Freedom and Corruption: Proudhon's Federal Principle

Author(s): Richard Vernon

Source: Canadian Journal of Political Science / Revue canadienne de science politique ,
Dec., 1981, Vol. 14, No. 4 (Dec., 1981), pp. 775-795
Published by: Canadian Political Science Association and the Société québécoise de science
politique
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/3229776

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide
range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and
facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
https://about.jstor.org/terms

Canadian Political Science Association and are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve
and extend access to Canadian Journal of Political Science / Revue canadienne de science
politique

This content downloaded from

154.59.124.141 on Wed, 23 Sep 2020 15:39:16 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
Freedom and Corruption: Proudhon's Federal
Principle

RICHARD VERNON University of Western Ontario

In his later writings, especially Du Principe federatif (1863),1 Proudhon

describes the principle of federation as one in which the "antinomies" of
politics were to find eventual resolution. Federation, he wrote, "is
intimately bound up with the theory of government in general-to speak
more precisely, it is its necessary conclusion."2 He thus claims for one
political principle exactly what Marx had claimed for another, in writing:
"Democracy is the resolved mystery of all constitutions."3 To
juxtapose these two claims is to be led straight to the centre of a
long-standing debate over the relation between dispersed and
concentrated power and the value of freedom; for it is precisely in the
dispersal or concentration of power that Proudhon and Marx
respectively believed that freedom was attained and secured.
For Marx, democracy solves the enigma of constitutions in at last
revealing what was always true but always concealed: that institutions
are the work of man himself, that their power is human power in
alienated form, and will cease to be alien only when society, no longer
internally divided, achieves reflexive control over its own organization
and circumstances. But this is possible only on condition that
democracy ceases to be mistaken for a merely political principle: the
very separation of political from social life is itself a symptom of
alienation, and the democratic principle will be liberating only if "the
power of united individuals"4 is brought to bear in the realm of social
relations itself. Now Proudhon too imagined an overcoming-though in
a different sense-of the separation of society and state;5 but he saw this
overcoming in federalism, not in democracy, because he connected
1 Except where noted, all references below to this work are to the English translation,
The Principle of Federation by P.-J. Proudhon (Toronto: University of Toronto
Press, 1979), cited as The Principle.
2 The Principle, 5.
3 Joseph O'Malley (ed.), Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1970), 29-30.
4 The German Ideology (English translation; New York: International, 1979), 86.
5 The Principle, 16.

Canadian Journal of Political Science I Revue canadienne de science politique, XIV:4 (December/
decembre 1981). Printed in Canada / Imprime au Canada

This content downloaded from

154.59.124.141 on Wed, 23 Sep 2020 15:39:16 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
776 RICHARD VERNON

freedom not with unity but with division, not with power
restraint. "The people imagine themselves, in their obscure m
a huge and mysterious entity.... The more they imagine them
be infinite, irresistible, immense, the more horrified they are by
splits, minorities. Their ideal, their fondest dream, is of unity, id
uniformity, concentration; they condemn, as affronts to th
majesty, everything that may divide their will, break up th
create diversity, plurality, divergence within themselves."6
imaginary unity enslaves them to the power which claims t
bearer; and the federal principle liberates them by dissolving thei
Compare Marx's belief in "the power of united individuals" with
Proudhon's maxim of federalism, "leave nothing undivided."7
Attempts to find a common ground have sometimes been made in
the history of socialist thought.8 In State and Revolution, however,
Lenin was to object hotly to such attempts.9 "To confuse Marx's views
on 'the destruction of state power...' with Proudhon's federalism is
positively monstrous!" He continued: "Federalism as a principle
follows logically from the petty bourgeois views of anarchism. Marx was
a centralist." To be sure, the revolutionary example of the Paris
Commune, historically more Proudhonian than Marxist, could scarcely
be denied, for Marx himself had admired it. But it is a revolutionary
model, Lenin contends, only to the extent that local or communal
organization is a phase in the mobilization of a general or national will
which finds its bearer in a new centre. Localities are elements, in short,
not of devolution but of transmission, and, properly understood,
"contain not a hint of federalism." With the revision of the Leninist
model which is currently under way in very diverse contexts, the paths
of thinking marked out by Proudhon once again come to light. There is
politically-relevant diversity, it is argued, in socialism: it follows from
the sheer fact that even socialist man must still inhabit space, and there
are consequently irreducible relations of proximity and distance; unless
these are forcibly suppressed, such relations will continue to form the
basis of competing political identities.10 This insistence, and above all
the expansion of argument to embrace territorial as well as social and
economic categories, recalls precisely what was fundamental to the
federalist writings of the later Proudhon.
It is natural to begin with the topic of socialist organization: this is
the context in which Proudhon is familiar, and perhaps also a context in
6 Ibid., 58.
7 Ibid., 49.
8 See, for example, Eduard Bernstein, Evolutionary Socialism (English translation;
New York: Schocken, 1961), 157-59.
9 V. I. Lenin, The State and Revolution (English translation; Peking: Foreign
Languages Press, 1973), 60-64.
10 See especially William Connolly, "A Note on Freedom under Socialism," Political
Theory 5 (1977), 468.

This content downloaded from

154.59.124.141 on Wed, 23 Sep 2020 15:39:16 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 m

Du Principe federatif de P.-J. Proudhon

Du Principe federatif de P.-J. Proudhon presente le point de vue classique que la

liberte est sauvegardee par la dispersion federale du pouvoir. Bien qu'il soit
naturel de letudier a la lumiere des programmes contradictoires de ses
critiques, notamment Marx et Lenine, ce n'est pas seulement dans un contexte
socialiste que sa pretention a de l'interet. La liaison entre federalisme et liberte
a constamment ete refutee par les politologues occidentaux. Sans defendre ici le
point de vue de Proudhon, I'auteur soutient que les critiques du federalisme
n'ont pas aborde la notion de < liberte > que Proudhon avait a l'esprit: une
liberte politique qui requiert d'etre replacee dans le contexte des theories
< republicaines classiques > du dix-huitikme siecle et meme d'avant cette
periode. La liberte, pour Proudhon, englobe la re-politisation d'un etat dans
lequel le pouvoir executif est devenu excessif; la liberte est sauvegardee par le
federalisme, pretend-il, dans la mesure ou l'application du federalisme permet
aux communautes regionales de retrouver une vie politique interne. Bien que ces
propositions d'institutions soient sous plusieurs aspects bien imparfaites, sa
these propose des arguments a l'appui de l'idee que les divisions des loyautes
dans un systeme federal peut etre tout specialement reliee a la liberte entendue
dans son sens politique.

