Last nights wee-hours realization was that Proudhons use of the notion of mercantile anarchy, like a number of fairly basic elements in his political economy, is fairly orthodox Fourierism. Some of the apparent inconsistencies in Proudhons treatment of anarchy may be at least partially explained by the more explicitly complicated scheme of Fourier. And then there is clearly a difference in Proudhons thought between anarchy in the governmental realm (non-government, self-government) and (false) anarchy in the economic realm. Shi Yung Lu paraphrases a relevant part of The Political Capacity of the Working Classes: ...political centralization has as its principal corollary mercantile anarchy, or anarchistic capitalism—that is to say, the negation of all economic right and of all social guarantees, in short, of all mutuality. In Fouriers timeline, he lived in the period of mercantile anarchy, and there was only a period of industrial feudalism between his own time and the beginnings of the era of Guarantism (a word which Proudhon used as a synonym for mutualism.) Whether or not mutualism is around the next corner, so to speak, Fouriers description of the era in front of him is certainly interesting: Whereas the predominant characteristic of the third phase of civilisation is mercantile anarchy or false competition, that of the fourth phase, or age of the senility or decrepitude, of civilisation, is a species of false regulation, resulting from a general monopoly of commerce and industry by an oligarchy of capital. A feudality based on wealth is fully developed, gains the command of all labour, regulates all the movements of trade, monopolises industrial and financial enterprise, controls governments, and by its system of loans draws to itself the revenues of nations. The mass of mankind thus find themselves in the last phase of civilisation destitute of all the natural rights which the savage enjoyed, including that of sharing in the consumption of what they have themselves produced. The earlier servitude of individuals has only been replaced by a collective servitude. While the two first ages of civilisation diminished and abolished personal and direct bondage, its two last ages produce an increase of general and indirect bondage, seeing that, as population grows and industry expands, the labouring classes become more and more dependent on a league of capitalists who have the wealth of society in their hands. The hopes of man in its closing phase are placed in association, but these hopes are illusions, for the association aimed at is the false association which merely combines capitals, and so only increases their power of absorption; it is a caricature of the true association which duly combines capital, labour, and talent. (Brisbane translation)
Posted on: Wed, 24 Dec 2014 20:42:26 +0000
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