II.3. Competition and Monopoly

M. Proudhon begins by defending the eternal necessity of competition against those who would replace it by emulation.

There is no “emulation without an object,” and as “the object of every passion is necessarily analogous to the passion, a mistress for the lover, power for the ambitious, gold for the avaricious, a crown for the poet; the object of industrial emulation is necessarily profit. Emulation is nothing but competition itself.”

Competition is emulation in view of profit. Is industrial emulation necessarily emulation in view of profit, that is to say, competition? M. Proudhon proves it in affirming it. We have already seen that to affirm is, for him, to prove, the same as to suppose is to deny.

If the immediate object of the lover is a mistress, the immediate object of industrial emulation is the product and not the profit.

Competition is not industrial emulation, it is commercial emulation. In our days industrial emulation only exists in view of commerce. There are some phases in the economic life of modern peoples in which everybody is seized with a kind of vertigo for making profit without producing. This vertigo of speculation, which reappears periodically, discloses the real character of competition which seeks to escape the necessity of industrial emulation.

If you had told an artisan of the fourteenth century that the privileges and the whole feudal organisation of industry were about to be abrogated, in order to put industrial emulation, called competition, in their place, he would have answered that the privileges of the various corporations, masters and wardens, were organised competition. M. Proudhon says no better in affirming that “emulation is nothing but competition itself.”

“Enact that from January 1, 1847, work and wages shall be guaranteed to everybody: immediately an immense relaxation would succeed to the ardent tension of industry.”

In the place of a supposition, an affirmation, and a negation, we have now an ordinance, which M. Proudhon gives expressly in order to prove the necessity of competition, its eternity as a category, &c.

If people were to suppose that it only requires an ordinance to escape from competition, they would never escape from it. And to go so far as to propose the abolition of competition while retaining the wage system is to propose to make nonsense by a royal decree. But the peoples do not proceed by royal decree. Before making these ordinances they have at least to change, from top to bottom, their industrial and political conditions of existence, and, in consequence, all their manner of being.

M. Proudhon would answer with his imperturbable assurance that this is the hypothesis “of a transformation of our nature without historical precedent,” and that he would have the right to “put us outside the discussion” in virtue of we know not what ordinance.

M. Proudhon does not know that the whole of history is nothing but a continual transformation of human nature.

“Let us keep to facts. The French Revolution was made for industrial as well as for political liberty; and, although France, in 1789, may not have recognised all the consequences of the principle, the realisation of which she demanded, we may say frankly she was not deceived either in her desires or in her attempt. Whoever should attempt to deny this would in my opinion lose the right of criticism. I will never dispute with an adversary who would lay down as a principle that 25,000,000 of men had spontaneously been guilty of error..... Why, then, if competition were not a principle of the social economy, a decree of destiny, a necessity of the human mind, why, instead of abolishing corporations, companies and wardenships, did not people rather think of re-establishing the whole of them?”

Thus, since the French people of the eighteenth century abolished corporations, companies and wardenships, instead of modifying them, the French people of the nineteenth century ought to modify competition instead of abolishing it. Since competition was established in France, in the eighteenth century, as a consequence of historical needs, this competition must not be destroyed in the nineteenth century in consequence of other historical needs. M. Proudhon, not comprehending that the establishment of competition was bound up with the actual development of the men of the eighteenth century, makes of competition a necessity of the human mind, in partibus infidelium. What would he have made of the great Colbert for the seventeenth century?

After the Revolution comes the existing state of things. M. Proudhon also draws some facts from that in order to show the eternity of competition, by proving that all the industries in which this category is not yet sufficiently developed, as agriculture, are in a state of inferiority, of decay.

To say that there are some industries which are not yet at the height of competition, that yet others are below the level of bourgeois production, is mere quibbling which by no means proves the eternity of competition.

