The Father of Anarchism: The Brilliance & Fatuity of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

Extreme left-wing journalists discussed him without respect, as if he were an old comrade who had gone astray, while academics saw him as a paradoxical writer, victim of all the impulses of his polemical talent. Even today, his memory remains so full of the errors, illusions, and sweet dreams of his early comrades, that few people allow themselves to see in him what he truly was, namely the greatest French philosopher of the 19th century.

Georges Sorel, Letter to Edouard Berth [8]

Pierre-Joseph Proudhon may be rightfully credited as the greatest thinker to emerge from 19th century France. First influencing a young Karl Marx, only to become his sworn enemy in the following years, founding the political term “anarchism”, and later inspiring the Russian, Italian, and French socialist and syndicalist thinkers, Proudhon represented the most practical and yet still revolutionary current of left-wing political thought.

The Superiority of Proudhon to Marx

Proudhon can first and foremost be thanked for introducing the concept of “surplus labor value”, utilized by Karl Marx in Das Kapital, originally conceived of within Proudhon’s first book, “What is Property” [1]. This refers to the value of the labor of any given laborer extracted as capital by the owner of any given firm, rather than being paid in the form of wages. Not only this, but the distinction of “utopian” and “scientific” socialism emphasized and expanded upon within the theories of Friedrich Engels and Karl Marx, was only first envisioned within Proudhon’s writings, with “scientific socialism” mentioned within “What is Property” years before its first usage by any communist theorist.

The truth is that quite a few ideas of Proudhon’s other than this were taken by Karl Marx, who then bastardized said concepts in the name of establishing his own theory of communism. For Karl Marx, when communism was to be finally actualized, man and society would be fully reconciled, ending conflict, and beginning an era of all working towards the good of mankind. This, however, is not a scientific theory at all. It is not a novel, testable or verifiable scientific prediction, as Marx’s conclusion to his communist theory arrives at the very pinnacle of Utopia.

Proudhon is right, and in line with a genuine scientific tradition when he upholds the fact that there is no society in which all problems are solved. In no revolution have less contradictions within society emerged, for the fact that society is constantly in a state of becoming, always transient and changing. Proudhon’s theory of “mutualism” (an extremely faulty theory though it may be) was never intended to be the final stage of society. For Proudhon, there is no end to history, there is no final solution. There are only new questions, new problems, new struggles, and this is a great thing. Within Proudhonian thought, struggle keeps the world turning, it creates progress and makes men active.

Jean Lacroix is correct when stating that while Marx represents an authoritarianism whereby mankind must overcome all contradictions and suppress all opposition, by its own nature opposing everything which does not adhere to its pedantic dogmatism, Proudhon’s philosophy represents a humanist ideology, recognizing that all oppositions will never be overcome, and that humanity is in a perpetual state of tension, and the only way society can achieve genuine peace is through the balance of competing interests. Therein lies the fundamental break which shows the superiority of Proudhon over Karl Marx: Proudhonian philosophy allows diversity and a genuine liberalism, whereas Marxism, in its drive to overcome contradiction, must result in the homogenization of society, and cannot allow variety [3]. But as the saying goes, "One is never done wrestling with God.”

But wasn’t it Marxism which first actualized social political thought on a large scale? In part, yes, but the Marxists wouldn’t have had as much success without Proudhon’s legacy. As pointed out by Georges Gurvitch (an organizer of the Russian soviets of 1917) in his article “Proudhon & Marx”, the first Soviets within Russia were organized by Proudhonians who emerged from the Socialist Revolutionary Party. It was not merely Marx, but the heavy influence of Proudhon, who inspired the revolution in Russia which at least temporarily overcame Tsardom [3].

Marx, although praising Proudhon in his youth, later came to loath him, attempting to write him off as simply another theorist from the petite-bourgeois— Only, Proudhon was not merely a member of the petite-bourgeois, he had been a member of the peasantry of France. Marx’s hatred of Proudhon led him to take up a radical anti-communist stance, demonstrated in the following excerpts:

Far from me, Communists. Your presence is a stench to me.

Proudhon, Economic Contradictions [4]

Thus, the communists followed suit: they reduce everything to the sovereignty of the people, to the right of the collectivity; their notion of power or the State is absolutely the same as that of their former masters.

