Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

I protest against every order with which some authority may feel pleased on the basis of some alleged necessity to over-rule my free will. Laws: We know what they are, and what they are worth! They are spider webs for the rich and mighty, steel chains for the poor and weak, fishing nets in the hands of government.

Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (pronounced [ˈpruːd.ɒn] in BrE, [pʁu.dɔ̃] in French) (15 January 1809 – 19 January 1865) was the first individual to call himself an "anarchist," and the first documented as using the word "Capitalist" to mean property-owner.

Quotes

To be governed is to be watched over, inspected, spied on, directed, legislated at, regulated, docketed, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, assessed, weighed, censored, ordered about, by men who have neither the right, nor the knowledge, nor the virtue.

All parties without exception, when they seek for power, are varieties of absolutism.

• La République est l'organisation par laquelle toutes les opinions, toutes les activités demeurant libres, le Peuple, par la divergence même des opinions et des volontés, pense et agit comme un seul homme. Dans la République, tout citoyen, en faisant ce qu'il veut et rien que ce qu'il veut, participe directement à la législation et au gouvernement, comme il participe à la production et à la circulation de la richesse. Là tout citoyen est roi ; car il a la plénitude du pouvoir, il règne et gouverne. La République est une anarchie positive. Ce n'est ni la liberté soumise A l'ordre comme dans la monarchie constitutionnelle, ni la liberté emprisonnée DANs l'ordre, comme l'entend le Gouvernement provisoire. C'est la liberté délivrée de toutes ses entraves, la superstition, le préjugé, le sophisme, l'agiotage, l'autorité; c'est la liberté réciproque, et non pas la liberté qui se limite; la liberté non pas fille de l'ordre, mais MÈRE de l'ordre.
  • Idée générale de la revolution au XIXe siècle (1851), p. 235, as cited in Anarchism (1908) by Paul Eltzbacher, p. 76
  • The Republic is the organization by which, all opinions and all activities remaining free, the People, by the very divergence of opinions and of wills, thinks and acts as a single man. In the Republic every citizen, in doing what he wishes and nothing but what he wishes, participates directly in legislation and government, just as he participates in the production and circulation of wealth. There every citizen is king; for he has plenary power, he reigns and governs. The Republic is a positive anarchy. It is neither liberty subjected to order, as in the constitutional monarchy, nor liberty imprisoned in order, as the provisional government would have it. It is liberty delivered from all its hobbles, superstition, prejudice, sophism, speculation, authority; it is mutual liberty, not self-limiting liberty; liberty, not the daughter but the MOTHER of order.
    • As translated in Anarchism (1908) by Paul Eltzbacher, p. 76
  • The Republic is the organization by which, all opinions and all activities remaining free, the People, by the very divergence of opinions and will, think and act as a single man. In the Republic, every citizen, by doing what they want and nothing but what they want, participates directly in the legislation and in the government, as they participate in the production and circulation of wealth. There, every citizen is king; for he has the fullness of power; he reigns and governs. The Republic is a positive anarchy. It is neither liberty subjected to order, as in the constitutional monarchy, nor liberty imprisoned in order, as the Provisional Government intends. It is liberty delivered from all its shackles: superstition, prejudice, sophistry, stock-jobbing, authority. It is reciprocal liberty, and not the liberty which restricts; liberty, not the daughter of order, but the MOTHER of order.
    • As translated in "Notes on Proudhon's changing notion of the state" by Shawn P. Wilbur (19 January 2013); this is cited there to "Solution of the Social Problem" (1849)

• To be governed is to be watched over, inspected, spied on, directed, legislated at, regulated, docketed, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, assessed, weighed, censored, ordered about, by men who have neither the right, nor the knowledge, nor the virtue. ... To be governed is to be at every operation, at every transaction, noted, registered, enrolled, taxed, stamped, measured, numbered, assessed, licensed, authorized, admonished, forbidden, reformed, corrected, punished. It is, under the pretext of public utility, and in the name of the general interest, to be placed under contribution, trained, ransomed, exploited, monopolized, extorted, squeezed, mystified, robbed; then, at the slightest resistance, the first word of complaint, to be repressed, fined, despised, harassed, tracked, abused, clubbed, disarmed, choked, imprisoned, judged, condemned, shot, deported, sacrificed, sold, betrayed; and, to crown all, mocked, ridiculed, outraged, dishonoured. That is government; that is its justice; that is its morality.
  • Idée Générale de la Révolution au XIXe Siècle [The General Idea of the Revolution] (1851); quoted in The Anarchists (1964) by James Joll, Ch. 3, p. 78