which what he says now enjoys a certain topical sharpness. But

Proudhon claimed emphatically, as we have seen, to be addressing "the
theory of government in general"; he also wrote, "the federal system is
applicable to all nations and all ages."11 The relation between federalism
and freedom, and the issue between the dispersal and the concentration
of power, may perhaps bear especially acutely upon socialist
organization, but are certainly not unique to socialist theory. What
Proudhon claimed has also been claimed by writers innocent of all
socialism, just as it has been criticized by centralists who have little
apparent sympathy for Lenin. It is with what Proudhon called
"government in general" that this discussion is concerned; and indeed
its principal theme is that Proudhon linked the questions of federalism
and freedom to a tradition of thinking which is neither socialist nor
bourgeois (nor indeed 'petty bourgeois") in anything but an abusive and
content-free sense. If Marx saw in democracy (properly understood) the
solution to alienation, Proudhon saw federalism (properly understood)
as the solution to corruption; and his use of that concept places his
argument in the context of a tradition springing from political theorists
such as Machiavelli and Montesquieu. Marx, taking alienation as the
problem, imagines an eventual mode of society which, in laying bare its
own nature, "differs from all past movements."'2 Proudhon, taking as
his topic the traditional notion of corruption, stresses the continuity of

11 The Principle, 49.

12 German Ideology, 86.

This content downloaded from

154.59.124.141 on Wed, 23 Sep 2020 15:39:16 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
778 RICHARD VERNON

political science, and not a theme of qualitative transformation in w

the very concept of a political science is dissolved.

The claim that federalism provides freedom appears not to enjoy much
current support. What has been vigorously criticized is not only the
claim itself, but also the view that federalism is to be seen as anything
more than a mere (perhaps unfortunate) historical fact. This, of course,
radically undermines not only the substance of Proudhon's argument
but also its enthusiasm, which many recent political scientists regard as
wholly misplaced. In "On the Theory of the Federal State,"l3 Franz
Neumann sets out to demolish the view that there is "a value which
inheres in federalism as such," and the alleged "value" which he
considers is precisely the supposed ability of federalism to maximize
liberty. It is supposed to do so, Neumann claims, because it divides
power, and because it provides relatively small units in which
democracy can be practised. But the former reason is open to the
objection (ascribed to Bentham) that institutional separation is
meaningless unless there is also social pluralism; social pluralism, not
any form of institutional separation, is thus the truly causal element. The
latter reason is open to the objection (quoted from Mill) that a unitary
state with effective institutions of local government can do everything a
federation can do. An even stronger case is advanced in a standard text
by William H. Riker,14 who likewise insists that federation is to be seen
as an institutional device and must be purged of any hint of immanent
value. "Probably the commonest case" for the value of federalism, he
says, is "that federalism is a guarantee of freedom, followed by the
prescription that, in order to preserve freedom, one must preserve
federalism." But it is not true, Riker argues, that a division of power
such as federalism provides is favourable to freedom: on the contrary,
by frustrating (national) majorities, it may lead to tyranny (a view also
advanced by Neumann). Nor can it even be claimed that the freedom of
minorities is protected, for in a federation there are local majorities
which may oppress local minorities. Finally, in a hostile piece frankly
entitled "Against Federalism,"15 Preston King notes: "the favour which
was and is frequently bestowed on an abstract understanding of
federalism derives from the supposition that federalism, as such, is
good, the embodiment of institutional liberty." The burden of his
response-recalling somewhat Neumann's quotation from
Mill-appears to be that there is no more freedom in a federation than
13 In The Democratic and the Authoritarian State (New York: Free Press, 1957), 216
14 Federalism: Origin, Operation, Significance (Boston: Little, Brown, 1964), 139-
15 In Robert Benewick et al. (eds.), Knowledge and Belief in Politics (London: Alle
Unwin, 1973), 151-76.

This content downloaded from

154.59.124.141 on Wed, 23 Sep 2020 15:39:16 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
Freedom and Corruption: Proudhon's Federal Principle7 779

a decentralized state; there would be if its constituents units had a right

to secede, but this is a right which no federation grants.
These criticisms seem to be directed against a strikingly naive view
of what federalism can be expected to do. They might be better
described as arguments "against naivety" than as "against federalism";
for what they succeed in undermining is a certain kind of constitutional
optimism, not, specifically, the distinctive claims of federalism. If
federalism may lead to tyranny by frustrating majorities, then the same
charge can obviously be levelled at any constitutional restraint
whatsoever, for all such restraints are well described as "mechanisms
which are better designed to curb than to promote public action.'16 If
provinces in a federation-the southern United States, and Bavaria, are
the standard examples-have harboured oppressive causes, so too have
all constitutionally-provided rights, and (for example) representative
democracy is no less vulnerable to the objection than federalism is. If
judicial protection of provincial rights is negligible because a supreme
court is "an organ of central government,"'7 then a great deal of what is
generally seen as protection against government must be declared
insignificant on exactly the same grounds. Presumably it is not the
intention of these critics to discredit all forms of constitutionalism; and
so we must suppose them to be confronting advocates of federalism who
fail to understand that no constitutional system can be guaranteed to do
anything which we would want to prescribe in advance. If this is the
case, then they have picked a very easy target. It is one which,
moreover, remains largely unidentified. There are references to "the
theoretical argument for federalism," "the commonest argument for
federalism," "the favour bestowed on federalism," but nowhere is an
actual argument really given its day in court.
Two of these discussions, it is true, mention Proudhon, though only
in order to make very short work of what he was supposed to have said.
King mentions him as the prime example of the enthusiasm which he
finds so misguided. Neumann also mentions him, but only in order to
deny that he had anything to say about the subject at all: "His theory of
federalism has nothing in common with that of the federal state; it is
rather the very negation of it," for what Proudhon had in mind,
Neumann says, was "a contractual industrial organization of small-
scale units."18 This presents us with an initial difficulty which
must be confronted at once. Neumann does not cite any passage in
Proudhon in support of his claim: he could not have done so, for his point
is-uncharacteristically-simply wrong. In Du Principe federatif,
Proudhon speaks of federation without embarrassment as a "state."l9
16 Raymond Aron, An Essay on Freedom (New York: World Publishing, 1970), 47.
17 King, "Against Federalism," 161.
18 "Theory of the Federal State," 161.
19 The Principle, 40.