Proudhon, On the Political Capacity of the Working Class [7]

Regardless of Marx’s hatred of Proudhon, the fact is that there would be no Marxism without Proudhon. Karl Marx’s work was saturated by Proudhon’s ideas, even as Marx turned against him. The frequency of the very terms “fetishism” and “contradiction” appear in both authors’ vocabularies an astounding number of times. Marx himself acknowledges in Capital, written 1867, that he derived the labor-value approach, what he later calls “surplus value”, from classical economists including Adam Smith and Ricardo, and even from Sismondi. Proudhon, however, had already identified something like surplus labor in his mutualist theory in 1845.

Proudhon marked up his own personal copy of Marx’s 1847 work, The Misery of Philosophy, a book dedicated to defaming Proudhon. Within his markups, Proudhon accused Marx of “inversion” of his own previous ideas, charging Marx with simply inverting Proudhon’s federalism into dictatorship, one aristocratic sovereignty for another. Marx indeed borrowed the conceptual framework of class struggle and value from Proudhon’s writings as well as from the economists which Proudhon knew, while discarding of Proudhon’s liberal mutualism for state socialism. Proudhon’s famous phrase that “property is theft” found its mirror in Marx’s view that private property in the means of production underpinned class oppression. Both men used dialectical reasoning about historical progress and it is pretty undeniable that Proudhon’s notion of history as a series of revolutions finds its echoes in Marx’s materialism.

As the anthropologist Warlaam Tcherkesoff noted in 1900, many of the ideas that Marx had claimed as original such as his labor theory of value, class conflict, etc, had already been developed by Proudhon and others earlier. Proudhon was, in many ways, a mediator of socialist ideas, channeling the thought of Saint-Simonianism as well as Ricardian thought. Marx simply tapped into that reservoir. Proudhon’s critique of interest-bearing credit and his advocacy of mutual banks was a prefiguration of Marx’s critique of the financial forms of capital, for example, and Proudhon’s call for workers’ associations and cooperatives was simply a prototype of Marx’s vision of communistic organization. Even Marx himself once admitted his “critique of political economy” owed much to Proudhon’s analyses. And so, Marx absorbed terms and analyses from Proudhon before turning to attack him to assert his own originality.

Proudhon lamented Marx’s blatant plagiarizing of his own contributions. In personal notes (and later writings), Proudhon would criticize Marx and Engels for repackaging what had been originally mutualist and Ricardian concepts as “novel ideas”. Proudhon’s Carnets contain side-by-side comparisons of passages from his own works and Marx’s so that the readers may observe the overlap. For example, Proudhon’s model of wages set at subsistence (“or the Law of the 3-Franc Wage”) is simply stolen by Marx’s Law of Values. Marx even ripped off Proudhon’s phrase “contradictions of political economy.” There is no doubt that Marx’s lexicon of exploitation, value, alienation, class, and of course “revolution” is completely stolen from the socialists such as Proudhon who came before him.

Proudhon’s Brilliant Conception of Struggle

As previously mentioned, central to Proudhon’s ideological framework was the concept of struggle. Proudhon espouses struggle and conflict, and the tension which emerges from this conflict, as the manner in which society progresses. Struggle determines by the trial of strength (through various methods, including battles of arms) which of two or more contending powers engaging in conflict, are superior [5]. The struggle between Hercules and Eurystheus, between authority and liberty, and between revolution and tradition, represent the constant poles around which movement organizes itself. Because of this doctrine of Proudhon’s philosophy, the world is always in a permanent state of revolution, regardless of whether or not we would like it to be [17].

War … a still more false philanthropy, showed us nothing but a frightful scourge, the explosion of our innate wickedness and the manifestation of heavenly wrath, war is the most incorruptible expression of our conscience, the act which, in the final analysis, and in spite of the impure influence that is mixed with it, honors us most before creation and before the Eternal.

Proudhon, Peace & War [5]

To Proudhon, even battle was a beautiful ideal to uphold. Not only this, but it laid down the framework for the very basis of civilization itself in his view, as only through struggle and its resolutions would the human race ever continue to evolve. On the other hand, the pacification of society into a state of consumerist and inactive stupor would mark its deterioration and eventual collapse, as without conflict, no resolution, and therefore no advancement could ever occur.