• All my economic ideas as developed over twenty-five years can be summed up in the words: agricultural-industrial federation. All my political ideas boil down to a similar formula: political federation or decentralization.
  • Du principe Fédératif [Principle of Federation] (1863)

• All parties without exception, when they seek for power, are varieties of absolutism.
  • As quoted in Philosophy at Work : A Constructive Approach to Philosophy (1960) by Ralph Bubrich Winn

• I stand ready to negotiate, but I want no part of laws: I acknowledge none; I protest against every order with which some authority may feel pleased on the basis of some alleged necessity to over-rule my free will. Laws: We know what they are, and what they are worth! They are spider webs for the rich and mighty, steel chains for the poor and weak, fishing nets in the hands of government.
  • As quoted in "The Authority Principle" in No Gods, No Masters : An Anthology of Anarchism (1980) Daniel Guérin, as translated by Paul Sharkey (1998), p. 90

What is Property? (1840)

I build no system. I ask an end to privilege, the abolition of slavery, equality of rights, and the reign of law. Justice, nothing else; that is the alpha and omega of my argument: to others I leave the business of governing the world.

Using primarily the translation of Benjamin R. Tucker What is Property? An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government (1890)

I recognized at once that we had never understood the meaning of these words, so common and yet so sacred: Justice, equity, liberty; that concerning each of these principles our ideas have been utterly obscure...

To name a thing is easy: the difficulty is to discern it before its appearance.

All men in their hearts, I say, bear witness to these truths; they need only to be made to understand it.

Man is very willing to obey the law of duty, serve his country, and oblige his friends; but he wishes to labor when he pleases, where he pleases, and as much as he pleases... to act from judgment, not by command...

As man seeks justice in equality, so society seeks order in anarchy.

• I have found more peace in the knowledge of truth than anger in the feeling of oppression, and the most precious fruit that I could want to collect in this memoir would be to inspire my readers with that peace of mind arising from the clear perception of evil and its causes.
  • Preface
• The nineteenth century is in my eyes a creative age in which new principles are produced but in which nothing written will endure.
  • Preface
• I should like to restore with one hand what I destroy with the other. When pruning an old tree one should avoid destroying the buds and fruit; you know this is as well as anyone.
  • Preface

• If we pass from physical nature to the moral world, here we still find ourselves subject to the same deceptions of appearance, to the same influence of spontaneity and habit.
  • Chapter One

• Justice is not the work of the law: on the contrary, the law is only the declaration and application of what is just in all circumstances where men have relations with one another.
  • Chapter One

• If I were asked to answer the following question: What is slavery? and I should answer in one word, It is murder, my meaning would be understood at once. No extended argument would be required to show that the power to take from a man his thought, his will, his personality, is a power of life and death; and that to enslave a man is to kill him. Why, then, to this other question: What is property! may I not likewise answer, It is robbery, without the certainty of being misunderstood; the second proposition being no other than a transformation of the first?
  I undertake to discuss the vital principle of our government and our institutions, property: I am in my right. I may be mistaken in the conclusion which shall result from my investigations: I am in my right. I think best to place the last thought of my book first: still am I in my right.
  • Ch. I: "Method Pursued in this Work. The Idea of a Revolution"

• Property is robbery! That is the war-cry of '93! That is the signal of revolutions!
  Reader, calm yourself: I am no agent of discord, no firebrand of sedition. I anticipate history by a few days; I disclose a truth whose development we may try in vain to arrest; I write the preamble of our future constitution. This proposition which seems to you blasphemous — property is robbery — would, if our prejudices allowed us to consider it, be recognized as the lightning-rod to shield us from the coming thunderbolt; but too many interests stand in the way! ... Alas! philosophy will not change the course of events: destiny will fulfill itself regardless of prophecy. Besides, must not justice be done and our education be finished?
  • Ch. I: "Method Pursued in this Work. The Idea of a Revolution"
  • Property is theft! is a more famous translation of the original: La propriété, c'est le vol!

