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Proudhon is the first known theorist to refer to himself as an “anarchist.” He defined anarchy as “the absence of a master, of a sovereign” in What is Property and urged a “Society without Authority” in The General idea of the Revolution. He extended this analysis beyond just political institutions, arguing in What is Property? that “proprietor” was “synonymous” with “sovereign.” For Proudhon:

“Capital”... in the political field is analogous to “government”... The economic idea of capitalism, the politics of government or of authority, and the theological idea of the Church are three identical ideas, linked in various ways. To attack one of them is equivalent to attacking all of them . . . What capital does to labour, and the State to liberty, the Church does to the spirit. This trinity of absolutism is as baneful in practice as it is in philosophy. The most effective means for oppressing the people would be simultaneously to enslave its body, its will and its reason. [1]

One exception to this position was his sexism, causing Joseph Déjacque (as well as subsequent anarchists) to attack Proudhon’s support for patriarchy as being inconsistent with his anarchist ideas.

In his earliest works, Proudhon analyzed the nature and problems of the capitalist economy. While deeply critical of capitalism, he also objected to those contemporary socialists who idolized association. In series of commentaries, from What is Property? (1840) through the posthumously-published Théorie de la propriété (Theory of Property, 1863-64), he first declared that “property is theft”, “property is impossible”, “property is despotism” and “property is freedom”. When he said property is theft, he was referring to the landowner or capitalist who he believed stole the profits from laborers. For Proudhon, the capitalist’s employee was “subordinated, exploited: his permanent condition is one of obedience.” [2]

In asserting that property is freedom, he was referring not only to the product of an individual’s labor, but to the peasant or artisans home and tools of his trade and the income he received by selling his goods. For Proudhon, the only legitimate source of property is labor. What one produces is his property and anything beyond that is not. He advocated worker self-management and was against capitalist ownership of the means of production. He strenuously rejected the ownership of the products of labor by society, arguing in What is Property? that while “property in product [...] does not carry with it property in production [...] The right to product is exclusive [...] the right to means is common” and applied this to the land (“the land is [...] a common thing”) and workplaces (“all accumulated capital being social property, no one can be its exclusive proprietor”). But he didn’t approve of “society” owning means of production or land, but rather that the user own it (under supervision from society, with the “organising of regulating societies” in order to “regulate the market.” [Selected Writings, p. 70]). Proudhon called himself a socialist, but he opposed state ownership of capital goods in favour of ownership by workers themselves in associations. This makes him one of the first theorists of libertarian socialism.

This use-ownership he called “possession,” and this economic system mutualism. Proudhon had many arguments against entitlement to land and capital, including reasons based on morality, economics, politics, and individual liberty. One such argument was that it enabled profit, which in turn led to social instability and war by creating cycles of debt that eventually overcame the capacity of labor to pay them off. Another was that it produced “despotism” and turned workers into wage workers subject to the authority of a boss.

In What Is Property?, Proudhon wrote:

Property, acting by exclusion and encroachment, while population was increasing, has been the life-principle and definitive cause of all revolutions. Religious wars, and wars of conquest, when they have stopped short of the extermination of races, have been only accidental disturbances, soon repaired by the mathematical progression of the life of nations. The downfall and death of societies are due to the power of accumulation possessed by property.

Towards the end of his life, he modified some of his earlier views. In “The Principle of Federation” (1863) he modified his earlier anti-state position, arguing for the “the balancing of authority by liberty” and put forward a decentralised “theory of federal government.” He also defined anarchy differently as “the government of each by himself,” which meant “that political functions have been reduced to industrial functions, and that social order arises from nothing but transactions and exchanges.” This work also saw him call his economic system an “agro-industrial federation,” arguing that it would provide “specific federal arrangements is to protect the citizens of the federated states from capitalist and financial feudalism, both within them and from the outside” and so stop the re-introduction of “wage labour.” This was because “political right requires to be buttressed by economic right.”

