Property Is Theft!

by Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

  Once this situation was understood, the course that socialism had to follow was all set out. It had merely to press for demolition of the authorities, acting, so to speak, in concert with the authorities and favouring, by means of calculated opposition, the handiwork of Louis Bonaparte. Adopting those tactics, with divine Providence and human Providence in agreement, nothing would stand in our path. The misgivings that had made socialism doubtful prior to December 10th about alliance with the Mountain were banished: that alliance now became entirely profitable, wholly beneficial. Louis Bonaparte elected by an overwhelming majority, the reaction which he had made so formidable, any hope of re-capturing power was banished for a long time from the eyes of the Montagnards, committed by their programme and compelled to go where it might please us to lead them.

  That left two things still undone: firstly, have the political question subsumed into the social question by simultaneously mounting a frontal assault on the capitalist principle and the authority principle: secondly, by having the latter follow through with all of the consequences of its latest formula, in other words, rendering the presidency as much help as we could muster in its suicidal undertaking.

  In this way, the old society was plucked from its foundations; Jacobinism turned into pure socialism; democracy became more liberal, more philosophical, more real; socialism itself emerged from its mythological envelopment and made its stand, as if on two pillars, on the double repudiation of usury and of power. From which point onwards the social system wriggled free of the mists of utopias; society became conscious of itself; and, under the aegis of the popular genius, freedom blossomed without contradiction.

  At the same time, power was peaceably moving towards its doom. The Freedom that had once ushered it in now spread the shroud over it; socialism’s triumph lay in giving it, as the people naively say, a glorious death.528

  Alongside capital and power, however, there was a third power that seemed to have been asleep for the past sixty years, its death throes threatening to be altogether more dreadful: namely, the Church.

  Capital, whose mirror-image in the political sphere is Government, has a synonym in the religious context, to wit, Catholicism. The economic notion of capital, the political notion of government or authority, the theological notion of the Church, these three notions are identical and completely interchangeable: an attack upon one is an attack upon the others, as all the philosophers today know fine well. What capital does to labour and the State to freedom, the Church in turn does to understanding. This trinity of absolutism is deadly, in its practice as well as in its philosophy. In order to oppress the people effectively, they must be clapped in irons in their bodies, their will and their reason. So if socialism wanted to manifest itself completely and positively, stripped of all mysticism, there was but one thing for it to do: to set the idea of this trilogy in intellectual circulation. And the occasion could scarcely have been more propitious.

  As if they saw eye to eye with us, the leaders of Catholicism had come voluntarily to abide by the determination of revolutionary dialectics. They had sided with the Holy Alliance against nationality, with governments against subjects, with capital against labour. In Rome, there was an out-and-out contest between theocracy and revolution; and as if to render the socialist proof all the more spectacular, Louis Bonaparte’s government was loudly espousing the Pope’s cause in the name of Catholic interests.529 Now we had merely to highlight this triple form of social slavery, this conspiracy of altar, throne and strong-box, for it to be readily understood. Even as the reaction was denouncing our atheism, which certainly did not cause us much in the way of discomfort, we were, every morning, recounting some episode from the Holy League and, without harangue or argument, the people were being de-monarchised and de-Catholicised.

  From December 10th on, this was the battle plan spelled out by Le Peuple and broadly adhered to by the newspapers of the social democracy; and, dare I say it? if said plan has not yet reaped all the success one might expect it to deliver, it has already brought forth imperishable results: and the rest is only a matter of time.

  Capital will never regain its whip hand; its secret has been exposed. Let it hold its last orgy: tomorrow it must burn atop the pyre of its treasures, as did Sardanapalus.530

  The powers that be are done for in France, doomed to acting out on a daily basis and for the sake of self-protection, the most terrifying plot that socialism might devise for their destruction.

  Catholicism has not waited for its mask to be torn away: the skeleton beneath the shroud stands exposed. The Christian world cries for vengeance against Church and Pope. The Oudinot expedition has delivered the coup de grace to the papacy; spurred on by the Jesuits, the doctrinaires, whose every thought was of how to destroy Jacobinism by attacking it in one of its heartlands, have done socialism’s job for it. Pius IX is the throne of St. Peter brought low. Now, with the papacy demolished, Catholicism has nothing to recommend it: The serpent having died, its venom dies also.

  When partisan fury, when men of God ignorant of the concerns of philosophy are doing things so well, it is highly imprudent and bordering upon criminal to hinder them in their endeavours. It only remained for us to explain the meaning of things as the short-sightedness of our enemies brought them to light; to highlight the logic, I nearly said the loyalty, with which the Louis Bonaparte government was tearing out its own entrails; to endorse and indeed sing the praises of the eloquent arguments mounted by the Barrot-Falloux-Faucher ministry, or, (and this amounted to precisely the same thing), denounce them so that such friends might find therein a ready source of further arguments for persistence.

