Characterising Translation No. 3
The Critical Proudhon has a Critical property-owner, too, according to whose
"own admission those who had to work for him lost what he appropriated".
The mass-type Proudhon says to the mass-type property-owner:
"You have worked! Ought you never to have let others work for you? How, then, have they lost while working for you, what you were able to acquire while not working for them?"
By "richesse naturelle",a the Critical Proudhon makes Say understand "natural possessions" although Say, to preclude any error, states explicitly in the Epitome to his Traité d'économie politiqueh that by richesse he understands neither property nor possession, but a "sum of values". Of course, the Critical Proudhon reforms Say just as he himself is reformed by Herr Edgar. He makes Say "infer immediately a right to take a field as property" because land is easier to appropriate than air or water. But Say, far from inferring from the greater possibility of appropriating land a property right to it, says instead quite explicitly:
"Les droits des propriétaires de terres — remontent à une spoliation."c (Traité d'économie politique, édition III, t. I., p. 136, Nota.)
That is why, in Say's opinion, there must be "concours de la législation"d and "droit positife to provide a basis for the right to landed property. The real Proudhon does not make Say "immediately" infer the right of landed property from the easier appropriation of land. He reproaches him with basing himself on possibility instead of right and confusing the question of possibility with the question of right:
"Say prend la possibilité pour le droit. On ne demande pas pourquoi la terre a été plutôt appropriée que la mer et les airs; on veut savoir, en vertu de quel droit l'homme s'est approprié cette richesse.'"(1)
The Critical Proudhon continues:
"The only remark to be made on this is that with the appropriation of a piece of land the other elements — air, water and fire — are also appropriated: terra, aqua, aëre et igne interdicti sumus."
Far from making "only" this remark, the real Proudhon says, on the contrary, that he draws "attention" to the appropriation of air and water incidentally {en passant). The Critical Proudhon makes an unaccountable use of the Roman formula of banishment. He forgets to say who the "we" are who have been banished. The real Proudhon addresses the non-property-owners:
"Proletarians... property excommunicates us: terra, etc. interdicti sumus."
The Critical Proudhon polemises against Charles Comte as follows:
"Charles Comte thinks that, in order to live, man needs air, food and clothing. Some of these things, like air and water, are inexhaustible and therefore always remain common property; but others are available in smaller quantities and become private property. Charles Comte therefore bases his proof on the concepts of limitedness and unlimitedness; he would perhaps have come to a different conclusion had he made the concepts of dispensability and indispensability his main categories."
How childish the Critical Proudhon's polemic is! He expects Charles Comte to give up the categories he uses for his proof and to jump over to others so as to come, not to his own conclusions, but "perhaps" to those of the Critical Proudhon.
The real Proudhon does not make any such demands on Charles Comte; he does not dispose of him with a "perhaps", but defeats him with his own categories.
Charles Comte, Proudhon says, proceeds from the indispensabil-ity of air, food, and, in certain climates, clothing, not in order to live, but in order not to stop living. Hence (according to Charles Comte) in order to maintain himself, man constantly needs to appropriate things of various kinds. These things do not all exist in the same proportion.
"The light of the heavenly bodies, air and water exist in such quantities that man can neither increase nor decrease them appreciably; hence everyone can appropriate as much of them as his needs require, without prejudice to the enjoyment of others" .a
Proudhon proceeds from Comte's own definitions. First of all he proves to him that land is also an object of primary necessity, the usufruct of which must therefore remain free to everyone, within the limits of Comte's clause, namely: "without prejudice to the enjoyment of others." Why then has land become private property? Charles Comte answers: because it is not unlimited. He should have concluded, on the contrary, that because land is limited it may not be appropriated. The appropriation of air and water causes no prejudice to anybody because, as they are unlimited, there is always enough left. The arbitrary appropriation of land, on the other hand, prejudices the enjoyment of others precisely because the land is limited. The use of the land must therefore be regulated in the interests of all. Charles Comte's method of proving refutes his own thesis.
"Charles Comte, so Proudhon" (the Critical one, of course) "reasons, proceeds from the view that a nation can be the owner of a land; yet if property involves the right to use and misuse — jus utendi et abutendi re sua—even a nation cannot be adjudged the right to use and misuse a land." ' The real Proudhon does not speak of jus utendi et abutendi that the right of property "involves". He is too mass-minded to speak of a right of property that the right of property involves. Jus utendi et abutendi re sua is, in fact, the right of property itself. Hence Proudhon directly refuses a people the right of property over its territory. To those who find that exaggerated, he replies that in all epochs the imagined right of national property gave rise to suzerainty, tribute, royal prerogatives, corvée, etc.