• Of what consequence to you, reader, is my obscure individuality? I live, like you, in a century in which reason submits only to fact and to evidence. My name, like yours, is truth-seeker. My mission is written in these words of the law: Speak without hatred and without fear; tell that which thou knowest! The work of our race is to build the temple of science, and this science includes man and Nature. Now, truth reveals itself to all; to-day to Newton and Pascal, tomorrow to the herdsman in the valley and the journeyman in the shop. Each one contributes his stone to the edifice; and, his task accomplished, disappears. Eternity precedes us, eternity follows us: between two infinites, of what account is one poor mortal that the century should inquire about him?
  Disregard then, reader, my title and my character, and attend only to my arguments.
  • Ch. I: "Method Pursued in this Work. The Idea of a Revolution"

• I build no system. I ask an end to privilege, the abolition of slavery, equality of rights, and the reign of law. Justice, nothing else; that is the alpha and omega of my argument: to others I leave the business of governing the world.
  • Ch. I: "Method Pursued in this Work. The Idea of a Revolution"

• I have made every effort to obtain exact information, comparing doctrines, replying to objections, continually constructing equations and reductions from arguments, and weighing thousands of syllogisms in the scales of the most rigorous logic. In this laborious work, I have collected many interesting facts which I shall share with my friends and the public as soon as I have leisure. But I must say that I recognized at once that we had never understood the meaning of these words, so common and yet so sacred: Justice, equity, liberty; that concerning each of these principles our ideas have been utterly obscure; and, in fact, that this ignorance was the sole cause, both of the poverty that devours us, and of all the calamities that have ever afflicted the human race.
  • Ch. I: "Method Pursued in this Work. The Idea of a Revolution"

• All that the sovereign people, legislators, and reformers see in public office is, to speak plainly, their own benefit.
  • Ch. I

• To name a thing is easy: the difficulty is to discern it before its appearance. In giving expression to the last stage of an idea, — an idea which permeates all minds, which to-morrow will be proclaimed by another if I fail to announce it to-day, — I can claim no merit save that of priority of utterance. Do we eulogize the man who first perceives the dawn?
  Yes: all men believe and repeat that equality of conditions is identical with equality of rights; that property and robbery are synonymous terms; that every social advantage accorded, or rather usurped, in the name of superior talent or service, is iniquity and extortion. All men in their hearts, I say, bear witness to these truths; they need only to be made to understand it.
  • Ch. I: "Method Pursued in this Work. The Idea of a Revolution"

• The purchaser draws boundaries, fences himself in, and says, “This is mine; each one by himself, each one for himself.” Here, then, is a piece of land upon which, henceforth, no one has a right to step, save the proprietor and his friends; which can benefit nobody, save the proprietor and his servants. Let these sales multiply, and soon the people — who have been neither able nor willing to sell, and who have received none of the proceeds of the sale — will have nowhere to rest, no place of shelter, no ground to till. They will die of hunger at the proprietor's door, on the edge of that property which was their birthright; and the proprietor, watching them die, will exclaim, “So perish idlers and vagrants!”
  • Ch. III: "Labor as the Efficient Cause of the Domain of Property"

• Property is impossible.
  • Ch. IV: "That Property Is Impossible"

• The elements of justice are identical with those of algebra.
  • Ch. IV

• AXIOM. — Property is the Right of Increase claimed by the Proprietor over any thing which he has stamped as his own.
  • Ch. IV

• The proprietor, producing neither by his own labor nor by his implement, and receiving products in exchange for nothing, is either a parasite or a thief.
  • Ch. IV

• What is conscription? An act of property exercised over families by the government without warning, a robbery of men and money.
  • Ch. IV

