Pierre-Joseph Proudhon Quotes

La République est l'organisation par laquelle toutes les opinions, toutes les activités demeurant libres, le Peuple, par la divergence même des opinions et des volontés, pense et agit comme un seul homme. Dans la République, tout citoyen, en faisant ce qu'il veut et rien que ce qu'il veut, participe directement à la législation et au gouvernement, comme il participe à la production et à la circulation de la richesse. Là tout citoyen est roi ; car il a la plénitude du pouvoir, il règne et gouverne. La République est une anarchie positive. Ce n'est ni la liberté soumise A l'ordre comme dans la monarchie constitutionnelle, ni la liberté emprisonnée DANs l'ordre, comme l'entend le Gouvernement provisoire. C'est la liberté délivrée de toutes ses entraves, la superstition, le préjugé, le sophisme, l'agiotage, l'autorité; c'est la liberté réciproque, et non pas la liberté qui se limite; la liberté non pas fille de l'ordre, mais MÈRE de l'ordre.

Humanity makes continual progress toward truth, and light ever triumphs over darkness.

In order better to grasp the thought of Malthus, let us translate it into philosophical propositions by stripping it of its rhetorical gloss: — "'"Individual liberty, and property, which is its expression, are economical data; equality and solidarity are not." "Under this system, each one by himself, each one for himself: labor, like all merchandise, is subject to fluctuation: hence the risks of the proletariat." "Whoever has neither income nor wages has no right to demand anything of others: his misfortune falls on his own head; in the game of fortune, luck has been against him." From the point of view of political economy these propositions are irrefutable; and Malthus, who has formulated them with such alarming exactness, is secure against all reproach. From the point of view of the conditions of social science, these same propositions are radically false, and even contradictory.

I build no system. I ask an end to privilege, the abolition of slavery, equality of rights, and the reign of law. Justice, nothing else; that is the alpha and omega of my argument: to others I leave the business of governing the world.

Formerly, the nobility and the clergy contributed towards the expenses of the State only by voluntary aid and gratuitous gift; their property could not be seized even for debt, — while the plebeian, overwhelmed by taxes and statute-labor, was continually tormented, now by the king’s tax-gatherers, now by those of the nobles and clergy. He whose possessions were subject to mortmain could neither bequeath nor inherit property; he was treated like the animals, whose services and offspring belong to their master by right of accession. The people wanted the conditions of ownership to be alike for all; they thought that every one should enjoy and freely dispose of his possessions his income and the fruit of his labor and industry. The people did not invent property; but as they had not the same privileges in regard to it, which the nobles and clergy possessed, they decreed that the right should be exercised by all under the same conditions. The more obnoxious forms of property — statute-labor, mortmain, maîtrise, and exclusion from public office — have disappeared; the conditions of its enjoyment have been modified: the principle still remains the same. There has been progress in the regulation of the right; there has been no revolution.

Justice is the central star which governs societies, the pole around which the political world revolves, the principle and the regulator of all transactions. Nothing takes place between men save in the name of right; nothing without the invocation of justice. Justice is not the work of the law: on the contrary, the law is only a declaration and application of justice in all circumstances where men are liable to come in contact. If, then, the idea that we form of justice and right were ill-defined, if it were imperfect or even false, it is clear that all our legislative applications would be wrong, our institutions vicious, our politics erroneous: consequently there would be disorder and social chaos.
This hypothesis of the perversion of justice in our minds, and, as a necessary result, in our acts, becomes a demonstrated fact when it is shown that the opinions of men have not borne a constant relation to the notion of justice and its applications; that at different periods they have undergone modifications: in a word, that there has been progress in ideas. Now, that is what history proves by the most overwhelming testimony.

