I’ve been spending time lately — time that perhaps would have been at least as well spent on less obscure material — finishing the translation of Pierre Leroux’s Equality. Leroux’s work is largely forgotten now, but, as longtime readers here will know, it had a fairly significant influence on anarchists in the 1840s. Equality and Humanity, the work that followed it, are texts that will undoubtedly reward closer examination as I continue with my work on Proudhon and mutualism.
There are other encounters that seem as inescapable, but, alas, seem unlikely to be quite so fruitful. One of those involves the Belgian “rational socialist” Jean Guillaume César Alexandre Hippolyte, baron de Colins, otherwise known as Jean Hippolyte Colins de Ham or just Colins. Colins seems to have aspired to a rivalry with Proudhon, responding to Justice in the Revolution and in the Church with both an open letter and the 3-volume Justice in Science, apart from the Revolution and the Church. Proudhon doesn’t seem to have been particularly interested, but that didn’t stop Colins and his followers from continuing to respond.
I first encountered the “rational socialists” fifteen years ago or a little more, and was, at the time, mostly struck by the pecularities of Colins’ style. A 2008 post on “Colins’ painful punctuation” seems to be the first reference here. Readers can now judge for themselves, as I have translated his 1858 open letter — To M. P.-J. Proudhon on his Latest Work Entitled On Justice in the Revolution and in the Church — in a style that preserves those idiosyncracies.
In 2010, I posted a partial translation of Summary of Social Economy, According to the Ideas of Colins, by Agathon de Potter, one of the most active of Colins’ followers. It took fifteen years to come back and finish the job, but — one thing having led to another — the completed translation is one of three newly translated texts by de Potter that I’m sharing today.
The other two articles — “Libertarian Socialism or Individualist Anarchism and Rational Socialism” (1891) and “The Unique and Its Property, by Max Stirner” (1900) — were items that I encountered more recently, while researching other things — and promptly squirreled away in a folder on a hard drive that contains thousands of similar items, with no intention of dealing with them anytime soon, despite the fact that, sooner or later, I really need to at least look at that 3-volume response to Proudhon’s Justice. But then someone asked about Elie Soubeyran, the 20th-century Colinsian who contributed articles to a number of anarchist papers, as well as some entries to the Encyclopédie Anarchiste. And, as I said, one thing led to another…
I am not convinced that the “rational socialist” responses to Proudhon, and to anarchism more generally, are particularly useful, but there is something about the persistence of the critique, from a tendency that seems to have struggled even to find proper adversaries, that suggests that perhaps there is a more interesting story to be unearthed. It appears that Soubeyran was not the only anarchist in Colinsian circles — or the only Colinsian in anarchist circles. That fact may have something to do with the fact that de Potter took it upon himself to publish a 20,000-word study of “Anarchism and Bourgeoisism,” which was then debated in the journals associated with his circle. (I thought that that text had not been digitized, but eventually found that I had downloaded a poor scan from somewhere around 2010, then consigned it to the offline archive.) That overlap seems interesting enough to dedicate another few days or research to it — one of these days.
There is also the question of the “rational socialist” label and its origins. Colins published two works in Paris in 1849, including Socialisme rationnel, ou Association universelle des amis de l’humanité, but there doesn’t seem to have been a great deal of notice, at least in the parts of the French press that have been digitized. The phrase did, however, appear in the first of six “Letters to the Workers on Modern Socialism,” by “A Christian Socialist,” which appeared in La Liberté in July, 1849. Those letters appear unconnected to Colins, beyond the shared membership of their authors in the ranks of dissident “socialisms” of one sort or another, but I will include the first of them, as it offers its own minor literary curiosities, including a metaphor in the first paragraph that, well… I’ll let you read it.
LETTERS TO THE WORKERS ON MODERN SOCIALISM.
My friends,
Socialism is gravely wounded; many would be tempted to believe it dead and deliver its funeral oration. I, who am more humane and more prudent, will limit myself to performing an autopsy. If one of its elements is robust enough to emerge from the ordeal other than in manus, if I see that its flesh is palpitating under the scalpel, be assured that, as an impartial and humane observer, I will give the patient all my care, and I will allow you to witness the marvelous spectacle of an intellectual resurrection!
You already see that my work is offered to you with a stamp of impartiality; I hasten to tell you — because you might read me with some unfortunate prejudices — that a Christian socialist could not accept a task in which he would be forced to abdicate his independence.