  From before February I had foreseen what was happening. No one was ever better prepared for a cold-blooded fight. But such is the fervour in political arguments that even the wisest are carried away by passion. When reason alone would have been enough to make me the victor, I threw myself into the fray with something akin to rage. The unfair attacks to which I had been subjected by a number of men drawn from the Mountain party had wounded me: the election of Louis Bonaparte, which I held was an affront to the republican party, weighed heavily upon me. I was like the people under the lash of tyranny, rearing up and roaring against its masters. Rather than assuaging my enthusiasm, the truth and justice of our cause served only to heighten it; so true is it that the men who rely so heavily upon their understanding are often the very ones whose passions are the most untameable. I have immersed myself in study; I have numbed my soul with meditations; I have merely succeeded in inflaming my irascibility all the more. Having recently recovered from a serious illness, I declared war on the President of the Republic. I marched out to do battle with the lion when I was not even a gadfly.

  I freely admit it, now that I have the chance to gauge the facts better: such immoderate aggression on my part towards the head of state was unfair.

  From the very first day he took office, the presidential government, faithful to the orders it had received from on high, paved the way for the extinction of the authority principle by stirring up conflict between the powers that be. Could I have asked for anything better than Monsieur Odilon Barrot’s summing-up to the Constituent Assembly and the famous Rateau proposal?531 So how come the very confirmation of my forecasts made me lose my calm? What was the point of all this invective spewed at a man when, as an instrument of fate, after all is said and done, he deserved to be applauded for his diligence?

  I knew only too well that by its very nature government is counter-revolutionary: it either resists, oppresses, or corrupts or wrecks. Government knows nothing else, can do nothing else and will never seek anything else. Put a St. Vincent de Paul in power and he will turn into a Guizot or a Talleyrand. Look no further back than February and the provisional government: General Cavaignac and all those republicans and all those socialists who had a hand in affairs, were they not acting, some on behalf of dictatorship and some in the service of the reaction? How could Louis Bonaparte not have followed in their footsteps? W
as it through any fault of his own? Were his intentions not pure? Were his thoughts, insofar as they were known, not at loggerheads with his politics? So why the vehement accusation which amounted to nothing short of a condemnation of fate? The blame that I was heaping on Louis Bonaparte was nonsensical: and in accusing him of reaction I myself was, in my keenness to thwart him, reactionary.

  I was also not unaware—who ever knew it better than I did?—that if the President of the Republic, as specifically outlined in twenty-one articles of the Constitution, was merely the agent and subordinate of the Assembly and, under the principle of separation of powers, he was its equal and, inevitably, its antagonist. So it was impossible for the government to have been free of jurisdictional squabbling and rival prerogatives—mutual trespasses and accusations resulting in the imminent breakdown of authority. The Rateau proposition, or anything of that sort, was bound to result from this constitutional dualism, as infallibly as the spark springs from the impact of the stone on the steel. Add that Louis Bonaparte, a mediocre philosopher, (not that I hold that against him), was being advised by the Jesuits and the doctrinaires, the worst reasoners and the most despicable politicians the world has ever seen; that in addition, due to the injustice of his position, he was personally answerable for a policy on which he had only to sign off; answerable for constitutional conflicts for which he became the whipping-boy; answerable for the silliness and noxious passions of advisors foisted upon him by the coalition of his electors!

  When I think of the wretchedness of this head of state I am tempted to weep for him and I count my own imprisonment a blessing. Was there ever a man more frightfully sacrificed? The man in the street marvelled at such unprecedented elevation: I see it only as the posthumous penalty for an ambition that is in the grave but which social justice still pursues, although the people, with their short memory span, have long since forgotten it. As if the nephew should pay the penalty for the iniquities of the uncle. Louis Bonaparte, I am afraid, will prove to be merely yet another martyr to governmental fanaticism; he will be brought down as his monarch predecessors were brought down, or else he will become a companion in misfortune to the democrats who paved the way for him—Louis Blanc and Ledru-Rollin, Blanqui and Barbès. For he, no more and no less than all of them, stands for the authority principle: and whether he wishes, on his own account, to hasten or to fend off the revolution, the task will be too much for him and he will perish. You poor victim! Even as I was celebrating your efforts, I should have been pleading your case, making excuses for you, maybe even defending you, but I could spare you naught but insult and sarcasm: I behaved badly.

  Had I the slightest faith in supernatural callings, I would say that one of two things must be true: that Louis Bonaparte has been summoned to the presidency of the Republic to redeem the French people from enslavement to the power restored and consolidated by the Emperor: or in order to expiate the Emperor’s despotism. Actually, there are two courses open to Louis Bonaparte: one which, by means of popular initiative and an organic fellowship of interests, leads directly to equality and peace, this being the course favoured by the socialist analysis and revolutionary history; and the other which, from a position of power, will inevitably lead him to catastrophe, this being the course of usurpation, surreptitious or brazen, to which the man elected on 10 December is to all appearances committed. Was it necessary for us to see him flounder like the rest and refuse all chance to turn back?… Put it to the man himself: as for me, I have nothing more left to tell you. I am too great a foe to hazard advice: it is enough for me to open your eyes to our country’s future, reflected in her past as if in a mirror. He that lives will see!

