Proudhon thus sees "economic law" as a "social law"{1} (he sometimes uses this pure and independent term[1]), interpreted as a true law of integration and applied to the economic sphere. Legal individualism, he tells us, is blind to the reality of "economic law". For its supporters, "the idea of an economic law, a complementary corollary of political and civil law, does not exist, it is a nonsense [...] a nothing"[2]. And, since political and civil law cannot be "infused" into the structures of economic life and guide it, this blindness of traditional legal doctrine results in "a mercantile anarchy; that is, the denial of all economic law, of all social guarantee, in a word of all mutuality"[3]. But "what virtue, what good faith can persist in a society whose fundamental maxim is [...] that the idea of economic law is a utopia [...] that therefore the economic order, existing by itself, it is claimed, is not based on any legal fact"[4]. According to Proudhon, this "legal fact" of an independent economic order differs markedly in structure from other kinds of law.
It is the principle of mutuality that unleashes "this supreme and fundamental category of law: economic law"[5]. "Political law" is only the external expression of society, just as "civil law" is only the demarcation of externalised relations between individuals, whereas "economic law" governs the inner life of totalities that assert themselves through this regulation as "real and living collective beings". This is why "economic law" "sets society in motion" and "restores to it ownership of its collective forces"[6]. And this is true of every particular group as well as of society as a whole; the law that "is all the more inherent to every group [than to every individual] [...], to every corporation, every commune", delivers them to themselves, lets them live according to their own inner life and serves as the foundation for "corporate liberties". It is therefore only through "economic law" that the totality can receive adequate expression; only this law is a "social law", whereas Proudhon viewed "political law", "civil law" and the "law of nations" as varieties of "individualistic law" concerning only the relations among external conflicting wills belonging to individuals on a small and large scale.[7]
This conception finds a particularly strong expression in War and Peace, where Proudhon constructs a whole "scale of law", beginning with the "right of war" and "public law", passing through "civil law" and culminating in "economic law". "Economic law" is the most sociable and peaceful; it embodies the order of peace and common collaboration, while the other kinds of law are all more or less individualistic and warlike. Moreover, since in War and Peace Proudhon had the idea (which is highly debatable and whose origin we will have occasion to explain further) of comparing the manifestations of the order of "individualistic law", in particular "international law" and "political law", to the "right of force", the opposition between "economic law" and other kinds of law becomes not only an opposition between formal structures, but also a gradation of values.[8]
"Economic law", being characterised as the farthest from the "right of the strongest", is thus considered the law closest to justice, the law with the greatest value — the supreme degree on the scale of the legal system. "Economic law" "is the fleur-de-lis that renounces the bulb from which it came"[9]. The "progress of law" consists in the blossoming of "economic law", whose predominance institutes social and international peace[10]. This is how the assertion of economic law, of "this supreme [...] category of law", "creates the unity of legal science"[11]. Thus Proudhon is forced to grant political law a lower value than "economic law".
We might perhaps regret, for the clarity of Proudhon's thought, that he intermingles the problem of differentiating the structures of the various kinds of law with that of their value, and we might express reservations about the wholesale exclusion of political law, and above all international law, from the domain of social law. In any case, it follows from our account that economic law has all the features of social law. If the Grotius–Leibniz school recognised in national life only a particularistic extra-State law, and the Physiocrats only a common but unorganised social law, Proudhon's "economic law" manifests itself in both forms at once and finds its supreme expression in common, organised economic law established by the "social constitution", which integrates all particular groupings into the general economic organisation, represented by the "agro-industrial federation".
