Library:Marx's Inferno/Chapter 2 - Revision history

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	Despite its having fallen apparently stillborn from the press, ''Zur Kritik'' was destined to deliver to later generations one of the iconic statements of Marx’s project. His preface—it has come to be so detached from the work it prefaces that it is generally referred to simply as “the 1859 Preface”—comprises what Marx calls a “sketch of the course of [his] studies,” an intellectual autobiography that traces his path from editor of the Rheinische Zeitung to surveyor of bourgeois political economy. While engaged in journalism, Marx claims, he had run up against “so-called		Despite its having fallen apparently stillborn from the press, ''Zur Kritik'' was destined to deliver to later generations one of the iconic statements of Marx’s project. His preface—it has come to be so detached from the work it prefaces that it is generally referred to simply as “the 1859 Preface”—comprises what Marx calls a “sketch of the course of [his] studies,” an intellectual autobiography that traces his path from editor of the Rheinische Zeitung to surveyor of bourgeois political economy. While engaged in journalism, Marx claims, he had run up against “so-called
			[[Category:Marx’s Inferno]]

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	=== ''The 1859 Preface'' ===		=== ''The 1859 Preface'' ===
	Thirteen years after Proudhon’s much-anticipated ''Système,'' an obscure little book was published by Franz Duncker in Berlin. Titled ''Zur Kritik der politicshen Ökonomie'' (''Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy''), it was written by a German exile from the revolutions of 1848		Thirteen years after Proudhon’s much-anticipated ''Système,'' an obscure little book was published by Franz Duncker in Berlin. Titled ''Zur Kritik der politicshen Ökonomie'' (''Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy''), it was written by a German exile from the revolutions of 1848 who had largely disappeared from the German radical scene after 1852. Karl Marx had been making a meager living in London as a newspaper correspondent for the ''New York Tribune'', the ''Neue Oder-Zeitung'' in Breslau, and the ''Zuid Afrikaan'', a Dutch-language paper in South Africa. While this journalism was, considered in sum, the majority of what Marx would publish in his entire life, it was not addressed primarily to a working-class or socialist audience, and it was not, perforce, very heavy on either political agitation or theoretical elaboration.<ref>Sperber, ''Karl Marx'', 294– 96. Marx’s journalism during this period is summarized by Sperber (ibid., 302– 25). The political and theoretical development of Marx’s thought in and through his journalism is ably treated by the recent work of Anderson, ''Marx at the Margins''.</ref> And, as Marx said in a contemporaneous letter to Joseph Weydemeyer, he had “given up associations [and] withdrawn completely into [his] study.”<ref>Marx to Weydemeyer, February 1, 1859; ''MECW'', 40:376. The background of this withdrawal from political activity is detailed by Hunt, ''The Political Ideas of Marx and Engels'', vol. 1, and Lattek, ''Revolutionary Refugees''.</ref>

			Marx intended this new book to return him to the partisan fray. To Weydemeyer, Marx put his aims this way:

			<blockquote>

			In these two chapters the Proudhonist socialism now fashionable in France . . . is demolished to its very foundations. Communism must above all rid itself of this “false brother.” . . . I hope to win a scientific victory for our party. But the latter must itself now show whether its numbers are great enough to buy enough copies to banish the publisher’s “moral scruples.” The continuation of the venture depends on the sale of the first installments.<ref>Marx to Weydemeyer, February 1, 1859; ''MECW'', 40:377–78.</ref>

			</blockquote>

			The numbers of Marx’s party were quite small, as it turned out. The further installments were never published, and, eight years on, when Marx published volume one of Capital, he had to apologize for “the long pause” between ''Zur Kritik'' and its “continuation,” and to begin again from the beginning, recapitulating “the substance of that earlier work” at the start of the new one.<ref>''Capital'', 1:89; ''MEGA'', II.5:11; ''MEGA'', II.7:11.</ref>

			Despite its having fallen apparently stillborn from the press, ''Zur Kritik'' was destined to deliver to later generations one of the iconic statements of Marx’s project. His preface—it has come to be so detached from the work it prefaces that it is generally referred to simply as “the 1859 Preface”—comprises what Marx calls a “sketch of the course of [his] studies,” an intellectual autobiography that traces his path from editor of the Rheinische Zeitung to surveyor of bourgeois political economy. While engaged in journalism, Marx claims, he had run up against “so-called

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	Luckily for us, Proudhon thinks we have already, with “the drill of philosophy,” begun to break out of “the embryonic shell” these ideas have provided for our thought. Completing this task—which is simultaneously one of society turning “from within to without,” of “invert[ing]” every social relation— is the calling of the revolution. For carrying out this mission, Proudhon suggests turning to “the economists,” for “they are miners by trade.”<ref>''General Idea'', 291, 297; ''OC'', 2:342, 347.</ref> What is it about philosophy and economics that will help us to escape from the prison of the old ideas? Very simply, they both teach, according to Proudhon, that all authority is illegitimate. They teach “the laws of nature and of society.”<ref>''General Idea'', 292–94; ''OC'', 2:342–45.</ref>		Luckily for us, Proudhon thinks we have already, with “the drill of philosophy,” begun to break out of “the embryonic shell” these ideas have provided for our thought. Completing this task—which is simultaneously one of society turning “from within to without,” of “invert[ing]” every social relation— is the calling of the revolution. For carrying out this mission, Proudhon suggests turning to “the economists,” for “they are miners by trade.”<ref>''General Idea'', 291, 297; ''OC'', 2:342, 347.</ref> What is it about philosophy and economics that will help us to escape from the prison of the old ideas? Very simply, they both teach, according to Proudhon, that all authority is illegitimate. They teach “the laws of nature and of society.”<ref>''General Idea'', 292–94; ''OC'', 2:342–45.</ref>

