Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk · 1891
Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk’s journal book review assesses the second installment of Karl Diehl’s study of Proudhon. Its organizing judgment is favorable: Diehl completes his account of Proudhon’s economic theories while placing his practical proposals within a wider history of socialism and monetary reform. Böhm-Bawerk particularly values the comparative excursions, finding that Diehl’s command of the literature and powers of exposition have improved since the first installment.
Der günstige Eindruck, den die erste Abteilung erweckt hat, wird durch die jetzt vorliegende zweite Abteilung noch befestigt.
English translation: The favorable impression made by the first part is further strengthened by the second part now before us.
The review moves from the installment’s coverage to its substantial comparisons and finally to Diehl’s judgment of Proudhon’s historical significance. Whereas the first part treated property and value, the second completes the theoretical exposition and criticism and examines proposals for resolving the social question. The bank projects receive particular attention. Proudhon’s proposed exchange bank of 1848 never materialized; his people’s bank was founded in 1849 but dissolved after two months, before actually beginning business, following his sentencing to a lengthy prison term. Böhm-Bawerk thus distinguishes proposed institutions from an institution founded but never operational.
Two comparative discussions become, in his estimation, almost independent monographs. The first surveys monetary and credit reforms related to Proudhon’s people’s bank, beginning with Law and including Cieszkowski’s proposal to monetize land, Owen’s labour-exchange bank, and the Marseille exchange banks of Mazel and Bonnard. Their importance lies in situating Proudhon’s schemes among a range of institutional experiments rather than treating them in isolation. The second traces Proudhon’s relationship to earlier, contemporary, and later socialism, including French socialists, Marx, and Rodbertus.
Here Böhm-Bawerk explicitly supports Diehl’s resistance to Marx’s accusation of plagiarism:
Der Verf. verteidigt hierbei Proudhon mit ebenso viel Lebhaftigkeit, als, wie mir scheint, Berechtigung gegen den von Marx erhobenen Vorwurf, ein Plagiat an den älteren englischen Sozialisten begangen zu haben.
English translation: Here the author defends Proudhon against Marx’s accusation that he had plagiarized the earlier English socialists with as much vigor as, it seems to me, justification.
The distinction is between resemblance in particular doctrines and dependence in their intellectual derivation. Godwin, Gray, and Bray had expressed related views, but Diehl argues that their larger conceptual frameworks and paths to conclusions differed from Proudhon’s. Böhm-Bawerk presents independent convergence, supported by further indications, as the more plausible explanation. Comparative intellectual history consequently serves both to identify affinities and to resist treating those affinities as proof of borrowing.
The closing assessment asks whether Proudhon belongs to socialism at all. Diehl emphatically answers yes, crediting him with the first complete socialist system in the modern scientific sense, while expressly recognizing the originality and greater scientific depth and significance of Marx and Rodbertus. Böhm-Bawerk reports this position alongside a mild reservation about the heated polemics through which Diehl establishes it. Proudhon’s distinctive ambition was to advance socialist ideas while retaining individual freedom. For Diehl, however, that ambition also explains his central weakness:
Man kann nicht die Gleichheit erlangen, oder das Geld, das Lohnsystem, den Zins u. s. f. abschaffen wollen, und gleichzeitig die privatwirtschaftliche Produktionsweise beibehalten.
English translation: One cannot seek to attain equality, or to abolish money, the wage system, interest, and so forth, and at the same time retain the mode of production based on private enterprise.
The objection concerns the compatibility of Proudhon’s ends with the economic organization he would preserve. Böhm-Bawerk’s review is valuable for showing how favorable appraisal of historical scholarship can coexist with a reported criticism of the system under study. It closes by noting Diehl’s planned third installment on Proudhon’s life; its own substantive focus remains the completed theoretical account, the reform projects, and their place in socialist history.
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