The Philosophy of Poverty: The System of Economic Contradictions

by Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

This important work of political and moral philosophy set off a firestorm of criticism upon its publication in the mid-nineteenth century. Most notably, Joseph-Pierre Proudhon's The Philosophy of Poverty compelled Karl Marx to write a treatise in response. Marx's rejoinder, entitled The Poverty of Philosophy, is a fascinating companion piece to this Proudhon's book.

Genres: Philosophy, Economics, Politics, Nonfiction, Audiobook, Sociology, Theory

463 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1846

About the author

Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (15 January 1809 – 19 January 1865) was a French socialist, politician, philosopher, economist, and the founder of mutualist philosophy. He was the first person to declare himself an anarchist, using that term and is widely regarded as one of anarchism's most influential theorists. Proudhon is considered by many to be the "father of anarchism". Proudhon became a member of the French Parliament after the Revolution of 1848, whereafter he referred to himself as a federalist. Proudhon described the liberty he pursued as "the synthesis of communism and property". Some consider his mutualism to be part of individualist anarchism while others regard it to be part of social anarchism.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre-...

Reviews

[Luís · Rating 3 out of 5]

In 1847 Pierre-Joseph Proudhon began in Besançon, at Arls "Syncerite, Parfaite Union et Constance Réunies" of the Great East of France. He is portrayed to this day by GOF as "a frequent and fulfilling Freemason of his duties, and has strongly influenced Freemasonry's development in France."
The publication of the book attracted the attention of the French authorities. It was also attracting the interest of Karl Marx, who began to correspond with his author. The two influenced each other: they found themselves in Paris during the exile of Marx. Their friendship finally came to an end when Marx responded to his text system of economical contradictions, or The Philosophy of Misery, with another provoke entitled The Misery of Philosophy.
The dispute has become one of the origins of the division between Marxist and anarchist wings at the International Workers Association meetings. Some, such as Edmund Wilson, argue that Marx's attack on Proudhon originates in Karl Grün's prior defense, which Marx openly hated and had been the author of Proudhon's work translations into several languages.
Humanity is a specter for God, just as he is a specter for her; each of the two is for the other, cause, reason, and end of existence.

[Kennedy Ifeh · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the best review of this book you can find anywhere on the internet.
In ‘the Philosophy of Misery’, Proudhon analyses five evolutionary stages of capitalism, namely; division of labour, machinery, competition, monopoly, and tax/policing. Based on his analyses, he indicts capitalism. Since, according to him, socialism is a replication of certain elements of capitalism, he also indicts socialism. What are the bases of Proudhon’s indictments?
The book opens with the analyses of the fundamental cornerstone of capitalism, value.
‘Value’, declares Proudhon ‘has two faces; value in use and value in exchange’; which represents thesis and antithesis.
‘Value in use’ is the capacity of the products of a producer. ‘Value in exchange’, is the capacity of the products of producers, to purchase each others’ products.
Proudhon and economists are in agreement with the idea of the double character of value. But they differ in the definition of value and what value constitutes.
The economists say supply and demand are the regulators of value. Proudhon says supply and demand (or commerce) serves to reconcile exchange value and useful value. By their mutually exclusive antagonism, prices oscillate.
For example, a farmer who harvests 100 kg of maize expects that he should get twice as much value as when he had harvested 50 kg of maize. However, if the production of maize is doubled countrywide, the value of maize will be lower. Hence, a farmer who produces twice as he ought to have produced arrives at poverty in relation to the increase of his harvest. Fundamental contradiction!
Hence, according to Proudhon, when value in exchange exceeds useful value, the consumer suffers. But when useful value exceeds value in exchange, the producer suffers.
Proudhon has no answer to these contradictions between exchange value and use value, as they are antithetical concepts ingrained in human freewill. Hence, he declares, “…it is man’s free will that gives rise to the opposition between use value and exchange value. How can this opposition be removed, so long as free will exists? And how can the latter be sacrificed without sacrificing mankind?"
Proudhon went ahead to define a third type of value, ‘constituted value’. Constituted value is the synthesis of the tension existing between value in use and value in exchange. When the thesis of value in use meets its antithesis in value in exchange, they resolve into their proper identity in the scheme of homogenous whole.
While the economists say value has no measure and that it exists in perpetual fluctuation due to the forces of production, Proudhon says constituted value is the relations of commodity to the mass of wealth which constitutes a homogenous whole.
He submits that the distribution of wellbeing in any society at any given time follows the movement of value, and reproduces them in misery and luxury on a frightful scale and with terrible energy.
Proudhon took pains to define ‘constituted value’ as a necessary point of departure to analyse the stages of the evolution of capitalism. The stages are thus:

1. Division of Labour – Producers tend to organize labour in such a way to increase constituted value by tilting the scale in favour of exchange value. One of the ways of organizing labour to attain maximum exchange value is division of labour.

