Proudhon on politically compromising Christians

Whose politics change with who's in power

The first person to call himself an anarchist, defining anarchy as “order without power,” Pierre-Joseph Proudhon is best known for his declaration “property is theft.” His politics is sometimes called “Anarcho-Mutualism,” and opposed to Marxist collectivism. He became a member of the French Parliament after the 1848 revolution, when he called himself a “federalist,” and died in 1865 at the age of 56. This description of Proudhon’s idea of religion is given by the Jesuit theologian Henri de Lubac in his The Un-marxian Socialist.

It was not Proudhon who, if we can put it thus, thrust God into the brawl. The traditional religion, for long engaged in supporting the “Right to the Throne,” was called in afresh to gives its aid to “Property.” This was the new Idol, and the God of the Christians was commandeered for its service. Those who were honoring the Idol were the upper-middle-class people, who, at the same time, in their enthusiasm, were singing their hymn to Liberalism.

According to many of them, the workman was to earn by his labour a little less than was necessary for him to live; that was a providential necessity, and economic progress consisted in transforming a crowd of craftsmen and small property-owners into a miserable proletariat. . . . That was what was prescribed in the name of social progress: Proudhon rebelled against it. Providence was called in to justify it: Proudhon rejected Providence. To the first cry of rebellion: “Property is theft,” he added as a corollary: “God is Evil.”

Proudhon had seen this political in the defense of the missions to other countries. One prominent Catholic priest argued that those who opposed the missioners were “opposed to the desires of the Most Christian Monarch” and thus “avowed enemies of the country.” De Lubac mentions Montalambert, Balzac, and Bloy as other witnesses. In Proudhon’s idea of religion,

can we not recognize the idea of the majority of the traditionalists and of the counter-revolutionaries of the century before his own, for whom religion appeared to be principally a cohesive source and a source of social preservation?

When, however, the middle classes were firmly set up in power with the July monarchy, Property became the subject of their dithyrambs; and it was Property in particular which called upon Providence to consolidate its interests. . . . Conservatives or progressivists, supporters of the “resistance” or of the “movement,” their worship of Property was equally ardent.

Property then inspired a literature in a mystical vein, which today, at a century’s distance, makes us smile, but was calculated to stir the heart of a man enamoured of justice. The old “divine right” of kings had given way to a divine right of property-owners. The alliance between throne and altar had been succeeded by [quoting the philosoher François Pillon] “an alliance between the altar and the money-bags.”

Property was unreservedly declared to be of “divine origin.” They said it was “a divine institution,” “a sacred mystery,” whose “holy laws” were revered. The inequalities to which it gave rise were themselves sacred, they were all full of “providential advantages.” . . .

This language, which justified all selfishness and sanctioned, even sanctified, all abuses, was spoken by philosophers, economists and politicians.

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