Proudhon begins his book War and Peace by asserting that war, like religion and justice, is an intrinsic moral phenomenon, not a merely external, physical conflict. He writes that « "War, like religion and justice, is, in humanity, a phenomenon more internal than external, a fact of moral life."  In his view, war is rooted in the depths of human conscience and “encompasses in its idea the universality of human relations." By this he means that war gives rise to (and reveals) almost every human institution: religion, law, art, economics, politics, even classes such as nobility and bourgeoisie. Proudhon famously declares that through war "nations are regenerated, states find balance, progress continues, justice establishes its rule, and liberty finds its guarantees." To remove the idea of war, Proudhon argues, is to extinguish all meaning in human history and civilization.

Proudhon thus elevates war as a fundamental form of our reason, a law of our soul, a condition of our existence, akin to time, space, beauty, or justice. It is almost a metaphysical given, a divine law of society. War’s inevitability is portrayed by Proudhon in cosmic terms: He states “I am not afraid to say it, [war] is eternal. Hail to war! It is through it that man, scarcely risen from the mud […] asserts himself in his majesty and his bravery…". In calling “Hail to War”, Proudhon isn’t celebrating meaningless violence, but the heroic struggle that for him, brings mankind out of brutishness and towards nobility. Philosophically, then, war is for Proudhon a divine and primordial reality. He declares "War is divine, that is to say primordial, essential to life… It has its source in the depths of consciousness…".

Contrary to the common view of war as immoral murder, Proudhon argues that true war is morally justified. He rejects the notion that a warrior is either a hero or a brigand depending on the justness of his cause. Instead, Proudhon argues that "True war... is no more unjust on one side than the other; it is, on both sides and necessarily, just, virtuous, moral, [and] sacred." In other words, genuine warfare as a “juridical” act embodies justice on both sides and even attains a sacred character. By this paradoxical criterion, war elevates rights instead of abolish them. When two armies fight honorably and the honorability of the combatants and the presumption of right are equal, each side may claim the moral high ground. Death on the battlefield is, in Proudhon’s framing, the crowning of life, a noble end for a free, intelligent being.

Proudhon observes that, unlike animals that fight merely as instinct, human war is infused with conscience and justice. Wolves and lions make war only on other species, but do not wage war among themselves, while among humans, war alone has produced civilization, freedom, and progress. Proudhon argues that without “pride in heroism”, the pride and spirit of valor in conflict, humanity would have sunk to the level of purely industrious, peaceful animals. And so, for Proudhon, war brings out humanity’s chivalry and our capacity for justice and heroism.

This conviction leads Proudhon to embrace war with almost a theological commitment. He anticipates the pacifist objection that war is murder, calling it an “abominable sophism” to equate honorable war with mere homicide. In Proudhon’s account, it is not war that falsifies conscience, but the pacifists who “disregard… the human conscience, which they do not understand.” The fact that states are founded on bloody conquest, is a puzzle that Proudhon throws back at the critic. For him, the moral order has emerged from war. War, far from being a moral aberration, is the secret font of human ethics and polity.

Sociologically, Proudhon saw war as a fundamental institution of human society. He insists that war is more than an occasional outbreak of violence; it is “a principle, an institution, a belief... a doctrine” that permeates civilizations. By chronicling law and war through history, Proudhon suggests, one learns the true foundations of society. In fact, he argues, the common view that war is arbitrary conflict is misleading. The Law of Nations in his view is essentially the outcome of martial struggle, the “first expression” of rights being determined by which side’s force (or “right”) prevails. The jurists who deny any “right of war” misunderstand that war itself creates new rights by establishing victors and vanquished.

Regardless, Proudhon is also attentive to how society resists war’s brutality. Every social group instinctively seeks to avoid deadly slaughter, even as it depends on conflict for meaning. Proudhon frames this as the fundamental contradiction of society: our very progress depends on struggle, but we flee its excesses. He writes that without war, “civilization falls into the void” and the very idea of human progress becomes meaningless. But since people "Flee war and tend... toward peace”, there is an enduring problem to solve.

Beyond literal war, Proudhon famously claimed that society is based on persistent contradictions or “antagonisms” at every level. Any attempt to eliminate conflict is for him akin to destroying humanity. His concept of federalism is, in part, an attempt to channel antagonisms without eradicating them. And so, war, in Proudhon’s vision, has its analog in the peaceful but inexorable clashes of interests within society. He says there is “struggle” or “lutte” before any stable resolution. Before a new social order, there is necessarily a fight. Even institutions like religion and justice arise from conflict. In Proudhon’s De la Justice, for example, he portrays the “Church militant” as inherently a warlike organization, conquering souls and opposing false ideas as though on a battlefield.