Before organising itself through a "social constitution", economic society already represents a legal order for Proudhon[12]; it is governed by a common, unorganised economic law underlying all particular groupings and all the agreements that unite them. "Man, whether he likes it or not, is an integral part of [...] [this] society which, prior to any agreement, exists by reason of the division of labour and the unity of collective action"[13]. "It cannot be a matter of touching [this] society itself, which we must consider to be a superior being endowed with its own life and which in consequence rules out on our part any notion of arbitrary reconstitution"[14]. With regard to this unorganised economic society embodying the common interest, every person and every particular group "at every moment of his life is, in advance, in his current account [...] a debtor who of necessity dies insolvent"[15]. Thus, the unorganised common law governing this deep layer of economic society and expressed in particular in customary law takes precedence over all other varieties of economic law, for which it serves as the foundation; the validity of all agreements is founded upon it.
Moreover, independently of any "social constitution", economic law asserts itself within any particular group performing any activity; this is particularistic economic law. "[W]ithin universal society there exist for each of us as many special societies" as there are special interests, "and we are bound, by the principle of sociability itself, to fulfil the obligations which these impose upon us [...] This theory of special societies [...] gives the key to all the problems which arise from the opposition and conflict of the different varieties of social duty"[16]. In particular, contemporary society is differentiated into "industrial categories" and "[t]he workshop becomes the constitutive unit of society"[17]. Now, each workshop necessarily implies a "corporate interest" (intérêt de corps) and asserts itself as the seat of an autonomous economic law governing its inner life. Here it simply reproduces the tendency of all particular groups to "self-govern, self-judge, self-administer, according to their own laws", to obey only "their own statute", to exercise their "own internal policing" by "acting directly and by [themselves] in administering the interests which [they] encompass"[18].
Every group, every social cell, is both a centre of collective forces and the seat of a collective reason, in particular a legal consciousness. "A workshop made up of labourers, whose work converges towards the same goal [...] a ship's crew, a limited partnership, an academy, an orchestra, an army, etc., all these collectivities, more or less skilfully organised, contain power, a power which is synthetic and consequently specific to the group", "a social power"[19]. But this social power would be a brute and oppressive force were it not imbued with the social law that emerges from the collective reason of every group, the centre of a particular legal order[20]. "The organ of the collective reason is the same as that of the collective force: it is the working and teaching group; the company, whether industrial, scholarly, or artistic; academies, schools [...] the club, the jury; any meeting of men, in a word, formed for the discussion of ideas and inquiry into questions of law and right"[21]. Thus arises particularistic economic law, the law serving the group's "corporate interest".
Before "economic society" organises itself rationally on the basis of a "social constitution", only these two kinds of "economic law" appear: either the organised, but particularistic, economic law of groups pursuing their own interest, or common economic law, which remains exclusively unorganised and has no organ for self-expression. It is precisely the vocation of the "social constitution" to establish this organ and thus to bring forth economic law that is both common and organised. Proudhon expects the working class to implement the "social constitution". "The development of the working-class idea", which is embodied in "the creation of economic law"[22], consists in the federative union of corporate groupings, integrating their particularistic economic law within a common economic law governing the agro-industrial federation. "Workers' corporations [...] This word corporation is one of those most frequently used to accuse the workers; let us not be afraid of it..." Once integrated by the mutualist social constitution into the general industrial federation, "they [the corporations] will have lost their egoistic, subversive character while preserving the particular advantages that they derive from their economic power. They will be just so many particular churches in the bosom of the universal Church, capable of reproducing it anew, if it were possible that it ever died out"[23].
In his "Bank of the People" projects, Proudhon mentions two general syndicates: the syndicate of production and the syndicate of consumption[24]; their integration within a single organisation is alone capable of representing the general economic interest and thus of expressing common economic law. In order to establish the body capable of declaring this law, it is therefore not sufficient to integrate all producer groups into a single federative union; it must also be counterbalanced within the economic organisation itself by the union of consumer associations. In his other works, Proudhon is less explicit[25] regarding the role of consumers in the general economic organisation, but alongside producer groups he always mentions associations for exchange, mutual credit, insurance, trade, affordable housing, etc.; moreover, his exchangism makes clear his effort to recover common, organised economic law by integrating into the agro-industrial federation not only workers' corporations, but all unions of particular groups performing a necessary function in economic life.
