Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

Liberty is the original condition of man; to renounce liberty is to renounce the nature of man: after that, how could we perform the acts of man?

But what is sovereignty? It is, they say, the power to make laws. Another absurdity, a relic of despotism. The nation had long seen kings issuing their commands in this form: for such is our pleasure; it wished to taste in its turn the pleasure of making laws. For fifty years it has brought them forth by myriads; always, be it understood, through the agency of representatives. The play is far from ended.
The definition of sovereignty was derived from the definition of the law. The law, they said, is the expression of the will of the sovereign: then, under a monarchy, the law is the expression of the will of the king; in a republic, the law is the expression of the will of the people. Aside from the difference in the number of wills, the two systems are exactly identical: both share the same error, namely, that the law is the expression of a will; it ought to be the expression of a fact. Moreover they followed good leaders: they took the citizen of Geneva for their prophet, and the contrat social for their Koran.
Bias and prejudice are apparent in all the phrases of the new legislators. The nation had suffered from a multitude of exclusions and privileges; its representatives issued the following declaration: All men are equal by nature and before the law; an ambiguous and redundant declaration. Men are equal by nature: does that mean that they are equal in size, beauty, talents, and virtue? No; they meant, then, political and civil equality. Then it would have been sufficient to have said: All men are equal before the law.

If we pass now from physical nature to the moral world, we still find ourselves subject to the same deceptions of appearance, to the same influences of spontaneity and habit. But the distinguishing feature of this second division of our knowledge is, on the one hand, the good or the evil which we derive from our opinions; and, on the other, the obstinacy with which we defend the prejudice which is tormenting and killing us.

Nevertheless, it is with the help of these metaphysical toys that governments have been established since the beginning of the world, and it is with their help that we shall come to resolve the enigma of politics, if we are willing to make the slightest effort to do so. I hope I will be forgiven, then, for labouring this point, as one does in teaching the rudiments of grammar to children.

L’homme est né sociable, c’est-à-dire qu’il cherche dans toutes ses relations l’égalité et la justice ; mais il aime l’indépendance et l’éloge : la difficulté de satisfaire en même temps à ces besoins divers est la première cause du despotisme de la volonté et de l’appropriation qui en est la suite.

It is for you now, gentlemen, whose mission and character are the proclamation of the truth, it is for you to instruct the people, and to tell them for what they ought to hope and what they ought to fear. The people, incapable as yet of sound judgment as to what is best for them, applaud indiscriminately the most opposite ideas, provided that in them they get a taste of flattery: to them the laws of thought are like the confines of the possible; to-day they can no more distinguish between a savant and a sophist, than formerly they could tell a physician from a sorcerer. ‘Inconsiderately accepting, gathering together, and accumulating everything that is new, regarding all reports as true and indubitable, at the breath or ring of novelty they assemble like bees at the sound of a basin.

Descartes, reasoning unconsciously according to the prejudices of the old metaphysics, and seeking an unshakable foundation for philosophy, an aliquid inconcussum, as it was said, imagined that he had found it in the self, and posited this principle: I think, therefore I am; Cogito, ergo sum. Descartes did not realize that his base, supposedly immobile, was mobility itself. Cogito, I think — these words express movement; and the conclusion, according to the original sense of the verb to be, sum, ειναι, ou חיח, (haïah), is still movement. He should have said: Moveor, ergo fio, I move, therefore I become!

"Of a real, true contract, on whatsoever subject, there is no vestige in Rousseau's book. To give an
exact idea of his theory, I cannot do better than compare it with a commercial agreement, in which
the names of the parties, the nature and value of the goods, products and services involved, the
conditions of quality, delivery, price, reimbursement, everything in fact which constitutes the
material of contracts, is omitted, and nothing is mentioned but penalties and jurisdictions.

"Indeed, Citizen of Geneva, you talk well. But before holding forth about the sovereign and the
prince, about the policeman and the judge, tell me first what is my share of the bargain? What? You
expect me to sign an agreement in virtue of which I may be prosecuted for a thousand
transgressions, by municipal, rural, river and forest police, handed over to tribunals, judged,
condemned for damage, cheating, swindling, theft, bankruptcy, robbery, disobedience to the laws of
the State, offence to public morals, vagabondage, — and in this agreement I find not a word of either
my rights or my obligations, I find only penalties!

"But every penalty no doubt presupposes a duty, and every duty corresponds to a right. Where then
in your agreement are my rights and duties? What have I promised to my fellow citizens? What
have they promised to me? Show it to me, for without that, your penalties are but excesses of
power, your law-controlled State a flagrant usurpation, your police, your judgment and your
executions so many abuses. You who have so well denied property, who have impeached so
eloquently the inequality of conditions among men, what dignity, what heritage, have you for me in
your republic, that you should claim the right to judge me, to imprison me, to take my life and
honor? Perfidious declaimer, have you inveighed so loudly against exploiters and tyrants, only to
deliver me to them without defence?"

The proprietor, the robber, the hero, the sovereign — for all these titles are synonymous — imposes his will as law, and suffers neither contradiction nor control; that is, he pretends to be the legislative and the executive power at once ... [and so] property engenders despotism ... That is so clearly the essence of property that, to be convinced of it, one need but remember what it is, and observe what happens around him. Property is the right to use and abuse ... if goods are property, why should not the proprietors be kings, and despotic kings — kings in proportion to their facultes bonitaires? And if each proprietor is sovereign lord within the sphere of his property, absolute king throughout his own domain, how could a government of proprietors be any thing but chaos and confusion?

May you, gentlemen, desire equality as I myself desire it; may you, for the eternal happiness of our country, become its propagators and its heralds; may I be the last of your pensioners! Of all the wishes that I can frame, that, gentlemen, is the most worthy of you and the most honorable for me.

Na propriedade, como em todos os elementos econômicos, o mal ou o abuso é inseparável do bem, exatamente como na contabilidade por partidas dobradas o dever é inseparável do haver. Um engendra necessariamente o outro. Querer suprimir o abuso da propriedade é destruí-la; da mesma maneira que suprimir um artigo do débito de uma conta é destruí-lo no crédito.

The great are only great because we are on our knees. Let us rise

But what is there in man older and deeper than the religious sentiment?
There is man himself; that is, volition and conscience, free-will and law, eternally antagonistic. Man is at war with himself: why?
“Man,” say the theologians, “transgressed in the beginning; our race is guilty of an ancient offence. For this transgression humanity has fallen; error and ignorance have become its sustenance. Read history, you will find universal proof of this necessity for evil in the permanent misery of nations. Man suffers and always will suffer; his disease is hereditary and constitutional. Use palliatives, employ emollients; there is no remedy.

It is better to enlighten men’s minds than to teach them to be obstinate in their prejudices.

I live, like you, in a century in which reason submits only to fact and to evidence. My name, like yours, is TRUTH-SEEKER. My mission is written in these words of the law: Speak without hatred and without fear; tell that which thou knowest! The work of our race is to build the temple of science, and this science includes man and Nature. Now, truth reveals itself to all; to-day to Newton and Pascal, tomorrow to the herdsman in the valley and the journeyman in the shop. Each one contributes his stone to the edifice; and, his task accomplished, disappears. Eternity precedes us, eternity follows us: between two infinites, of what account is one poor mortal that the century should inquire about him?