sarily from the correction of the thesis by the
antithesis. It is therefore necessary to examine closely its
peculiarities, and to exclude that which there is in them hostile to
society. The two that remain will, when united, form the true formula
of human social life."[3]

[3] _Qu'est-ce que la Propriete?_ p. 202.

Karl Marx, who made very merry over Proudhon's dialectic, thought he
had played his trump card against the capitalistic method of
production in almost the same way, namely, with the Hegelian
proposition of the negation of negation. If they both explained
themselves by bringing forward, besides the dialectic proof, also an
historical and economic one for their contentions, the answer is that
historic proof cannot be brought forward for Proudhon's synthetic
conception of property or for Marx's method of production, since
history only concerns itself with the past or the present; whereas
such conditions as they imagine exist only in the future, and can only
be derived from the past or present conditions by the dialectic
method, and only can be assumed as hypotheses.

This standpoint unites Proudhon and Karl Marx, the Anarchists and the
Social Democrats; they both call each other Utopians, and both are
right.

* * * * *

Proudhon in his book upon property did not answer the question put in
its title, _What is Property?_ as he had promised in the introduction.
From his statement "property is theft," which was uttered with so much
_eclat_, and of which, according to his own account at least, he was
prouder than if he had possessed all the millions of Rothschild--from
this paradox one might conclude, and certainly the great majority of
his readers do conclude usually that Proudhon was an enemy of property
in general. That is not at all the case. "What I have been seeking
since 1840 in defining property," said he much later (in _Justice_,
i., p. 302), "and what I wish to-day, as I have repeated over and over
again, is certainly not abolition of property. For this would be to
fall into Communism with Plato, Rousseau, Louis Blanc, and other
opponents of property, against whom I protest with all my strength.
What I demand from property is _a balance_." But all his life Proudhon
was unable to dispel the misunderstanding which he carelessly brought
upon his doctrine in his first writing by a talented paradox. We say
carelessly, for the concluding answer which Proudhon gives to the