"[I]n an economic context, one may confederate for the reciprocal protection of commerce and industry [...], for the organisation of credit and insurance, and so on. The purpose of such particular federal arrangements is to withdraw [...] from capitalist and bankocratic exploitation [...]; in their aggregate they form, in opposition to the financial feudalism in the ascendant today, what I will call an agro-industrial federation"[26]. "The agro-industrial federation [...] tends to foster ever greater equality [...] through mutualism in credit and insurance [...], guaranteeing the right to work [...], and an organisation of work which allows each labourer to become, from a mere unskilled hand, a skilled worker and an artist, and from a wage-earner, his own master"[27]. It is through the combination of these particular federations within the general economic federation "that any subjugation of man by man must disappear, and that the classes that we have called upper and lower, born of economic anarchy and speculative individualism, must return to homogeneity"[28]. This presupposes the agro-industrial federation becoming a "universal federation"[29] of all economic functions. "Considered in itself, the idea of an industrial federation serving to complement and sanction political federation receives the most striking confirmation from the principles of economics. It is the application on the highest scale of the principles of mutuality..."[30]
This is the realisation of the theses we have already cited: "Political law must have the buttress of economic law"[31]; "the idea of a limitation of the State by the groups"[32]. Economic society, organised in an agro-industrial federation encompassing all particular economic groupings, counterbalances the State by formulating the common and organised economic law that competes with State law.
In particular, "industries are sisters; they are branches of one another; one cannot suffer without the others sharing in its suffering. Let them therefore federate, not to abolish and confuse themselves together, but to mutually guarantee the conditions of common prosperity, upon which none may claim a monopoly"[33]. "The spontaneous, popular formation of [production] groups, workshops, companies, associations of workers"[34], which involve "all associates in the management of the enterprise and in its surpluses, within the limits and proportions determined by the articles of association" and which are founded on new principles of law unknown to the Code[35], is the first step toward the federation of producers.
"Workers' associations are the centres of production, a new principle, a new model, which must replace the present joint-stock companies (sociétés anonymes)"[36]. "We want these democratically organised workers' associations [...] to be models proposed for agriculture, industry and trade, the pioneering core of that vast federation of companies and societies joined together in the common bond of the democratic and social Republic"[37]. "Extend to the working associations, taken as units, the principle of mutuality that unites the workers of each group, and you will have created a form of civilisation that from all points of view [...] will differ completely from previous civilisations, [...] which with all possible guarantees of freedom, [...] [and] an impenetrable system of insurance [...] will provide us everywhere and always with our right and law" in economic life[38]. "[We see] the importance accorded in the new democracy to workers' associations, considered as economic organs and mutualist institutions"[39]. "[It is through them that] a reorganisation of industry will be accomplished, under the jurisdiction of all those who compose it"[40].
The "social constitution" is the charter, the common statute of the global economic federation, organising Society opposite the State, in which all particular groupings and federations are integrated. Proudhon is well aware that this global agro-industrial federation, in which "all his economic ideas developed over twenty-five years are summed up"[41], itself represents a totality, a "real collective being" distinct from its members and generating its own law. In this federation it is not a matter of a purely contractual relationship, but of a "higher order" having its own "constitution" and most likely its own central bodies.
It is the "solidarity of the groups", their mutualist bond, their prior, common rooting in unorganised economic society, pre-existing and underlying all organisations, that finds expression in the agro-industrial federation[42]. How could this pre-existing solidarity, "how could [this] economic mutuality be anything other than a federation"[43]? Several economic groups "placed in relations of exchange engender [...] [a] social power. In order for this social power to act in its fullness, for it to yield all the fruit that its nature promises, the forces and functions of which it consists must be in equilibrium"[44]. This equilibrium is produced through the statutes of the agro-industrial federation, through the "social constitution" that governs it and formulates common, organised economic law. "The mutualist organisation [...] invariably pushes producers [...] towards a centralisation analogous to that of the State"[45], but essentially different from it because every group and individual member can freely withdraw from the organisation[46].