Proudhon criticized the concept of division of labour, that it takes away our capacity to develop our faculties. It stifles the intellectual growth of the working class and it is used as a tool to put them in perpetual misery.

The conditions of the labourer are summarized in the words of J.B Say (as quoted by Proudhon):

“A man who during his whole life performs but one operation, certainly acquires the power to execute it better and more readily then another; but at the same time he becomes less capable of any other occupation, whether physical or moral; his other faculties become extinct, and there results a degeneracy in the individual man…On the whole, it may be said that the separation of tasks is an advantageous use of human forces; that it increases enormously the products of society; but that it takes something from the capacity of each man taken individually.”

The primary cause of intellectual degeneracy is division. The more the productive power of labour is increased by assigning minute tasks to labourers, the more the labourers are reduced to mechanical operations. They become things rather than beings. The intelligence is crippled.

This problem bares its fangs into the world of arts and science. Industrial professionalism has destroyed the flare to search for eternal truth.

The only solution to the problem of division of labour is instruction. He challenged the organization of instruction in society.

When students are placed in classrooms, forced to listen and learn, forced to use their memories, forced to do tests, forced to learn in accordance with professional requirements, judged by 3 hours of an examination….their intelligence in stupefied, their faculties are crippled and they are degraded to professional invalids.

Instruction is supposed to be free, and is best when so. Students should be given freedom to learn, to think, to deliberate, to apply themselves to truths, to be moral creatures of God.

It is this freedom of instruction, in the perspective of Proudhon, which should guarantee the freedom of the labourers.


2. Machinery – Proudhon described machinery as the second phase in the evolution of capitalism. ‘The introduction of Machinery into industry is accomplished in opposition to the law of division of labour.’

Just as Machinery opposes division of labour in political economy, it also opposes conceptual analyses in the human mind.

‘Genius, talent, industry, is at the start a naked and inert potentiality,’ declares Proudhon, ‘which gradually grows in size and strength, takes on colour and form, and shades itself in an infinite variety of ways’…‘Man can attain welfare only in proportion as his reason and his liberty not only progress in harmony, but never halt in their development.’

When a labourer employs the aid of tools to do his work, he undermines reasoning and analyses. As such, the vital ingredient of experience which can only be gained by on-the-job-mastery is taken away from him. His capacity to labour using logic is rendered impotent by machinery.

In his conclusion, Proudhon maintains that the solution to the contradiction of machinery is qualitative instruction…’in order that instruction may be useful, in order that it may even be received, it is necessary, first of all, that the pupil should be free.’ Freedom at the heart of instruction will make labour worthy of its essence.

3. Competition – In Proudhon’s views, competition has a good side. Competition is necessary in the sense that it establishes true value of a commodity. Monopoly is evil, it conceals the true value of a commodity… ‘as long as a product is supplied by a single manufacturer, its real value remains a mystery…’

However, competition has a bad side. The more competition develops the more it reduces the number of competition. In the long run, we see a situation whereby competition negates itself; competition destroys competition in the final analyses. ‘Competition abandoned to itself, and deprived of the direction of a superior and efficacious principle, can never arrive at its own constitution’

There is an extent to which competition is stifled, that compromises universal liberty. Yet, there is an extent to which competition develops, that eventually leads to the destruction of competition.

Proudhon submits that the remedy to the bad manifestation of competition is to find its equilibrium, its police. But how should competition be policed?


4. Monopoly – ‘Monopoly is the natural opposite of competition’…, ‘the inevitable end of competition’. It is the driving force of competition. If competition is an unavoidable means of society, due to the inherent nature of man, monopoly is an unavoidable end of competition. If man must be free, then competition and monopoly are inevitable paths which society must thread.

Monopoly, by imposing rules on invention and enterprise stifles ingenuity and cripples the faculties to freely express that unlimited and constantly evolving divine intelligence. Monopoly demoralizes man’s will-power, while competition invigorates the human-factor.

Thus, one can justifiably conclude that without the goal of monopoly, there would be no competition.

