dévouer, c'est mourir. Que les utopistes ne nous parlent plus de dévoûment: c'est le travail, exprimé et mesuré par ses œuvres." – (Vol. ii., p. 465.) Labour needed to be defined, it seemed; and this is the definition, "L'émission de l'esprit!" And in play, then, as well as in work, is there no emission of the spirits, or mind, or life of the man? Did M. Prudhon never run a race, or handle a bat at cricket, or ride with the hounds? or can he not remember that such things are, though not in his philosophy? But dear, inexpressibly dear to M. Prudhon, is every idea of his own that savours of paradox; and the more it violates common sense, the more tenderly he clings to it, cherishes, and vaunts it. This, doubtless, is one of his favourite children. His celebrated aphorism, "La Propriété c'est le vol," – he contradicts it himself in every page of his writings, yet boasts and cherishes it as his greatest possession, and the most remarkable discovery of the age. "La définition de la propriété," he says, in answer to a sarcasm of M. Michelet, "est mienne, et toute mon ambition est de prouver que j'en ai compris le sens et l'étendue. La propriété c'est le vol! il ne se dit pas, en mille ans, deux mots comme celui-là. Je n'ai d'autre bien sur la terre que cette définition de la propriété: mais je la tiens plus précieuse que les millions des Rothschild, et j'ose dire qu'elle sera l'évènement le plus considérable du gouvernement de Louis-Philippe." – (Vol. ii., p. 328.)

Even in that tenebrous philosophy which he has imported from Germany, and which he teaches with such caustic condescension to the political economists, he is very much at fault. It is always, we know, an adventurous matter to accuse any one who deals in the idealistic metaphysics of modern Germany of obscurity, or of imperfect knowledge of the theories taught in his own school. The man has but to dive into deeper mud to escape from you. Follow him you assuredly cannot; he is out of sight, and the thick sediment deters; and thus, in the eyes of all who are not aware what the capture would cost to any hapless pursuer, the fugitive is sure of his triumph. Nevertheless, we venture to assert that M. Prudhon is but a young, and a not very promising scholar in the philosophy of Kant and of Hegel. Two very manifest blunders it will be enough to indicate: he assimilates his Contradictions Economiques to the Antinomies of the Pure Reason developed by Kant; and he confounds Kant with Hegel in a matter where they are widely opposed, and speaks as if the same law of contradiction were common to both.

After alluding to some of his own "contradictions," he says, "Tel est encore le problème de la divisibilité de la matière à l'infini, que Kant a démontré pouvoir être nié et affirmé, tour-à-tour, par des arguments également plausibles et irréfutables." – (Vol. i. p. 43.) It is the object of Kant, in one of the most striking portions of the Critique of Pure Reason, to show that, in certain problems, the mind is capable of being led with equal force of conviction to directly opposite conclusions. The pure reason, it seems, gets hold of the forms of the understanding, and can extract nothing from them but a series of antinomies, like that which M. Prudhon has alluded to, where the infinite divisibility of matter is both proved and disproved with equal success. Now what analogy is there between the contradictions which M. Prudhon can develop, in any one of our social laws, and the antinomies of Kant? In these last, two opposite conclusions of speculative reason are arrived at, which destroy each other; in the Contradictions Economiques, the good and evil flowing from the same law may very easily co-exist. They affect different persons, or the same persons at different times. Free competition, for instance, in trade or manufacture, may be viewed on its bright side as the promoter of industry and invention; on its dark side as the fomenter of strife, and the inflicter of injury on those who lose in the game of wealth. But the benefit and injury arising from this source do not destroy each other, like the yes and no of an abstract proposition; they can be balanced against each other; they co-exist, and, for aught we see, will eternally co-exist. Let them be as strikingly opposed as you will, they can have nothing in common with the antinomies of Kant. M. Prudhon proves that there is darkness and brightness scattered over the surface of society: he does not prove that the same spot, at the same moment, is both black and white.

From Kant he slides to Hegel, as if their tenets on this subject at all resembled each other. Kant saw in his contradictions an arrest of the reason, Hegel the very principle and condition of all thought. Thought involves contradictions. In the simplest idea, that of being, is involved the idea of no-being; neither can we think of no-being without having the idea of being. Now as thought and thing are identical in the absolute, (this every one knows,) whatever may be said of the thought may be said of the thing, and hence the celebrated formula, Being = no being —sein = nicht sein– something and nothing are identical.

As thought and thing are identical in the absolute, logic is a creation and creation is a logic; thus the metaphysics of Hegel became a cosmogony in which all things proceed according to the laws of thought, and are therefore developed in a series of contradictions. Now let M. Prudhon be as thorough master of the Hegelian logic, or the Hegelian cosmogony, as he desires to be esteemed, how, in the name of common sense, can he hope to clear up the difficulties of political economy by mixing them with a philosophy like this? How will his thesis and his antithesis help us to adjust the claims between labour and capital? If he has any adjustment to propose – if he has found what he calls his synthesis – let us hear it. If the synthesis is only to be developed in those future evolutions of time, which neither he nor we can divine, of what use all this angry exposition of the inevitable Contradictions that mark and constitute the progress of humanity?

