He glimpsed the problem of variation in the 'proportion' of labour, and hence in input-output coefficients, and he connected this to technical progress. He believed that a kind of 'higher mathematics' could help in developing 'social economics', but warned against any ill-considered use of mathematics in economics. All the ills of mankind spring from 'mere accounting error'. The 'social balance' is inexact. The gratuitous appropriation of collective effort, the inequality of exchange, the law of escheat, all distort the economic accounts.
Property is at the same time 'right of exclusion and theft' and 'despotic power'.
Proudhon's historical labourism bears no relation to Marx's historical materialism. For Proudhon, social and economic facts are only the 'manifestations' and 'signs' of ideas. All bis works are a prodigious effort to lay bare the foundations, the elements and the method for a self-managed society free of all alienation. He foresaw and proposed the building of a 'scientific socialism'. What makes society possible, for Proudhon, is the .opposition of powers', 'mutual counterbalance'.