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.
All we have just said makes up the beautiful side of competition as M. Proudhon sees it. Now let us pass on to the ugly side, that is the negative side, of competition, its drawbacks, its destructive, subversive elements, its injurious qualities. There is something dismal about the picture M. Proudhon draws of it. It disillusions everyone, even economists. It pushes things so far as to destroy its very self.