Anarchism and SocialismPlekhanov, Georgii Valentinovich
Philosophy
Anarchism and Socialism
Plekhanov, Georgii Valentinovich
Anarchism; Socialism
The nature of this social constitution is absolutely different from, and
even incompatible with, that of the political constitution. Nevertheless
it is the fate of the political constitution to constantly call forth
and produce the social constitution. This is tremendously confusing! Yet
one might get out of the difficulty by assuming that what Proudhon meant
to say was that the political constitutions act upon the evolution of
the social constitution. But then we are inevitably met by the question.
Is not the political constitution in its turn rooted--as even Guizot
admitted--in the social constitution of a country? According to our
author _no_; the more emphatically _no_, that the social organisation,
the true and only one, is only a thing of the future, for want of which
poor humanity has "invented" the political constitution. Moreover, the
"Political Constitution" of Proudhon covers an immense domain, embracing
even "class distinctions," and therefore "non-organised" property,
property as it ought not to be, property as it is to-day. And since the
whole of this political constitution has been invented as a mere
stop-gap until the advent of the anarchist organisation of society, it
is evident that all human history must have been one huge blunder. The
State is no longer exactly a fiction as Proudhon maintained in 1848;
"the governmental formulas" for which people and citizens have been
cutting one another's throats for sixty centuries are no longer a "mere
phantasmagoria of our brain," as the same Proudhon believed at this
same period; but these formulas, like the State itself, like every
political constitution, are but the product of human ignorance, the
mother of all fictions and phantasmagorias. At bottom it is always the
same. The main point is that Anarchist ("social") organisation could
only be discovered as the result of "many experiences." The reader will
see how much this is to be regretted.
The political constitution has an unquestionable influence upon the
social organisation; at any rate it calls it forth, for such is its
"fate" as revealed by Proudhon, master of Kantian philosophy and social
organisation. The most logical conclusion to be drawn therefrom is that
the partisans of social organisation must make use of the political
constitution in order to attain their end. But logical as this deduction
is, it is not to the taste of our author. For him it is but a
phantasmagoria of our brain. To make use of the political constitution
is to offer a burnt offering to the terrible god of authority, to take
part in the struggle of parties. Proudhon will have none of this. "No
more parties," he says; "no more authority, absolute liberty of the man
and the citizen--in three words, such is our political and social
profession of faith."[19]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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