• Talents is a creation of society rather than a gift of nature; it is an accumulated capital of which the recipient is only the guardian. Without society, without education and powerful assistance which it gives, the finest nature would be inferior to the most ordinary capacities even in the rare as where it ought to shine.
  • Ch.IV

• Sociability is the attraction felt by sentient beings for each other; justice is the same attraction, accompanied by reflection and knowledge.
  • Ch.V

• Friendship is precious in the hearts of the children of men. Generosity, gratitude (I mean here only that gratitude which is born of admiration of a superior power), and friendship are three three distinct shades of a single sentiment which I will call "equity" or "social proportionality. Equity does not change justice; but always taking equity as the base, it adds to it esteem and thereby forms in man a third degree of sociability. Equality makes it at once our duty and our pleasure to aid the weak who need us and to make them our equals; to pay to the strong a just tribute of gratitude and honour without making ourselves slaves to them; to cherish our neighbors, friends, and equals for what we receive from them, even by right of exchange. Equity is sociability raised to this ideal through reason and justice; its most usual manifestation is urbanity or politeness, which among certain nations sums up in a single word almost all the social duties.
  • Ch. V
• Justice is the product of nature and labour
  • Ch. V
• If God should descend to earth and come to live among us, we could not love him unless he became like us or give him anything unless he produced something or listen to him unless he proved us mistaken or worship him unless he manifested his power. All the laws of our nature, affective, economic, and intellectual, would prevent us from treating him as we treat other men, that is, according to reason, justice, and equity. From this I infer that if God ever put himself into immediate communication with man, he would have to become a man.
  • Ch. V

• Communism is inequality, but not as property is. Property is the exploitation of the weak by the strong. Communism is the exploitation of the strong by the weak. In property, inequality of conditions is the result of force, under whatever name it be disguised: physical and mental force; force of events, chance, fortune; force of accumulated property, &c. In communism, inequality springs from placing mediocrity on a level with excellence. This damaging equation is repellent to the conscience, and causes merit to complain; for, although it may be the duty of the strong to aid the weak, they prefer to do it out of generosity, — they never will endure a comparison. Give them equal opportunities of labor, and equal wages, but never allow their jealousy to be awakened by mutual suspicion of unfaithfulness in the performance of the common task.
  Communism is oppression and slavery. Man is very willing to obey the law of duty, serve his country, and oblige his friends; but he wishes to labor when he pleases, where he pleases, and as much as he pleases. He wishes to dispose of his own time, to be governed only by necessity, to choose his friendships, his recreation, and his discipline; to act from judgment, not by command; to sacrifice himself through selfishness, not through servile obligation. Communism is essentially opposed to the free exercise of our faculties, to our noblest desires, to our deepest feelings. Any plan which could be devised for reconciling it with the demands of the individual reason and will would end only in changing the thing while preserving the name. Now, if we are honest truth-seekers, we shall avoid disputes about words.
  Thus, communism violates the sovereignty of the conscience, and equality: the first, by restricting spontaneity of mind and heart, and freedom of thought and action; the second, by placing labor and laziness, skill and stupidity, and even vice and virtue on an equality in point of comfort. For the rest, if property is impossible on account of the desire to accumulate, communism would soon become so through the desire to shirk.
  • Ch. V: "Psychological Explanation of the Idea of Justice and Injustice, and the Determination of the Principle of Government and of Right," Part 2: Characteristics of Communism and of Property

• As man seeks justice in equality, so society seeks order in anarchy.
  • Ch. V, Part 2; this might be the ultimate inspiration of the later slogan coined in 1848 by Anselme Bellegarrigue (and often attributed to Proudhon): "Anarchy is order, government is civil war."

• Up to now the victories of justice over injustice and of equality over inequality have been won by instinct and the simple force of things, but the final triumph of our social nature will be due to our reason, or else we shall fall back into feudal chaos. Either this is reserved for our intelligence, or this depth of poverty for our indignity.
• Ch.V

• The end of the old civilization has come; the face of the earth will be renewed under a new son. Let the present generation perish, let the old prevaricators die in the desert! The holy earth will not cover their bones.
  • Ch.V

The General Idea of the Revolution

"Come to me, Lucifer, Satan, whoever you may be! Devil whom the faith of my fathers contrasted with God and the Church. I will act as spokesman for you and will demand nothing of you." (Idee Generale De La Revolution, pp. 433-434; also in Justice III)

The System of Economic Contradictions, or The Philosophy of Poverty (1846)

I will explain … how, studying in the silence of my heart, and far from every human consideration, the mystery of social revolutions, God, the great unknown, has become for me an hypothesis, — I mean a necessary dialectical tool.