Moreover, Proudhon argues that war (or latent war) is what ultimately disciplines society. In Justice in the Revolution, he warns that a society lacking faith turns into a deadly struggle "where the law of the strongest is replaced by the law of the most cunning”, ending inevitably in servitude to tyranny. In this view, the absence of any moral sanction renders all relations warlike, and the end of conflict would paradoxically be “servitude” and “tyranny” itself. So all in all, social life thrives on struggle; out of warlike antagonism emerges any balance of power or justice we achieve. A conflict that simply destroys both sides is not a “war” but a subversion – an anomaly in the social order. The healthy war, by contrast, preserves a dynamic equilibrium.

Proudhon’s positive stance on war is curated by his dialectical view of history. It was his belief that humanity is perfectible, born capable of progress, but that progress requires perpetual effort and conflict. War is one mode of this struggle. In War & Peace, Proudhon argues that if war truly ceased everywhere, civilization would become inert. Ending antagonism means ending the world.

Regardless, Proudhon does not glorify pointless massacre. He distinguishes between war as massacre & war as production of peace. In his sociology of war, the “just war” is one carried out under equal rules and rights. If antagonism is the social law, it needs to be checked by justice. Proudhon scorns the jurists who say there is no law of war; he argues that war itself has its own positive law, consecrated by victory, which imposes itself on the vanquished as surely as a court’s judgment.

Proudhon’s dialectical approach means that each struggle brings synthesis: after war, a new balance is struck and society is renewed or regenerated. Antagonism is itself creative. The end goal of human history is progress, which only through continual confrontation of opposites. Any attempt to impose a static peace would reverse progress. Hence he provocatively claims that peace without war lacks substance. Yet the tension between war and peace, the will to reconcile conflict, is itself what pushes civilization forward.

Proudhon’s Class Entente

Starting in 1848, disappointed by the revolutionary incapacity of the working-class on its own accord, Proudhon believed that the middle class (the property-owning class) and the workers ought to merge their interests together, as it has been said, into a singular force for the progressive movement of the Revolution against the government [6]. It was the Revolution of 1848 that first drew Proudhon into politics and led him to seek a compromise with the middle classes. In 1849 it was clear that a balance, a class entente so-to-speak, between the middle class and the working class could not yet be achieved quite at that point, yet Proudhon had strongly stated that [6] “the proletariat and the middle class, divided right now by the selfishness of their respective tendencies, are, in essence, of one mind on principles as well as on aims and on means…” In The General Idea of the Revolution, written in 1851, he addressed the bourgeoisie as “the elder sons of the Revolution,” praising them for advancing liberty and urging them to side with the people. As he states, “Save the people, save yourselves, as did your fathers, through the Revolution.”

Even as late as 1865, in Proudhon’s last work before his death as his condition deteriorated, and perhaps his work which most closely agreed with the theories of Marx, Proudhon still stated that the salvation of the working class and the middle class would inevitably occur through nothing other than their alliance [7]. Proudhon points out on top of this that liberalism, an ideology of the middle-class, has ever since its founding, resisted the authority of the government in favor of individual freedoms, and argues that liberal philosophy and non-Marxian socialism complement each other as two halves of one singular whole against oppressive government [6].

This Class Entente envisioned by Proudhon shows itself to have been a necessity, as all successful revolutions have required the coordination of not only the working class, but the business-owning class to succeed as well, whether that be under Lenin’s New Economic Policy, Mao Zedong’s New Democracy, or any of the other popular revolutions against the systems of old times.

In line with this all-inclusive view of the base of society, Proudhon believed that representative political institutions within a nation must be founded upon the inclusion of every social and political element, which can express itself freely and obtain justice, achieving its own influence and sovereignty [10]. This healthy, pluralistic ideal of representation would later be emulated in the goals of the syndicalists of France who would emerge only a few decades after Proudhon’s death in 1865.