Thus, the problem of the counterweights between centralising and decentralising tendencies, between centripetal and centrifugal forces, arises for organised economic society just as acutely as for every other totality; it always represents a concrete system of balances. Endowed with its own "social power", structured by its own "social constitution", founded on its own statutory law which gives rise to centralising as well as decentralising tendencies, the agro-industrial federation is unquestionably not conceived by Proudhon as a purely contractual relationship, but as a real sui generis totality not identical to the sum of its members. And how could it be otherwise, when for Proudhon, as we have already noted several times, "collectivities, groups, are not [...] abstract ideas [...], fictions; they are realities as real as the [...] monads or molecules of which they are composed and on the same footing as the latter [...]; higher-order units, positive existences, formed by the relations between lesser units and having special properties, qualities and faculties"[47].
At bottom, federalism is only a legal expression (embodied in a rational organisation) of the principle that dominates all Proudhonian thought: the synthesis between universalism and individualism, unity and diversity. And this is confirmed by the famous Proudhonian maxim: "Whoever says socialism says federation or says [...] nothing"[48].
But if this is the case, if the agro-industrial federation is a real totality having its own legal order distinct from the wills of its members, what then is the meaning of Proudhonian "contractualism", his repeated declarations that the "social constitution" is realised through the "reign of contracts", the contractual principle being presented as the very basis of every federative bond[49]? We already know that according to Proudhon, contracts do not create law out of nothing, but recognise and formulate a pre-existing law already latent in unorganised society, which itself represents a necessary society, "not conventional, but real". This explains why, for Proudhon, the contractual origin of the federation in no way implies that it can be dissolved into mere relations between its members, or that it fails to constitute an irreducible order, a wholly specific legal organism.
Proudhon clearly stresses that, though born of contract, the economic federation is more than a contract: it is a stable institution. "There exists in the mutualist association [...] a power of development that tends with an irresistible force to assimilate and incorporate all that surrounds it [...] [A]s the [mutualist] society is founded above all on an idea, it lays claim to perpetuity [...] Once formed, its nature is to generalise itself and to have no end [...] The contract of mutuality is irrevocable by its nature, as much in the smallest association as in the largest"[50].
"Once formed, the federation can no longer dissolve itself"[51]: not, of course, in the sense that the participating parties cannot withdraw from the economic federation — their exit always remains free — but in the sense that once established, the federation begins to lead a legal life of its own, distinct from the relations between its members and governed by its own autonomous law, the social law of the totality that it constitutes. It is not for nothing that it has its own statutes, just as each participating group has its own[52]. Ultimately, according to Proudhon, the "contracts" through which the "social constitution" is realised, and on which the "agro-industrial federation" is founded, are of the same nature as "collective labour agreements" (conventions collectives du travail) and the conventions establishing international organisations in modern law.
These are not true contracts, but "rule-making acts" (actes-règles), technical procedures for the expression of the pre-existing institution (body), as Maurice Hauriou called them[53], since the contracting parties act not as isolated subjects, but as representatives of this underlying institution[54]. Proudhon himself says that individuals who conclude a contract of association act as a kind of "organ of society"[55]; this characteristic must likewise apply to groups that conclude the "federative pact", since Proudhon recognises that "society must be regarded as a giant with a thousand arms, who performs all industries"[56]; the groups contracting the agro-industrial federation must therefore be regarded as acting as the "arms" of pre-existing society and in its name. It is therefore not in vain that Proudhon assures us that the contract conceived as order and organisation "would found, far better than the principle of authority, the union of producers, centralise their forces, [...] assure the unity and solidarity of their interests [and] constitute [...] the Republic"[57].
In introducing the formula "the contract [...] is order [...] it is organisation", Proudhon is well aware that this does not concern the contract enshrined in the Civil Code, which, considering only "relations with others", falls within the framework of individualistic law. "The formula of the social contract has not yet been found [...] We are at the stage of learning about association. The contract of association has nothing in its past analogous to what it produces today [...] It is a revolution that it brings. The provisions of the Code are a dead letter"[58].