	This may seem a puzzling lesson for Proudhon to draw, given his passionate denunciations of the economists in both ''Qu’est-ce que la''		This may seem a puzzling lesson for Proudhon to draw, given his passionate denunciations of the economists in both ''Qu’est-ce que la propriété?'' and the ''Système.'' There is certainly a knot to untie here (and I will make a suggestion about how to do this below). But what matters for present purposes is only that, in the ''Idée générale,'' Proudhon develops the myth of the social Hell into a comprehensive representation of both human history and the revolutionary project, one, moreover, that seems to integrate his earlier invocations of the myth with the Fourierist images. As in Considérant, the social Hell is a remnant of the past, a condition of humanity’s immaturity, the limits of which we have now, finally, encountered. As in Proudhon’s earlier text, only science, an excavation below the apparent surface, can show us the way out of this Hell. Finally, and also repeating a feature of the ''Système'', only our very imprisonment beneath the earth could have developed our capacities to the point where we would require and seek liberation into a life above the earth. The journey through the underworld is part—if a contrapuntal part—of the providential march of human progress.

			=== ''Marx’s Katabasis'' ===
			These developments of socialist infernalism were not unknown to Marx. He seems to have had a copy of the second edition of ''Considérant’s Manifeste'' in his personal library, and there are marginal notations on the pages containing the discussion of the social Hell.''<ref> MEGA, IV.32:199–200; §XI, “The social Hell,” is on pp. 15– 17 of the edition possessed by Marx, and page 15 and page 17 in Marx’s copy contain marginalia.</ref>'' He wrote ''The Poverty of Philosophy'' as a response to Proudhon’s Système, and he studied that work intensively. He read Proudhon’s ''Idée générale'' as soon as he could get his hands on it, at the end of July or beginning of August 1851. He summarized it for Engels in a letter, then sent the book to his friend for his thoughts. Engels wrote up a lengthy critical assessment later in the year, which he sent to Marx. Marx planned to publish a long review of Proudhon’s book in Joseph Weydemeyer’s ''Die Revolution'', but the journal went bankrupt before he could realize this intention. As I will now argue, Marx’s familiarity with this trope was not barren. He himself deployed it in a novel and interesting way.

			=== ''The 1859 Preface'' ===
			Thirteen years after Proudhon’s much-anticipated ''Système,'' an obscure little book was published by Franz Duncker in Berlin. Titled ''Zur Kritik der politicshen Ökonomie'' (''Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy''), it was written by a German exile from the revolutions of 1848

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	Five years later, imprisoned for his criticisms of Louis Bonaparte, Proudhon again turned his pen to elaborating the socialist myth, this time with considerable inventiveness and precision. “Humanity,” he proposed in his ''Idée générale de la révolution au XIX<sup>e</sup> siècle'',		Five years later, imprisoned for his criticisms of Louis Bonaparte, Proudhon again turned his pen to elaborating the socialist myth, this time with considerable inventiveness and precision. “Humanity,” he proposed in his ''Idée générale de la révolution au XIX<sup>e</sup> siècle'',

			<blockquote>

			in the theologico-political sphere, wherein it has been agitated these six thousand years, is like a society which, instead of being placed on the outside of a solid star, is shut up inside a hollow sphere, lighted from the interior and warmed, like the subterranean world of Virgil, by an immobile sun in the zenith common to the lands curving around it.<ref>''General Idea'', 289; ''OC'', 2:340</ref>

			</blockquote>

			Imagining this world, and the course of history in it, Proudhon claims that “the progress of civilization . . . would bring vast movements to these infernal regions,” movements that would reveal the true scope and nature of this upside-down world, and simultaneously install in the minds of the inhabitants the conviction that “the earth is too cramped for the humanity that works it [l’exploite].”

			<blockquote>

			Then these men, who had at first taken their orb to be infinite, and had sung its praises, and who had nonetheless been imprisoned like a nest of beetles in a clod of earth, begin to blaspheme God and nature. . . . Menacing heaven with eye and fist, they begin audaciously to drill into the ground, so well that one day, the drill encountering only the void, they conclude that to the concave surface of this sphere corresponds a convex surface, an exterior world, which they set out to visit.<ref>''General Idea'', 289–90; Proudhon, ''OC'', 2:340–41.</ref>

			</blockquote>

			This situation is, Proudhon says, a representation not of our physical existence but of our mental one, of the history of “our political and religious views.” The ideas of “God and Prince, the Church and the State,” have dominated and defined the sphere of our thinking. We have now exhausted our explorations of these ideas, outgrown them. “We must burst this casing if we want to arrive at a more exact notion of things and leave this hell, where the reason of man, cretinized, will end up being extinguished.”<ref>''General Idea'', 290–91; ''OC'', 2:341–42.</ref>