Many academics posit that by 1865, Proudhon had lost his faith in the class alliance, and begun to advocate for a solely proletarian-led revolution. This, however, is false, as in his 1865 book, “The Political Capacity of the Working Class”, he counseled workers not to abolish all bourgeois rights. He wrote that workers should not destroy the middle classes but win “the same liberty of action” that the bourgeoisie enjoy. He urged industrialists and liberal politicians to defend societal progress, warning workers against smashing the middle class, and instead instructing workers to treat the latter as “our elder brother in emancipation.”

Anarchy & the Proudhonian Republic

In his first major works from 1840 to 1846, Proudhon ruthlessly, perhaps overbearingly critiqued government as a corrupt instrument of privilege. He refused to identify as monarchist, democrat, or aristocrat, claiming only the identity of “anarchist.” At that time Proudhon saw all governments, monarchy, republic, or dictatorship, as enemies of liberty. In System of Economic Contradictions, written in 1846, Proudhon argues that the state necessarily reproduces social inequalities. Thus in 1840–1846 Proudhon’s platform was radical anti-statism. The state needed to wither away, and society instead should have in his view, organized bottom-up through free federations and mutual aid, not through any fixed political authority.

Yet the Revolution of 1848 brought an end to this stance. Following the fall of Louis-Philippe in 1848, which Proudhon welcomed, Proudhon quickly grew pessimistic about the viability of a proletarian revolution. Without the strong institutional checks which Proudhon believed were ensured by federalism and local liberties, France would merely trade one master, Louis-Philippe, for another.

Proudhon thus continued to exalt federalism and municipal autonomy during 1848–1852, criticizing any centralized bourgeois republic, attacking the Orleans bankocracy. Meanwhile, he now anticipated a republic formed by a network of communes and associations. He campaigned on the idea of bottom-up federalism, believing that sovereignty should reside in free municipal as well as industry-based bodies. His federalist stance was theoretically consistent with his early anarchism as he was still advocating for a balance of freely associated citizens organized by profession and locality.

The true embodiment of republican government under Proudhon’s conception, must include a multitude of properties. First and foremost, a definition of economic rights to secure freedoms for all participants in economic life. Secondarily, the balance of economic forces, including the hierarchical formation of agricultural and industrial organizations alongside the socially oriented organization of public services for the wellbeing of the general public. The aforementioned agricultural and industrial organizations were very important to Proudhon’s theory. The Republic’s legislative body must, in Proudhon’s republic, correlate to the relationship of industrial groupings within society. The only way universal suffrage could mean anything positive in a moral or democratic sense to Proudhon, was for the citizenry to vote on the basis of economic category & function [13].

Proudhon’s later works "On Justice in the Revolution and in the Church", written in 1858, elaborated his aforementioned republican vision. Both legislative and executive power would fuse in representatives chosen by industrial, corporative, and communal groupings. Proudhon explicitly rejected the dual-chamber system, instead proposing one Legislative Body alongside an “office of jurisprudence” to advise it. Strangely, Proudhon insisted that the legislative/executive would not be separate: In his own words: “The legislative power is not distinct from the executive power.” He explains that ““the representatives of the nation, being the delegated heads of the various public services, industrial groups, corporations, and territorial districts, are all, in fact, true ministers.” In other words, deputies would be chosen by industry groups and local communes, making them simultaneously legislators and administrators. By having all representatives drawn from economic and territorial categories and subject to recall at any time, they form together the nation’s convention, ministry, council of state, and legislature at once.

This arrangement was a reflection of Proudhon’s doctrine that power should mirror the society’s economic structure. He even argued that “"To make universal suffrage intelligent... it is necessary... to have citizens vote by categories of functions, in accordance with the principle of collective force which forms the basis of society and the State.". In plain terms, he believed universal suffrage should not be a mass anonymous vote, but rather an election organized by categories of function such as job, guild, or region. In other words, instead of one person, one vote, one territory, votes would flow through functional federations to balance competing interests such as workers and capitalists by tying deputies to their groups’ economic rules, thus ensuring interdependence.

The third point which was important to Proudhon’s idealized republic was the assurance of political guarantees designed to protect individual freedoms such as freedom of speech, the freedom of the press, legislative initiative, freedom of assembly and association, inviolability of the individual, the home, and private writings. Fourth, administrative decentralization accompanied by a revival of localized city life. Fifth and finally included the abolition of standing armies, as Proudhon expected, perhaps naively, that within socialized society, the spirit of struggle would transfer from the battlefield to the workplace, imbued into the production process within the economy, ending wars between states [13].

