System of Economic Contradictions

Contr'un

Proudhon on Property (1846) – Conclusion

June 4, 2010 Shawn P. Wilbur
Here is the final section of Proudhon’s study on property, from the Contradictions. The other sections I posted recently will appear, in full or part, in the forthcoming AK Press anthology, but this section didn’t make the cut for various reasons, not the least of which was its difficulty. The translation is still considerably rougher than the others in a few places, but I think most of it is clear and very interesting. As of today, I have officially begun a revision and annotation of Benjamin R. Tucker’s translations of the first two memoirs on property. Since the translations are generally […]
Contr'un

Proudhon on Property (1846) – Part 5

May 20, 2010 Shawn P. Wilbur
THE SYSTEM OF ECONOMIC CONTRADICTIONS CHAPTER XI EIGHTH EPOCH.—PROPERTY [continued from Part 4] Thus property, which should consummate the holy union of man and nature, leads only to an odious prostitution. The sultan uses and abuses his slave: the earth is for him an instrument of luxury… I find here more than a metaphor; I discover a profound analogy. What is it that, in the relations of the sexes, distinguishes marriage from concubinage? Everyone senses the difference between these two things; few people would be in a state to render an account of it, so obscure has the question become […]
Contr'un

Proudhon on Property (1846) – Part 4

May 20, 2010 Shawn P. Wilbur
THE SYSTEM OF ECONOMIC CONTRADICTIONS CHAPTER XI EIGHTH EPOCH.—PROPERTY [continued from Part 3]   Of all the forms of property, the most detestable is that which has talent for a pretext. Prove to an artist, by the comparison of times and men, that the inequality of works of art, in the different centuries, above all stems from the oscillating movements of society, from the changing of beliefs and of the state of minds; that whatever a society is worth, so much is the worth of the artist; that between the artist and his contemporaries there exists a community of needs […]
Contr'un

Proudhon on Property (1846) – Part 3

May 20, 2010 Shawn P. Wilbur
THE SYSTEM OF ECONOMIC CONTRADICTIONS CHAPTER XI EIGHTH EPOCH.—PROPERTY   [continued from Part 2] § III. — How property is corrupted. By means of property, society has realized a thought that is useful, laudable, and even inevitable: I am going to prove that by obeying an invincible necessity, it has cast itself into an impossible hypothesis. I believe that I have not forgotten or diminished any of the motives which have presided over the establishment of property; I even dare say that I have given these motives a unity and an obviousness unknown until this moment. Let the reader fill […]
Contr'un

Proudhon on Property (1846) – Part 2

May 19, 2010 Shawn P. Wilbur
THE SYSTEM OF ECONOMIC CONTRADICTIONS CHAPTER XI EIGHTH EPOCH.—PROPERTY [continued from Part 1] I The organization of common sense presupposes the solution of another problem, the problem of certainty, which divides into two correlative species, certainty of subject and certainty of object. In other words, before searching for the laws of thought, one must assure oneself of the reality of the being that thinks as well as that of the being that is thought, without which one runs the risk of researching the laws of nothing. The first moment of that great polemic is thus that in which the self […]
Contr'un

Proudhon on Property (1846) – Part 1

May 15, 2010 Shawn P. Wilbur
THE SYSTEM OF ECONOMIC CONTRADICTIONS CHAPTER XI EIGHTH EPOCH.—PROPERTY 1.—Property is inexplicable apart from the economic series.—Of the organization of common sense, or problem of certainty. The problem of property is, after that of human destiny, the greatest that reason can propose, and the last that it will be able to resolve. Indeed, the theological problem, the enigma of religion, has been explicated; the philosophical problem, which treats the value and legitimacy of knowledge, is resolved: there remains the social problem, which simply joins these two, and the solution of which, as everyone believes, comes essentially from property. I will […]
mutualism

Dyer Lum on Mutualism, and a note on Proudhon

October 2, 2009 Shawn P. Wilbur
I’m working on gathering the pieces for a series of pamphlets documenting the mutualist tradition, and ran across this rather strange, but very interesting piece, by the frequently strange, but always interesting Dyer D. Lum. Tucker’s translation of the first volume of The System of Economical Contradictions was published in 1888, and Lum’s 1892 piece seems to be a fairly idiosyncratic commentary on it. [I admit that I have tended to treat the Contradictions as a sort of badly flawed middle-step between the initial critique of property in 1840 and the realization that “the antinomy does not resolve itself” in […]