This content downloaded from

154.59.124.141 on Wed, 23 Sep 2020 15:39:16 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
780 RICHARD VERNON

He describes this state as "prime mover and general director,"

highest expression of progress," and as "the spirit of the comm
He also speaks of "confederation," for he is unaware of a sema
distinction not clearly made until a generation after his death.
federal state, as opposed to a confederation, is one in which each
is subject to a dualjurisdiction, of province and centre, then Pro
a theorist of a federal state, for he assigns to the centre a direc
guaranteeing the personal and civil rights of individuals with
province. He is also concerned, as before, with industrial organ
but a certain mode of industrial organization is treated quite explic
an adjunct to federalism, not as a definition of it.
Neumann, perhaps misled by the secondary sources whi
refers to, wholly underrates the political emphasis of the later Pro
and insists on continuing to see him as an anarchist. At that p
however, Proudhon, who claimed to be the first to have descr
himself as anarchiste, had come to the realization that anarch
"scarcely likely" ever to be achieved.21 He thus concerned himse
the internal and external relations proper to societies which per
seeing themselves in territorial, as opposed to industrial, terms
offered the federal principle not as the extinction of politics bu
solution to what he saw as abiding political problems. This
unrelated to the question of freedom, and to the simple inadequacy
arguments advanced against federalism. For the freedom which
Proudhon associated with federalism was political freedom, and what
he meant by that almost wholly escapes the criticisms mentioned above.
What Proudhon meant, in connecting federalism with freedom, was that
a federation would restore what he called "political life" to the regional
entities within a nation-state. Surprisingly perhaps, but unmistakably,
his argument is developed in the language of early modern political
theory, not in the language of industrial organization; and while this does
nothing, of course, to improve on the credibility of his claims, it does
suggest that a closer reading is necessary before we can establish what
they were.

There is a classic though brief discussion of federation by Montesquieu

in De l'esprit des lois, to which Proudhon's treatment appears to be
indebted at several points. Montesquieu's argument is summarized in
his remark: "Cette sorte de republique... peut se maintenir dans sa
grandeur sans que l'interieur se corrompe."22 Proudhon is concerned
likewise with grandeur or scale: the idea of federation comes into its
20 Ibid., 48.
21 Ibid., 20.
22 De l'esprit des lois, Vol. 1 (Paris: Gamier, 1961), 138 (IX.i.)

This content downloaded from

154.59.124.141 on Wed, 23 Sep 2020 15:39:16 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
Freedom and Corruption: Proudhon's Federal Principle 781

own when the nation-state had brought into play relations of

interdependence which are incalculably more vast than the ancient city
had experienced.23 Federation, for Proudhon, is the (partial)
disaggregation of massive social and political entities, not the (partial)
aggregation of miniature ones. Still more significantly, Proudhon is
preoccupied with Montesquieu's two linked concepts of maintien and
(its opposite) corruption. This preoccupation virtually
displaces-without, of course, suppressing-Proudhon's more
characteristic concern with justice. Justice is given an honourable
mention on page one, as one of the four cardinal political virtues, but
afterwards almost disappears from view, Proudhon simply referring his
readers to his earlier writings for an account of his thinking. Two of the
other cardinal virtues, order and stability-together with the fourth,
liberty-bear the weight of his discussion.
Corruption is the opposite of maintenance by virtue of the definition
established by Montesquieu, and, before him, Machiavelli. A polity is
held to have a principle essential to it, a principle which was present at its
founding and which must be preserved if the polity is to retain its
identity. Corruption is the loss of the founding principle. No less than
three chapters in the first part of Proudhon's text are devoted to this
theme. He seeks to show that no existing regime can remain faithful to
the principles which it claims as its own: "since arbitrariness enters
necessarily into politics, corruption soon becomes the soul of power,
and society is led without rest or reprieve along the path of incessant
revolution."24 The corruption which especially concerns Proudhon is
the corruption to which "civic spirit" is liable,25 that is, the corruption of
the democratic republic, whose principle, according to Montesquieu,
was that of "virtue." What corrupts virtue is passivity, lack of
responsibility, dependence, all of which undermine the engaged concern
for a common good which the democratic citizen is required to have.
This is the essence of Proudhon's critique of the grossly centralized
nation-state, France in particular, in which the citizen has become a
mere subject: "The citizen has nothing to do but perform his little task in
his little corer, drawing his little salary, raising his little family, and
relying for the rest upon the providence of government."26 Citizenship
requires, on the contrary, the diffusion of a spirit of responsibility, of
self-government, of local and individual initiative. As such it centrally
involves a critique of professionalism: of military professionalism, a
Machiavellian theme which Proudhon takes up in his rejection of
mercenary armies and his advocacy of militia forces:27 of administrative
23 The Principle, 51.
24 Ibid., 31.
25 Ibid., 32.
26 Ibid., 60.
27 Ibid., 47-48, 68.

This content downloaded from

154.59.124.141 on Wed, 23 Sep 2020 15:39:16 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
782 RICHARD VERNON

professionalism, Proudhon's critique of bureaucracy strongly

the fear, prominent among classical theorists of civic virt
excessive executive power. The very existence of public funct
Proudhon says, is a threat to a self-governing society.28 It is
relevant to note here that, as Proudhon stresses at the outset, Du
Principe federatif is intended above all as a popular book, readily
accessible to a broad readership, and designed to contribute to the
diffusion of political prudence, and hence to civic responsibility.
It is the lack of prudence, the inability to take the long view, that lies
at the root of corruption. Political orders are ruined by "the succession
of forgetful but endlessly-renewed generations," who, lacking
awareness of the long-term constraints of order, endlessly "follow the
same path" and become "exhausted in turn."29 This argument may be
traced to the second chapter of Machiavelli's Discourses, where the
endless cycles of change and decay are attributed to the fact that "the
children succeeded their fathers" and were "ignorant of the changes of
fortune." Proudhon shares too in Machiavelli's ambition to master the
flux of change which menaces political institutions; and he shares the
conviction, said to be characteristic of the Machiavellian tradition,30 that
the present or near future offers a "moment" of fateful significance,
when change will either be mastered or lead to total ruin. But what sets
the final seal of authenticity on Proudhon's republicanism is his call, at
the beginning of Part Two of his book, for a return to "ancient
principles,"31 a call issued by Machiavelli and by countless successors
in that tradition. For although Proudhon sees the federal system which
he admires as the culmination of a long development, he also believes it
to have been foreshadowed in the political organization of barbarian
Gaul. Liberty, the spirit of self-government, is thus indigenous; but it
has been lost, or, rather, overlaid by alien (Roman) forms; the
federalization of France is its recovery.
There is here a most interesting conjunction of two languages, or, as
some prefer, two paradigms. On the one hand, federalism, as we have
seen, rests upon a universalist argument: it is the "necessary
conclusion" of the theory of government in general, the resolution of
antinomies, the overcoming of contradictions, the achievement of a final
equilibrium between universally necessary properties. On the other
hand, the argument also draws upon a native and patriotic theme, the
recovery of France's lost order, and thus the restoration of civic pride:
"the short duration" of the French constitutions, he writes, "reflects so
poorly upon our country."32 This conjunction is strongly related to
28 Ibid., 14-16.
29 Ibid., 30.
30 See J. G. A. Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1975).
31 The Principle, 78.
32 Ibid., 66.