			Luckily for us, Proudhon thinks we have already, with “the drill of philosophy,” begun to break out of “the embryonic shell” these ideas have provided for our thought. Completing this task—which is simultaneously one of society turning “from within to without,” of “invert[ing]” every social relation— is the calling of the revolution. For carrying out this mission, Proudhon suggests turning to “the economists,” for “they are miners by trade.”<ref>''General Idea'', 291, 297; ''OC'', 2:342, 347.</ref> What is it about philosophy and economics that will help us to escape from the prison of the old ideas? Very simply, they both teach, according to Proudhon, that all authority is illegitimate. They teach “the laws of nature and of society.”<ref>''General Idea'', 292–94; ''OC'', 2:342–45.</ref>

			This may seem a puzzling lesson for Proudhon to draw, given his passionate denunciations of the economists in both ''Qu’est-ce que la''

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	The lower circle of Hell to which Proudhon refers is monopoly, the fourth ''époque'' in his own ''Système''. Here we have a striking conjunction of liberal and socialist myths. Proudhon endorses the necessity of free competition in the labor market and acknowledges that this competition is one aspect of the social Hell condemned by Considérant. He thereby casts his scientific journey from appearances to reality as a descent into this Hell, an exploration of its internal arrangement and structural necessity.		The lower circle of Hell to which Proudhon refers is monopoly, the fourth ''époque'' in his own ''Système''. Here we have a striking conjunction of liberal and socialist myths. Proudhon endorses the necessity of free competition in the labor market and acknowledges that this competition is one aspect of the social Hell condemned by Considérant. He thereby casts his scientific journey from appearances to reality as a descent into this Hell, an exploration of its internal arrangement and structural necessity.

	As in Considérant’s text, Hell is a social reality surrounding us. However, far from being the rhetorical culmination of Proudhon’s indictment, this is merely one of his many asides. Indeed, he begins his consideration of the fifth ''époque''—“the police, or taxation”— by turning the trope on its head. He imagines the progress of humanity as the journey of a traveler marching up a “zigzag” path from the valley to the mountaintop. Despite its confidence, “the social genius,” upon reaching “the perspective of monopoly,” “casts backward a melancholy glance, and, in deep reflection, says to itself: ‘Monopoly has stripped everything from the poor hireling: bread, clothing, home, education, liberty, and security. I will lay a tax upon the monopolist; at this price I will preserve him his		As in Considérant’s text, Hell is a social reality surrounding us. However, far from being the rhetorical culmination of Proudhon’s indictment, this is merely one of his many asides. Indeed, he begins his consideration of the fifth ''époque''—“the police, or taxation”— by turning the trope on its head. He imagines the progress of humanity as the journey of a traveler marching up a “zigzag” path from the valley to the mountaintop. Despite its confidence, “the social genius,” upon reaching “the perspective of monopoly,” “casts backward a melancholy glance, and, in deep reflection, says to itself: ‘Monopoly has stripped everything from the poor hireling: bread, clothing, home, education, liberty, and security. I will lay a tax upon the monopolist; at this price I will preserve him his privilege.’ ”<ref>''System'', 1:319; ''OC'', 1:274.</ref> Far from descending through a Hell of misery, the reader is here told that we are following the social genius on its ever-ascending path, the course of which progressively correct past errors. Proudhon betrays his affinities with the liberal thinkers of spontaneous order, intimating “that out of the common efforts of mankind, out of the struggles and collaborations among men, largely without design, intent, or self-consciousness, come the institutions, beliefs, and all that goes to make up civilization.”<ref>Noland, “History and Humanity: The Proudhonian Vision,” 69–70.</ref> The liberal myth of providence trumps the socialist myth of Hell on earth.

			However, Proudhon has not abandoned the trope of the social Hell. He ends his discussion of free trade with a passage equal in its vehemence to anything in ''Qu’est-ce que la propriété''?, calling free trade

			<blockquote>

			the centralization over the whole face of the earth of this regime of spoliation and misery, . . . property in its might and in its glory. And it is in order to bring to its consummation this system that so many millions of workers are starved, so many innocent creatures turned back from the breast into oblivion, so many girls and women prostituted, so many souls sold, so many characters wasted! If only economists knew a way out of this labyrinth, an end to this torture! But no: ''always! never!'' like the clock of the damned this is the refrain of the economic Apocalypse. Oh! if the damned could burn hell!<ref>''OC'', 2:67–68.</ref>

			</blockquote>

			These words cast the economists as the mouthpieces of Hell, declaring the eternity of the torments undergone by the suffering masses. They revert to the earlier metaphor, casting the journey through the ''époques'' as the nightmarish path through the infernal labyrinth. They suggest that, far from being a holdover from antiquity, the social Hell is a historical necessity and a trial we must undergo in order to arrive at “the exact knowledge of value” that will set us free. Finally, unlike Considérant’s pagan underworld, Proudhon’s Hell is obviously a Christian one. The descending circles suggest Dante’s ''Inferno'', while the labyrinthine structure recalls both Dante and Fourier.<ref>Proudhon was certainly familiar with Dante’s ''Divine Comedy'', referring to it in passing in several of his works. Sent a short monograph on the poem by his friend Bergmann, however, he replied (August 24, 1863), modestly, “Pour moi, je t’avoue mon ignorance; jen’avais jamais su ce que c’était que ce Dante, avec sa trilogie divine” (''Correspondance de P.- J. Proudhon'', 1875, 13:136).</ref>

