Page:Karl Marx - The Poverty of Philosophy - (tr. Harry Quelch) - 1913.djvu/120

 THE METAPHYSICS OF POLITICAL ECONOMY 113

tableau, we possess one by the doctor himself. It is, “The Analysis of the Economic Tableau,” followed by “Seven Important Observations.”

M. Proudhon is another Doctor Quesnay. The Quesnay of the metaphysics of political economy. But metaphysics—the whole of philosophy, in fact—is sum- med up, according to Hegel, in the method. It will be necessary, then, for us to endeavor to elucidate the method of M. Proudhon, which is at least as obscure as the “Tableau Economique.” For that purpose we will give seven observations more or less important. If Doctor Proudhon is not content with our observations, well, then, he must play Abbé Baudeau, and give “the explanation of the economico-metaphysical method” him- self.

First Observation.

“We will not make a history according to the order of time, but according to the succession of ideas. The economic phases or categories are in their manifestation sometimes contemporaneous, sometimes in inverse order . . . . Economic theories have also their logical succes- sion and their series in the comprehension, It is this order which we flatter ourselves with having discovered.” (Proudhon vol. I., p. 146.)

Decidedly M. Proudhon has wished to frighten the French by throwing in their faces some quasi-Hegelian phrases. We are then concerned with two men, at first with M. Proudhon and then with Hegel. How does M. Proudhon distinguish himself from other economists? And Hegel, what réle does he play in the political economy of M. Proudhon?

The economists express the relation of borgeois