The System of Economic Contradictions (1846)

• Before entering upon the subject-matter of these new memoirs, I must explain an hypothesis which will undoubtedly seem strange, but in the absence of which it is impossible for me to proceed intelligibly: I mean the hypothesis of a God.
  To suppose God, it will be said, is to deny him. Why do you not affirm him?
  Is it my fault if belief in Divinity has become a suspected opinion; if the bare suspicion of a Supreme Being is already noted as evidence of a weak mind; and if, of all philosophical Utopias, this is the only one which the world no longer tolerates? Is it my fault if hypocrisy and imbecility everywhere hide behind this holy formula?

• Tormented by conflicting feelings, I appealed to reason; and it is reason which, amid so many dogmatic contradictions, now forces the hypothesis upon me. A priori dogmatism, applying itself to God, has proved fruitless: who knows whither the hypothesis, in its turn, will lead us?
  I will explain therefore how, studying in the silence of my heart, and far from every human consideration, the mystery of social revolutions, God, the great unknown, has become for me an hypothesis, — I mean a necessary dialectical tool.
  • Introduction

• In order better to grasp the thought of Malthus, let us translate it into philosophical propositions by stripping it of its rhetorical gloss: —
  "'"Individual liberty, and property, which is its expression, are economical data; equality and solidarity are not."
  "Under this system, each one by himself, each one for himself: labor, like all merchandise, is subject to fluctuation: hence the risks of the proletariat."
  "Whoever has neither income nor wages has no right to demand anything of others: his misfortune falls on his own head; in the game of fortune, luck has been against him."
  From the point of view of political economy these propositions are irrefutable; and Malthus, who has formulated them with such alarming exactness, is secure against all reproach. From the point of view of the conditions of social science, these same propositions are radically false, and even contradictory.
  • Chapter I

Confessions of a Revolutionary (1849)

It is necessary to have lived in this insulator which is called the national assembly, in order to perceive how the men who are the most completely ignorant of the state of the country are almost always the ones who represent it.

As translated in "P. J. Proudhon in the Revolution of 1848" by Mary B. Allen The Journal of Modern History (1952) 24:1-14.

• Power, instrument of the collective force, created in society to serve as mediator between capital and labor, has become inescapably enchained to capital and directed against the proletariat. No political reform can resolve this contradiction, since, according to the avowal of politicians themselves, such a reform could only end by giving more energy and expansion to power, and until it had overthrown the hierarchy and dissolved society, power would not be able to attack the prerogatives of monopoly. The problem consists, then, for the working classes, not in capturing, but in defeating both power and monopoly, which would mean to make rise from the bowels of the people, from the depths of labor, a power greater, an action more powerful which would envelop capital and the State and subjugate them.

• It is necessary to have lived in this insulator which is called the national assembly, in order to perceive how the men who are the most completely ignorant of the state of the country are almost always the ones who represent it. I set myself to read everything that the distribution bureau sends the representatives: proposals, reports, brochures, even the Moniteur and the Bulletin of the laws. The greater part of my colleagues of the left and the extreme left were in the same perplexity of spirit, in the same ignorance of the daily facts. The national workshops were spoken of only with a kind of fright; for fear of the people is the defect of all those who belong to authority; the people, as concerns power, is the enemy.

