Proudhon and German philosophy René BERTHIER 2 Proudhon and German philosophy 1 INTRODUCTION 3 PROUDHON AND GERMAN PHILOSOPHY 6 PROUDHON AND MARX 11 PROUDHON, HEGEL AND MARX 13 THE METHOD IN THE SYSTEM OF ECONOMIC CONTRADICTIONS 23 MARX’S ANSWER: POVERTY OF PHILOSOPHY 30 STIRNER AND FEUERBACH 38 BACK TO GERMAN IDEOLOGY 42 MARX AND THE REFERENCE TO HEGEL 50 MARX’S VIEWPOINT IN 1858 AND 1865 56 ON HEGEL AND METHOD 70 FETISHISM OF METHOD 74 MARXISM AND SCIENCE 86 CONCLUSION 91 Proudhon and German philosophy 3 Introduction This text is the translation of the first part of a book published in French in 2009, Études proudhoniennes, L’économie politique (Éditions du Monde libertaire. This first part develops a thesis concerning Proudhon’s methodological approach of economy I had started to study in an article, “La Question économique”, published in a French anarchist magazine, La Rue, revue culturelle et littéraire d’expression anarchiste, n° 33, 2nd term, 1983. The reader will quickly realize I am not acquainted with philosophical vocabulary in English and that I am a poor translator. This translation has been made quite quickly and needs to be revised and improved, but I do hope the English reader will at least roughly understand what it is about in general terms. The references which are mentioned are naturally French references. Many authors I quote are Marxist authors the English speaking reader has certainly never heard about and I didn’t bother to find an English publication for there certainly are none. Concerning Marx and Engels, I tried as much as possible to find the English version of their writings, which I found on the Internet. I simply mentioned the title of the book. Concerning Proudhon, it seems the only book that has been translated is the Système des contradictions économiques, or System of Economic contradictions, available on the Internet. I mention this book either under the French or the English title. The motivation for this translation is that I realized that the English speaking readers seem to have a very scarce knowledge of Proudhon, which is quite surprising for he laid the foundations of 4 Proudhon and German philosophy anarchist doctrine. Although he can be associated with no anarchist organization, he developed most of the concepts which characterize the anarchist doctrine, as well as most of the concepts Marx uses in economy. Not being particularly a “Proudhonian” myself, my intention is not to “rehabilitate” this author but to give credit for his contribution to the founding of anarchist doctrine. * * * * * * * In order to understand what follows, it is necessary to have a certain number of definitions in mind, related to Hegel’s philosophy. Hegel’s approach consisted in posing concepts to which he gave an absolute character and an independent existence. So it seemed that he had wanted to create Reality from Abstraction, but there is a misunderstanding concerning Hegel’s method, in my view. The German philosopher had made a distinction between: • The “development according to Time” (or “according to Nature”), such as it presents itself to the understanding: the real is first, thought is conditioned to it; and • The “development according to the Concept”, such as it appears to reason: empiric reality is the effect of reason. In the relationship existing between the two processes, Hegel chooses to give reality only to the second. He decides that only the development according to the concept, according to which the Real is deduced from the concept, is real. The development according to nature, for which the concept is second and reality first, is only an apparent process. The fact that the philosopher adopts an approach consisting in posing first Concepts and deducing the Real from them does not mean that he really believed that the concept, through a superior power such as God, or anything else, pre-exists the Real: it is only a working hypothesis. Hegel is only making a simulation – Proudhon will call it a “scaffolding”, whose elements (the concepts) allow him to define reality such as it is in its bareness, deprived of all the different accidental parasites that do not actually participate in its definition. Proudhon will do exactly the same thing in his Système des contradictions économiques, published in 1846, the same year as Marx’s German Ideology. He does not take into account the Proudhon and German philosophy 5 historical process but the logical process. He does not write the story of capitalism, he describes its mechanisms from a logical point of view. This approach is absolutely not original in philosophy. You can find it in Plato’s philosophy of knowledge, in Aristotle. Closer to us, in Descartes or Rousseau. The concept of “social contract” in Rousseau does not result from a historical assessment: Rousseau never imagined that a group of men actually sat around a table to negotiate a “contract”: it is only a hypothesis. Rousseau explains it very well: “One must not take for historical truth the researches which have been made concerning this subject, but only as hypothetical and conditioned reasonings more liable to enlighten the nature of things than to show their real origin” (Oeuvres complètes, La Pléiade, III, p. 139.) Proudhon makes no real discovery; his genius consists in applying this method to political economy. He does what absolutely all thinkers did before him, confronted