This content downloaded from

154.59.124.141 on Wed, 23 Sep 2020 15:39:16 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
Freedom and Corruption: Proudhon's Federal Principle 783

another, the adoption in Du Principe federatif of two distinct

conceptions of time in its political bearing. One view, more
characteristic of the earlier Proudhon, and of his century, is expressed in
his view of federalism as a universal solution and historical culmination.
It will be "the greatest triumph of human reason" to have grasped,
eventually, its necessity; but before it can be grasped, other forms must
have accomplished, over time, their preparatory "mission."33 The view
of time here is inflexibly linear and irreversible: there is a general and
necessary order of succession, and the eventual resolution is definite
and complete. The other view is comprised by the themes of loss and
recovery. Societies have individual principles which they can
compromise, abandon, regain. The "incessant revolutions" which he
speaks of, which "come and go like the seasons" or, alternatively,
reflect the rotation of a "wheel" of fate,34 obviously recall the early
modem conception of revolutions as recurrent and cyclical events,
connected in metaphor (at least) with cosmic or astral process. Such
revolutions are not the revolution of nineteenth-century thought, an
upheaval placed within a linear conception of progressive development,
and viewed as a decisive and irreversible transition from epoch to epoch.
Proudhon himself had once expressed this latter view no less
emphatically than, say, Marx. His Idee ge'nerale de la Revolution au
XIXe siecle had been among the clearest expressions of that idea:
Revolution (capitalized) was an immanent process of change, rooted in
social and intellectual necessity, to which what Proudhon called the
fracas of politics was wholly irrelevant.35 The recurrent revolutions
which he now speaks of represent the triumph of a political conception
over an historical one, for they are traced wholly to contingent if regular
political causes. Interestingly, Proudhon allows his earlier usage of the
term to linger in the subtitle to Du Principe federatif, which is: La
Necessite de reconstituer le parti de la Revolution. Here there is a strong
implication, as before, that Revolution is an immanent and progressive
force capable of being sustained and extended. But la Revolution, for
Proudhon, turns out to be the French Revolution prior to 1793 and the
Jacobin triumph.36 What was authentic in the Revolution was the
moment, before Paris re-asserted its malign control, when the old
provinces briefly regained their political voice, and the dogma of
"indivisibility" was temporarily broken. It is here that Proudhon speaks
of a return to "ancient principles": for here Gaul at last re-appeared,
diverse, localist and populist, from under the enormous weight of
centralism artifically imposed upon it. What is contained in Proudhon's
subtitle, then, is a remarkably elegant linkage between his earlier and
33 Ibid., 17, 51.
34 Ibid., 16,33.
35 Idee generale de la Revolution air XIXe siecle (Paris: Internationale, 1851), 11.
36 The Principle, 78-81.

This content downloaded from

154.59.124.141 on Wed, 23 Sep 2020 15:39:16 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
784 RICHARD VERNON

later conceptions of time: there is a universal, the Revolution, an

immanent and necessary trend of change, which is to be
"reconstituted." But its content, on closer inspection, is a particular
and nontemporal principle of national identity.
Proudhon's federalism is thus to be sharply distinguished from that
other "federal principle," as it has been called, of the Jacobins: a
principle of mass mobilization by sections, linked by tiers of delegation
to a national centre. The importance of such a principle was admitted by
Lenin-although, as noted above, he declined to call it federal-and was
emphatically stressed by Hannah Arendt-who did call it federal-as
the means by which an intense but short-lived impulse flowered, and
freedom was dramatically if transiently rediscovered.37 But this is not
Proudhon's federalism at all, as his hostility to the Jacobins makes clear.
His federalism is not even properly viewed as a revolutionary model; it is
a model for a polity which seeks to preserve itself and to escape
"mortality."38 What concerns him is not intense participation valued
either for its own sake or as a means of political mobilization, but the
defence of regional societies, and their political life, against the
encroachments of central power. The federal society which he favours is
valued above all for the restraints which it places upon change, which he
views, in a thoroughly classical manner, as destruction. In a centralized
order, he writes, echoing Tocqueville's argument precisely, every
disturbance at the centre makes itself felt destructively throughout the
whole: but in a federalized France, "Let Paris make revolution within its
own walls. What is the use if Lyon, Marseilles, Toulouse, Bordeaux,
Nantes, Rouen, Lille, Strasbourg, Dijon and so on, if the Departments,
masters of themselves, do not follow? Paris will have wasted its time."39
The tragic relevance of this remark to the fate of the Paris Commune
eight years later needs no comment.
In seeking in federation what he calls an "unshakeable
equilibrium," in seeking to arrest those cycles of decline and decay to
which in the past all orders have fallen victim, Proudhon turns to a new
form of an ancient solution: that of creating some mixture or balance o
powers so that they complement and restrain one another. Proudhon
quite explicitly presents federation, the division of powers by area, as an
extension of the constitutionalist principle of the division of powers by
function. "At first," he writes, "the demand for a constitution is heard
on all sides; later the demand will be for decentralization."40 It is
childish, he says, to confine the principle of division to the distribution of
powers at the centre; by implication, the "mature" division of powers
will be territorial in character, and powers will be divided among
37 See especially On Revolution (New York: Viking, 1963), 217-85.
38 The Principle, 22.
39 Ibid., 62.
40 Ibid., 34.

