Proudhon
"Herr Stein revealed his intellectual poverty in no uncertain way by treating Proudhon en bagatelle" (cf. Einundzwanzig Bogen, p. 84 ). "One needs something more than Hegel's old twaddle to follow this logic incarnate" (p. 411).
A few examples may show that Herr Grün remains true to his nature in this section too.
He translates (on pages 437-44) several excerpts from the economic arguments adduced by Proudhon to prove that property is intolerable and finally exclaims:
"To this critique of property, which is the complete liquidation of property, we need add nothing. We have no desire to write a new critique, abolishing in its turn equality of production and the isolation of equal workers. I have already in an earlier passage indicated what is necessary. The rest" (that is, what Herr Grün has not indicated) "we shall see when society is rebuilt, when true property relations are established" (p. 444).
In this way Herr Grün tries to avoid a close investigation of Proudhon's economic arguments and, at the same time, to rise superior to them. Proudhon's whole set of proofs is wrong; however, Herr Grün will realise that, as soon as someone else has proved it.
The comments on Proudhon made in Die heilige Familie—in particular those stressing that Proudhon criticises political economy from the standpoint of political economy, and law from the legal standpoint"—are copied by Herr Grün. But he has understood so little of the problem that he omits the essential point, [namely] that Proudhon vindicates the illusions cherished by jurists and economists [as against] their practice; with regard to the foregoing statement he produces a set of nonsensical [phrases].
The most important thing in Proudhon's book De la création de l'ordre dans l'humanité is his dialectique sérielle, the attempt to establish a method of thought in which the process of thinking is substituted for independent thoughts. Proudhon is looking, from the French standpoint, for a dialectic method such as Hegel has indeed given us. A relationship with Hegel therefore exists here really and does not need to be constructed by means of some imaginative analogy. It would have been an easy matter to offer a criticism of Proudhon's dialectics if the criticism of Hegel's had been mastered. But this was hardly to be expected of the true socialists, since the philosopher Feuerbach himself, to whom they lay claim, did not manage to produce one. Herr Grün makes a highly diverting attempt to shirk his task. At the very moment when he should have brought his heavy German artillery into play, he decamps with an indecent gesture. First of all he fills several pages with translations, and then explains to Proudhon, with boisterous literary captatio benevolentiae,b that his dialectique sérielle is merelv an excuse for showing off his learning. He does indeed try to console Proudhon by addressing him as follows:
"Ah, my dear friend, make no mistake about being a man of learning" (or "tutor"). "We have had to forget everything that our school-masters and our university hacks" (with the exception of Stein, Reybaud and Cabet) "have tried to impart to us with such infinite labour and to our mutual disgust" (p. [457]).
As a proof that now Herr Grün no longer absorbs knowledge "with such infinite labour", although perhaps with just as much "disgust", we may note that he begins his socialist studies and letters in Paris on November 6th [and] by the following January 20th has "inevitably" [not] only concluded his studiesbut has also finished the [exposition of] his
"really complete impression of the entire process".