THE METAPHYSICS OF POLITICAL ECONOMY 121
Fourth Observation.
Let us see now the modifications to which M. Proud- hon subjects the dialectic of Hegel in applying it to political economy.
For him, M. Proudhon, every economic category has two sides, the one good, the other bad. He regards the categories as the lower middle-class regard the great men of history: Napoleon was a great man; he did very much good, he also did much evil.
The good side and the bad side, the advantage aad the inconvenience, taken together, form for M. Proudhon the contradiction in each economic category.
The problem to solve: | To conserve the good side while eliminating the bad.
Slavery is an economic category as well as any other. That then has, that also, its two sides. Let us leave the bad side and speak of the beautiful side of slavery ; being understood that it is only a question of direct slavery, of the slavery of the blacks in the East, in Brazil, in the Southern States of North America.
Direct slavery is the pivot of bourgeois industry as well as machinery, credit, &c. Without slavery you have no cotton, without cotton you cannot have modern industry. It is slavery which has given their value to the colonies, it is the colonies which have created the commerce of the world, it is the commerce of the world which is the essential condition of the great industry. Thus slavery is an economic category of the highest importance.
Without slavery, North America, the most progressive country, would have been transformed into a patriarchal country. Efface North America from the map of the world and you would have the anarchy, the complete