to the necessity to explain a complex phenomenon. All thinkers, except Marx. For in 1846 Marx had just developed in German Ideology his own method, a historical method. For fifteen years, he will try to achieve the explanation of the mechanisms of the capitalist system with this method, unsuccessfully, before resolving to use the commonplace method all thinkers had used before him, but that only Proudhon had used in political economy: the hypothetical-deductive method. We can say that the so-called “historical materialism” had absolutely not been a progress in terms of understanding social phenomena, but an obstacle. R.B. 6 Proudhon and German philosophy Proudhon and German philosophy Proudhon had an early interest in German philosophy, for Kant first. In 1839 he read the History of German philosophy of Barchou de Penhoën. He found in Fichte, Schelling and Hegel several things that matched his views, but he was particularly attracted by Kant. At the end of that year he read the Critique of Pure Reason and became interested in Hegel. It has been said that the knowledge Proudhon had acquired of German philosophers was superficial, that he made only a superficial review of these thinkers, seeking in their work the confirmation to his own views. It is partly true, but in fact a close lecture of the precursor of anarchism shows that he was not as ignorant as it has been said. Marx is probably largely responsible for this picture given of Proudhon, but his own knowledge of Hegel deserves being seriously reconsidered. If Proudhon's knowledge of these thinkers was limited by the absence of translations available in his time, the understanding he had remains quite outstanding. Most of the critiques of Proudhon have certainly not read Chapter XI of Volume II of the System of Economic contradictions: one finds there a stunning synthesis of the thought of Kant, Fichte, Schelling and Hegel. At first, Proudhon was not attracted by Hegel. He criticized him for wanting to “build the history of the mind by reasoning, instead of following the line of observation”. He also said that “if this method can be good for teaching, for a science it is worthless”. These two remarks are important for two reasons: • At first, Proudhon agrees with Marx and formulates against Hegel the same criticism. Both men, in their early intellectual development, therefore criticize the philosopher for wanting to attain knowledge through the development according to the concept. Proudhon and German philosophy 7 In 1840 Proudhon opposed the Hegelian method for the same reasons as Marx. • Later, when writing the Système des contradictions économiques, Proudhon will realize that it is necessary to distinguish between the process of investigation and the process of exposure. This distinction, already clearly stated by Hegel in the Introduction to the Phenomenology, is ignored by Marx, who will not refer to it until around 1865. Proudhon, who addresses this issue as soon as 1846, is many years ahead of Marx: it is precisely on this point that Marx will attack Proudhon after the System of Economical Contradictions is published. In the early 1840's there was an almost amusing competition between two German emigrants – Karl Grün 1 and Karl Marx – who absolutely wanted to teach Proudhon the basics of the Hegelian philosophy. Marx wrote about it, twenty years later: “During my stay in Paris in 1844, I came into personal contact with Proudhon.” He adds: “In the course of lengthy debates often lasting all night, I infected him very much to his detriment with Hegelianism, which, owing to his lack of German, he could not study properly.” Karl Grün on his side also boasted of having trained Proudhon to Hegelianism, which drove Marx furious. Marx, wishing to warn his pupil against Grün, wrote that he was a “literary charlatan”. Everyone wanted to convert Proudhon. Marx hated Grün, fearing the influence he could exert on the Frenchman. He said: “As a teacher of German philosophy he also had the advantage over me that he himself understood nothing about it.” Proudhon, on his side, perfidiously observed that among the twenty German doctors of philosophy he knew, there were not two who got along with each other. 1 Karl Grün (1817-1877), German journalist, author in 1845 of “The social movement in France and in Belgium”. A member of the Left in the Prussian national assembly in 1848 and elected in 1849 at the Second Prussian Chamber. He was arrested of his “intellectual participation” the the Palatinate insurrection. 8 Proudhon and German philosophy Proudhon gave credit for some time that Hegel’s influence had been decisive in his evolution. He even suggested that the Phenomenology potentially contained his economic deductions which is, as we shall see, not as absurd as one might think. He repeated that his dialectics was “otherwise simple, clear, and fruitful” than that of the German philosopher. This belief was fueled by the declarations of the Germans themselves. Grün had awarded Proudhon the title of “French Feuerbach”, which Proudhon was very proud of. Proudhon had assimilated, Grün said again, the best of German philosophy. At the same time, Marx was full of praise for the Frenchman, who was held up in the Neue Reinische Zeitung as “the most logical and most penetrating the socialist writer”. (NRZ Jan 7, 1843.) The Holy Family, dating from 1845, also contains a