Proudhon’s perspective of monopoly is different from the socialist or communist perspective of monopoly.
When the socialists or communists talk of monopoly, they talk of sacrifice for the state, they talk of universal fraternity, they talk of State sovereignty.

Proudhon’s perspective of monopoly is an evolutionary trend in the development of human relations.

In his perspective, the socio-political sub-division of the human community into family, clan, tribes, cities, nations, state, is an element of monopoly, the will to establish sovereignty.

In his perspective, the economic idea of wealth generation through the perfection of methods and then consolidating the products of labour earned from division of labour, machinery and competition is an element of monopoly. The resultant effect is what is known as ‘net product’ and ‘gross product’. Proudhon believes that monopoly aims at the greatest net product, even if it means obtaining it at the price of extermination of the human race.

[Aung Sett Kyaw Min · Rating 2 out of 5]

Intended as a double polemic against both "socialists" (of the 19th century) who seek the annihilation of political economy and political economists who clutch at the status quo without acknowledging its yawning contradictions.
Proudhon elaborates on the whole system of such contradictions involving the successive stages of the organization of labor (division, machinery, competition, monopoly, police/taxation). Each element tends to generate both wealth and misery simulatenously, and are negated by the next element in the series (e.g division of labor is negated by machinery). What functions as the primordial contradiction in this schema is the antinomy between use value and exchange value in which each tends to the other's annhilation, supposedly.
The whole treatsie is wordy and polemical. Just when you think a main argument is being explicated at length you are treated to a two three page digression on something which is only tangentially related. Fortunately the clarity of the writing improves starting from the chapter on monopoly.
Some of Proudhon conclusions, for instance, that machinery restores the intelligence and dignity of parcellaire laborer, that is, the former "negates" the harmful effects of the latter, are rather doubtful (if machinery brings together what the law of division of labor divides, then the proper conclusion would seem to be that the machine, not the working operating it, is the site of condensation and synthesis of a multiple processes)
Proudhon brings up "providence" a lot of times but given that he's a godless atheist himself it is most likely done for the polemical effect. In fact, the bombastic introduction in which he waxes lyrical about political economy being a "practical metaphysics" sets the tone for the chapters that follow.

[Randal Samstag · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have posted a review of Proudhon's comic masterpiece / muddle here.

My conclusions from that review:

What to make of P.J. Proudhon? Here I have focused solely on his attempts at economic theory as presented in his book, The Evolution of Capitalism, System of Economical Contradictions or, The Philosophy of Misery. I have not addressed his earlier work, What is Property?, or his later work in anarchist theory. But as an economist, how should he be judged? One would have to grant to Schumpeter and Marx that Proudhon was, at best, an extreme amateur economist. Many (including this reader) would grant to Walras that the base of his theory of value in labor is on shaky ground. His writing is “manic excessive” like our contemporary Zizek, but also like his predecessor Blake and his contemporary Marx. But while recognizing these limitations, this reader at least, must have an open heart to a man who tried to look into the true nature of human society. What he saw there were inherent contradictions that don’t go away. Have they gone away yet?

[Arys Aditya · Rating 5 out of 5]

Buku inilah yang meradikalisasi pandangan kita tentang masyarakat. Di awal banyak menggunakan metafor dan analogi yang berkaitan dengan sistem relijius Kristianistik. Pada akhir bagian 'Tuhani itu, saya masih ingat persis ada pertanyaan kunci yang ia ajukan, dengan huruf kapital: "WHAT, THEN, IS THE TRUTH IN RELATION TO US, AND WHAT IS THE CHARACTER OF CERTAINTY?" Nah!
Bab VIII juga merupakan bab yang sangat menarik. Dengan banyak mengutip dan menyindir Rosseau, dalam bahasa saya sendiri, bab ini akan merobek-robek kepala, jika Anda seorang konservatif. Pertanyaan yang diiringi konteks sosio-historis mengenai penderitaan manusia di bawah cengkeraman Tuhan (memang agak seperti Novel Brother Karamazov-nya Dostoevsky).
Tentu saja titik tekannya tidak hanya aspek eksistensialis manusia, tapi juga relasi ekonomi, politik, dan ekonomi-politik di masa yang dianggap sebagai jaman keemasan manusia lewat penemuan-penemuan teknologinya.
Seperti halnya tulisan filsuf lain, buku ini tidak bisa dibaca sambil-lalu, dan kalau Anda memaksa membacanya dengan main-main, selamat atas kesia-siaan.
Selamat mencoba karya klasik-monumental salah seorang (filsuf) anarkis.

