System of Economical Contradictions; Or, The Philosophy of Misery
- Language:
- English
- Translation:
- Benjamin R. Tucker
- Status:
- Complete work
- Authorship:
- Written by the author
- Condition of the text:
- No scanning noise detected (automatic measure over the whole text, not checked by hand)
- Extent:
- ~170,000 words · 798 passages
Cite this work
- APAProudhon. (n.d.). System of Economical Contradictions; Or, The Philosophy of Misery (Benjamin R. Tucker, Trans.). Digital reproduction: SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/proudhon/system-of-economical-contradictions-or-the-philosophy-of-misery
- MLAProudhon. System of Economical Contradictions; Or, The Philosophy of Misery. Translated by Benjamin R. Tucker. Digital reproduction, SigPhi, https://sigphiai.com/en/works/proudhon/system-of-economical-contradictions-or-the-philosophy-of-misery.
- ChicagoProudhon. System of Economical Contradictions; Or, The Philosophy of Misery. Translated by Benjamin R. Tucker. Digital reproduction, SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/proudhon/system-of-economical-contradictions-or-the-philosophy-of-misery.
Reference to the edition that SigPhi reproduces: SigPhi is its digital reproduction, not its publisher. The edition's year is not in the metadata (hence "n.d."), and the translator appears only when recorded.
What it is about
The 1846 book in which Proudhon argues that every economic institution — the division of labour, machinery, competition, credit, property — produces at once a good and the evil that is its shadow.
Context and history
The subtitle is 'The Philosophy of Poverty'. The argument runs as a series: the division of labour multiplies production and at the same time stunts the worker; machinery relieves effort and at the same time throws men out of work; competition cheapens and at the same time ruins. Proudhon does not conclude that these should be abolished, but that the balance of each pair must be found — and that is exactly the position Marx attacked the following year in 'The Poverty of Philosophy', inverting his title. The two books repay reading one after the other, and both are in the corpus: this is the first great internal argument of socialism, and what is at stake — whether contradictions are resolved or balanced — is still argued about.
Editorial context, not a citable source: unlike the passages of the work itself, these statements cannot be checked against the corpus.
(See Pauthier, "China," Paris, Didot.) More surprising still is it that this singular people, in losing its primitive faith, seems to have understood that divinity is simply the collective me of humanity: so that, more than two thousand years ago, China had reached, in its commonly-accepted belief, the latest results of the philosophy of the Occident. "What Heaven sees and understands," it is written in the Shu-king, "is only that which the people see and understand. What the people deem worthy of reward and punishment is that which Heaven wishes to punish and reward. There is an intimate communication between Heaven and the people: let those who govern the people, therefore, be watchful and cautious." Confucius expressed the same idea in another manner: "Gain the affection of the people, and you gain empire. Lose the affection of the people, and you lose empire." There, then, general reason was regarded as queen of the world, a distinction which elsewhere has been bestowed upon revelations. The Tao-te-king is still more explicit. In this work, which is but an outline criticism of pure reason, the philosopher Lao-tse continually identifies, under the name of TAO, universal reason and the infinite being; and all the obscurity of the book of Lao tse consists, in my opinion, of this constant identification of principles which our religious and metaphysical habits have so widely separated. Notice further that, in attributing to the vague and (so to speak) objectified consciousness of a universal reason the first revelation of Divinity, we assume absolutely nothing concerning even the reality or non-reality of God. In fact, admitting that God is nothing more than collective instinct or universal reason, we have still to learn what this universal reason is in itself.…