But in that case, one may ask, is it prudent to designate these new procedures by the old term contract, with which they bear so little relation[59]? Proudhon's terminology was indeed not very felicitous. Ultimately, Proudhon emphasised his contractualism with the sole aim of better highlighting the ability of groups and individuals to exit the economic organisation freely. At issue here for Proudhon was the essential difference between conditional constraint, from which one can withdraw and which alone is available to pure social law, and the unconditional coercion that sanctions State or state-enacted law.
His entire concern was to clarify the character of pure and independent social law in its organised expression, whereas the term "contract", not being sufficiently explained, directed the reader's thought towards analogies with the order of individualistic law. Perhaps Proudhon himself could not entirely rid himself of the consequences of this clumsy terminology. This is shown in his lack of a distinction between the confederative bond and the federative bond.
We have already had occasion to emphasise that these two kinds of complex subjects of social law can be distinguished both in organisations from which one is free to withdraw (and which do not possess unconditional coercion) and in States. Since the difference between federation and confederation consists in the fact that the balance between unity and plurality is achieved in a federation through a complete equivalence between these elements, whereas in a confederation this same balance is achieved through a preponderance of the members over the central power, it suffices for the right of free exit to be subject to certain restrictive conditions and for the majority principle to be recognised in order for the equivalence presupposed by a federation to be realised. It is precisely towards the federative, and not the confederative, type that modern economic and international organisations are heading.
Yet Proudhon wants to recognise no type other than the confederation, where the rights of the members take precedence over the rights of the central power. "What makes the essence and the character of the federative contract [...] is that in this system the contracting parties individually reserve for themselves [...] more rights, liberty, authority, property, than they give up"[60]. Proudhon does not consider the possibility of certain restrictions on the right of free exit (prior notice, the discharge of all obligations); he grants the right to break the federative pact ad libitum[61], and he does not specify whether he admits the majority principle in the federal union, whereas he nevertheless upholds it for simple associations and groups[62].
Proudhon's exclusive confederalism, to which he was perhaps led by his contractualist terminology, does not, however, call into question his theory of social law; the confederative association asserts itself as an organised species of this law. Moreover, Proudhon recognises other manifestations of social law: the unorganised social law of the necessary economic society, underlying all organisations, and the social law of simple particular groups, where the totality asserts itself as equivalent to the plurality of the members.
According to Proudhon, all the species of social law that he recognises and identifies with "economic law" have an egalitarian character[63]. Since equality asserts itself as the function of the social totality, and society and order are "impossible" without equality, how can we be surprised that the species of law in which the totality receives the most intense expression has a particularly democratic character? Economic law excludes any subordination, any hierarchy, and can receive an organised expression only in egalitarian associations of collaboration and cooperation, never in associations of domination. Whether it is a simple economic group (workshops, workers' company, craft corporation, labour exchange, mutual credit society) or a particular or global confederation, the principle of organisation according to economic law is always the same: the "jurisdiction of all those who compose" the association or federation, the "sovereignty of the masses" who form it, corporate self-government, participation in the management of the enterprise, and the guarantee of each member's equality and liberty.
Thus, economic society asserts itself as a new application of democratic principles, both within each of its particular cells and in their ensemble, represented by the agro-industrial federation. "The infusion of law" into economic forces[64], effected by the "social constitution", has the result of extending the sphere of application of the democratic idea to a new domain where it receives an especially intense expression. Such is Proudhon's standpoint when he declares that the "social constitution" organising "economic law" is realised in "industrial democracy", which complements and counterbalances political democracy[65].
