Proudhon instances railways—in which association is essential. In these, the isolated producer must make way for "companies of workers." But the exception only proves the rule.[1] Small private property must be the basis of "social organisation."
Small private property is tending to disappear. The desire not merely to preserve it, but to transform it into the basis of a new social organisation is extreme conservatism. The desire at the same time to put an end to "the exploitation of man by man," to the wage-system, is assuredly to combine with the most conservative the most radical aspirations.
We have no desire here to criticise this petty bourgeois Utopia. This criticism has already been undertaken by a master hand in the works of Marx: "La Misère de la Philosophie,” and “Zur Kritik der Politischen Oekonomie." We will only observe the following:—
The only bond that unites the producers of commodities upon the domain of economics is exchange. From the juridical point of view, exchange appears as the relation between two wills. The relation of these two wills is expressed in the "contract." The production of commodities duly "constituted" is therefore the reign of "absolute" individual liberty. By finding myself bound through a contract that obliges me to do such and such a thing, I do not renounce my liberty. I simply use it to enter into relations with my neighbours. But at the same time this contract is the regulator of my liberty. In fulfilling a duty that I have freely laid upon myself when signing the contract, I render justice to the rights of others. It is thus that "absolute" liberty becomes "commensurate
- ↑ For Proudhon the principle of association invoked by most schools (he means the various Socialist schools), "a principle essentially sterile, is neither an industrial force nor an economic law …. it supposes government and obedience, two terms excluded by the Revolution." (Idée Générale de la Révolution au XIX Siècle, 2 ed., Paris 1851 , p. 173).
