Utopians; he is a Utopian himself to his finger tips. What distinguishes him from men like Saint Simon, Fourier, and Robert Owen is his extreme pettiness and narrowness of mind, his hatred of every really revolutionary movement and idea.
Proudhon criticised the "political constitution" from the point of view of private right. He wished to perpetuate private property, and to destroy that pernicious "fiction" the State, for ever.
Guizot had already said that the political constitution of a country has its root in the conditions of property existing there. For Proudhon the political constitution owes its origin only to human ignorance, has only been "imagined" in default of the "social organisation" at last "invented" by him, Proudhon, in the year of our Lord so and so. He judges the political history of mankind like a Utopian. But the Utopian negation of all reality by no means preserves us from its influence. Denied upon one page of a Utopian work it takes its revenge on another, where it often appears in all its nakedness. Thus Proudhon "denies" the State. "The State—no, no—I will none of it, even as servant; I reject all government, even direct government," he cries ad nauseam. But, oh! irony of reality! Do you know how he "invents" the constitution of value? It is very funny.
The constitution of value is the selling at a fair price, at the cost price.[1] If a merchant refuses to supply his merchandise at cost price it is because he is not certain of selling a sufficient quantity to secure a due return, and further he has no guarantee that he will get quid pro quo for his purchases. So he must have guarantees. And there may be "various kinds" of these guarantees . Here is one.
"Let us suppose that the Provisional Government or the Constituent Assembly …. had seriously wished to
- ↑ It was thus that Proudhon understood the determining of value by labour. He could never understand a Ricardo.