The real Proudhon reasons against Charles Comte as follows: Comte wishes to expound how property arises and he begins with the hypothesis of a nation as owner. He thus falls into a petitio principii.b He makes the state sell lands, he lets industrialists buy those estates, that is to say, he presupposes the property relations that he wishes to prove.
The Critical Proudhon scraps the French decimal system. He keeps the franc but replaces the centime by the "Dreier".c
"If I cede a piece of land, Proudhon" (the Critical one) "continues, I not only rob myself of one harvest; I deprive my children and children's children of a lasting good. Land has value not only today, it has also the value of its capacity and its future."
The real Proudhon does not speak of the fact that land has value not only today but also tomorrow: he contrasts the full present value to the value of its capacity and its future, which depends on my skill in exploiting the land. He says:
"Destroy the land, or, what comes to the same thing for you, sell it; you not only deprive yourself of one, two or more harvests; you annihilate all the produce you could have obtained from it, you, your children and your children's children."
For Proudhon the question is not one of stressing the contrast between one harvest and the lasting good — the money I get for the field can, as capital, also become a "lasting good"—but the contrast between the present value and the value the land can acquire through continuous cultivation.
"The new value, Charles Comte says, that I give to a thing by my work is my property. Proudhon" (the Critical one) "thinks he can refute him in the following way: Then a man must cease to be a property-owner as soon as he ceases to work. Ownership of the product can by no means involve ownership of the material from which the product was made."
The real Proudhon says:
"Let the worker appropriate the products of his work, but I do not understand how ownership of the products involves ownership of the matter. Does the fisherman who manages to catch more fish than the others on the same bank become by this skill the owner of the place where he fishes? Was the skill of a hunter ever considered a title to ownership of the game in a canton? The same applies to agriculture. In order to transform possession into property, another condition is necessary besides work, or a man would cease to be a property-owner as soon as he ceased to be a worker."
Cessante causa cessât effectus.a When the owner is owner only as a worker, he ceases to be an owner as soon as he ceases to be a worker.
"According to law, it is prescription which creates ownership; work is only the perceptible sign, the material act by which occupation is manifested."
"The system of appropriation through work," Proudhon goes on, "is therefore contrary to law; and when the supporters of that system put it forward as an explanation of the laws they are contradicting themselves."
To say further, according to this opinion, that the cultivation of the land, for example, "creates full ownership of the same" is a petitio principii. It is a fact that a new productive capacity of the matter has been created. But what has to be proved is that ownership of the matter itself has thereby been created. Man has not created the matter itself. And he cannot even create any productive capacity if the matter does not exist beforehand.
The Critical Proudhon makes Gracchus Babeuf a partisan of freedom, but for the mass-minded Proudhon he is a partisan of equality (partisan de l'égalité).
The Critical Proudhon, who wanted to estimate Homer's fee for the Iliad, says:
"The fee which I pay Homer should be equal to what he gives me. But how is the value of what he gives to be determined?"
The Critical Proudhon is too superior to the trifles of political economy to know that the value of an object and what that object giv,es somebody else are two different things. The real Proudhon says:
"The fee of the poet should be equal to his product: what then is the value of that product?"
The real Proudhon supposes that the Iliad has an infinite price (or exchange value, prix), while the Critical Proudhon supposes that it has an infinite value. The real Proudhon counterposes the value of the Iliad, its value in the economic sense (valeur intrinsèque), to its exchange value (valeur échangeable); the Critical Proudhon counterposes its "value for exchange" to its "intrinsic value", i.e., its value as a poem.
The real Proudhon says:
"Between material reward and talent there is no common measure. In this respect the situation of all producers is the same. Consequently any comparison between them, any classification according to fortune is impossible." ("Entre une récompense matérielle et le talent il n'existe pas de commune mesure; sous ce rapport la condition de tous les producteurs est égale; conséquemment toute comparaison entre eux et toute distinction de fortunes est impossible.")
The Critical Proudhon says:
"Relatively, the position of all producers is the same. Talent cannot be weighed materially.... Any comparison of the producers among themselves, any external distinction is impossible."
In the Critical Proudhon we read that
"the man of science must feel himself equal in society, because his talent and his insight are only a product of the insight of society".
The real Proudhon does not speak anywhere about the feelings of talent. He says that talent must lower itself to the level of society. Nor does he at all assert that the man of talent is only a product of society. On the contrary, he says:
The Critical Proudhon goes on to say:
"Besides, he must be thankful to society for releasing him from other work so that he can apply himself to science."
The real Proudhon nowhere resorts to the gratitude of the man of talent. He says:
"The artist, the scientist, the poet, receive their just reward by the mere fact that society allows them to apply themselves exclusively to science and art."
Finally, the Critical Proudhon achieves the miracle of making a society of 150 workers able to maintain a "marshal" and, therefore, probably, an army. In the real Proudhon the marshal is a "farrier" (maréchal).