			Five years later, imprisoned for his criticisms of Louis Bonaparte, Proudhon again turned his pen to elaborating the socialist myth, this time with considerable inventiveness and precision. “Humanity,” he proposed in his ''Idée générale de la révolution au XIX<sup>e</sup> siècle'',

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	Because science is supposed to grasp the series, it must proceed through the elements of the series in turn, showing how any partial summation of the series, including any element on its own, is self-contradictory and inadequate from the point of view of justice. Hence, science, in Proudhon’s sense, must proceed methodically, following a determinate path, and may be said to pass from appearances—the partial aspects of the world presented by each ''époque''—to the reality of the whole series. As Proudhon put it, “to explain the system of the world, . . . one must leave the circle of appearances.”<ref>''What Is Property?'', 18; ''OC'', 4:138. Proudhon’s self-conception as a scientist has not aged well. Even scholars very friendly to Proudhon claim, e.g., that Proudhon’s “‘synthesis’ is quite artificial, claiming that it integrates without really doing so” (Hoffman, ''Revolutionary Justice'', 109). Indeed, Proudhon himself may have been dissatisfied with this pretense, for he largely dropped his claims to science after the disappointing reception of ''De la creation de l’ordre'' and ''Système des contradictions'' (Crowder, ''Classical Anarchism'', 112).</ref> This was the task Proudhon tried to accomplish in his ''Système''.		Because science is supposed to grasp the series, it must proceed through the elements of the series in turn, showing how any partial summation of the series, including any element on its own, is self-contradictory and inadequate from the point of view of justice. Hence, science, in Proudhon’s sense, must proceed methodically, following a determinate path, and may be said to pass from appearances—the partial aspects of the world presented by each ''époque''—to the reality of the whole series. As Proudhon put it, “to explain the system of the world, . . . one must leave the circle of appearances.”<ref>''What Is Property?'', 18; ''OC'', 4:138. Proudhon’s self-conception as a scientist has not aged well. Even scholars very friendly to Proudhon claim, e.g., that Proudhon’s “‘synthesis’ is quite artificial, claiming that it integrates without really doing so” (Hoffman, ''Revolutionary Justice'', 109). Indeed, Proudhon himself may have been dissatisfied with this pretense, for he largely dropped his claims to science after the disappointing reception of ''De la creation de l’ordre'' and ''Système des contradictions'' (Crowder, ''Classical Anarchism'', 112).</ref> This was the task Proudhon tried to accomplish in his ''Système''.

			In the course of his exposition of this social science, Proudhon has recourse, like Considérant before him, to the image of Hell. Discussing the consequences of Louis Blanc’s proposed right to work at a guaranteed wage, Proudhon writes:

			<blockquote>

			Certainly I do not care to deny that labor and wages can and should be guaranteed; I even entertain the hope that the time [''époque''] of such guarantee is not far off: but I submit that a guarantee of wages is impossible without the exact knowledge of value, and that this value can be discovered only by competition, not at all by communistic institutions or by a decree of the people. For in this there is something more powerful than the will of the legislator and of the citizens: that is, the absolute impossibility that man should do his duty after being discharged of all responsibility to himself: but, responsibility to oneself, in the matter of labor, necessarily implies competition with others. Ordain that from January 1, 1847 labor and wages are guaranteed to all: immediately an immense relaxation will succeed the fiery tension of industry; real value will fall rapidly below nominal value; metallic money, despite its effigy and stamp, will experience the fate of the ''assignats''; the merchant will demand more and deliver less; and we will find ourselves in a still lower circle in the hell of misery of which competition is only the third turn.<ref>''System'', 1:226– 27; ''OC'', 1:212– 13.</ref>

			</blockquote>

			The lower circle of Hell to which Proudhon refers is monopoly, the fourth ''époque'' in his own ''Système''. Here we have a striking conjunction of liberal and socialist myths. Proudhon endorses the necessity of free competition in the labor market and acknowledges that this competition is one aspect of the social Hell condemned by Considérant. He thereby casts his scientific journey from appearances to reality as a descent into this Hell, an exploration of its internal arrangement and structural necessity.

			As in Considérant’s text, Hell is a social reality surrounding us. However, far from being the rhetorical culmination of Proudhon’s indictment, this is merely one of his many asides. Indeed, he begins his consideration of the fifth ''époque''—“the police, or taxation”— by turning the trope on its head. He imagines the progress of humanity as the journey of a traveler marching up a “zigzag” path from the valley to the mountaintop. Despite its confidence, “the social genius,” upon reaching “the perspective of monopoly,” “casts backward a melancholy glance, and, in deep reflection, says to itself: ‘Monopoly has stripped everything from the poor hireling: bread, clothing, home, education, liberty, and security. I will lay a tax upon the monopolist; at this price I will preserve him his