[OneDimensionalMan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Really bad. Like someone half remembered lessons on Hegel and then based his entire life on it.
Turgid, wrong, and incredibly incoherent. Went in wanting to at see the best, came away thinking that Proudhon was at best misguided and more likely a libertarian incapable of theorising.
There’s the occasional banger line but it’s a bit like trying to look at a landscape through the moth holes in a jumper.
This text has largely been forgotten, except in reference to Marx’s critique and I think that is probably the most kind thing one can say about it.

[t.s. esque · Rating 2 out of 5]

Audiobook: www.youtube.com/watch?v=KKFKnpL96CU

["Nico" · Rating 2 out of 5]

As a work of political-economy Proudhon's double polemic against tendencies of the time in a framework of classical economics is of course useless to us. But his theodicy (intro & ch 8) is frequently interesting. There are healthier ways to spend your time than reading a book that will have you scribbling insults to Proudhon in the marigins. If you must read this book, keep a brisk pace.

[M. Ashraf · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read The Poverty of Philosophy by Karl Marx first and as it was a critique to this book I decided to read it to form a good opinion about it.
And after reading it I have to say I agree with Marx!

[Scotty · Rating 1 out of 5]

Lets just say I understand why Marx hated this horrid book.

Don't waste your time on these 400 pages of structureless dribble.

[Steven H · Rating 5 out of 5]

THE ANARCHIST LOOKS AT VARIOUS ISSUES, INCLUDING RELIGION

Author Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (1809-1865) states in the Introduction to this 1846 book, “It seems, then, that all is ended; it seems that, with the cessation of worship and mystification of humanity by itself, the theological problem is for ever put aside. The gods have gone: there is nothing left for man but to grow weary and die in his egoism… My exaltation resembles annihilation; and, since I made myself a God, I seem but shadow. It is possible that I am still a ME, but it is very difficult to regard myself as the absolute; and, if I am not the absolute, I am only half of an idea.” (Pg. vii)

He continues, “Humanity…. inevitably supposes the existence of God… we must believe that so astonishing an hallucination conceals some mystery, which deserves to be fathomed. I say hallucination and mystery, but without intending to deny thereby the superhuman content of the God-idea, and without admitting the necessity of a new symbolism---I mean a new religion. For if it is indisputable that humanity, in affirming God… only affirms itself, it is equally undeniable that it affirms itself as something other than its own conception of itself, as all mythologies and theologies show.” (Pg. xii) He adds, “It remains for me to tell why, in a work on political economy, I have felt it necessary to start with the fundamental hypothesis of all philosophy… I need the hypothesis of God to establish the authority of social science… Now, the first judgement of the reason… is necessarily this: THERE IS A GOD; which means that society is governed with design, premeditation, intelligence. This judgment, which excludes chance, is, then, the foundation of the possibility of a social science…. Thus the history of society is to us but a long determination of the idea of God, a progressive revelation of the destiny of man… Humanitarian atheism is, therefore the last step in the moral and intellectual enfranchisement of man, consequently the last phase of philosophy, serving as a pathway to the scientific reconstruction and verification of all the demolished dogmas. I need the hypothesis of God, not only… to give a meaning to history, but also to legitimate the reforms to be effected, in the name of science, in the State.” (Pg. xiii-xiv)

In the first chapter, he states, “Political economy is a collection of the observations thus far made in regard to the phenomena of the production and distribution of wealth; that is, in regard to the most common, most spontaneous, and therefore the most genuine, forms of labor and exchange… Political economy is, therefore, the natural history of the most apparent and most universally accredited customs, traditions, practices, and methods of humanity in all that concerns the production and distribution of wealth.” (Pg. xxii) Later, he adds, “Thus society finds itself, at its origin, divided into two great parties: the one traditional and essentially hierarchical, which, according to the object if is considering, calls itself by turns royalty or democracy, philosophy or religion, in short, property; the other socialism, which, coning to life at every crisis of civilization, proclaims itself preeminently ANARCHICAL and ATHEISTIC; that is, rebellious against all authority, human and divine.” (Pg. xxiv)