Proudhon believed this form of genuine republican government to be an abolition of the state, as to Proudhon, the state was definitionally nothing other than a repressive centralization of authority over the masses which it falsely proclaimed to represent. Within this understanding, through the new form of republican governance, the State is absorbed into society, swallowed by it in the totality of the social being, putting an end to taxation, simplifying the bloated bodies of bureaucratic administration, and centralizing each economic class of function separately, thereby organizing universal suffrage in a proper manner [6]. One could very much argue that Proudhon does not in fact abolish the nation-state in his theory, and in connection with Pierre-Leroux, Proudhon admits that from a certain standpoint, this can be viewed as true. On the other hand, to Proudhon, the state is simply the administrative body isolated and separate from society [14].

Proudhon’s Anti-Hyperintellectualism

The idea, with its categories, is born from action and must return to action; otherwise, the agent decays.

Proudhon [13]

To Proudhon, all meaningful knowledge emerges from the necessities of actual life and labor, not due to spontaneous divine revelation as posited by religion. Therefore, the thought of the Platonists, where the highest life was spent pondering the abstract forms, was in fact nothing short of a farce, a lie. To live purely in abstraction and in the realm of intellect bore little fruit to the only life which genuinely matters, the only life you know for a fact you are going to live. The form of thought which is genuinely meaningful is only that which can be practically applied, directly or otherwise indirectly, to the production process which helps all of humankind.

The Importance of Frugal Living

Poverty is not ease. For the worker this would be a form of corruption. It is not good for man to live in ease . . . It is clear that it would be misplaced to dream of escaping from the inevitable poverty that is the law of our nature and of society. Poverty is good, and we must regard it as the principle of our joy. Reason commands us to align our lives with it through frugality of manners, moderation in pleasures, diligence at work, and the absolute subordination of our appetites to justice.

Proudhon, Selected Writings [10]

To Proudhon, to live properly meant to abandon the excess of pleasure and to pursue frugal, modest living. This existence recalls the archetypal modest hero of ancient Western literature, or the idealized brave warrior class of Plato’s republic.

But when the cobbler or any other man whom nature designed to be a trader, having his heart lifted up by wealth or strength or the number of his followers, or any like advantage, attempts to force his way into the class of warriors … for which he is unfitted, and either to take the implements or the duties of the other; … then I think you will agree with me in saying that this interchange and this meddling of one with another is the ruin of the State.

Plato, Republic [11]

Another ancient Western thinker which this ideal of modesty recalls is the Spartan lawgiver Lycurgus who called for all men to stand in solidarity with one another in complete poverty. To Lycurgus, “by continuing poor, and not coveting each man to be greater than his fellows [12]”, one best defends their society against those attempting to destroy it.

The Errors of Proudhon

Proudhon, with all of his brilliant ideas, made countless blunders. Among them, his summarization of the various phases of capitalism. Proudhon, as he expressed in the “Stock Exchange Speculator’s Manual” believed that capitalism would have various phases, which have now been proven to be partially outdated. First and foremost was industrial anarchy, whereby an era of the free market and competition was established, an era of capitalism idolized by conservative liberal thinkers today. What emerged from industrial anarchy was industrial feudalism, which oversaw the establishment of trusts and cartels. Industrial empire, a period which lasted until the 1960s and 1970s, would be classified by the centralization of private enterprise under authoritarian leadership on a mass scale, embodied in Proudhon’s era under the leadership of Napoleon III, where the head of the state was nothing other than the head of large corporations [15].

Proudhon believed that after the rise of industrial empire, industrial democracy would occur, the last stage he bothered to predict, as participation of the masses within the government, and the self-management of the workers would be curated. This, however, is a proven falsehood. Industrial democracy did not succeed the rise of industrial empire, as the “empire” has been stripped of its industry under an era of neoliberalism, making the very category of “industrial” empire completely outdated. On the other hand, the classification of the development of capitalism by Proudhon up until that point does still stand as true [15].

Proudhon believed that once free mutual-credit banks and federations were established, as he says, “the Revolution externally will consist in preaching by example”, with no need for conquest or armies. This, however, has proven to not be the case even within fully realized socialist revolutions.