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	=== Development by Proudhon ===		=== Development by Proudhon ===
	Three years after Considérant’s ''Manifeste'', Proudhon published his ''Système des contradictions économiques, ou La philosophie de la misère''. This was supposed to be the positive system to follow on the scathing critique in ''Qu’est-ce que la propriété''?, which had brought Proudhon great notoriety. Since, in his earlier work, Proudhon had sharply differentiated himself from both the hierarchical organizers of labor (the Saint-Simonians, the Fourierists, Louis Blanc) and those who called for a community of property (Étienne Cabet and the Icarians, Wilhelm Weitling),<ref>The organization of labor and the community of goods are at times lumped together by Proudhon, as in his attacks on the advocates of “association” (''General Idea'', 75– 99; OC, 2:155– 76).</ref> it did seem incumbent upon him to provide some distinctive alternative to the system of private property. In this regard, the ''Système'' was quite a disappointment. Instead of being prescriptive, it was a long analysis of the interrelated aspects of the modern social system,<ref>These moments are, in Proudhon’s order: (1) the division of labor; (2) machinery; (3) competition; (4) monopoly; (5) police, or taxation; (6) the balance of trade; (7) credit; (8) property; (9) community; and (10) population.</ref> which aimed to highlight the destructiveness of each aspect and the potential for saving the whole by properly ordering them vis-à-vis one another.		Three years after Considérant’s ''Manifeste'', Proudhon published his ''Système des contradictions économiques, ou La philosophie de la misère''. This was supposed to be the positive system to follow on the scathing critique in ''Qu’est-ce que la propriété''?, which had brought Proudhon great notoriety. Since, in his earlier work, Proudhon had sharply differentiated himself from both the hierarchical organizers of labor (the Saint-Simonians, the Fourierists, Louis Blanc) and those who called for a community of property (Étienne Cabet and the Icarians, Wilhelm Weitling),<ref>The organization of labor and the community of goods are at times lumped together by Proudhon, as in his attacks on the advocates of “association” (''General Idea'', 75– 99; OC, 2:155– 76).</ref> it did seem incumbent upon him to provide some distinctive alternative to the system of private property. In this regard, the ''Système'' was quite a disappointment. Instead of being prescriptive, it was a long analysis of the interrelated aspects of the modern social system,<ref>These moments are, in Proudhon’s order: (1) the division of labor; (2) machinery; (3) competition; (4) monopoly; (5) police, or taxation; (6) the balance of trade; (7) credit; (8) property; (9) community; and (10) population.</ref> which aimed to highlight the destructiveness of each aspect and the potential for saving the whole by properly ordering them vis-à-vis one another.

			There are in Proudhon’s writings of the 1840s numerous invocations of the promise of an economic science that would reveal the tendency toward order in human society and catalyze the development of that order.<ref> For examples, see ''What Is Property?'', 17– 20, 208– 11; ''OC'', 4:136– 41, 338– 42; System, 1:44, 55, 388– 97; ''OC'', 1:66, 75, 337– 44; ''OC'', 5:80– 100, 405– 51.</ref> In ''Qu’est-ce que la propriété''? he summed up this prospective development by coining a phrase that would have a long life as another socialist myth: “the sovereignty of the will gives way to the sovereignty of reason and ends up being replaced by a scientific socialism.”<ref>''What Is Property?'', 208– 9; ''OC'', 4:339.</ref> Proudhon’s notion of this incipient social science was heavily indebted to Charles Fourier’s conception of the “series,”<ref>Coincidentally, there were two Fouriers obsessed with series: Charles and the mathematician Joseph. Victor Hugo, in ''Les Misèrables'', wrote that “There was a celebrated Fourier at the Academy of Science, whom posterity has forgotten; and in some garret an obscure Fourier, whom the future will recall” (I.III.1). This prediction has turned out to be very nearly the opposite of the truth, as the Fourier series is integral to mathematics while the other series, and the other Fourier, if not forgotten, certainly have no import in the social sciences.</ref> the sum of an ordered succession of elements.<ref>Hoffman, ''Revolutionary Justice'', 106– 9; Crowder, ''Classical'' ''Anarchism'', 112.</ref> The underlying idea is that the successive “stages” or “periods” (''époques'') of history exhibit, in turn, successive principles, and that only at the end of the series will these opposed principles come into a harmonious interrelation. As Proudhon put it, “while in nature the synthesis of contraries is contemporaneous with their opposition, in society the antithetic elements seem to be produced at long intervals, and to be resolved only after long and tumultuous agitation.”<ref>''System'', 1:129– 30; ''OC'', 1:135; compare ''What Is Property?'', 19; ''OC'', 4:19.</ref>

			Because science is supposed to grasp the series, it must proceed through the elements of the series in turn, showing how any partial summation of the series, including any element on its own, is self-contradictory and inadequate from the point of view of justice. Hence, science, in Proudhon’s sense, must proceed methodically, following a determinate path, and may be said to pass from appearances—the partial aspects of the world presented by each ''époque''—to the reality of the whole series. As Proudhon put it, “to explain the system of the world, . . . one must leave the circle of appearances.”<ref>''What Is Property?'', 18; ''OC'', 4:138. Proudhon’s self-conception as a scientist has not aged well. Even scholars very friendly to Proudhon claim, e.g., that Proudhon’s “‘synthesis’ is quite artificial, claiming that it integrates without really doing so” (Hoffman, ''Revolutionary Justice'', 109). Indeed, Proudhon himself may have been dissatisfied with this pretense, for he largely dropped his claims to science after the disappointing reception of ''De la creation de l’ordre'' and ''Système des contradictions'' (Crowder, ''Classical Anarchism'', 112).</ref> This was the task Proudhon tried to accomplish in his ''Système''.