This content downloaded from

154.59.124.141 on Wed, 23 Sep 2020 15:39:16 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
Freedom and Corruption: Proudhon's Federal Principle 785

provinces and towns, and between these regional units and the federal
centre. Proudhon is faithful to the constitutionalist tradition, moreover,
in seeing the principle of division as a check not only upon the ambitions
of central executive power but also upon the people, who are (as he
interestingly puts it) "one of the powers of the state, and one of the most
terrifying."41 By dividing them, federation will save the people from
their own folly: socialist decentralism joins hands with the federalism of
Madison.
To link Proudhon's and Madison's names may at first seem odd;
not only because Proudhon directs some venomous pages against the
American constitution, but also because of the very different economic
concerns underpinning their respective systems. Proudhon's thinking is
reputedly defined by the answer he gave to the question which forms the
title of his best-known work, Qu'est-ce que la propriete?, to which he
had replied: "C'est le vol." For Madison, and indeed generally for the
civic tradition upon which he had drawn and which Proudhon here
silently revives, the institution was highly valued. It is the possession of
property which, it was held, guarantees the independence of the citizen,
supplies the material basis for his active political life, and also supplies
him with an immediate interest in resisting excessive and arbitrary
governmental power. But if it is paradoxical to set the great critic of
property in the context of a property-owning theory, it is Proudhon
himself who invites this paradox: for he explicitly adopts the standard
argument that it is the absence of property that disposes men to tyranny.
"The people," he writes, "living from day to day, without property...
have nothing to lose under tyranny, and scarcely worry about the
prospect."42 Moreover, it is, he says, the property-owning middle class
that has always been the source of political liberty.
The difficulty is only apparent. The property-owning middle class,
the bourgeoisie in its original and non-Marxist sense, has, Proudhon
says, ceased to exist.43 It has given way to the concentration of wealth,
to finance capitalism as it was later called, or to "economic feudalism"
or "bankocracy" as Proudhon calls it. And how, he asks, can a
democratic republic be created without the social base which it has
always been thought to require? It is here that Proudhon returns to the
idea of economic organization which he had favoured from the
beginning, the idea of self-governing producers' associations, trading
with one another according to a principle of just exchange or "value."
Before, though, this idea had rested upon ethical foundations; now it
becomes a political instrument. Now that the bourgeoisie has vanished,
a society of self-governing producers' associations is the only basis for a
political order in which the concentration of power can be avoided. The
41 Ibid., 61.
42 Ibid., 28.
43 Du Princip fefderatif (Paris: Dentu, 1863) 313; not included in English translation.

This content downloaded from

154.59.124.141 on Wed, 23 Sep 2020 15:39:16 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
786 RICHARD VERNON

concentration of wealth breeds political dependency, dividing

into a class of passive wage-earners on the one hand and an
financiers on the other.
Although Proudhon retains intact his long-established economic
views, they have come in Du Principe federatif to acquire a new
significance and meaning: as a weapon against central power, and as the
means by which the political ideals once attached to the possession of
property may be rescued.44 Property as the classical theorists thought of
it no longer exists; but an equivalent is to be found in the joint property
rights of producers' associations, which likewise preserve their
members from dependency. Like earlier theorists who had stressed the
"civic" rather than the "juristic" aspects of property,45 Proudhon
examines property relations in the light of their political consequences.
The deconcentration of economic control gives life to the region; and it is
regional life that permits the values of self-government to be realized,
and supplies the only alternative to an order in which "Power invades
everything, dominates everything, absorbs everything, for ever, for
always, without end,"46 in which, also, "political life abandons the
periphery for the centre, and collapse overcomes a hydrocephalous
nation."47

The object has not been to justify Proudhon's argument but only to
indicate what it was. Many objections indeed arise, of both empirical
and conceptual kinds. With regard to the empirical line of objection,
Proudhon's largely assertive argument obviously falls short of providing
the sort of guarantees that critics of federalism appear to demand. On the
other hand, set in the context proper to it, it may not be as fanciful as
critics seem to claim. Its claim to realism lies in its essentially temporal
dimension. In addition to whatever abstract identification it may present
of the conditions for federalism and for freedom, it also presents, and
especially stresses, an argument for the conditions of freedom over time.
This is, of course, implicit in the central theme of "corruption," which
attributes value to a polity's capacity to maintain itself in the face of what
are imagined to be persistent threats to its identity.
Here Proudhon goes beyond Montesquieu. For the latter, the cause
of (a democratic republic's) corruption had been grandeur or scale.
44 Compare, however, Stanley Hoffmann's view, in A. Maass (ed.), Area and Power
(Glencoe: Free Press, 1959), 133, where the economic is treated as primary, the
political as a means.
45 For this distinction see J. G. A. Pocock's discussion in Anthony Parel and Thomas
Flanagan (eds.), Theories of Property (Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press,
1979).
46 The Principle, 59.
47 Ibid., 49.

This content downloaded from

154.59.124.141 on Wed, 23 Sep 2020 15:39:16 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
Freedom and Corruption: Proudhon's Federal Principle 787

Proudhon takes over that argument, as far as it goes, with little

modification; he claims that a federation combines the small scale of the
republic with a larger sovereignty, and also restrains territorial growth
by aggressive means. But Proudhon adds to this an argument in terms of
what may be called internal growth, that is, the increasing density of
relations, and the expansion of activities requiring general management
and supervision. "In a properly organized society, everything must be in
constant growth-science, industry, work, wealth, public health."48
Growth in this sense creates no less of an administrative burden than
territorial growth. Much importance attaches, therefore, to the manner
in which a society responds, over time, to new relations and
circumstances, and to the kind of institutions it adopts for managing the
additional burdens which its progress imposes upon it. Now in a unitary
state, Proudhon believed, there was a natural tendency for new
responsibilities to accumulate at the centre. Moreover, he believed, an
increasingly massive aggregation of central powers will also be
increasingly impenetrable to the value on which a republic rests, that is,
virtue or civic responsibility. The argument for federalism, therefore,
rests principally upon the claim that in a federation the trend towards
central accumulation will be less powerful that in a unitary state. The
acquisition of new responsibilities will be both legally and politically
challengeable by jealous provinces. The risk of corruption will therefore
be smaller, in the sense that provinces will be better able to preserve
their internal politics from central administration than if they were,
legally and politically, creatures of central power.
This is not a wholly unreasonable claim. What it amounts to is
the prediction that provinces in a federation will enjoy greater legal and
political resources, in preserving themselves from central accumulation,
than subordinate jurisdictions enjoy in unitary systems. The claim does
not predict that an initial division of power between provinces and
centre will survive the unanticipated circumstances which, over time,
foster increased central responsibility; it predicts only that as such
circumstances, arise provincial governments will be able to exercise
significant control over the growth of central powers. Of course, it is still
possible to raise difficulties. One can point to federal systems which are
less able to resist central accumulation than certain unitary systems are.
One can draw attention to the deep unclarity regarding the power of
amendment in federal systems. But the comparison of the worst possible
case of one system with the best possible case of another is at best only
the beginning of an argument. As for the question of amendment, what is
fundamentally at issue here is not the merits of federalism but its distinct
existence as a category: for unless there were some difference between
the resources available to provinces and those available to subordinate
48 Ibid., 47.

