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PROUDHON.

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governed, but how we shall be most free. Liberty commensurate and identical with Order,—this is the only reality of government and politics. How shall this absolute liberty, synonymous with order, be brought about?We shall be taught this by the analysis of the various formulas of authority. For all the rest we no more admit the governing of man by man than the exploitation of man by man."^[1]

We have now climbed to the topmost heights of Proudhon's political philosophy. It is from this that the fresh and vivifying stream of his Anarchist thought flows. Before we follow the somewhat tortuous course of this stream let us glance back at the way we have climbed.

We fancied we were following Kant. We were mistaken. In his "Critique of Pure Reason" Kant has demonstrated the impossibility of proving the existence of God, because everything outside experience must escape us absolutely. In his "Critique of Practical Reason" Kant admitted the existence of God in the name of morality. But he has never declared that God was a topsy-turvey image of our own soul. What Proudhon attributes to Kant, indubitably belongs to Feuerbach. Thus it is in

↑ For all these quotations see the preface to the third edition of the "Confessions d'un Révolutionaire." This preface is simply an article reprinted from the Voix du Peuple, November, 1849. It was not till 1849 that Proudhon began to "expound" his Anarchist theory. In 1848, pace Kropotkine, he only expounded his theory of exchange, as anyone can see for himself by reading the sixth volume of his complete works (Paris, 1868). This critique of Democracy, written in March, 1848, did not yet expound his Anarchist theory. This "critique " forms part of his work, "Solution du Problème Social," and Proudhon proposes to bring about this solution "without taxes, without loans, without cash payments, without paper-money, without maximum, without levies, without bankruptcy, without agrarian laws, without any poor tax, without national workshops, without association (!), without any participation or intervention by the State, without any interference with the liberty of commerce and of industry, without any violation of property," in a word and above all, without any class war. A truly "immortal" idea and worthy the admiration of all bourgeois, peace-loving, sentimental, or bloodthirsty—white, blue, or red!

[1] For all these quotations see the preface to the third edition of the "Confessions d'un Révolutionaire." This preface is simply an article reprinted from the Voix du Peuple, November, 1849. It was not till 1849 that Proudhon began to "expound" his Anarchist theory. In 1848, pace Kropotkine, he only expounded his theory of exchange, as anyone can see for himself by reading the sixth volume of his complete works (Paris, 1868). This critique of Democracy, written in March, 1848, did not yet expound his Anarchist theory. This "critique " forms part of his work, "Solution du Problème Social," and Proudhon proposes to bring about this solution "without taxes, without loans, without cash payments, without paper-money, without maximum, without levies, without bankruptcy, without agrarian laws, without any poor tax, without national workshops, without association (!), without any participation or intervention by the State, without any interference with the liberty of commerce and of industry, without any violation of property," in a word and above all, without any class war. A truly "immortal" idea and worthy the admiration of all bourgeois, peace-loving, sentimental, or bloodthirsty—white, blue, or red!

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