  Thus, prior to December 10th, the odds were a thousand to one that the president of the Republic, whoever he might turn out to be, would make his stand on the terrain of government, and therefore on reactionary ground. By as early as the 23rd, Louis Bonaparte was confirming that sinister prediction by pledging fealty to the Constitution. He would, he stated, be following Cavaignac’s policy, and, in a gesture of alliance, he shook hands with his rival. What a revelation it was for the general when, from the very lips of Louis Bonaparte, he heard it stated that his government’s record had been merely a paving of the way for absolutism! How he must have rued his dismal indulgence of the decent, moderate folk who had so unworthily betrayed him! And how he must have groaned not to have offered the amnesty that he was no doubt holding back as a token of reconciliation, for the day when he would come into his own! Do what you must, come what may! This feudal maxim was worthy of a republican.

  Matters of controversy quickly cropped up and the government’s suicide began. Coming in the wake of the summing-up by the prime minister, the Rateau proposal exposed these frictions. Irreconcilable differences between the authorities did not need thirty whole days to come to light: similarly, the people’s mutual and instinctive hatred of the government and the government’s of the people were more intensely manifested. The events of January 29th, when the government and the democrats could be found accusing each other of conspiracy and taking to the streets ready to do battle, were probably sheer panic, the upshot of their mistrust of each other: what was plainest about this adventure was the fact that there was war brewing between the democracy and the President, just as it had been once upon a time between the opposition and Louis-Philippe.

  Le Peuple stood out in the fray. Our early Parisian editions read like indictments. Harking back to his first profession, one minister, Monsieur Léon Faucher, was polite enough to answer back: his insertions in Le Moniteur, remarked upon by the republican press, triggered a tidal wave of anger and pity. By himself, this liverish creature, whom Heaven has made even uglier than his caricature and who suffers from a singular obsession with actually being worse than his reputation, did more damage to the authorities he represented than all the democrat and socialist diatribes. Yes, had the Mountain held its patience and Monsieur Léon Faucher held on to his ministerial office for another three months, the street-urchins of Paris might have dispatched Louis Bonaparte back to the fortress of Ham532 and his ministers to Charenton.533 But no such success awaited journalistic malice: the social question could not be decanted by this ridiculous bickering; which speaks volumes for it.

  Having become, thanks to the lawmaker’s determination and the selfishness of his advisors, the agent in charge of a policy of reaction and rancour, within three months Louis Bonaparte had frittered away the greater part of the strength with which the December elections had endowed him. Compromised by O. Barrot, committed to a liberticidal expedition by M. de Falloux, disgraced by Léon Faucher, the government under its new President caved in beyond recovery. Belief in the powers that be and respect for authority perished in the people’s hearts. What sort of power is it that is wholly reliant upon the point of a bayonet? Kings and princes no longer have any belief in it themselves: their interests as capitalists take precedence over their dignity as sovereigns. It is not their crowns that they fear for these days: it is their assets! No longer do they protest, as Louis XVIII did while exiled in Mittau, against the actions of democracy; they do insist upon their revenues from it. Trying out monarchy in France when everybody, title-holders included, now regards it only as a civil list matter, is akin to twisting the knife in a corpse.

  There is no victory but brings its toll of dead or wounded. The battle fought out on January 29th between the legislative authorities and the presidential prerogatives earned me three years in prison. This being the sort of decorations and pensions that the democratic social Republic promises its soldiers. Not that I am complaining; As the holy Scripture says He who seeks danger will perish; and War is war. I cannot resist pointing out, however, the profound wisdom with which the legislator, alert to the vindictiveness of parties, has afforded them, in the shape of the jury institution, an honest means of decimating one another, and reintroduced ostracism into our laws to cater for their hatreds.

  In attacking Louis Bonaparte, I had thought that I was i
n perfect conformity with justice. The only offence with which I can be charged, if indeed I have committed any, was having offended the President of the Republic. Now, the President of the Republic being, like any other magistrate, answerable: the prerogatives of the royal personage, as determined by the law of 1819, being non-applicable in his case, I could only have been dragged before the courts on a complaint from the President I had supposedly offended and not on a specific charge from the public prosecutor who had no remit to meddle in a dispute between private individuals. So it was not so much a political charge that I was facing, as straightforward insult or defamation of the person. On which count I had nothing to fear. I had not attacked Louis Bonaparte in his private life; I had spoken simply of his performance in office. Later, during the debate on the recent press law, it was plainly the feeling that, under a special ordinance, the pursuit of offences committed in print against the President should be handed over to the public prosecution office.

  But this hurdle, which seemed insurmountable to me as a scrupulous logician, was a mere bagatelle to the legal hair-splitters. To my extreme surprise, I found myself accused in connection with a pamphlet dealing exclusively with the President of the Republic: