No. 4 (April 4, 1848)
Représentant du Peuple no. 4 ( April 4, 1848): 1-2.
IDEAS AND FACTS.
There are always, and at this moment more than ever, two politics standing face-to-face: the politics of interests and the politics of ideas. The former is just as entitled as the latter to the attention of influential figures; its mission is to reduce the suffering of all members of society to its barest minimum, to temper, as much as possible, the profound upheaval in which almost every life is currently immersed and, finally, to give life to all the principles that have recently triumphed by facilitating their realization. It is also its duty to work tirelessly to restore confidence, credit and the circulation of financial instruments and social wealth, and to return producers to the work they call for with every fiber of their being and all their needs. This is what we mean by the politics of interests, that is to say, the regulation of the material life, the active and immediate existence of the nation.
But alongside this important preoccupation — this essential preoccupation, if you will — stands the politics of ideas: that is, the stewardship of the principles in whose name the French Revolution was carried out, and the logical extension of those principles to their ultimate consequences. This constitutes a sphere quite distinct from the other, even though it is directly linked to it.
Ideas and facts interpenetrate and mutually engender one another; yet, while this holds true regarding their ultimate objective, the situation is entirely different at the moment of their initial emergence. From a certain perspective, one might define an idea as a fact that does not yet exist but is striving to come into being; conversely, were one to accept that definition, one would then have to define a fact as an idea that no longer exists, or is tending toward disappearance. Now, this very contrast in the conditions of their existence frequently places them in a state of antagonism. The man more concerned with his interests than with his principles is, above all, the man of the present; he acts as if this present were destined to last forever. Ideas appear to him as mere reveries unworthy of a pragmatic mind, or, at most, as the idle play of an imagination lacking any real substance. The man, conversely, who is more concerned with his hopes than with his interests is, above all, the man of the future; he acts as if current events merited no serious attention. He does not trouble himself with finding ways to harness the things and people of the moment to serve the progressive development and gradual triumph of his convictions; rather, he is almost exclusively absorbed in the contemplation and pursuit of his ideal.
One might say that the entire world is divided between these two types of men, who represent the two political approaches we have attempted to characterize. It would be all too easy to add to this parallel the observation that the man of self-interest is as often self-serving as the other is self-sacrificing; yet, firstly, we do not believe this latter assertion to be as universally true as the preceding ones and, secondly, it would run counter to the very objective we aim to highlight.
Indeed, we believe that these two political approaches must draw ever closer together. We believe that revolutions sometimes stem from this same duel that exists between men of theory and men of practice. A mind immersed in practical affairs, if it lacks the illumination of a higher guiding principle, soon loses its sense of right and wrong, having already lost its sense of truth and falsehood; it is then that the dominant self-interest becomes exclusive, brutal and tyrannical. The former conservative party pushed this folly to its absolute extreme; it ceased to comprehend anything lying outside the realm of concrete fact. Every generous sentiment, every lofty idea, appeared to it as something utterly devoid of common sense; reality itself seemed like a mirage, precisely because the party no longer truly lived within the embrace of that reality. The Revolution has abruptly jolted it out of its monomania: henceforth, or so we must hope, pragmatists will no longer be so misguided as to disregard the virtue of principles and the power of ideas. There are forces that one only thinks to acknowledge once they have erupted.
But if practitioners are to rise upon the tide of events, it is imperative that theoreticians immerse themselves in the action of daily life, so as to adapt their ideas to the possibilities inherent in the situation. From this convergence may emerge a new politics, partaking of both approaches, at once wise and precise, rich in promise for the future and no less fruitful in providing partial and immediate solutions — a politics conscious of the ultimate goal toward which it must strive, but equally conscious of the means by which that goal may be attained.
We say this because we believe that such a frame of mind is the most conducive to serving the Republic well. On the one hand, there are men who aspire solely to restore the flow of affairs, who labor only to set commerce, industry, and all the functions of the body politic back on their accustomed course. Were such men to succeed without qualification, order would soon reign in Paris and throughout the world; yet this would come at the expense of the Revolution itself, which would have been rendered utterly sterile, or would have served, at best, merely to alter the political form of France. This is not a desirable outcome.
In contrast to this mindset, there are others who would seek to seize their ideal immediately, men who, in the fervor of their aspirations, observe no moderation, abhor any form of transition and would willingly plunge their country into the perils of the most terrible ordeals, without hesitation or scruple.
Both of these tendencies are ruinous. One must, undoubtedly, stand ready for any eventuality, living, as it were, henceforth in the fullness of one’s revolutionary energy; yet, at the same time, one must remain mindful of the necessities of the present: of those sufferings that are not indispensable to the establishment of democracy and, in short, of all the harm that it is humanly possible to avoid.
Such is the spirit, at once speculative and practical, that must animate the new politics for which we yearn with all our hearts; a politics untainted by either the aberrations of utopianism or the machinations of self-interest, for it will embrace both the present and the future, both interests and ideas.
Eug. STOURM.
No. 12 (April 12, 1848)
Représentant du Peuple no. 12 (April 12, 1848): 1.
Rights and Duties
It is difficult to have a more misguided understanding than is generally held regarding the distribution of rights and duties. It would seem that everyone should accept, as a self-evident axiom, that duties are proportional to each person’s power; so that, as was once said, albeit in vain, “Noblesse oblige,” one could say that every gift, every favor from the nation or society entails obligations strictly equivalent to those gifts and favors. It is possible that the principle itself raises no objection; but its application does not meet with the same docility. Moreover, in practice, the maxim is simply reversed. It is to the person who has received neither the gifts of strength, nor the benefits of education, nor the favors of fortune, that one always speaks of duties. As one fears the effects of discouragement, one extols the sublime virtues of resignation. As for the man who possesses relative omnipotence, you never hear him speak of his rights; and his fellow men, stupefied by prejudice, no longer speak to him in any other way. So much so that one might say there are two races in humanity: one powerless and paralyzed, burdened with all duties; the other omnipotent and free, granted all rights. Moreover, a socialist once said that we live in a world turned upside down; it is quite logical that, in such a world, one should profess and practice an inverted morality.
No. 14 (April 14, 1848)
Origin of the Word Club.
The meaning of the word club is not generally known. Club means massue, bat or mace. This word was created in the time of the round heads, when popular meetings were formed to bring down the monarchy. No other word could better express the strength of the people, a new Hercules destroying the hydra of privilege with massive blows.
No. 17 (April 17, 1848)
Le Représentant du Peuple (April 17, 1848): 1.
With the Bank of Exchange, No More Fears!
Let us assume the case where no one in France possesses cash;
Everyone would then have to make their purchases on credit. Now, if we all gave credit to each other, and each bought according to the measure of what he sells, it would happen that no one would owe anything to anyone, or, in other words, that each would only owe what would be due to him.
By thus exchanging our products without the aid of cash, we would no longer be obliged to pay enormous interest to the usurers, the parasites who devour us. We would do without them.
How then can this idea be realized? It is simply a matter of creating an exchange bank in Paris, with branches in the departments. There, by means of the bill of exchange, the use of which would become widespread, products would become, in a way, common currency.
Each merchant would have an open account at this bank where his debts and assets would be exposed in broad daylight, in such a way that bankruptcies would be impossible, and to settle the particular position of each interested party, this would only require extremely easy general accounting.
Moreover, there is still enough and even too much cash in circulation for retail trade and payments from employers to their employees, their workers, etc.
The Bank of Exchange, as proposed by citizen Proudhon, would therefore only be necessary for trading properly speaking.
Small business would continue to operate as in the past and would only use bank paper for transactions with wholesale trade or the manufacturing industry.
We will develop the various advantages of the Exchange Bank, which we only wanted to briefly indicate today.
No. 20 (April 20, 1848)
Ideas and Liberty.
How can it be that under a republic, where all must work for the common good, honest citizens still seek to rely on fiction and lies? Do they not know that a lie is a dangerous weapon that always ends up wounding the one who intended to use it?
That men who long for the past and who fervently desire the restoration of monarchical fictions and constitutional lies should use, to divide republicans, every means afforded them by the wealth of their patrons and the credulity of the public, we understand. That the former employees of the dynasty should strive, through their underhanded schemes, to spread terror among peaceful citizens and to pour the poison of slander upon the people’s best friends; that they stir up distrust in the provinces against Paris, and that they incite the bourgeoisie against the workers, we still understand — and we are little alarmed by it, for we have faith in human reason and in the good sense of the country, which will soon put an end to all these intrigues.
But that men who sincerely desire the Republic should try to rely on the prejudices of the past; that they should encourage and incite the absurd prejudices of a class of citizens against new ideas and the men in whom they are embodied — this is what we cannot comprehend.
What! Is there no better way to combat ideas than to outlaw them in the person of the writers who have expressed or defended them? Does not the liberty we have won, whose guardianship has been entrusted to you, grant you the right to destroy, by the power of reason and logic, the arguments of your opponents? Do you need to massacre the poet to obliterate an idea? Don’t you know that an idea can be neither hanged, nor drowned, nor stoned? Don’t you know that it grows amidst persecution, that it is steeped in the blood of martyrs and that it is never closer to ruling the world than when it is seen dying on the cross or stifled in the dungeons of tyranny?
So, all of you who truly desire the Republic, leave to the vanquished the pitiful weapons that still remain to them: lies and slander. These weapons will soon shatter in their powerless hands. What they couldn’t accomplish with a budget of 1.5 billion, with immense forces, with devoted soldiers, gendarmes and courts, they will no more accomplish today when all they have left is the money they stole from France, and the liberty to say and print anything. So leave yesterday’s defeated poor souls in the mud they’ve sunk into, and don’t borrow their cowardly weapon.
And above all, don’t condemn ideas under any label they may appear on. Ideas are manifestations of humanity’s collective life. They are emanations of universal intelligence, sparks from that source of love and light called God. What does it matter if the form they take sometimes seems tainted by error, exaggeration, or madness! Discussion, analysis, and reasoning will, sooner or later, separate error from truth and find, beneath the cloud that obscures it, the ray of light glimpsed dimly by the first initiators.
Ideas tainted by error or falsehood are never dangerous to civilized humanity. Nations, striving toward the future, cannot assimilate elements of dissolution, any more than a swift river can see its waters corrupted.
Ideas cannot be imposed by violence either; everyone knows this, and those who serve the idea know it better than anyone.
Why then protest against any propaganda whatsoever, when it is peaceful? But there are subversive doctrines, they say! Well! What does it matter if one does not wish to impose them on anyone? Those who wish to practice them are free to accept them or reject them. Reforms that one imposes upon oneself are good and appropriate. Let everyone wear the clothes that suit them, and don’t force anyone to wear something that doesn’t fit. Respect the freedom of others as you would have your own respected. Finally, as the singer-poet said:
“Let us even go to Mass,
That is what liberty is all about!”
No. 41 (May 11, 1848)
How to Reestablish Credit
The Revolution has dealt a terrible blow to credit. The Provisional Government tried to treat the disease without studying its cause, and, like so many other empirical doctors, it killed the patient.
Today, whatever optimistic pronouncements our statesmen may make, credit no longer exists in France; it must be created anew.
Fortunately, the elements of national wealth are not lacking in our country. It is simply a matter of making use of them. Agricultural and manufactured goods are quite abundant; they simply need to be put back into circulation.
The great driving force of circulation is credit.
Not the kind of credit that relies solely on speculation, on speculation, on stock market games. This kind of credit is only good for duping and provoking commercial and financial crises. We hope that it will never be a question of it again.
We want to talk about true, real credit, that which is based on a genuine commercial or exchange transaction, that which rests on an exact, certain value. determined by the consent of two or more contracting parties.
We will explain.
First of all, how does true credit operate, how is it established?
True credit exists only on the condition that it is backed by collateral equal to the value of the credit.
Indeed, a merchant, or any producer, only delivers their goods, their products, in exchange for a sum of money equal to the agreed-upon value of those goods, those products.
If the buyer cannot pay cash for the goods delivered, they give, instead of money, a written promise to pay at a specific place, on a specific date, a sum in cash equal to that which they received in goods. This promise may be their own or that of another, which they hold in their possession, and whose value they corroborate by adding their own signature. Such is the promissory note with one or more signatures; such is also the accepted draft or bill of exchange.
Most transactions are handled in this way. They are made on credit, and the sum of sales made by any manufacturer, merchant, or producer is represented in their hands either by an invoice accepted by the buyer, or by a promissory note signed or endorsed by them, or by a bill of exchange drawn on them.
Well, it is these different representations of the product that must be made to circulate as money in the hands of producers, merchants, and manufacturers.
Banks already have this mission. But they fulfill it only insufficiently, incompletely, because their final security is always cash, and not the product; thus, in times of crisis, their assistance, as we have seen since February 24, cannot prevent commercial disasters.
This impotence of the banks obviously stems from the fact that, in times of political or commercial crisis, metallic capital withdraws from circulation, abandons the banks, and thus leaves the channel through which products were transported dry. From one place to another, from the factory to the store, from the store to the market. In short, the means of exchanging products no longer exists.