It is generally not known that the author of this term, which has become so popular nowadays, was Proudhon — the very same Proudhon who so criticised democracy in its exclusively political and thereby "regal" (régalienne) form[66]. And yet for Proudhon, the idea of "industrial democracy" is only the logical outcome of his theory of "economic law" (structuring the inner life of non-hierarchical totalities), of his vision of legal pluralism, and of his brilliant effort to synthesise the idea of social law with the principles of the Revolution of 1789. "Let us complete," he exclaims, "against all odds, the Revolution begun in '89, by founding economic and social equilibrium, that is to say law, liberty, equality [...] — I am not speaking of the government, I am not doing politics here — upon the industrial republic"[67].
To better highlight the notion of "industrial democracy" realising "economic law", Proudhon contrasts four forms of industrial organisation, representing in his view four historical stages of its evolution: "industrial anarchy", "industrial feudalism", "industrial empire", and "industrial democracy or republic"[68].
a) "Industrial anarchy" is the ideal of economic individualism. It is the "nothingness of economic law"[69], property and competition rendered wholly independent of law[70]. b) It leads to "industrial feudalism", the concentration of "social power" in the hands of a few magnates — capitalist organisations and banks — who take advantage of the ownership of the means of production to found vast associations of domination subjecting workers to their arbitrary power. c) The vicissitudes and "excesses" of "industrial feudalism" cause the menacing shadow of the "industrial empire" to loom — the height of the crisis[71]. The industrial empire is "the culmination of capitalist and speculative absorption"[72], the centralisation of the direction of economic life in the hands of the State, exercising dictatorship over industry — an ideal that tempts communists and Caesarists in equal measure. But "the industrial empire is nothing else [...] than a contradiction [...] The imperial formula is inapplicable to the economic order"[73]. "[W]e are not to kill liberty [...] but to socialise it"[74]. "Social law cannot be the product of these three formulas [anarchy, feudalism, industrial empire], any more than unity can arise from adding zeros"[75].
d) The mere threat of the "industrial empire", which is slavery and death, intensifies and brings to the fore the tendencies towards "industrial democracy" — the only possible solution to the crisis, its "end"[76]. "Industrial feudalism [...] must be succeeded, according to the law of historical antinomies, by an industrial democracy"[77]. Its hallmarks are the "workers' associations", seats of a new economic law and cells of the future "social constitution".
Industrial democracy, according to Proudhon, has several aspects. Not only does it subordinate all the "social power" of economic organisations to law, but it penetrates to the very heart of property relations, instituting a "mutualist and federative" property[78] that makes all workers "co-owners" (copropriétaires)[79]; thus it reveals itself as a "labour-for-labour partnership, or universal mutuality" (commandite du travail par le travail ou mutualité universelle)[80]. We will return to this meaning of "industrial democracy" in the next section, which deals with the application of the Proudhonian theory of "economic law" to the problem of property. For now, we need only reproduce Proudhon's conclusion: "However we look at things [...] it is increasingly apparent that we are marching, through a semblance of feudal restoration, towards an Industrial Democracy"[81]. According to Proudhon, the equilibrium between the State and organised economic society, forming a counterweight — the "buttress of economic law" that political law requires — designates at the same time a balancing and a reciprocal limitation between political democracy and "industrial democracy"[82]. It is thus confirmed that Proudhon's "economic law" is a true law of integration.
[1] Qu’est-ce que la propriété ? (1st v.), p. 223; cf. p. 45; Contrad, econ., 1st v. (pp. 323, 253; “Droit au travail et droit de propriété” [Right to Work and Right to Property], p. 220 (7th v.); Confessions d'un révolutionnaire (9th. v.), p. 179; Manuel d’un spéculateur à la bourse (11th v.), p. 7 Cf. De la Justice, 1st t., 2nd Study, p. 214 (where the term “social right” is used in a broader sense).
[2] De la capacité politique, p. 226.
[3] Ibid., pp. 346, 384.
[4] Ibid., p. 228.
[5] Ibid., p. 220.
[6] Cf. La Guerre et la Paix, 1st v., pp. 307, 289 and Mélanges, 3rd v. (19th v.): “The State is the external constitution of social power”, pp. 11, 23.
[7] La Guerre et la Paix, 2nd v., p. 385; De la Justice, II, 2nd Study, pp. 115–117, 124.