Quotes about Proudhon

Proudhon, like the Communists, fights against egoism. ~ Max Stirner

Like such titles as Christian and Quaker, "anarchist" was in the end proudly adopted by one of those against whom it had been used in condemnation. ~ George Woodcock

• Proudhon is the master of us all.
  • Mikhail Bakunin, as cited in Anarchism: A History of Libertarian Ideas and Movements (1962) by George Woodcock, p. 152

• France had been the cradle of anarchism, fathered for a long time by some of her most brilliant sons, of whom Proudhon was the greatest.
  • Emma Goldman, Living My Life (1931)

• Proudhon said that it is surprising how at the bottom of politics one always finds theology.
  • Erik von Kuhnelt-Leddihn, Leftism: Freom de Sade and Marx to Hilter and Marcuse, Arlingthon House (1974), p. 54

• Proudhon in spite of his anticlericalism (which abated toward the end of his life) was deeply imbued with Christian moral principles.
  • Erik von Kuhnelt-Leddihn, Leftism: Freom de Sade and Marx to Hilter and Marcuse, Arlingthon House (1974), p. 124

• It is difficult to name a single author, alive or dead, of whom Proudhon ever found anything good to say. His other crochets included antisemitism, Anglophobia, tolerance for slavery (he publicly sided with the South during the American civil war), dislike of Germans, Italians, Poles--indeed of all non-French nationalities--and a firmly patriarchal view of family life ... After this it comes as no surprise that he believed in inherent inequalities among the races or that he regarded women as inferior beings.
  • George Lichtheim, The Origins of Socialism (1969)

• Proudhon had considered the patriarchal family as the fundamental social unit in his society without laws. He also disapproved of divorce and expected that women would always fulfill domestic functions...Proudhon, Kropotkin, and the other anarchist theorists who viewed women in such conventional ways argued that certain behavior patterns were natural for each sex. Since nature provided woman with a dependent personality, a nurturing instinct, and a desire for motherhood, to have her act in accord with those feelings would not violate her freedom because they would be an expression of her natural self. Many anarchist women, from Emma Goldman to the unassuming Helena Born, disagreed with this notion of woman's nature. Dismissing the interpretations of the male theorists, they appropriated for themselves the dogma of absolute individual liberty, reminded their male comrades of their responsibility not to infringe on the liberty of women, and rejected patriarchal as well as governmental authority. In their lives, perhaps as much as in their work, they gave evidence of their determination to apply anarchist tenets equally to men and women.
  • Margaret S Marsh, Anarchist Women, 1870-1920 (1981)

• Benjamin Tucker derived his economic and political ideas principally from two sources: Josiah Warren and Pierre-Joseph Proudhon. Proudhon, the French printer whom all anarchists considered their intellectual father, developed an economic and social system that abolished government while it emphasized economic equality. Proudhon believed that such equality could be achieved only if individuals were left free to work out with each other the kinds of social and economic relationships most compatible with the autonomy of each...it was Tucker who brought their ideas together in Liberty and whose efforts attracted a solid core of followers and sympathizers.
  • Margaret S Marsh, Anarchist Women, 1870-1920 (1981)

• Proudhon was the first to draw attention to the fact that the sum of the wages of the individual workers, even if each individual labour be paid for completely, does not pay for the collective power objectified in its product, that therefore the worker is not paid as a part of the collective labour power.
  • Karl Marx, in The Holy Family, Marx-Engels Collected Works Volume 4, p. 52 (1845)

• In France, Proudhon has the right to be a bad economist because he is reputed to be a good German philosopher. In Germany, he has the right to be a bad philosopher because he is reputed to be one of the ablest of French economists. But being both a German and an economist, I wish to protest against this double error.
  • Karl Marx, in The Poverty of Philosophy [Das Elend der Philosophie] (1847)

• We can find the origins of the doctrine of surplus value, that grand "scientific discovery" of which our marxists are so proud, in the writings of Proudhon. It was thanks to him that Marx became acquainted with that theory to which he added modifications through his later study of the English socialists Bray and Thompson.
  • Rudolf Rocker, in Marx and Anarchism (1925)

