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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 August 2009
The problem of community, as Proudhon understands it, is to reconcil individual freedom with social peace. His political theorizing can best be seen as a prolonged effort to achieve this reconciliation. Proudhon was not at all original in placing the problem of community, as thus conceived, at the top of his agenda. He was simply responding in the usual way to the challenge presented by the Revolution to all writers on politics in early nineteenth-century France.- By disrupting social order at the same time that it awakened demands for freedom, the Revolution had made an answer to the problem of community both urgent and difficult. A reconstructed French community both free and safe was clearly needed, but how could it be achieved? If pressing demands for freedom were met, a tenuous social peace would be endangered, while if peace were secured, demands for fredom would go unsatisfied. The need and the difficulty of reconciling peace and freedom under the circumstances prevailing in France led Proudhon, like so many of his contemporaries, to devote himself to finding an answer to the problem of community.
1 Mélanges littéraires, politiques et philosophiques (New ed., Paris, 1882), II, 491.Google Scholar
2 Ibid., p. 492.
3 Essai analytique sur les lois naturelles de l'ordre social (Paris, 1882), p. 18.Google Scholar
4 Ibid.
5 Théoried du pouvoir politique et religieux (New ed., Paris, 1880), I, 112.Google Scholar
6 Ibid., p. 127. cf. Démonstration philosophique du principe constitutif de la société (Paris, 1882), p. 457.Google Scholar
7 Théorie du pouvoir, II. 332, 365.Google Scholar
8 Ibid., I, 155, II, 87.
9 Législation primitive (Paris, 1882), p. 49; cf. pp. 52–8.Google Scholar
10 Ibid., pp. 52–3, 342.
11 Théorie du pouvoir, I, 269.Google Scholar
12 Législation Primitive, p. 389.Google Scholar Nothing points up so sharply the gulf between Hobbes and Bonald, despite their common first premise, as their conflicting attitudes toward guilds. Hobbes' zeal for strong political rule leads him to focus attention on the guild's ability to obstruct government. Hence he brands them “worms in the entrayles” of the commonwealth. (Leviathan, Ch. 29). Bonald, on the other hand, is so concerned with the guilds' allegedly salutary psychological effects upon their members that he ignores their threat to effective government.
13 Ibid., p. 354.
14 Ibid., p. 311.
15 Théorie du pouvoir, II 64–5.Google ScholarIn A Theory of stable Democracy (Princeton, 1961).Google ScholarHarry Eckstein seems to have revived and elaborated some of the points made by Bonald here. Eckstein's thesis is that “a government will tend to be stable if its authority pattern is congruent with the other authority patterns of the society of which it is a part.” (p. 6) Bonald sees that where a very similar type of congruence prevails, government is most likely to endure. “It is an axiom of social science… that popular states, presbyterian religions and families dessolvable by divorce are generally found in the same country.… just as fixity of tenure in State, religion and family is generally found in the same societies.” (Législation primitive), p. 51.Google Scholar
16 Législation primitive, p. 348.Google Scholar
17 Mélanges, I, 585.Google Scholarcf. Recherches philosophiques sur les premiers objets des connaissances morales (New ed., Paris, 1882), p. 474.Google Scholar
18 Théorie du pouvoir, I, 181.Google Scholar
19 Cours de politique constitutionelle, ed. Laboulaye, E. (Paris, 1861), I, 268.Google Scholar
20 Ibid., II, 300.
21 Ibid., II, 210, note.
22 Ibid., II, 90.
23 Ibid., II, 541.
24 It is true that Bonald considers himself just as much an enemy of arbitrary government as does Constant (cf. Recherches, p. 466). But his hostility to arbitrariness is superfical, hardly going beneath the level of words. The political institutions he recommends are in no sense designed to safeguard the rule of law and would in fact lead to its perpetual violation. We can hardly take his commitment very seriously when he fails to give it institutional backing.Google Scholar
25 Cours, II, 117.Google Scholar
26 Ibid., II, 119.
27 Ibid., II, 76–7.
28 Ibid., II, 78.
29 Ibid., II, 78–9.
30 Ibid., I, 258.
31 Ibid., I, 136.
32 Ibid., II, 554.
33 Idée générale de la révolution au dix-neuviéme siécle (New ed., Paris, 1924), p. 279.Google ScholarDe la justice dans la Révolution et dans l'Eglise (New ed., Paris, 1930– 1933), I, 309.Google Scholar
34 Justice, I, 299.Google Scholar
35 Philosophie du progrés programme (New ed., Paris, 1946), pp. 66–7.Google Scholar
36 Justice, III, 10.Google Scholar
37 Ibid., III, 409.
38 Ibid., III, 407.
39 Ibid., III, 418.
40 For a more detailed version of the following analysis of Proudhon's solution see Ritter, Alan, Proudhon: Realist, Radical, Moralist (Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Harvard University, 1965), ch. 5.Google Scholar
41 Idée générale, p. 268.Google Scholar
42 Ibid., pp. 188, 267.
43 Justice, II, 262.Google Scholar
44 La guerre et la paix (New ed., Paris, 1927); pp. 133–34.Google Scholar
45 Justice, III, 429.Google ScholarDe la capacité politique des classes ouvriéres (New ed., Paris, 1924), p. 189.Google Scholar
46 Ibid., pp. 137.
47 La guerre et la paix, p. 201.Google Scholar
48 Idée générale, p. 188.Google Scholar
49 Cours d'économie politique (Unpublished manuscript 1949–1955 in the possession of the Abbé Haubtmann in Paris).Google Scholar
50 Idée générale, p. 206.Google Scholar
51 Justice, I, 304.Google Scholar
52 Progrés, p. 82.Google Scholar
53 Ibid.,
54 Justice, IV, 368.Google Scholar
55 Idée générale, p. 281.Google Scholar
56 Capacité politique, p. 202.Google Scholar
57 InThe Political Community (Chicago, 1963) Sebastian de Grazia takes precisely this position. Starting from the premise that modern man “feels isolated and lost” (p. 4), he ultimately concludes that what is needed is “increased devotion” and the elimination of “competitive directives” (pp. 191–92.)Google Scholar
58 This was Lincoln's attitude toward the democratic ideal. It was to be “constantly looked to, constantly labored for, and even, though never perfectly attained, constantly approximated.” Speech at Springfield, Illinois, June 27, 1857, cited in Arthur Holcome, Securing the Blessings of Liberty (Fair Lawn. N.J., 1964), p. 55.Google Scholar
59 Dahl, Robert and Lindblom, Charles, for example, remark and lament that “badrgaining lacks a widely accepted theoretical rationale”. Politics, Economics and Welfare (New York, 1953), p. 472.Google Scholar