This content downloaded from

154.59.124.141 on Wed, 23 Sep 2020 15:39:16 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
788 RICHARD VERNON

jurisdictions, the very notion of federalism would become of

use.

Proudhon's case is even more obviously challengeable on gro

of a conceptual kind. Let us suppose that provinces do have def
weapons which prefectures, departments or municipalities lack. W
this a condition of freedom? Here Proudhon's argument confronts a
fundamental difficulty. He emphatically connects federalism
freedom, because of the capacity which he sees in it to block the
migration of political life from periphery to centre; but he does not
explain sufficiently what kind of freedom is fostered by this capacity. He
thus opens his argument to the powerful objection that to speak of
federalism as providing freedom tout court is simply vacuous, for there
is no such thing as freedom tout court. There are "freedoms."
Among the best short statements of such a view is the one offered in
a brilliant passage in Hobbes's Leviathan:49 "The Libertie, whereof
there is so frequent, and honourable mention, in the Histories, and
Philosophy of the Antient Greeks and Romans, and in the writings, and
discourse of those that from them have received all their learning in the
Politiques, is not the Libertie of particular men; but the Libertie of the
Common-wealth." The liberty of "particular men," as Hobbes
explained shortly before, is the liberty of not being hindered in doing
those things which one is able to do. A Commonwealth, like a particular
man, may have such freedom, in not being subject to another
Commonwealth: "The Athenians and Romanes were free; that is, free
Common-wealths: not that any particular men had the right to resist
their own Representative; but that their Representative had the Libertie
to resist, or invade other people." In a free city, in that sense, no one has
more liberty, "or Immunitie from the service of the Common-wealth,"
than in cities subordinate to an empire. Nor does the form of government
make any difference: "Whether the Common-wealth be Monarchicall,
or Popular, the Freedome is still the same." The claim that popular
government alone makes freedom possible is a mere parochialism of
"Aristotle, Cicero, and other men, Greeks and Romanes, that, living
under popular States ... transcribed... into their books ... the Practice
of their own Common-wealths."
Hobbes discriminates here three important senses of liberty. There
is, first, his own, the "immunity" or nonrestraint (always partial) of
individuals. Second, there is the same, transposed to the level of the
state, that is, the immunity of the state from external rule. Third, there is
the notion of popular government, or participation in ruling. All three are
absorbed by Proudhon within a single undifferentiated liberte. For, first,
as we have seen, federalism is presented as an extension of the
constitutionalist division of powers thesis, areal division being added to
capital division as an additional check to the accumulation of powers;
49 Leviathan, C. B. Macpherson (ed.) (Hardmondsworth: Penguin, 1968), 266-68.

This content downloaded from

154.59.124.141 on Wed, 23 Sep 2020 15:39:16 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
Freedom and Corruption: Proudhon's Federal Principle 789

the relevant view of freedom here is the view, common to Hobbes and
Montesquieu, of freedom as personal security. It is because of this
element in his argument that Proudhon is not content simply with the
devolution of power to provinces: any power is potentially oppressive,
and central government serves to check provincial power as vice versa.
Second, however, the devolution of power to provinces is itself, in a
different sense, constitutive of freedom, following Hobbes's analogy
between the "immunities" of individual and community: for if there are,
as Proudhon argues, real and historic communities, small "peoples" or
societies within the mammoth states, then they have a claim to become
"masters of themselves," just as particular men do. And third, as we
have also seen, there is an identification of freedom with what Hobbes
called "popular government," such as has, in his view, been "deerly
bought" with the learning of "the Greek and Latine tongues." For in the
"citizenship" which Proudhon admires, the political life of the engaged
and responsible citizen is itself a manifestation of freedom. Freedom
here is contrasted, not only with personal insecurity, nor with the loss of
communal autonomy as such, but with subjection, or total
administration.
Does Proudhon still have a case? He may do, but it has to be
constructed on his behalf, for he was far less careful in making his
argument than Hobbes was in making the contrary one.

It goes without saying that the freedoms introduced by Proudhon into his
discussion enjoy no necessary or even probable mutual harmony. This is
an embarrassment which, in part, critics of the supposed libertarian
tendencies of federalism have been quick to exploit: the case can easily
be shown to be self-defeating. If the claim is made that federalism
provides for the freedom of political majorities, then of course it can be
shown to be false, for federalism preserves regions, where minority
interests prevail, from national majorities. If, on the other hand, it is
claimed that federalism does after all protect the rights of minorities,
then with no less difficulty it can be shown that in fact it oppresses
(regional) minorities by devolving power to (regional) majorities.50 If
individual "immunities" take precedence, in other words, they may
conflict with the self-determination of provincial communities. If the
self-determination of provincial communities takes precedence, it may
obviously conflict not only with personal independence but also with the
claims of popular (national) majorities. If, finally, the political rights of
popular (national) majorities take precedence, then the
self-determination of provincial majorities is undermined, and so also
(no less than in a unitary state) are the personal rights of security. As
50 Riker, Federalism, 141-44.