I will go further, and I will tell you right away: you would be mistaken if you thought you saw in me an enemy of social reforms. Practical and Christian socialism, the kind that deals with possible reforms, will never find a more ardent defender. You will see me professing at all times rational socialism, the great goal of which is to put every member of society in a position to fulfill his moral career by making him escape the seductions or temptations of voluntary or forced idleness, resulting from extreme poverty or extreme wealth. I am therefore a socialist in the manner of that great initiator of progress, whom the impatient have misunderstood, the one who said: I know nothing more revolutionary than abuses. But I cannot try to hide it from you: I am the frank and honest enemy of this utopian socialism that gets ahead of the times, that promises only hasty fruits, that talks of reform come what may, that is not afraid to trample the laws of social movement, that thus compromises practical socialism, that seems profoundly ignorant of the fact that “without an opportune time, no opportune maxim.”
Many people are simple enough to imagine that one can only overcome exaggerated socialism by attacking it with something other than honorable weapons. You, who are people of common sense, will not be of that opinion: you will immediately understand what a beautiful pedestal is placed on the shroud that can cry out against slander and martyrdom; You will believe me at first when I tell you that one can overcome the utopian science, simply by revealing it, by showing one its oratorical tricks, by showing that its kingdom is not now of this world, which occupies you with empty dreams, with theories of the future that can be usefully discussed in some four or five centuries.
So that is agreed: You accept me as a Christian socialist, not as a utopian socialist: you expect from me the sale, as one has the right to demand from a disciple of the one of whom a February insurgent said, in a moment of sublime inspiration: “My friends, hats off! Here is the master of us all!”
For today, I will say a few words about positive socialism, robust socialism, as Citizen Considerant calls it, socialism par excellence whose name alone, thanks to the skill of its propagators, has become almost synonymous with ridiculous.
My friends, phalansterian socialism (since it must be called by its name) is perhaps the only one that claims to be complete and scientific. I imagine you would hardly have suspected it, because your socialist patrons have given you other idols for today. Nevertheless, since these claims have been periodically displayed, it is appropriate to examine whether they are well-founded.
To put into practice the system of impartiality that I have imposed on myself, I will employ a procedure whose fairness cannot be challenged by anyone; I will express on each point of doctrine what the two great phalansterian sects teach: the capitalists and the communists.
I will admit, however, that one point embarrasses me: that I have not yet been able to meet a single phalansterian capable of explaining to me twelve consecutive pages of Fourier, taken at random. But we will try to console ourselves together with this peremptory consideration that it would be unreasonable to want to be more Fourierist than the Phalansterians.
These preliminary facts being well understood, I enter directly into the matter.
The social order, says Charles Fourier, does not rest, as in ancient society, on conquest or external theft; it has no other basis than productive labor, the only legitimate foundation of true order and individual property. But labor itself can be performed in ways that are more or less favorable to improving the lot of workers. The same job, for example, can be salutary or fatal, depending on whether it is performed in conditions that are more or less hygienic, more or less contrary to the physical health of the worker. It can be more or less productive, more or less favorable to the development of wealth and general well-being, depending on whether it is performed in combinations that are more or less in keeping with the aptitudes or vocations of the workers. The important question, the primary question, in the study of the organization of labor, therefore consists of determining the aptitudes, inclinations, and primitive needs of the worker in the physical, intellectual, and moral realms.
Fourier claims to have discovered this psychology of the social man and the producer. He dares to make the bold assertion that before him, the study of man had been entirely neglected, particularly with regard to primitive inclinations, the radical passions that constitute the driving forces of civilized sociability and give rise to the great laws of social movement.
The question, my friends, is very serious; it demands, on your part, a redoubled attention. If Fourier truly discovered the elementary passions and primitive needs of human nature; if he knew how to disentangle them amidst all the deleterious influences that tend to alter the native faculties of the individual, the duty of all conscientious men will be to examine whether he had enough strength of mind and soundness of mind to logically deduce from them the true laws of social organization and the future developments of civilization. If, on the contrary, Fourier mistook effects for causes, secondary passions for primitive inclinations; if his theory rests on arbitrary data, then his system collapses at its foundations, and we will have no choice but to offer a general critique aimed at dispelling the illusions that appear to be possessed by a large number of positive traits. We will examine this question in a future article.
A CHRISTIAN SOCIALIST.
Anyway… Expect the complete translation of Leroux’s Equality soon, with his essay on “Happiness” perhaps soon after. There is work by Proudhon and E. Armand hovering ever closer to the point where I can share it. And, of course, sooner or later, there will be more to say about the “rational socialists” and the largely one-side feud with the anarchists.