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	Hence, it seems not unreasonable to suppose that Marx might similarly have borrowed the plot of ''Dante’s Inferno'' in order to supply himself with an order for his exposition in ''Capital''. Moreover, this borrowing would have suited Marx’s political aims and temperament. It would have underlined his desire to rework socialism’s relationship to political economy. It would have well-captured his ambivalent admiration of that bourgeois science. It would have appealed to his perverse desire to encourage his opponents’ worst thoughts about him. And it would have supplied an appropriately complex skeleton on which to hang his ambition to get to the bottom of what is wrong with capitalism. To these substantive points we must now turn.		Hence, it seems not unreasonable to suppose that Marx might similarly have borrowed the plot of ''Dante’s Inferno'' in order to supply himself with an order for his exposition in ''Capital''. Moreover, this borrowing would have suited Marx’s political aims and temperament. It would have underlined his desire to rework socialism’s relationship to political economy. It would have well-captured his ambivalent admiration of that bourgeois science. It would have appealed to his perverse desire to encourage his opponents’ worst thoughts about him. And it would have supplied an appropriately complex skeleton on which to hang his ambition to get to the bottom of what is wrong with capitalism. To these substantive points we must now turn.

	===The Social Hell		=== The Social Hell ===

	Marx is often represented as having “created,” in G.D.H. Cole’s words, “that distinctively German Socialism which was soon to assume an ideological dominance over most of the continent, driving the older forms of Socialism before it as chaff before the wind.”<ref>Cole, ''A History of Socialist Thought'', 1:222.</ref> One of the themes of this book, by way of contrast, is that many of the elements of Marx’s work were commonplaces in the socialist and communist discourses of the mid-nineteenth century, and they retained their status as commonplaces long after Marx. Most of the phrases, tropes, and bits of technical vocabulary we have come to associate with Marx actually originated elsewhere and circulated very widely within the publications and speeches of socialists, mutualists, cooperativists, and communists. They were not in themselves the badges of a distinctive, or distinctively German, socialism, and they could not drive away the elements of the older socialisms because they were as integral to those older patterns of thinking as they were to Marx’s.		Marx is often represented as having “created,” in G.D.H. Cole’s words, “that distinctively German Socialism which was soon to assume an ideological dominance over most of the continent, driving the older forms of Socialism before it as chaff before the wind.”<ref>Cole, ''A History of Socialist Thought'', 1:222.</ref> One of the themes of this book, by way of contrast, is that many of the elements of Marx’s work were commonplaces in the socialist and communist discourses of the mid-nineteenth century, and they retained their status as commonplaces long after Marx. Most of the phrases, tropes, and bits of technical vocabulary we have come to associate with Marx actually originated elsewhere and circulated very widely within the publications and speeches of socialists, mutualists, cooperativists, and communists. They were not in themselves the badges of a distinctive, or distinctively German, socialism, and they could not drive away the elements of the older socialisms because they were as integral to those older patterns of thinking as they were to Marx’s.

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	</blockquote>		</blockquote>

			Since he had begun the ''Manifeste'' in a Saint-Simonian vein, contrasting the ancient economy of slavery—“the exploitation of man by man in its most complete form”—with the modern “democratic spirit,”<ref>''Principes du socialisme: Manifeste de La Démocratie au XIXe siècle'', 1– 2.</ref> this revelation that the modern economy embodies the worst tortures that the ancients could imagine is supposed to throw into question the reality of historical progress to date. In light of the Saint-Simonian and Fourierist attempts to marshal Christian ethics and spirituality in support of a new social order, it is not surprising that Considérant makes no mention of any Christian hellscape.<ref>For citations and discussion of Fourierism’s close links with social Catholicism, see Pilbeam, ''French Socialists before Marx'', 44–46.</ref> Hell is, for him, a place in the pagan imaginary, Taenarus, the descending path walked by Heracles. We have not avoided this survival from barbarous antiquity, and so we can only abolish it.<ref>For further uses of the trope of the social Hell, see Jacques Rancière’s exploration of the writings of Saint-Simonian workers in the run-up to 1848, in ''The Nights of Labor'', chap. 1.</ref>

			=== Development by Proudhon ===
			Three years after Considérant’s ''Manifeste'', Proudhon published his ''Système des contradictions économiques, ou La philosophie de la misère''. This was supposed to be the positive system to follow on the scathing critique in ''Qu’est-ce que la propriété''?, which had brought Proudhon great notoriety. Since, in his earlier work, Proudhon had sharply differentiated himself from both the hierarchical organizers of labor (the Saint-Simonians, the Fourierists, Louis Blanc) and those who called for a community of property (Étienne Cabet and the Icarians, Wilhelm Weitling),<ref>The organization of labor and the community of goods are at times lumped together by Proudhon, as in his attacks on the advocates of “association” (''General Idea'', 75– 99; OC, 2:155– 76).</ref> it did seem incumbent upon him to provide some distinctive alternative to the system of private property. In this regard, the ''Système'' was quite a disappointment. Instead of being prescriptive, it was a long analysis of the interrelated aspects of the modern social system,<ref>These moments are, in Proudhon’s order: (1) the division of labor; (2) machinery; (3) competition; (4) monopoly; (5) police, or taxation; (6) the balance of trade; (7) credit; (8) property; (9) community; and (10) population.</ref> which aimed to highlight the destructiveness of each aspect and the potential for saving the whole by properly ordering them vis-à-vis one another.

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	=== Origins in Fourier and Fourierism ===		=== Origins in Fourier and Fourierism ===
	As with so many elements of the discourse around “the social question,” the notion that modernity amounts to “a social Hell” seems to begin its public life in the works of Charles Fourier. In his ''Théorie des quatre mouvements'' (1808), Fourier had compared the terrors of “the first creation”—tigers, bedbugs, gout, and so on—to “a foretaste of hell.”<ref> Fourier, ''The Theory of the Four Movements'', 45– 46.</ref> With the publication of his ''Traité de l’association domestique- agricole''in 1822, however, he introduced into French literature the metaphor of ''l’enfer social'', a trope that would reappear in dozens of permutations over the next thirty years of Fourierist evangelism. The social Hell was		As with so many elements of the discourse around “the social question,” the notion that modernity amounts to “a social Hell” seems to begin its public life in the works of Charles Fourier. In his ''Théorie des quatre mouvements'' (1808), Fourier had compared the terrors of “the first creation”—tigers, bedbugs, gout, and so on—to “a foretaste of hell.”<ref> Fourier, ''The Theory of the Four Movements'', 45– 46.</ref> With the publication of his ''Traité de l’association domestique- agricole''in 1822, however, he introduced into French literature the metaphor of ''l’enfer social'', a trope that would reappear in dozens of permutations over the next thirty years of Fourierist evangelism. The social Hell was polyvalent. It named the misery of the multitude of the poor.<ref>''Traité de L’association domestique-agricole ou Attraction Industrielle'', 485.</ref> It named the “labyrinth of passions” in which we are trapped by commerce.<ref>''Cités Ouvrières: Extrait de La Phalange'', 64..</ref> It named the barbarity of civilization under “the laws of ''philosophes'' and conquerors.”<ref>''Pièges et Charlatanisme des Deux Sectes Saint-Simon et Owen''</ref> Of all these senses, that of the misery of the poor and wretched was the most appropriated, even as this shaded into a moralizing catalog of the sins that kept the multitude imprisoned in its terrors.<ref> Thus, in what must be one of the earliest appearances of the phrase in English, the editor of a compilation of character studies by various French authors takes the reader of the introduction on a tour of “the Parisian social hell,” teeming with young girls headed to work in the workrooms, shops, attics, and cellars of the city. As the editor informs us, “Many of them become prostitutes, and are degraded to a circle of our social hell, into which we will not follow them” (Anonymous, ''Pictures of the French: A Series of Literary and Graphic Delineations of French Character'', x).</ref>

			In 1843, Victor Considérant, the dean of Fourierism in France, published, in his ''Démocratie Pacifique, a Manifeste de la Démocratie au XIXesiècle''.<ref> ''The Manifeste'' was republished as a pamphlet, ''Principe du socialism'', in 1847, on the eve of revolution, and commentators have underlined the numerous rhetorical and tropic similarities between it and Marx and Engels’s ''Manifesto''.</ref> A plea for France to step back from the brink of social war and to organize economic production and distribution by the institution of Fourier’s ''phalanges'', the ''Manifeste'' is also a fierce denunciation of the “new feudalism” brought about by the anarchy of laissez-faire competition. This denunciation culminates in §XI, “The social Hell. Absolute necessity of a solution.” Here, Considérant compares the miseries of “our regimof free competition” or “our industrial regime” to “the cruelest conceptions of the myths of antiquity.”'''53'''<ref>''Principes du socialisme: Manifeste de La Démocratie au XIXe siècle'', 15– 16.</ref> The suffering of the poor masses in the midst of commercial society is compared to the torment of Tantalus. The wage laborers, driven every day to work by the recurrent threat of poverty, share the fate of Sisyphus. The wealth the workers continuously create just as continuously flows out of their hands and into the purses of the wealthy, just as the water carried by the Danaïdes flowed out of the cracked tub as quickly as they could pour it in. Drawing his lesson, Considérant writes:

			<blockquote>

			Our industrial regime, founded on competition without guarantees and without organization, is it not thus a social Hell, a vast realization of all of the torments and all of the tortures of the ancient Taenarus. There is a difference, though: the victims of Taenarus were guilty, and in the mythological hell there were judges.<ref> Ibid., 16. Frédéric Bastiat, ''the prize fighter of nineteenth-century French liberalism'', saw fit to truncate this passage, leaving off everything after “the victims” (''Harmonies Économiques'', 45n1). By this ingenious method, he sought either to convict Considérant of “misanthropy,” presumably for comparing the poor to those suffering for their sins, or else to suggest that the only difference between the Hell of antiquity and the modern social Hell was that the latter lacked victims (ibid., 45).</ref>