This content downloaded from

154.59.124.141 on Wed, 23 Sep 2020 15:39:16 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
790 RICHARD VERNON

defined, this trap leaves no escape, for success with respect to any
the three dimensions carries with it failure with respect to one or
the others.
Riker notes that, "though we may know fairly well what
'federalism' means, we have at best a confused notion of what 'freedom'
means." If Proudhon's federalism can escape the trap set by Riker and
others, the route must surely lie in the definition of the second of these
terms. Recent discussion has largely revolved around a well-known
essay by Sir Isaiah Berlin.51 There are, according to Berlin, two
concepts of freedom, which he calls negative and positive. Negative
freedom is what Hobbes called "immunity," that is, nonrestraint, or the
sphere of personal security. Positive freedom lies in collective
self-determination, that is, in participation in ruling oneself and others.
Berlin rightly points out that the two freedoms may ultimately point to
two quite different conclusions. One may have a great deal of negative
freedom without enjoying positive freedom, as in the case of a
benevolent or simply lazy tyranny. One may have a great deal of positive
freedom without enjoying much negative freedom, as in the case of what
has been called totalitarian democracy. One view addresses itself to
what may be called the scope of power-over what range am I
governed?-while the other addresses itself to what may be called the
source of power-by whom am I governed? To this we must add, in the
context of a federal system, a further ambiguity with respect to the
source of power. For if a federation presents each individual with two
jurisdictional sources, the distinction between negative and positive
freedom is complicated by the presence of two communities in either of
which (or both at once) positive freedom may be sought. It is not only a
question of (negative) individual security versus (positive) collective
rights, but also a question of which community-provincial or
central-is to have the more salient positive right.
In the context of this discussion Proudhon's undifferentiated liberte
may well seem to be out of its depth. He simply has nothing to say
about Berlin's distinction, just as he has nothing to say about the
distinctions introduced by Hobbes. But it is not universally accepted
that freedom should be divided as Berlin proposes, if at all. All freedom,
as one critic has urged,52 involves reference (if only implicit) to three
"variables": it must be the freedom "of' some actor "from" some
obstacle "to" his doing something. Berlin's negative freedom-from and
positive freedom-to thus do not constitute two concepts of freedom but
two aspects of any intelligible use of the word. What divides different
51 In Four Essays on Liberty (London: Oxford University Press, 1969), 118-72.
52 Gerald C. MacCallum, "Negative and Positive Freedom," in Peter Laslett et al.
(eds.), Philosophy, Politics and Society (4th series; Oxford: Blackwell, 1972), 174-93.
For a comment on this view, see Robert A. Kocis, "Reason, Development and the
Conflict of Human Ends," American Political Science Review 74 (1980), 38-52.

This content downloaded from

154.59.124.141 on Wed, 23 Sep 2020 15:39:16 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
Freedom and Corruption: Proudhon's Federal Principle 791

theorists of freedom, it is claimed, is not disagreement over the meaning

of the word but disagreement over the application of one or more of its
three essential "variables."
What may more accurately reflect what happens in political history
is a conception in which the competitive interplay of aspects of freedom
is recognized.53 Perhaps linguistic analysis is right in declaring the
meaning of the word to be essentially homogeneous, and perhaps Berlin
is also right in stressing the utterly different political meanings (in the
sense of implications) of the term. The two views are not mutually
exclusive if taken in that sense. But if it does not follow from the first
view that divergent political meanings will not compete, nor does it
follow from the second that one political meaning or another is
connected uniquely or in a stable manner with a particular cause. With
regard to Berlin's freedom-from, even the most passionate advocates of
positive freedom do not deny that elementary freedoms-from restraint
are genuine cases of freedom: they may rank them lower than liberals
do, but they do not obliterate their sense. With regard to freedom-to, it
may be impossible in practice to separate the desire for collective
self-determination from the desire for the enjoyment of personal
freedoms. It is, indeed, precisely in the conjunction of the two that the
concept of political freedom was historically developed. For if the
primal enemy of freedom is despotism, what is demanded is at once
personal security and rights of participation, the two together being
constitutive of a society which is civil and not servile.
But if the meanings of freedom are thus interwoven, and subject to
changing priorities over time, that does not necessarily mean that to
speak of a society as "free" tout court is meaningless. What Raymond
Aron proposes is the illuminating idea that a society may be called
"free" precisely to the extent that it admits the political ambiguities of
freedom, and gives institutional expression to divergent readings of its
meaning.54 In terms of political judgments of priority, there is no
conceivable way of announcing in advance whose freedom is most
severely jeopardized by what restraints with respect to what potential
action. "Dogmas" of either liberal or democratic kinds are inadequate;
for on the one hand the disparity between formal negative rights and
actual positive powers may become intolerable, while on the other the
absence of negative rights may make political action impossible.
While this consideration may help to excuse Proudhon's failure to
make expected distinctions, it has moved to a plane apparently
remote from the question of federalism. A further development of the
argument, however, suggests an approach to what Proudhon may have
had in mind, or which at least casts some new light on the system which

53 For a sustained analysis of the themes of this paragraph, see Aron, Essay on
Freedom, Parts 2 and 4.
54 Ibid., 157.

This content downloaded from

154.59.124.141 on Wed, 23 Sep 2020 15:39:16 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
792 RICHARD VERNON

he proposed. If indeed there is a "dialectic" of freedoms, then a

role is played by the first and seemingly the most innocent of the
"variables" distinguished: the freedom "of" whom? For the
freedoms enjoyed or valued by individuals are attached to
membership in various groups or communities. The freedoms
establishing or established by one community imply its power to act, and
hence a limit upon the power of another; and where, as in the case of
communities within a state, individuals have dual (or multiple)
memberships, what is posed by questions of freedom is the question of
the priority of attachment. Aron remarks: "It varies with circumstances
whether it is to this group or that... that the individual will have the
sense of owing certain precisely defined freedoms."55
This consideration bears, of course, upon any polity which does not
wholly suppress internal associations. But in a federation, at least as
Proudhon imagines it, it has a quite special importance. While he takes
over the classical theme of checks and balances, and to that extent sees
federalism as setting "power against power," what he also has in mind is
not so much duality of power as duality of constituency. He has in mind
a polity in which the question of priority of membership will be
permanently open. He speaks, indeed, of provinces as natural
communities, of central power as artificial; but he also speaks of the
federal state, as we have seen, in quite unexpected language, which
leaves no doubt that it, no less than the province, is a locus of
identification. He wants to destroy the indivisible state without setting
the indivisible province in its place; he wants, ideally, a set of
systematically competitive loyalties, of which neither province nor state
enjoys a monopoly. The self-administering province substitutes civic
freedom for the administered subject of the unitary state; but in another
sense of freedom, the state must protect individuals against their
provinces; while in a third sense the state may again be a vehicle of
freedom, in giving force to the will to act with respect to "common
things."'56
Theorists of federalism have often found clarity desirable in the
separation of provincial and federal jurisdictions. Proudhon seems at
times to be pointing to a different emphasis. It is not through clarity but
through conflict, or at least through the possibility of conflict, that a
federation can be said to make freedom possible. He does not suppose
freedom to have an assignable primary location. He supposes that its
location will vary in unanticipated and also in differently-perceived
ways. What he means by federation is a repoliticized society in which
the location of new powers is subject to contestation and negotiation. He
sees this as setting limits to the natural but corrupting tendency for
politics to give way to administration. In the classical manner, he sees
55 Ibid.