Enough of these metaphysics. It was necessary to say this much of the peculiar form into which M. Prudhon has chosen to cast his thoughts; but there will be no occasion to allude to it again. Whatever there is of truth or significance in his work, may easily be transferred into a language familiar and intelligible to all.

We have eaten, says one, of the forbidden fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and the taste of them has been thenceforth invariably blended together. There is a law of compensation – thus another expresses it – throughout the world, both moral and physical, by which every evil is balanced by its good, and every good by its besetting evil. Humanity, says a third, progresses without doubt, and obtains at each stage a fuller and a higher life; but there is an original proportion of misery in its lot, from which there is no escape: this also swells and darkens as we rise. To use the language of chemistry, you may increase the volume of this ambient life we breathe, but still, to every one-hundred part of vital air there shall be added twenty-five of mephitic vapour. All these are different modes of expressing the homely truth, that a shadow of evil falls even from the best of things; and it is this truth which is really developed in the Contradictions Economiques.

It is a truth which, at times, it may be very needful fully to recognise. When men of sincere convictions are found agitating society for some organic change, their errors may be always traced to an over-sanguine and one-sided view of the capabilities of man for happiness. The conservative and the movement parties, philosophically considered, may be described as branching out of different opinions on the probable or possible progress of society. The philosophical conservative has accepted humanity as it is – as, in its great features, it is exhibited throughout all regions of the earth, and in the page of history: he hails with welcome every addition to human happiness; he believes in progress, he derides the notion of perfectibility, – it is a word he cannot use; he recognises much happiness coming in to mankind from many and various sources, but still believes that man will never find himself so content on earth as to cease looking forward for the complement and perfection of his felicity to another world. The philosopher of the movement party has made a sort of religion of his hopes of humanity: he conceives some ideal state, and anticipates its development here; he dismantles heaven and immortality to furnish out his masquerade on earth; or, with still vaguer notions, he rushes forward upon reforms that imply, for their justification, the existence of what never yet was seen – a temperate and enlightened multitude.

It follows that the conservative has allotted to him the ungracious and invidious task of discouraging the hopes of a too eager philanthropy; he is compelled to show, of certain evils, that they are constantly to be contended against, but never can be eradicated. Society has been often compared to a pyramid; its broad basis on the earth, and towering high or not, according as circumstances were propitious to its formation; but always the broad basis lying on the earth. He accepts the ancient simile; he recognises the unalterable pyramid. Without aid of priest or legislator, society assumes this form; it crystallises thus; higher and higher, broader and broader, it rises, and extends, but still the lowest stratum is lying close upon the earth. Will you disguise the fact? It is fruitless, and the falsehood only recoils upon yourself, rendering what truth you utter weak and suspicious. Will you strive to make the pyramid stand upon its apex? It will not stand; and what god or giant have you to hold it there? Or will you join the madman, who, because the lowest stratum cannot be made the highest, nor any other but the lowest, would level the whole pyramid to the ground, and make every part touch the earth? No; you will do all in your power for that lowest stratum, but you will not consent that, because all cannot be cultivated and refined, no one shall have a chance of becoming so. You accept the pyramid.

When M. Prudhon criticises the laws which preside over the production and distribution of wealth, and shows their twofold and antagonistic influence, he is but illustrating the inevitable formation of our pyramid. Let us follow him in a few instances.

The Division of Labour.– This is the first topic on which our author descants – the first of our economic laws in which he finds his contradictions – his two poles of good and evil. On the advantages of the division of labour, we have but to call to mind the earlier chapters of Adam Smith, wherein these are so truthfully and vividly described. Indeed, the least reflection is sufficient to show that, if each man undertook by his own labour to provide for all his wants, it would be impossible for society to advance beyond the very rudest form of existence. One man must be tailor, another shoemaker, another agriculturist, another artist; and these trades or occupations, to be brought to perfection, must again be subdivided into different departments of industry – and one man makes the coat, and another weaves the cloth, one man makes the shoe, and another dresses the leather. It is needless to say that these departments are again divided into an almost infinite number of separate occupations; till, at length, we find that a man employs his whole day in turning one thread over another, or in manufacturing the eighteenth part of a pin.

But now, no sooner does this division of employments obtain in society, than our pyramid begins to form. The man of manual labour rests still at the basis; he of superior skill, the artist, or the intellectual workman, rises permanently above him. The more minute this division of labour, the more simple and mechanical becomes the labour of the artisan; the education he receives from his employment becomes more and more limited; he is wanted for so little; he is esteemed, and, if other circumstances permit, remunerated accordingly.

"Although," says the celebrated economist, J. B. Say, "a man who performs one operation all his life comes to execute it better and more rapidly than any other man, yet at the same time he grows less capable of every other occupation, physical and moral; his other faculties are extinguished, and there results a degradation to the human being considered individually. It is a sad account to give of one's-self to have accomplished nothing but the eighteenth part of a pin… In conclusion, it may be said that the separation of labours is a skilful employment of the force of man – that it increases prodigiously the products of society – but it destroys something of the capacity of the individual man."

