In the Philosophie de la misère all the defects of Proudhon’s method of presentation stand out very unfavourably in comparison with Qu’est-ce que la propriété? The style is often what the French call ampoule. High-sounding speculative jargon, purporting to be German-philosophical, appears regularly on the scene when his Gallic astuteness fails him. A noisy, self-glorifying, boastful tone and especially the twaddle about “science” and sham display of it, which are always so unedifying, are continually jarring on one’s ears.

Marx was truly one of us