vibrant praise of Proudhon who is acknowledged as the master of scientific socialism, the father of the theories of labor value and surplus value. The German Ideology (1846) refers to the dialectics of Proudhon as an “attempt to give a method by which independent thinking is replaced by the operation of thought”. When Proudhon lost his flattering status and became a “petty bourgeois” author, Marx declared that he himself had been responsible for the “sophistication” of Proudhon: . “To a certain extent I am also to blame for his ‘SOPHISTICATION’: as the English call the adulteration of commercial goods”. (Letter to J. B. Schweizer, Jan. 24, 1865.) All these flattering and perhaps exaggerated appraisals made by Grün and Marx in 1844-1845 had somehow destabilized Proudhon. So when he declared he would work to popularize metaphysics and put it into action, he claimed to use “the most profound dialectics, Hegel’s”, but added he was using there a process that was repugnant to him! In a letter to Bergman dated 19 January 1845, referring to the System of contradictions he was writing, Proudhon writes, somewhat candidly: Proudhon and German philosophy 9 “I cannot yet judge the relationship that exists between my metaphysics and Hegel’s logic, for example, since I have never read Hegel, but I am convinced that this is his logic that I use in my next book.” Recognizing that he had never read Hegel, Proudhon is here relatively reserved, but in 1848, he said that his “true masters” had been the Bible, Adam Smith and… Hegel. Marx responded derisively to the Système des contradictions économiques: Louis Blanc then wrote that Proudhon had become the laughing stock of the Berlin students. Proudhon ceased all references to Hegel. The German philosopher was not mentioned in the second edition of the book. Yet, despite his superficial knowledge of Hegel, Proudhon had perfectly understood the question posed in the Phenomenology concerning the “intelligible form of science”. The “science of observation” is certainly just the opposite of Hegel’s approach, but the latter did not intend to make a history book describing Experience: he intended to analyze the rational movement, revealing the logic of the evolution of consciousness. And it is precisely a similar path that Proudhon follows in the System of contradictions, which Marx fiercely criticized in 1846. Bakunin participated in some way in the competition to introduce Proudhon to the philosophy of Hegel. In 1844, he was in Paris: he met Proudhon, saw Marx again. Mentioning this period, he acknowledged, in 1871, that Marx was far ahead of him: “I knew then nothing of political economy, I had not yet got rid of metaphysical abstractions, and my socialism was only instinctive 1.” Bakunin and Marx saw each other often. Bakunin respected Marx for “his knowledge and for his passionate and serious dedication, although always mixed with personal vanity, to the cause of the proletariat”. The Russian liked Marx’s conversation, which was informative and witty, but unfortunately too often inspired by “petty hatred”. There never was a true friendship between them, their temperaments were too different. 1 “Rapports personnels avec Marx”, décembre 1871. 10 Proudhon and German philosophy Bakunin and Marx must have realized the limitations of Proudhon in the understanding of German philosophy. Marx wrote in Poverty of Philosophy that “M. Proudhon has nothing of Hegel’s dialectics but the language”. Bakunin on his side could hardly appreciate Proudhon’s tendency to select in the writings of the authors he read the passages that were consistent with his own views. The Russian revolutionary will later vigorously fight eclecticism in Mazzini and Victor Cousin. Of Mazzini, he wrote: “He takes only fragments of thoughts and phrases that suit him, leaving aside those which are in conflict with him, without even wondering if, in the mind of the author, these apparently opposite fragments do not form a single organic thought 1.” There is no reason to believe that what he criticized in V. Cousin and Mazzini, he accepted it in Proudhon. So if Bakunin availed himself of Proudhon, it is for other reasons, and with certain restrictions. We can also legitimately think he had Proudhon in mind when he regretted that “Romand thinkers” – that is to say in French- speaking – had failed to understand Hegel. Fascinated by German philosophy, Proudhon intended to “teach the French public what dialectics was”. In Germany, he says, “writers all submit themselves to a known methodical form”, while in France, “one eternally quibbles indiscriminately without ever being able to agree. It is this need of discipline for reason that I thought I was the first inaugurated under the name of serial dialectics, to which Hegel had already given a particular constitution 2.” He says he is convinced that it is the Hegel’s Logic he will use in his next book... 3 Showing that Proudhon does not understand Hegelian dialectics does not lead us very far. The question is not to know whether Proudhon understood and used Hegel’s dialectics in the Système des contradictions économiques”. That Proudhon had a glimpse of Hegel’s methodological developments through the oral teaching of Grün, Marx and Bakunin is possible but not determinant, for 1 Bakounine, Œuvres, Champ libre, I, 162. 2 Lettre à Bergmann, 19 janvier 1845. 3 Lettre à Bergmann, 19 janvier 1845.