See DuveauGeorges's introduction to Si les traités de 1815 ont cessé d'exister? (Paris, 1952). 343. All our references to Proudhon's critical writings are based on the modern edition of his collected works published by Marcel Rivière in 15 volumes (Paris, 1923-59).
2.
Ibid., 346.
3.
DrozEdouard, P-J. Proudhon (Paris, 1909), 96. In his biography of Proudhon, WoodcockGeorge presents a slightly different version of this conspiracy. He writes that one of Proudhon's distant cousins believed that the pope had put a curse on the family and searched the municipal archives, whenever he visited Besançon, for clues relating to the malediction, WoodcockGeorge. Pierre-Joseph Proudhon: His Life and Work (New York, 1972), 3–4.
4.
HaubtmannPierre (ed.), Carnets de P. - J. Proudhon (Paris, 1960), i, 115 (cited hereafter as Carnets). Associations always played an important role in Proudhon's thought. According to his theory of “mutualism”, associations of producers and consumers would agree to exchange goods and services in an equitable and mutually beneficial manner and would thus bring about the reform of the unjust economic system then in existence.
5.
HaubtmannPierre,. “P.-J. Proudhon, sa vie et sa pensée“, Diss. University of Paris, Sorbonne, 1961, iii, 496–7.
6.
Avertissement aux Propriétaires, 247. As further evidence of Proudhon's connections with secret organizations, we might cite his membership in the Freemasons. Inducted into the lodge of “Sincérité, Parfait Union et Constante Amitié” in his hometown Besançon on 8 January 1847, Proudhon was an indifferent Mason at best. He only attended one additional meeting in his entire life and never progressed beyond his original grade of “apprenti”. See Carnets, ii, 9.
7.
In his unfounded remarks on the Jews, Proudhon revived the standard cliché: they were a “blood-sucking, parasitic “people who worshipped as their Gods, “Egotism and Money” (Carnets, ii, 335). He often took his prejudice to lamentable extremes in the privacy of his Carnets, condemning both a race as a whole and its prominent representatives of the period: “Le juif est l'ennemi du genre humain. Il faut renvoyer cette race en Asie ou l'exterminer. H. Heine, A. Weil, et autres ne sont que des espions secrets; Rothschild, Crémieux, Marx, Fould, êtres méchants, bilieux, envieux, âcres etc. etc. qui nous haïssent. Par ler fer, ou par la fusion, ou par l'expulsion, il faut que le juif disparaisse” (Carnets, ii, 337–8).
8.
Idee générale de la Révolution au XIXe siècle, 153.
9.
LangloisJ.-A. (ed.), Correspondance de P.-J. Proudhon (Paris, 1875), ii, 17 (cited hereafter as Correspondance.).
10.
Idée génerale de la Révolution au XIXe siècle, 150.
11.
Carnets, iii, 246.
12.
Les confessions d'un révolutionnaire, 283.
13.
Mélanges: Articles de Journaux par P.-J. Proudhon (Paris, 1868), i, 229.
14.
Carnets, i, 14–15.
15.
De la justice dans la Révolution et dans l'Eglise, iii, 289. Proudhon linked these “illuminés' with the members of the conservative coalition as follows: “Ce sont les missionnaires de la femme libre, devenus les chefs de la spéculation agioteuse, qui nous annoncent aujourd'hui les mystères du siècle nouveau; ce sont les voleurs publics et par privilège qui, après avoir dirigé la guerre contre les travailleurs, contre la république, contre les libertés et droits de la Révolution, interrogent les esprits avec la plus vive foi, et se font les apôtres d'une régéneration soi-disant humanitaire. Hypocrisie, escroquerie, mystification, promiscuité: voilà le dernier mot de l'illuminisme.”
16.
Correspondance, ix, 227.
17.
Carnets, ii, 184.
18.
Ibid., ii, 338.
19.
Système des contradictions économiques, ii, 67.
20.
Correspondance, ix, 243.
21.
La Fédération et l'Unité en Italie, 106.
22.
Correspondance, ix, 224. As the quote suggests (in labelling the Italian liberals “bourgeois athées…trafiquants avides des pouvoirs et des biens du clergé…”), Proudhon actually defended the papacy's right to exist as a temporal power in Italy. Although he never supported the pope or the Church philosophically, he believed that the papacy should form a key element in a federated Italian state and that the partisans of unification wanted to negate the influence of the Holy See so as to make their control of Italy universal and uncontested. Even while expressing such support, Proudhon did not absolve the Church of its conspiratorial designs. He intimated, rather sinisterly, that the “parti catholique” invited the persecution of the pope in order to garner sympathy and to pave the way for a restored and more powerful bishop of Rome! See La Fédération et l'Unité en Italie. 167.
23.
Si les traités de 1815 ont cessé d'exister?, 400.
24.
Ibid., 398.
25.
Correspondance, xii, 300.
26.
Si les traités de 1815 ont cessé d'exister?, 422–3.
27.
AlbouyPierre, Mythes et Mythologies dans la littérature Française (Paris, 1969), 205.