56 De la capacite politique des classes ouvrieres (new ed.; Paris: Riviere, 1924

This content downloaded from

154.59.124.141 on Wed, 23 Sep 2020 15:39:16 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
Freedom and Corruption: Proudhon's Federal Principle 793

politics as requiring an active and widely-diffused sense of a common

interest; but he also believes that "common interest" will become a
mere symbol of tutelage, administrative "providence," if any one
collectivity takes it uniquely as its own.

We began with Proudhon and Marx, and perhaps we might return there
for a conclusion. The suggestion that the two, among the
nineteenth-century socialist founders, best represent the diversitarian
and unitarian tendencies, is not at all original; it may be, even, only
approximately correct, and, in Marx's case especially, liable to being
badly overdrawn. But it is not, I think, so widely recognized that
Proudhon, or at any rate the later Proudhon, stood so far apart from the
characteristic nineteenth-century views which Marx so powerfully
advanced. In reverting to the themes of an older political science, it was
argued above, Proudhon separated himself not only from the language of
immanent change and historical liberation, but also from much that he
himself had previously taken from the language. Nothing if not eclectic,
he had borrowed before from Hegel and Comte, and constructed a
philosophy of history. Now he borrows from Machiavelli and
Montesquieu, and constructs a strikingly traditional science of politics.
But no more than in his earlier writings is his meaning derivable in any
simple way from his borrowings. If he borrowed the problem of
"corruption," he connected it not only with a critique of despotism but
also with a critique of bureaucracy: he could not simply have borrowed
from anyone his solution, federalism, for no one had previously made for
that form claims as large as his. Even if federalism, like corruption, owes
much to Montesquieu's account, it points in a direction which is quite
novel, in suggesting the importance not only of a dispersal of power but
also of what we might call dispersal of loyalty.
As a critic of "alienation," Marx identified freedom with the
self-determination of a community, with its ridding itself of both the
illusions and the divisions which in the past had always impeded its
power to will and to act, to make its institutions and circumstances what
its members wished them to be. Such a theme is not at all unfamiliar to
Proudhon, whose conception of freedom, as we have seen, was far
indeed from being of a wholly "negative" variety. What separates him
from Marx's vision is not so much any clear difference on the issue of
what freedom means, as his sense that we may be fundamentally unclear
about the location and extent of the "community" whose power is to be
realized. No political theory of freedom-as opposed to a moral theory
of personal development, or a philosophical treatment of the nature of
choice-can neglect Marx's "power of united individuals." But
Proudhon's question is, Which individuals, defined by which

This content downloaded from

154.59.124.141 on Wed, 23 Sep 2020 15:39:16 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
794 RICHARD VERNON

attachments, identifications, and loyalties? It is simply not true

Rousseau had claimed) "the most general will is always the mos
There are cases where it is more just, and critics of federalism
difficulty in pointing to them. There are also cases where the
general will may be less just. Obviously, a polity cannot assign p
one community or another on the basis of someone's intuitive
perception of which has the more just claim. Whatever rule it adopts will
one day violate someone's intuitive perception of which case is the more
just. All one can hope to do is to avoid foreclosing the issue more than is
necessary either way, and to create institutions which leave the question
politically open. That is what Proudhon tried to do. He was a
decentralist, but not merely a decentralist; he thought there were issues
on which the central power was the instrument of freedom; but he saw in
central power a force so unrelentingly accumulative that it would, if
given free rein, prevent the question of proper jurisdiction even from
being raised.
Proudhon was no more of a utopian than Marx was. He used that
word, as Marx did, in a pejorative sense. His prescriptions for future
society should be taken, as Marx's should, not as programmes but as
hints, whose general tendency is what deserves attention. Here it must
be noted, finally, that the tendency of his prescriptions is not always
clear. Unlike Marx, he feared "administration" more than he did
"government," and certainly had no intention of substituting the former
for the latter; on the contrary, his object was to open public
administration to multiple political wills. His target was not, then, the
authority of the state-which he welcomes, even idealizes-but its
monopoly of powers. However, in his passionate concern with
redistributing powers, he was not always sensitive to the conditions
necessary for a federal state to enjoy authority. It rests upon little more
than what may be called a moral constituency, and lives, apparently, off
the fund of civility inherited by the federation from the unitary state
which it has displaced. It may have no political constituency, federal
representation being mediated through provincial governments.58 This
absence of a distinct federal constituency is not required by any of the
arguments which Proudhon offers, and actually impedes some of the
tasks which he requires federal government to perform. It is perhaps
understandable that he should have seized every means he could find to
demolish the grossly inflated unitary sovereignty which he saw in
France; but in doing so he offered proposals which tend to eliminate a
political centre no less than they undermine administrative monopoly.
His own argument requires, however, that a political centre should not
57 Roger D. Masters (ed.), "Political Economy," in On the Social Contract (New York:
St. Martin's, 1978), 213.
58 See for example The Principle, 61, where it is suggested (though not required) that the
federal centre be composed of delegates from provincial governments.

This content downloaded from

154.59.124.141 on Wed, 23 Sep 2020 15:39:16 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
Freedom and Corruption: Proudhon's Federal Principle 795

wither away;59 the most radically decentralist system requires one, for,
after all, decisions made, over time, to decentralize are no less general in
character than decisions to centralize. Whether or not this point may
have some relevance for other federations, and of a nonsocialist kind, I
leave it to others to judge.
59 See F. M. Barnard and R. A. Vernon, "Socialist Pluralism and Pluralist Socialism,"
Political Studies 25 (1977), 474-90, for the view that the pluralization of socialist
regimes may require the abandonment of the "withering away" thesis.

This content downloaded from

154.59.124.141 on Wed, 23 Sep 2020 15:39:16 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms