Page:The Paris Commune - Karl Marx - ed. Lucien Sanial (1902).djvu/58

 Rh Proudhon, the socialist of the small farmer and petty tradesman, hated association most heartily. According to him, it does more harm than good; it is naturally unfruitful, even detrimental, because it curtails the worker's freedom; it is pure dogma, unproductive and troublesome, destructive of the freedom of the worker as well as the saving of labor; its disadvantages multiply faster than its advantages; while competition, division of labor, private property, are economic springs of greater power. Only in exceptional cases—these are Proudhon's own words—of great industries and great business corporations, the railroads, for instance, is the association of the workers good and proper.

And yet, even in Paris, the center of the artistic trades, production on a large scale had so far ceased to be an exception in 1871 that the most important decree of the Commune had for its object the organization of great industries and even of manufacture; and this organization