Note 639 — Chapter V · : PROUDHON AND THE SOCIALISM OF 1848

“I believe that I am the first person possessed of a full knowledge of the phenomena in question who has dared to uphold the doctrine that instead of restraining economic forces whose strength has been so much exaggerated we ought to try to balance them against one another in accordance with the little known and less perfectly understood principle that contraries, far from being mutually destructive, support one another just because of their contrary nature.” (Justice, vol. i, pp. 265-266.) The same idea also finds expression on pp. 302-303. Elsewhere he remarks that what society is in search of is a way of balancing the natural forces that are contained within itself (Révolution démontrée par le Coup d’État, p. 43).