In the posthumously published Theory of Property, he argued that “property is the only power that can act as a counterweight to the State.” Hence, “Proudhon could retain the idea of property as theft, and at the same time offer a new definition of it as liberty. There is the constant possibility of abuse, exploitation, which spells theft. At the same time property is a spontaneous creation of society and a bullwark against the ever-encroaching power of the State.” [3]

He continued to oppose both capitalist and state property. In Theory of Property he maintains: “Now in 1840, I catagorically rejected the notion of property...for both the group and the individual,” but then states his new theory of property: “property is the greatest revolutionary force which exists, with an unequaled capacity for setting itself against authority...” and the “principal function of private property within the political system will be to act as a counterweight to the power of the State, and by so doing to insure the liberty of the individual.” However, he continued to oppose concentrations of wealth and property, arguing for small-scale property ownership associated with peasants and artisans. He still opposed private property in land: “What I cannot accept, regarding land, is that the work put in gives a right to ownership of what has been worked on.” In addition, he still believed that that “property” should be more equally distributed and limited in size to that actually used by individuals, families and workers associations. (Theory of Property in Selected Writings of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon p. 136, p. 129, p. 133, p. 135, p. 129) He supported the right of inheritance, and defended “as one of the foundations of the family and society.” (Steward Edwards, Introduction to Selected Writings of P.J. Proudhon) However, he refused to extend this beyond personal possessions arguing that “[u]nder the law of association, transmission of wealth does not apply to the instruments of labour.” (in Daniel Guerin (ed.), No Gods, No Masters, vol. 1, p. 62).

As a consequence of his opposition to profit, wage labour, worker exploitation, ownership of land and capital, as well as to state property, Proudhon rejected both capitalism and communism. He adopted the term mutualism for his brand of anarchism, which involved control of the means of production by the workers. In his vision, self-employed artisans, peasants, and cooperatives would trade their products on the market. For Proudhon, factories and other large workplaces would be run by ‘labor associations’ operating on directly democratic principles. The state would be abolished; instead, society would be organized by a federation of “free communes” (a commune is a local municipality in French). In 1863 Proudhon said: “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.”

Proudhon opposed the charging of interest and rent, but did not seek to abolish them by law: “I protest that when I criticized... the complex of institutions of which property is the foundation stone, I never meant to... forbid or suppress, by sovereign decree, ground rent and interest on capital. I believe that all these forms of human activity should remain free and optional for all.” (Solution of the Social Problem, 1848-49) He considered that once workers had organised credit and labour and replaced property by possession, such forms of exploitation would disappear along with the state.

Proundhon was a revolutionary, but his revolution did not mean violent upheaval or civil war, but rather the transformation of society. This transformation was essentially moral in nature and demanded the highest ethics from those who sought change. It was monetary reform, combined with organising a credit bank and workers associations, that Proudhon proposed to use as a lever to bring about the organization of society along new lines. He did not suggest how the monetary institutions would cope with the problem of inflation and with the need for the efficient allocation of scarce resources.

He made few public criticisms of Marx or Marxism, because in his lifetime Marx was a relatively minor thinker; it was only after Proudhon’s death that Marxism became a large movement. He did, however, criticize authoritarian socialists of his time period. This included the state socialist Louis Blanc, of which Proudhon said, “Let me say to M. Blanc: you desire neither Catholicism nor monarchy nor nobility, but you must have a God, a religion, a dictatorship, a censorship, a hierarchy, distinctions, and ranks. For my part, I deny your God, your authority, your sovereignty, your judicial State, and all your representative mystifications.” It was Proudhon’s book What is Property? that convinced the young Karl Marx that private property should be abolished.

In one of his first works, The Holy Family, Marx said, “Not only does Proudhon write in the interest of the proletarians, he is himself a proletarian, an ouvrier. His work is a scientific manifesto of the French proletariat.” Marx, however, disagreed with Proudhon’s anarchism and later published vicious criticisms of Proudhon. Marx wrote The Poverty of Philosophy as a refutation of Proudhon’s The Philosophy of Poverty. In his socialism, Proudhon was followed by Mikhail Bakunin. After Bakunin’s death, his libertarian socialism diverged into anarchist communism and collectivist anarchism, with notable proponents such as Peter Kropotkin and Joseph Déjacque.

Notes

1. quoted by Max Nettlau, A Short History of Anarchism, pp. 43-44

2. General Idea of the Revolution in the Nineteenth Century (1851), Sixth Study, § 3 ¶ 5.

3. Copleston, Frederick. Social Philosophy in France, A History of Philosophy, Volume IX, Image/Doubleday, 1994, p. 67

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