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Since the criticism of political economy forms the chief subject of interest, we need not here examine the legal section of the book, which criticizes law from the standpoint of law. Proudhon's book is therefore scientifically surpassed by the critical school of political economy, even of political economy as conceived by Proudhon.
Proudhon has always appealed only to the realisation of the idea through the actual circulation of values on the one hand, and to the law-abiding character of nature on the other. Upon the point of "realisation" we shall have something to say later. But the law-abiding character of life is, however, just as much an algebraical expression as the "proportion of the product."
Marr forms the link between the pure theory of Anarchism and active Anarchist agitation, between the older generation who laid down the principles and the modern Anarchists. The acute reaction following upon the years 1848 and '49 extinguished the scanty growth that had sprung from the seed sown by Proudhon and Stirner.
Proudhon probably did not believe, when he was writing the Sociale Révolution, by any means too much in the willingness of Napoleon to take upon himself such a mission as he assigned to him. The language of the book is in any case very reserved, and there is no trace of the apotheosis of the author of the coup d'état.
On this round earth that revolves so rapidly in space, a grain of sand amid infinity, is it worth while for us to hate one another?" Reclus has no special doctrine, but shares generally the views of his friend Kropotkin, although his greater scientific insight on many points leads him to incline rather to the Collectivism of Proudhon and Bakunin.
On the 25th of January, 1849, Proudhon, rising from a sick bed, saw that the existence of the Constituent Assembly was endangered by the coalition of the monarchical parties with Louis Bonaparte, who was already planning his coup d'Etat. He did not hesitate to openly attack the man who had just received five millions of votes.
Powerful as was the influence of Hegel upon Proudhon, the Anarchist was but little affected by the fashionable philosophy of his contemporary and fellow-countryman, A. Comte; which is all the more remarkable since it is Comte's Positivism which, proceeding along the lines of Spencer's philosophy, has in no small degree influenced modern Anarchism, while echoes of the Comtian individualist doctrine are even to be found in the German contemporary of Proudhon, Stirner; echoes which, although numerous, are perhaps unconscious.
Proudhon, and, to a certain extent, Bakunin also who always called himself a Collectivist, and repelled the charge of Communism certainly attacked property as rente or profit derived from the appropriation of the forces of nature; but they have also not only not denied the right to individual possession of property, but even sought to make it general.
Caesar, tired of so much light, took a book from his pocket: The Speculator's Manual of Proudhon, and set to reading it attentively and to marking the passages that struck him as interesting. Laura, when she was not watching the landscape, was looking at those who came and went in the corridor. "The Englishman is lying in wait," Laura observed. "What Englishman?" asked Caesar.
All these ideas, and many others which were only hinted at in his work on "War and Peace," were developed by Proudhon in his subsequent publications, one of which has for its motto, "Reforms always, Utopias never." The thinker had evidently finished his evolution.
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