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In this article we will discuss about the views of Pierre Joseph Proudhon on property.
Proudhon is one of the few French socialists of genuinely plebeian origin. Through a scholarship from a local fund, he was able to continue his studies after graduating from the lycee. While accepting this aid, he vowed that he would remain faithful to the cause of those whom he called his brothers and comrades.
His pamphlet entitled Qu’est-ce que la propriety? Which was published in Paris in 1840, created a sensation. It was here that he declared that “property is theft”. He believed that justice was the law of nature. He concluded from this conviction that man should have complete control over things acquired by dint of his labour. The reasons which prompted him to characterize property as ‘theft’ may be discussed briefly.
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It appears from his writings that in condemning property he had in mind chiefly that form of property which is made up of accumulations from profits, interest and rent. It seems from his specific economic proposals that he intended only to eliminate the monopolistic and exploitative features from private property. He did not advocate abolition of other types of property.
He declared himself to be an anarchist. As such, his “most specific complaint against the state was that it had evolved out of the system of private property and had sustained the inequitable incidents of that institution”. “What Proudhon feared above all was any meddling on the part of the state, even on the part of a democratic state; he was fundamentally antipathetic to the principle of authority”.
His ideas on property would be further clarified if one takes into account his specific proposals to render financial assistance to workers. He proposed the setting up of a ‘Bank of the People’. Those workers who are able to work and are prepared to give an undertaking that they would do so would be permitted to draw in advance Bank Notes without interest on the basis of their undertaking.
The amount of their withdrawal from the Bank would be determined in terms of the hours of work they would put in. He characterised this arrangement as mutualism. The idea is that the workers would gain as a result of cooperation among themselves.
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He visualised a definite advantage in the arrangement for the common people in that the moneylenders would be forced to wind up their usurious practices. Thus, the workers themselves, according to him, would be in a position to eliminate exploitation. There would no more be any need for “coercive social organisation”.
If follows from the aforesaid discussion that he characterised as ‘theft’ only that kind of property which originated from exploitation of labour. On the other hand, the property that would accumulate under the ownership and control of the society would not be exploitative in nature.
That explains the reason which prompted him to lay stress on co-operative banking associations. Since his proposals would make redundant any kind of “coercive social organization” he called himself a positive anarchist.
To Proudhon, communism was repulsive. He sought to find a middle course between the socialist theories and the theories of classical economics. He sought the road to his Utopia through the organization of free credit and equitable exchange. When the Revolution of 1848 broke out, he was chosen deputy and he tried to start a ‘people’s bank’ as a way of realizing his scheme of free credit.
Proudhon was very much devoted to the rearing of just and honest citizens, who would in turn be able to organize equitable relations of exchange between groups of producers”.
C. Bongle points out that his individualistic trend is “surprisingly enough linked up with a sociological approach. He lists among his discoveries what he calls ‘the metaphysics of the group’ which involves the idea that collective force is something more than the sum of the individual forces”.
He sums up Proudhon’s paradoxical position in the history of sociology thus:
“He forced collective reason to consecrate personal rights and assigned to the community the goal of protecting individual equality.”