To say that there are industries which have not yet reached the stage of competition, that others gains are below the level of bourgeois production, is drivel which gives not the slightest proof of the eternity of competition. To this truth, he gives no logical development, but only forms, often very well developed, when he says that competition is industrial emulation, the present-day mode of freedom, responsibility in labor, constitution of value, a condition for the advent of equality, a principle of social economy, a decree of fate, a necessity of the human soul, an inspiration of eternal justice, liberty in division, division on liberty, an economic category. Competition and association support each other. Far from excluding each other they are not even divergent. Whoever says competition already supposes a common aiM. Competition is therefore not egoism, and the most deplorable error com- mitted by socialism is to have regarded it as the overthrow of society.
Every egoism operates in society and by the fact of society.
Hence it presupposes society, that is to say, common aims, common needs, common means of production, etc., etc. Socialists know well enough that present-day society is founded on competition. M. Proudhon says, later on, that competition is the opposite of monopoly , and consequently cannot be the opposite of association . In actual fact, society , association are denominations which can be given to every society, to feudal society as well as to bourgeois society which is association founded on competition. All we have just said makes up the beautiful side of competition as M. Proudhon sees it.