THE METAPHYSICS OF POLITICAL ECONOMY 163
opposite of monopoly, that, in consequence, it cannot be the opposite of association.
Feudalism was, from its origin, opposed to competition, which did not yet exist. Did it follow that competition was not opposed to feudalism?
In fact, society, association, are denominations which may be given to all societies, to feudal society as well as to bourgeois society, which is association based upon competition. How, then, can there be Socialists who, by the single word association think to be able to dispose of competition? And how can M. Proudhon himself think to defend competition against Socialism, simply by defining competition by the single word association?
All that we have just considered forms the good side of competition, as M. Proudhon understands it. We will now pass on to the evil side, that is to say to the negative side of competition, to its inconveniences, to those quali- ties in it which are destructive, subversive, maleficent.
The picture of these which M. Proudhon presents to us is a somewhat lugubrious one.
Competition engenders poverty, foments civil war; it “changes the natural zones,” confounds nationalities, disturbs families, corrupts the public conscience, “over- turns the notions of equity, of justice,” of morality, and what is worse, it destroys honest and free commerce and does not even give in exchange synthetical value, fixed and honest price. It disenchants everybody, even the economists. It forces things on even to its own destruc- tion,
After all the bad that M. Proudhon says of it, can there be, for the relations of bourgeois society, for its principles and its illusions, an element more disintegrat- ing, more destructive, than competition ?
Let us observe that competition always becomes more