Within “Economic Contradictions” we encounter another error of Proudhon, where he states that “the role of the woman” is their responsibility for the “management of the household, for everything related to consumption and saving, inferior to that of the man, whose proper function is the command of the workshop, that is, the government of production and exchange…” [4]. Here is perhaps Proudhon’s worst mistake— Although he touts the concept of universal suffrage, when personally inquired about his opinion on women, not only in this book, but also in his other insufferable works such as “the Pornocracy of Women” (a book dedicated totally to his misogynistic and racist beliefs), Proudhon expresses his absolute hatred towards them. While Proudhon’s racism is also another horribly thrawn problem, it’s never anywhere near as prominent within any of his works as his (albeit still infrequently referenced) misogyny is.

Regardless of ideological inconsistency or the repulsiveness of misogyny, restricting half of the population to the home would cause any developed nation’s economy across the globe to freefall into total collapse. This is entirely undeniable, and immediately allows Proudhon’s misogyny, simply from a pragmatic angle, to be instantly dismissible.

This prejudice towards women, however, is not even the worst crime of Proudhon. Proudhon was among the foremost rabid antisemite theoreticians of political thought in Europe during the 19th century, stating in his private journal in a text known as “On the Jews”, written in 1847, that “The Jew is the enemy of humankind. They must be sent back to Asia or be exterminated.” Although this is one of Proudhon’s earlier works, and this extreme variety of antisemitism never finds its way into any of his later works, it does leave a dull mark on his legacy which he could never make up to in any of his grand reasonings or his brilliant economic treatises [16].

The truth is that Proudhon’s hatred of capitalism was according to him, one to one with his hatred of the Jew, while at the same time his commitment to libertarian social order never did extend to gender equality. Historical context can in part, explain why he thought these things, but it does not excuse them.

But unlike any other reactionaries in history, Proudhon knew his views were backwards and stupid. As he stated, “I dream of a republic where I would be guillotined as a reactionary.” As Proudhon acknowledged, his cultural positions, influenced by his background within a reactionary family, were not, and could never be progressive, hoping others would never pursue the adoption of them. In Proudhon we find a man who acknowledges that his ideals are those of an antiquated past long forgotten, and yet also lacks the will to break free of them, a slave to his own sentiments.

Regardless of Proudhon’s vitriolic social takes, and his confused theory of morality, in his philosophy of man and his theory of governance and economics, we find the most well-developed and practical alternative to communism and commercial capitalism out of any theorist who lived and wrote during the entirety of the 1800s. Frequently buried behind the scathing words of Karl Marx, Proudhon has never been given the credit he is due as not only a brilliant political theorist, but an inspiration to hundreds of thousands of forward-thinking individuals, providing the ideological backdrop to dozens of revolutions around the globe.

Sources

1. Proudhon, P. J. What Is Property? Humboldt Publishing Company, 1893, 1893.

2. LACROIX, JEAN. “Marx et Proudhon.” Esprit (1940-), no. 145 (5/6), 1948, pp. 970–80. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/24251713. Accessed 7 Oct. 2024.

3. Gurvitch, Georges. “PROUDHON ET MARX.” Cahiers internationaux de sociologie, vol. 40, no. 1, 1966, pp. 7–16.

4. Proudhon, Pierre-Joseph. Economic Contradictions. p 198. 1850.

5. Proudhon, Pierre-Joseph. La Paix et la Guerre. 1861.

6. Proudhon, Pierre-Joseph. In Connection with Louis Blanc. 1849.

7. Proudhon, Pierre-Joseph. On the Political Capacity of the Working Classes. 1865.

8. Sorel, Georges. Letter to Edouard Berth. 1914.

9. Proudhon, Pierre-Joseph. Political Contradictions: Theory of the Constitutional Movement in the 19th Century. 1870.

10. P-J Proudhon: Selected Writings of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, S Edwards, ed, Macmillan, London, 1970.

11. Plato. Republic.

12. The Internet Classics Archive | Lycurgus by Plutarch (mit.edu)

13. Proudhon, Pierre-Joseph. De la Justice dans la Révolution et dans l'Église. Nouvelle éd., vol. 2, Marpon et Flammarion, 1870.

14. Proudhon, Pierre-Joseph. Letter to Pierre Leroux. 1849.

15. Proudhon, Pierre-Joseph. Stock Exchange Speculator’s Manual. 1854

16. Proudhon, Pierre-Joseph. On the Jews. 1847.

17. Proudhon, Pierre-Joseph. Toast to the Revolution. 1848.