[8] La Guerre et la Paix, 1st v., pp. 110, 136, 154, 202, 288–299, 302, 2nd v., pp. 147, 367, 380–381.
[9] La Guerre et la Paix, 1st v., p. 300.
[10] Ibid., 2nd v., p. 380 et seqq.
[11] De la capacité politique, p. 220.
[12] Correspondance, 3rd v., pp. 386–387 (Letter of 4th March 1843); Idée générale de la Révolution, p. 300.
[13] De la création de l’ordre (3rd v.), pp. 376–377.
[14] L'idée générale de la Révolution au XIX siècle, p. 156.
[15] Qu’est-ce que la propriété ? (1st vol.), p. 120; cf. De la capacité politique, p. 148.
[16] Qu'est-ce que la propriété ? (1st vol.), pp. 184–185.
[17] Contre économ., 1st v., p. 238; cf. De la création de l’ordre (3rd v.), p. 270.
[18] Du principe fédératif, op. cit., pp. 315, 284, 163; Idée générale de la révolution, op. cit., 325, 202, 267.
[19] De la Justice, 2nd t., 4th Study, pp. 99–100, 104–105.
[20] Ibid., p. 105 et seqq.
[21] De la Justice, 3rd t., 7th Study, p. 119.
[22] De la capacité politique, p. 85 et seqq.
[23] Ibid., pp. 123, 196.
[24] 6th v., pp. 273, 284, 297 et seqq., 299–300.
[25] However, see Manuel d'un spéculateur à la bourse (11th v.), p. 417 et seqq.
[26] Du principe fédératif, p. 111.
[27] Ibid., pp. 111–112.
[28] Manuel du spéculateur (11th v.); pp. 430–431.
[29] Du principe fédératif, p. 113, n. 1.
[30] Ibid., p. 113.
[31] Ibid., p. 107.
[32] De la capacité politique, p. 286.
[33] Du principe fédératif, p. 113.
[34] Mélanges, 3rd t. (19th v.), p. 39; 1st t. (17th v.), pp. 70–71.
[35] Manuel d'un spéculateur (11th v.), pp. 411, 416, 426, 183, 177.
[36] Ibid., p. 415.
[37] Mélanges, (1st v.) (17th v.), p. 189.
[38] Manuel d'un spéculateur (11th v.), p. 416.
[39] De la capacité politique, p. 214.
[40] Ibid., p. 123.
[41] Du principe fédératif, p. 116.
[42] De la cap. polit., pp. 396, 194, 127, 148.
[43] Du principe fédératif, p. 264.
[44] De la justice, 2nd t., 4th Study, pp. 123-25 (22nd v.).
[45] Mélanges, 1st v. (17th v.), pp. 70–71; 6th v., p. 76.
[46] Idée générale de la Révolution, p. 282; Du principe fédératif, pp. 74, 16; cf. De la cap. polit., p. 207.
[47] Pornocratie, op. cit., pp. 116–119.
[48] Du principe fédératif, p. 137.
[49] L’idée de la Révolution, op. cit., pp. 187, 199, 258, 267-268, 301-302, 343; Confessions d’un révolutionnaire (9th v.), p. 177; Du principe fédératif, pp. 64, 74, 264, 284; De la capacité politique, pp. 141, 191, 192.
[50] De la capacité politique, pp. 193–196.
[51] Ibid., p. 222.
[52] Du principe fédératif, pp. 163, 75, note.
[53] Cf. above, 6th part, ch. III.
[54] Cf. our explanation of the modern doctrine of collective labour agreements in Le temps présent et l’idée du droit social [The Present Time and the Idea of Social Right], 1st section, ch. I and II.
[55] De la capacité politique, p. 148.
[56] Ibidem.
[57] Idée générale de la Révolution, p. 268.
[58] Manuel d’un spéculateur (15th v.), pp. 183, 176, 411–412.