• Proudhon hated all authority and rebuked anyone planning a dictatorial form of socialism. He abhorred government altogether and made the call for a free federation of independent communes. He rejected all laws as instruments of oppression; he wanted communes to conclude agreements with each other about how their members should live.
  • Robert Service, Comrades! A History of World Communism (2007), p. 17
• Proudhon, like the Communists, fights against egoism. Therefore they are continuations and consistent carryings-out of the Christian principle, the principle of love, of sacrifice for something general, something alien. They complete in property, only what has long been extant as a matter of fact — namely, the propertylessness of the individual. ... In this too Proudhon is like the Christians, that he ascribes to God that which he denies to men. He names him the Proprietaire of the earth. Herewith he proves that he cannot think away the proprietor as such; he comes to a proprietor at last, but removes him to the other world.
  • Max Stirner, in The Individual and His Property [Der Einzige und sein Eigenthum] (1845)

• Like such titles as Christian and Quaker, "anarchist" was in the end proudly adopted by one of those against whom it had been used in condemnation. In 1840, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, that stormy, argumentative individualist who prided himself on being a man of paradox and a provoker of contradiction, published the work that established him as a pioneer libertarian thinker. It was What Is Property?, in which he gave his own question the celebrated answer: "Property is theft." In the same book he became the first man willingly to claim the title of anarchist.
  Undoubtedly Proudhon did this partly in defiance, and partly in order to exploit the word's paradoxical qualities. He had recognized the ambiguity of the Greek anarchos, and had gone back to it for that very reason — to emphasize that the criticism of authority on which he was about to embark need not necessarily imply an advocacy of disorder. The passages in which he introduces "anarchist" and "anarchy" are historically important enough to merit quotation, since they not merely show these words being used for the first time in a socially positive sense, but also contain in germ the justification by natural law which anarchists have in general applied to their arguments for a non-authoritarian society.

What is to be the form of government in the future? … I hear some of my readers reply: "Why, how can you ask such a question? You — are a republican." A republican! Yes, but that word specifies nothing. Res publico; that is, the public thing. Now, whoever is interested in public affairs — no matter under what form of government, may call himself a republican. Even kings are republicans. "Well, you are a democrat." No … "Then what are you?" I am an anarchist!

• George Woodcock, in Anarchism : A History of Libertarian Ideas and Movements (1962), Prologue

• Proudhon goes on to suggest that the real laws by which society functions have nothing to do with authority; they are not imposed from above, but stem from the nature of society itself. He sees the free emergence of such laws as the goal of social endeavour. ... Proudhon conceiving a natural law of balance operating within society, rejects authority as an enemy and not a friend of order, and throws back at the authoritarians the accusations leveled at anarchists; in the process he adopts the title he hopes to have cleared of obloquy.
  • George Woodcock, in Anarchism : A History of Libertarian Ideas and Movements (1962), Prologue

• Proudhon was a voluntary hermit in the political world of the nineteenth century. He sought no followers, indignantly rebuffed suggestions that he had created as system of any kind, and almost certainly rejoiced in the fact that he accepted the title anarchist in virtual isolation.
  • George Woodcock, in Anarchism : A History of Libertarian Ideas and Movements (1962), Prologue

• It is the general idea put forward by Proudhon in 1840 that unites him with the later anarchists, with Bakunin and Kropotkin, and also with certain earlier and later thinkers, such as Godwin, Stirner, and Tolstoy, who evolved anti-governmental systems without accepting the name of anarchy; and it is in this sense that I shall treat anarchism, despite its many variations: as a system of social thought, aiming at fundamental changes in the structure of society and particularly — for this is the common element uniting all its forms — at the replacement of the authoritarian state by some form of non-governmental cooperation between free individuals.
  • George Woodcock, in Anarchism : A History of Libertarian Ideas and Movements (1962), Prologue

External links

• Pierre-Joseph Proudhon at the Anarchist Archives
  • The General Idea of Proudhon's Revolution by Robert Graham
• Pierre-Joseph Proudhon Page at the Anarchist Encyclopedia (includes short timeline)
• BlackCrayon.com: People: Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
• Proudhon and Anarchism by Larry Gambone
• Stirner on Proudhon Max Stirner criticizes Proudhon
• Proudhon by K. Steven Vincent

Works online :

• Works by Pierre-Joseph Proudhon at Project Gutenberg
• What is Property? An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government
• System of Economical Contradictions: or, the Philosophy of Misery
• General Idea of the Revolution in the Nineteenth Century (1851)
• What is Property? An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government