THE METAPHYSICS OF POLITICAL ECONOMY 161
men had spontaneously been guilty of error..... Why, then, if competition were not a principle of the social economy, a decree of destiny, a necessity of the human mind, why, instead of abolishing corporations, com- panies and wardenships, did not people rather think of re- establishing the whole of them?”
Thus, since the French people of the eighteenth century abolished corporations, companies and warden- ships, instead of modifying them, the French people of the nineteenth century ought to modify competition in- stead of abolishing it. Since competition was established in France, in the eighteenth century, as a consequence of historical needs, this competition must not be de- stroyed in the nineteenth century in consequence of other historical needs. M. Proudhon, not comprehending that the establishment of competition was bound up with the actual development of the men of the eighteenth century, makes of competition a necessity of the human mind, in partibus infidelium. What would he have made of the great Colbert for the seventeenth century?
After the Revolution comes the existing state of things. M. Proudhon also draws some facts from that in order to show the eternity of competition, by proving that all the industries in which this category is not yet sufficiently developed, as agriculture, are in a state of inferiority, of decay.
To say that there are some industries which are not yet at the height of competition, that yet others are below the level of bourgeois production, is mere quibbling which by no means proves the eternity of competition.
All the logic of M. Proudhon is summed up in this: Competition is a social relation in which we really develop our productive forces. He gives to this truth, not any