[59] Have we not spoken of the “decline of the law and the contract”, precisely in relation to collective labour agreements? See G. Morin, La révolte des faits contre le Code [The Revolt of the Facts Against the Code], 1920, and Loi et contrat : La décadence de la souveraineté [Law and Contract: The Decline of Sovereignty], 1927.
[60] Du principe fédératif, pp. 68, 74, 316.
[61] De la capacité politique, p. 207.
[62] Cf. for example, Mélanges, 1st v. (18th v.), p. 71.
[63] De la capacité politique, p. 267.
[64] De la Justice, 1st t., 3rd Study, p. 328; De la capacité politique, p. 186.
[65] Manuel d’un spéculateur à la Bourse (11th v.), pp. 399, 405 et seqq., 426; De la capacité politique, pp. 69, 143; La Guerre et la Paix, 1st v., 302 (Dentu ed.).
[66] See, however, the mention in C. Bouglé’s remarkable book, La sociologie de Proudhon [The Sociology of Proudhon], p. 177.
[67] Manuel d'un spéculateur (11th v.), p. 7.
[68] Manuel d’un spéculateur (11th v.), pp. 7–8, 5, 393, 399 et seqq., 426.
[69] De la capacité politique, p. 225.
[70] Théorie de la propriété, p. 243.
[71] Manuel d'un spéculateur, p. 399 et seqq.
[72] Ibidem.
[73] Ibid., pp. 6–7.
[74] Contr. écon., 1st v., p. 97.
[75] Manuel d’un spéculateur, p. 7.
[76] Ibid., pp. 408 et seqq., 426 et seqq.
[77] Ibid., p. 399.
[78] Cap. polit., pp. 196, 70.
[79] Manuel (11th v.), pp. 424, 410 et seqq.
[80] Ibid., p. 408.
[81] Ibid., p. 426.
[82] Proudhon’s idea of “industrial democracy” may serve as a basis to clarify his attitude towards the principle of association. It is known that on the one hand, Proudhon led a very energetic struggle against belief in the miraculous force of the associationist principle (Idée gén. de la rév., pp. 158 et seqq., 174 et seqq.; Manuel d'un spéculateur, 11th v., pp. 174 et seqq.; Contr. écon., 2nd v., pp. 272, 256 et seqq., 291); on the other hand, he himself made association the basis of his system and went so far as to say that “of all forces the greatest, in the spiritual and moral order as well as in the material order, is the association, which can be defined as the embodiment of justice” (G. et P., 1st v., p. 204; cf. Corr. 7th, pp. 20, 18, Letter to Villaumé, 24th January 1852; cf. Des réformes à opérer dans l’exploitation des chemins de fer [Reforms To Be Adopted in the Operation of Railways], 12th v., pp. 252–253). This can be well explained if we consider that for Proudhon, everything depends on the way in which the association is organised. For him, the association is not a dogma, a solution, as it is for Fourier, Leroux and Louis Blanc (Idée gén. de la Rév., p. 159), but a problem that raises a whole series of difficulties that can be solved only by “economic right” and its realisation in “industrial democracy”. Like all collective forces and in particular economic forces, “association by itself and without a thought for right” (Cap. pot., p. 187; Manuel, 11th v., p. 175) can become an oppressive force and degenerate into an organisation of domination and subordination. But “once entered into right” (Cap. pol., p. 186; Manuel, 11th v., pp. 175–176), this same association embodies the highest positive values. And it is organising the association according to the principles of “industrial democracy” that actualises all its most valuable possibilities.
{1} Translator's note: In French legal philosophy, droit designates both an objective legal order or body of law (e.g. droit social ['social law'], droit économique ['economic law'], droit civil ['civil law'], droit coutumier ['customary law']) and a subjective entitlement ('a right', plural les droits), whereas loi refers specifically to statute law enacted by a political authority. In this revised edition, droit is rendered as 'law' when referring to an objective legal order and as 'right' when referring to a subjective entitlement or claim (such as the 'right of war' or 'right of force').