And yet the products still exist; the earth has not ceased to produce raw materials; the arms of the workers, the power of the machines, are still there to transform these materials and adapt them to our needs; indeed, the stores are full and the national wealth is the same as before the crisis.
What would it take, then, to put an end to such a state of affairs?
It would simply require that goods, products, and social wealth be able to exchange with one another, to pass from hand to hand, without the aid of this hidden intermediary, or that its holders cling to at such an exorbitant rate; without the aid of currency, in short.
For this, would it not suffice for the product, which is the source of all wealth, to be represented in some way whatsoever, provided that this representation was accurate, widespread, and convenient for circulation?
As we said earlier, the mission of banks is to receive from each person a value which, under the name of promissory note, bill of exchange, etc., represents a product delivered, accepted and to be repaid. In exchange for this paper, which represents a particular, special value, if the bank provides a paper representing the same value, but under a general, universal title, exchangeable for any kind of product on all the country’s markets, will it not have rendered the same service as if it had provided cash or bullion?
Such a bank would offer as much guarantee as the Bank of France itself would if it held in its vaults, in metallic reserves, a value equal to the sum of its banknotes; for in both cases, each circulating banknote would be the actual representation of a value held in the hands, in the coffers, or in the vaults of the Bank.
Such is the mechanism of the Bank of Exchange, which simplifies, as we see, to the highest degree, the operations of exchange, credit, and circulation. Here, products are exchanged directly for products, without having to pay capital, the agio, a premium which, by raising its price, sometimes suffices. to completely halt the mechanism of production and distribution of social wealth.
We will soon publish a plan in which this new circulation system will be developed from a practical and immediately implementable point of view.
No. 45 (May 16, 1848)
- “The True Revolutionary Politics” (pdf)
No. 47 (May 18, 1848)
BANK OF EXCHANGE. — NOTICE.
All citizens who wish to join the society of the BANK OF EXCHANGE, the purpose of which is the exchange of goods for goods without the need for cash, are invited to register at the office of the newspaper Le Représentant du Peuple, 8 rue J.-J. Rousseau. A register is available there for this purpose.
This appeal is also addressed to all citizens, for there is no citizen who does not need exchange. Through the Exchange Bank, that is to say, through circulation, the worker can realize the results of their labor, the merchant their goods, the trader their securities and the landowner their income. To need the Exchange Bank, one simply needs to have something to give or exchange with someone; It is enough to be a producer in the present through one’s work, through one’s industry, or to have been one in the past and to possess through savings, inheritance or otherwise.
No. 48 (May 19, 1848)
ECONOMIC REFORM. — NOTICE.
Economic reform is everything; political reform, nothing. Let our readers take note of our words:
Politics, of whatever sort it may be, can only lead to monarchy. In the sphere of political ideas, everything converges, everything concludes in the restoration of royal power, on pain of inconsistency and hypocrisy. It is the monarchy that inspires the National Assembly, the executive commission, the ministers and all the newspapers; it was politics that inspired, unbeknownst to them, the Montagnards who were miserably defeated on May 15. We have said it many times, — and this is what has earned us the distrust of the ultra-democrats, who despite their political radicalism, have never been anything other than semi-socialists, — monarchy is the fatal, inevitable end of politics. We have to escape from politics if we want to be republicans.
While the National Assembly will waste time composing a political constitution from bits and scraps; while the new workers’ commission will take up the abandoned idea of national workshops; while official philanthropy exhausts, without fruit, its last resources for the workers on strike, we will cast in iron, with a single concept, the economic constitution, and we will proceed, without delay, to the complete reform of society.
The organization of credit forms the first part of the economic constitution. We gave a specimen of this yesterday in our draft statutes for the Bank of Exchange.
The industrial-agricultural organization, and consequently, the reform of the State, will form the second part of this same constitution: we will immediately deduce it from the principles laid down in the first part.
The implementation will follow, as soon as we have collected a sufficient number of members.
We therefore ask our readers, and all our friends from Paris and the departments, to immediately form committees for the organization of credit, circulation and work, and to collect support from citizens everywhere.
Registrations must indicate the name, profession, domicile and, insofar as possible, the number of people making up the family and employed in the workshop of each member.
The lists will be published, gradually, in the Représentant du Peuple. They will determine the procedure to follow for the next work.
We are also asking citizens for any comments they may have to make to us on the various parts of the economic constitution. The letters must reach us postage free, at the offices of the Représentant du Peuple, 8 Rue J.-J. Rousseau,. All will be analyzed, and responded to, either separately or collectively.