All the logic of M. Proudhon is summed up in this: Competition is a social relation in which we really develop our productive forces. He gives to this truth, not any logical developments, but certain forms, often well developed, in saying that competition is industrial emulation, the actual mode of being free, responsibility in labor, the constitution of value, a necessary condition for the future of equality, a principle of social economy, a decree of destiny, a necessity of the human mind, an inspiration of eternal justice, liberty in division, division in liberty, an economic category.

“Competition and association support each other. So far from excluding each other they are not even divergent. Who speaks of competition already supposes a common end. Competition therefore is not egoism, and the most deplorable error of Socialism lay in having regarded it as the overthrow of society.”

Who speaks of competition speaks of a common end, and that proves, on the one hand, that competition is association; on the other, that competition is not egoism. And does not he who speaks of egoism, speak of a common end? Each egoism operates in society and by reason of the existence of society. It, therefore, presupposes society, that is to say common ends, common wants, common means of production, &c., &c. Can it by chance be that, therefore, the competition and the association of which the Socialists speak are not even divergent?

The Socialists know very well that modern society is based upon competition. How can they reproach competition with overthrowing the existing society, which they desire to overthrow themselves? And how can they reproach competition with the overthrow of the society of the future in which, on the contrary, they see the overthrow of competition?

M. Proudhon says, further, that competition is the opposite of monopoly, that, in consequence, it cannot be the opposite of association.

Feudalism was, from its origin, opposed to competition, which did not yet exist. Did it follow that competition was not opposed to feudalism?

In fact, society, association, are denominations which may be given to all societies, to feudal society as well as to bourgeois society, which is association based upon competition. How, then, can there be Socialists who, by the single word association think to be able to dispose of competition? And how can M. Proudhon himself think to defend competition against Socialism, simply by defining competition by the single word association?

All that we have just considered forms the good side of competition, as M. Proudhon understands it. We will now pass on to the evil side, that is to say to the negative side of competition, to its inconveniences, to those qualities in it which are destructive, subversive, maleficent.

The picture of these which M. Proudhon presents to us is a somewhat lugubrious one.

Competition engenders poverty, foments civil war; it “changes the natural zones,” confounds nationalities, disturbs families, corrupts the public conscience, “overturns the notions of equity, of justice,” of morality, and what is worse, it destroys honest and free commerce and does not even give in exchange synthetical value, fixed and honest price. It disenchants everybody, even the economists. It forces things on even to its own destruction,

After all the bad that M. Proudhon says of it, can there be, for the relations of bourgeois society, for its principles and its illusions, an element more disintegrating, more destructive, than competition?

Let us observe that competition always becomes more destructive of bourgeois relations in proportion as it excites to a feverish creation of new productive forces—that is to say, of the material conditions of a new society. In this connection, at least, the evil side of competition should have its good.

“Competition, as an economic position or phase, considered in its origin, is the necessary result.... of the theory of the reduction of the general cost.”

For M. Proudhon, the circulation of the blood must be a consequence of the theory of Harvey.

“Monopoly is the fatal term of competition, which the latter engenders by an incessant negation of itself. This generation of monopoly is already the justification of competition.... Monopoly is the natural opposite of competition.... but from the time that competition is necessary it implies the idea of monopoly, since monopoly is as the seat of each competing individuality.”

We rejoice with M. Proudhon that he can for once, at least, properly apply his formula of thesis and antithesis. Everybody knows that modern monopoly is engendered by competition.

As to the content, M. Proudhon devotes himself to some poetic images. Competition makes “of each subdivision of labor a sort of sovereignty in which each individual reposes in his strength and his independence.” Monopoly is “the seat of each competing individuality.” The sovereignty is at least worthy of the seat.

M. Proudhon speaks only of modern monopoly engendered by competition. But we all know that competition was engendered by feudal monopoly. Thus primarily competition has been the contrary of monopoly, and not monopoly the contrary of competition. Therefore modern monopoly is not a simple antithesis; it is, on the contrary, the true synthesis.

Thesis: Feudal monopoly anterior to competition.

Antithesis: Competition.