That this inevitable division and subdivision of labour gives rise to, and renders permanent, the distinction of classes in a community, is clear enough. But we do not agree with M. Say, and other economists, in representing that minute subdivision of labour which accompanies a very advanced state of civilisation, as peculiarly injurious to the workman. That degradation of the artisan, which might ensue from the monotony and triviality of his employment, is counteracted by that variety of interests which spring up in a civilised community. This eighteenth part of a pin is not all that educates or engages his mind. He is not a solitary workman. His file and his wire are not his sole companions. He has the gossip of his neighbourhood, the politics of his parish, of his town, of his country – whatever fills the columns of a newspaper, or gives topic of conversation to a populous city – he has, at least, all this for intellectual food. The man of handicraft is educated by the city he lives in, not by his handicraft; and the humblest artisan feels the influence of that higher civilisation from which he seems at first to be entirely shut out. Hodge the countryman, who can sow, and plough, and reap; who understands hedging and ditching, and the management of sheep; who is accomplished in all agricultural labours, ought to be, if his daily avocations alone decided the matter, infinitely superior to the village cobbler, who travels only from the sole to the upper leather, and who squats stitching all day long. But the cobbler is generally the more knowing, and certainly the more talkative man. Hodge himself is the first to recognise it; for he listens to him at the ale-house, which sometimes brings them together, as to an oracle of wisdom.

Machinery.– The benefit derived from machinery needs no explanation. The more simple order of machines, or instruments – as the plough, the axe, and the spindle – have never been otherwise considered than as precious gifts to human industry; and the more complicated machines, which have been invented in modern times, have no sooner established themselves, so to speak, in society – have no sooner, at the expense of some temporary evils, secured themselves a quiet recognised position – than they, too, have been welcomed in the same character as signal aids to human industry. But while the machine has added immensely to the products of labour, it has done nothing to diminish the class of manual labours. It has done nothing, nor does it seem probable that it will ever effect anything, towards rendering that class less requisite or less numerous. On the contrary, it has always, hitherto, multiplied that class. The machine will not go of itself, will not manufacture itself, nor keep itself in repair. The human labourer becomes the slave of the machine. He created it for his service, and it serves him, but on condition only that he binds himself to a reciprocal bondage. You spin by a steam-engine, and some complicated system of reels and pulleys, but the human finger is not spared – the human volition is still wanted. To manufacture this machine, to tend it, to govern it – in short, to use it – far more manual labour is called into requisition than ever turned the simple spinning-wheel, or teased the flax from the distaff. You have more garments woven, but the better clad are not exactly those who weave them. The machine has called into existence, for its own service, an immense population, ill fed and ill clothed. Our pyramid is extending at the basis: as it rises higher it is growing broader.

Money – Capital.– We class these together because they are intimately connected. Capital is not money, but there would have been little accumulation of capital but for the use of money.

The youthful student of political economy meets with no chapter in his books of science so amusing, and so thoroughly convincing, as that which shows him the utility of money, and the reasons which have led almost all nations to prefer the precious metals for their instruments of exchange. Without some such instrument, what is to be done? A man has made a hat, and wants a pound of butter. He cannot divide his hat: what would be half a hat? Besides, the man who has the butter does not want the hat. But the precious metals come in marvellously to his aid. They are divisible into the smallest portions; they are durable, will not spoil by keeping; they are of steady value, and will not much depreciate: if the man of butter does not want them, he can always find somebody that does; no fear but that they will easily pass from hand to hand, as each one wishes to barter them for whatever he may want.

It is generally said, that it is the steadiness of their value that constituted one chief reason for the selection of gold and silver for the purposes of money. This is undoubtedly true; but it is also true (and we do not remember to have heard this previously remarked) that the use of the precious metals for money has tended to preserve and perpetuate that steadiness of value. Had gold and silver remained as simple articles of merchandise, they would probably have suffered considerable fluctuations in their value from the caprice of fashion and the altered taste of society. In themselves, they were chiefly articles of luxury; the employment of them for money made them objects of indispensable utility.

Money there must be. Yet mark how its introduction tends to destroy equality, to favour accumulation, to raise the hill and sink the valley. If men bartered article against article, they would generally barter in order to consume. But when one of them barters for gold, he can lay it by; he can postpone at his pleasure the period of consumption; he can postpone it for the benefit of his issue. The piece of gold was bought originally with the sweat of his brow; who shall say that a year, ten years, fifty years hence, he may not traffic it again for the sweat of the brow? The pieces of gold accumulate, his children possess them, and now a generation appears on the face of the earth who have not toiled, who do not toil all their lives, who are sustained in virtue of the labours of their ancestor. Their fathers saved, and they enjoy; or they employ a part of the accumulation in the purchase of the labour of others, by which means their riches still further increase. The pyramid rises. But the descendants of those fathers who had consumed the product of their labour, they bring no postponed claim into the market. These are they who must sell their labour. They must work for the children of those who had saved. Our pyramid broadens at the base. This perpetual value given to money has enabled the man of one generation to tax all ensuing generations with the support of his offspring. Hence much good; for hence the leisure that permits the cultivation of the mind, that fosters art, and refinement, and reflection: we have to notice here only how inevitably it builds the pyramid.