			</blockquote>

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	Marx is often represented as having “created,” in G.D.H. Cole’s words, “that distinctively German Socialism which was soon to assume an ideological dominance over most of the continent, driving the older forms of Socialism before it as chaff before the wind.”<ref>Cole, ''A History of Socialist Thought'', 1:222.</ref> One of the themes of this book, by way of contrast, is that many of the elements of Marx’s work were commonplaces in the socialist and communist discourses of the mid-nineteenth century, and they retained their status as commonplaces long after Marx. Most of the phrases, tropes, and bits of technical vocabulary we have come to associate with Marx actually originated elsewhere and circulated very widely within the publications and speeches of socialists, mutualists, cooperativists, and communists. They were not in themselves the badges of a distinctive, or distinctively German, socialism, and they could not drive away the elements of the older socialisms because they were as integral to those older patterns of thinking as they were to Marx’s.		Marx is often represented as having “created,” in G.D.H. Cole’s words, “that distinctively German Socialism which was soon to assume an ideological dominance over most of the continent, driving the older forms of Socialism before it as chaff before the wind.”<ref>Cole, ''A History of Socialist Thought'', 1:222.</ref> One of the themes of this book, by way of contrast, is that many of the elements of Marx’s work were commonplaces in the socialist and communist discourses of the mid-nineteenth century, and they retained their status as commonplaces long after Marx. Most of the phrases, tropes, and bits of technical vocabulary we have come to associate with Marx actually originated elsewhere and circulated very widely within the publications and speeches of socialists, mutualists, cooperativists, and communists. They were not in themselves the badges of a distinctive, or distinctively German, socialism, and they could not drive away the elements of the older socialisms because they were as integral to those older patterns of thinking as they were to Marx’s.

	This is in no way meant to imply that Marx was simply derivative of his discursive context, the amanuensis of Monsieur Nineteenth Century Socialism. Rather, Marx’s specificity and originality can emerge, if at all, only on the condition that we understand what he has done with these commonplaces, how they have come to be related to one another in his works, and how this set of internal relationships gives a distinctive cast to his work. In his superb study of Greek myths of the underworld journey, Radcliffe Edmonds emphasizes “the ways in which different authors make use of myth, the way they manipulate a common set of traditional elements in various ways to achieve different ends.”<ref>4 Edmonds, ''Myths of the Underworld Journey'', 4.</ref> If we follow		This is in no way meant to imply that Marx was simply derivative of his discursive context, the amanuensis of Monsieur Nineteenth Century Socialism. Rather, Marx’s specificity and originality can emerge, if at all, only on the condition that we understand what he has done with these commonplaces, how they have come to be related to one another in his works, and how this set of internal relationships gives a distinctive cast to his work. In his superb study of Greek myths of the underworld journey, Radcliffe Edmonds emphasizes “the ways in which different authors make use of myth, the way they manipulate a common set of traditional elements in various ways to achieve different ends.”<ref>4 Edmonds, ''Myths of the Underworld Journey'', 4.</ref> If we follow Edmonds in defining myth as “an agonistic form of cultural discourse, a traditional language for the communication of ideas from the author to his audience, in which competing versions vie for authority,”<ref>Ibid., 5.</ref> then we can say that this book aims to articulate Marx’s ''Capital'' against the background of the socialist myths redeployed and complicated by that text.<ref>I do not mean “myth” to carry any pejorative force. Myths are the stories we tell ourselves and one another to help make shorthand sense of the world. They are not true in the way that science is, but that is neither here nor there. They are action-guiding and meaning-giving, and their truth or falsity is an ethical and political question, not merely an epistemological one.</ref> Marx’s contribution to socialism can only be appreciated by following the traditional elements of socialist discourse as they enter into and are reordered by Marx’s work. And this reordering can only be rendered visible as a contest with other socialists, a contest over the proper ordering of and relations among the traditional elements.

			It is not by accident that I introduce this consideration of Marx’s appropriation of a common set of socialist tropes by way of scholarship on Greek myths of the underworld, for a crucial case in point is Marx’s appropriation of the socialist comparison of the modern social world to Hell. This trope has a long and colorful history in socialist literature, both before and after Marx. It seems to have emerged out of the idiosyncratic imagination of Charles Fourier; it found sustenance in the workers’ writings of the July monarchy in France; and it was reworked significantly by Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, before Marx gave it another twist. It continued to be a staple of French socialist writing into the twentieth century. Despite its apparent heavy-handedness, it was a flexible myth, suggesting different lessons in different contexts and uses. The history I tell will be limited, picking out only a few of what I take to be the most significant instances.

			=== Origins in Fourier and Fourierism ===
			As with so many elements of the discourse around “the social question,” the notion that modernity amounts to “a social Hell” seems to begin its public life in the works of Charles Fourier. In his ''Théorie des quatre mouvements'' (1808), Fourier had compared the terrors of “the first creation”—tigers, bedbugs, gout, and so on—to “a foretaste of hell.”<ref> Fourier, ''The Theory of the Four Movements'', 45– 46.</ref> With the publication of his ''Traité de l’association domestique- agricole''in 1822, however, he introduced into French literature the metaphor of ''l’enfer social'', a trope that would reappear in dozens of permutations over the next thirty years of Fourierist evangelism. The social Hell was