To be governed is to be watched over, inspected, spied on, directed, legislated at, regulated, docketed, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, assessed, weighed, censored, ordered about, by men who have neither the right, nor the knowledge, nor the virtue. ... To be governed is to be at every operation, at every transaction, noted, registered, enrolled, taxed, stamped, measured, numbered, assessed, licensed, authorized, admonished, forbidden, reformed, corrected, punished. It is, under the pretext of public utility, and in the name of the general interest, to be placed under contribution, trained, ransomed, exploited, monopolized, extorted, squeezed, mystified, robbed; then, at the slightest resistance, the first word of complaint, to be repressed, fined, despised, harassed, tracked, abused, clubbed, disarmed, choked, imprisoned, judged, condemned, shot, deported, sacrificed, sold, betrayed; and, to crown all, mocked, ridiculed, outraged, dishonoured. That is government; that is its justice; that is its morality.

When politics and home life have become one and the same, when economic problems have been solved in such a way that individual and collective interests are identical – all constraints having disappeared – it is evident that we will be in a state of total liberty or anarchy.

Човекът проявява своето мъжество чрез труда, не чрез войната.

I protest that in criticizing property, or rather the whole mass of institutions of which property is the pivot, I have never intended either to attack individual rights, based upon existing laws, or to contest the legitimacy of acquired possessions, or to demand an arbitrary division of goods, or to place any obstacle to the free and regular acquisition, by sale and exchange, of property, or even to forbid or suppress, by sovereign degree, ground rent and interest on capital.

I think that all these manifestations of human activity should remain free and voluntary for all: I ask for them no modifications, restrictions or suppressions, other than those which result naturally and of necessity from the universalisation of the principle of reciprocity which I propose.

Property is theft!

"Of a real, true contract, on whatsoever subject, there is no vestige in Rousseau's book. To give an
exact idea of his theory, I cannot do better than compare it with a commercial agreement, in which
the names of the parties, the nature and value of the goods, products and services involved, the
conditions of quality, delivery, price, reimbursement, everything in fact which constitutes the
material of contracts, is omitted, and nothing is mentioned but penalties and jurisdictions.

"Indeed, Citizen of Geneva, you talk well. But before holding forth about the sovereign and the
prince, about the policeman and the judge, tell me first what is my share of the bargain? What? You
expect me to sign an agreement in virtue of which I may be prosecuted for a thousand
transgressions, by municipal, rural, river and forest police, handed over to tribunals, judged,
condemned for damage, cheating, swindling, theft, bankruptcy, robbery, disobedience to the laws of
the State, offence to public morals, vagabondage, — and in this agreement I find not a word of either
my rights or my obligations, I find only penalties!

"But every penalty no doubt presupposes a duty, and every duty corresponds to a right. Where then
in your agreement are my rights and duties? What have I promised to my fellow citizens? What
have they promised to me? Show it to me, for without that, your penalties are but excesses of
power, your law-controlled State a flagrant usurpation, your police, your judgment and your
executions so many abuses. You who have so well denied property, who have impeached so
eloquently the inequality of conditions among men, what dignity, what heritage, have you for me in
your republic, that you should claim the right to judge me, to imprison me, to take my life and
honor? Perfidious declaimer, have you inveighed so loudly against exploiters and tyrants, only to
deliver me to them without defence?"

L’homme est né sociable, c’est-à-dire qu’il cherche dans toutes ses relations l’égalité et la justice ; mais il aime l’indépendance et l’éloge : la difficulté de satisfaire en même temps à ces besoins divers est la première cause du despotisme de la volonté et de l’appropriation qui en est la suite.

When deeds speak, words are nothing.

The object of the federations will be to guarantee, as far as possible, the beneficent reign of peace; and they will have the further effect of securing in every nation the triumph of liberty over despotism. Where the largest unitary State is, there liberty is in the greatest danger; further, if this State be democratic, despotism without the counterpoise of majorities is to be feared. With the federation, it is not so. The universal suffrage of the federal State is checked by the universal suffrage of the federated States; and the latter is offset in its turn by property, the stronghold of liberty, which it tends, not to destroy, but to balance with the institutions of mutualism.