He asserts, “In primitive communism misery… is the universal condition. Labor is war declared upon this misery. Labor organizes itself, first by division, next by machinery, than by competition, etc. Now, the question is whether it is not in the essence of this organization, as given us by political economy, at the same time, that it puts an end to the misery of some, to aggravate that of others in a fatal and unavoidable manner. These are the terms in which the question of pauperism must be stated, and for this reason we have undertaken to solve it.” (Pg. lxxiii)

He observes, “it is impossible, contradictory, in the present system of society, for the proletariat to secure well-being through education or education through well-being. For, without considering the fact that the proletaire, a human machine, is as unfit for comfort as for education, it is demonstrated… that his wages continually tend to go down rather than up, and that… the cultivation of his mind, if it were possible, would be useless to him; so that he always inclines toward barbarism and misery.” (Pg. ixxv)

He says, “Multiply machinery, and you increase the amount of arduous and disagreeable labor to be done.” (xcii)

He asserts, “Is it not immediately and intuitively evident that COMPETITION DESTROYS COMPETITION? Is there a theorem in geometry more certain, more peremptory, than that? How then… can a principle which is its own denial enter into science?... And if its most certain effect is to ruin those who it incites, how does it become useful? For the INCONVENIENCES which follow in its train, like the good which it procures, are not accidents arising from the work of man; both follow logically from the principle, and subsist by the same title and face to face.” (Pg. ci)

He argues, “You wish to strike articles of luxury; you take civilization at the wrong end. I maintain… that articles of luxury should be free. In economic language what are luxuries? Those products which bear the smallest ratio to the total wealth, those which come last in the industrial series and whose creation presupposes the preexistence of all the others. From this point of view all the products of human labor have been, and in turn have ceased to be, articles of luxury, since we mean by luxury nothing but a relation of succession, whether chronological or commercial, in the elements of wealth. Luxury, in a word, if synonymous with progress.” (Pg. clxi)

He states, “Taxation, then police---henceforth we shall not separate these two ideas---is a new source of pauperism; taxation aggravates the subversive effects of the proceeding antinomies---division of labor, machinery, competition, monopoly. It attacks the laborer in his liberty and in his conscience, in his body and in his soul, by parasitism, vexations, the frauds which it prompts, and the punishments which follow them.” (Pg. clxvi)

He argues, “the theory of man’s innocence, corresponding to that of the depravity of society, has at last got the upper hand. The immense majority of socialists… have solemnly repudiated the Christian myth of the fall to substitute there for the system of an aberration on the part of society. And, as most of these sectarians, in spite of their flagrant impiety, were still too religious, too pious, to finish the work of Jean Jacques and trace back to God the responsibility for evil, they have found a way of deducing from the hypothesis of God the dogma of the native goodness of man, and have begun to fulminate against society in the finest fashion.” (Pg. clxxxiv)

He summarizes, “Social destiny, the solution of the human enigma, is found, then, in these words: EDUCATION, PROGRESS. The education of liberty, the taming of our instincts, the enfranchisement or REDEMPTION of our soul---this, then… is the meaning of the Christian mystery.” (Pg. cxcvi)

He notes, “it is plain that man, the syncretism of the creation, the point of union of all the potentialities manifested by the creation, physical, organic, mental, and moral; man, perfectible and fallible, does not satisfy the condition of Divinity as he, from the nature of his mind, must conceive them. Neither is he God, nor can be, become God.” (Pg. cxcviii)

He contends, “I deny, therefore, the supremacy of God over humanity; I reject his providential government, the non-existence of which is sufficiently established by the metaphysical and economical hallucinations of humanity---in a word, by the martyrdom of our race; I decline the jurisdiction of the Supreme Being over man; I take away his titles of father, king, judge, good, merciful…rewarding, and avenging. All these attributes… are but a caricature of humanity, irreconcilable with the autonomy of civilization, and contradicted, moreover, by the history of its aberrations and catastrophes.” (Pg. cciv)

He concludes, “the universal consent of the peoples, manifested by the establishment of many different faiths, and the forever insoluble contradiction which strikes humanity in its ideas, its manifestations, and its tendencies, indicate a secret relation of our soul, and through it of entire nature, with the infinite---a relation the determination of which would express at the same time the meaning of the universe and the reason of our existence.” (Pg. ccvii)

This book may prove disappointing for those interested in Anarchism, since it focuses so much on other issues (notably religion).

[Mitchell · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book does a good job of outlining Proudhon’s critique of capitalism. However, his good points are undercut by meandering from the core topic and a general density of writing.

[M Eren Yasar · Rating 4 out of 5]

Now lets hear Herr Marx s words.