Synthesis: Modern monopoly, which is the negation of feudal monopoly in so far as it supposes the régime of competition, and which is the negation of competition in so far as it is monopoly.

Thus modern monopoly, bourgeois monopoly, is synthetic monopoly, the negation of the negation, the unity of contraries. It is monopoly in its pure, normal, rational state. M. Proudhon is in contradiction with his own philosophy when he makes of bourgeois monopoly, monopoly in the crude, simple, contradictory, spasmodic state. M. Rossi, whom M. Proudhon often quotes on the subject of monopoly, appears to have more clearly grasped the synthetic character of bourgeois monopoly. In his “Cours d’Économie Politique,” he distinguishes between artificial monopolies and natural monopolies. Feudal monopolies, he says, are artificial, that is to say arbitrary; bourgeois monopolies are natural, that is to say rational.

Monopoly is a good thing, reasons M. Proudhon, since it is an economic category, an emanation “from the impersonal reason of humanity.” Competition is another good thing since it also is an economic category. But what is not good is the reality of monopoly and the reality of competition. What is worse still is that competition and monopoly devour each other mutually. What is to be done? Seek the synthesis of these two eternal thoughts, drag it from the bosom of God, where it has been deposited from time immemorial.

In practical life we find not only competition, monopoly, and their antagonism, but also their synthesis, which is not a formula but a movement. Monopoly produces competition, competition produces monopoly. The monopolists are made by competition, the competitors become monopolists. If the monopolists restrict competition among themselves by partial association, competition grows among the workers; and the more the mass of the workers grows as against the monopolists of one nation, the more keen becomes the competition between the monopolists of different nations. The synthesis is such that monopoly can only maintain itself by continually passing through the struggle of competition.

In order to dialectically engender the imposts which follow monopoly, M. Proudhon talks to us of the social genius who, after having intrepidly pursued his zigzag route, “after having marched with a firm step, without regret and without halting, and having arrived at the angle of monopoly, casts a melancholy glance backward, and, after profound reflection, fixes imposts on all objects of production, and creates an entire administrative organisation, in order that all employment should be delivered to the proletariat and be paid by the men of monopoly.”

What is to be said of this genius, who being fasting, walks zigzag? And what is to be said of this promenade which has no other end than to demolish the bourgeoisie by imposts, while these imposts serve precisely to give the bourgeoisie the means of conserving its position as the dominant class?

In order to get a glimpse of the manner in which M. Proudhon treats economic details, it will suffice to say that, according to him, the impost on articles of consumption must have been established with a view to equality and in order to render assistance to the proletariat.

Imposts on articles of consumption have only had their true development since the advent of the bourgeoisie. In the hands of industrial capital, that is to say the sober and thrifty wealth which maintained, reproduced, and increased itself by the direct exploitation of labor, the impost on articles of consumption was a means of exploiting the frivolous, joyous, prodigal wealth of the grand lords who did nothing but consume. Sir James Steuart very well explains this primitive object of the impost on articles of consumption in his “Inquiry into the Principles of Political Economy,” which he published ten years before Adam Smith.

“Under the pure monarchy,” he says, “the prince seems jealous as it were, of growing wealth, and therefore imposes taxes upon people who are growing richer. Under the limited Government they are calculated chiefly to affect those who are growing poorer. Thus the monarch imposes a tax upon industry, where everyone is rated in proportion to the gain he is supposed to make by his profession. The poll-tax and taille, are likewise proportioned to the supposed opulence of everyone liable to them..... In limited Governments, impositions are generally laid upon consumption.”

As to the logical succession of imposts, of the balance of commerce, of credit—in the understanding of M. Proudhon—we will merely observe that the English bourgeoisie, having, under William of Orange, attained its political constitution, created at a stroke a new system of taxation, public credit, and the system of protective duties, when it was in a position to freely develop its conditions of existence.

This glimpse will suffice to give the reader a fair idea of the lucubrations of M. Proudhon on police and taxation, the balance of commerce, communism, and population. We defy the most indulgent critic to approach these chapters seriously.