Pierre-Joseph
Proudhon, the son of a brewer, was born in Besancon, France,
in 1809. He attended the local school but was primarily self-educated
at the town's public library.
Proudhon
was apprenticed as a printer and became interested in politics after
he was involved in the printing of The New
Industrial and Cooperative World by Charles
Fourier. Proudhon now turned to writing and in 1843 published
What is Property? In the book
Proudhon attacks the injustices of inequality and coined the phrase,
"property is theft".
In 1842
Proudhon was arrested for his radical political views but was acquitted
in court. The following year he joined the Lyons Mutualists, a secret
society of working men. The group discussed ways of achieving a more
egalitarian society and during this period Proudhon developed the
theory of Mutualism where small groups worked together and credit
was made available through a People's Bank.
Proudhon
published his most important work, System
of Economic Contradictions, was published in 1846. Karl
Marx responded to Proudhon's book by writing The
Poverty of Philosophy (1847). This was the beginning of
the long-term struggle of ideas between the two men. Proudhon was
opposed to Marx's authoritarianism and his main influence was on the
libertarian socialist movement.
After the
1848 Revolution in France, Proudhon was elected to the National Assembly.
This experience resulted in the publication of Confessions
of a Revolutionary (1849) and the General
Idea of the Revolution in the 19th Century
(1851). In these books Proudhon criticized representative democracy
and argued that in reality political authority is exercised by only
a small number of people.
In 1854
Proudhon contracted cholera. He survived
but he never fully recovered his health. He continued to write and
published two more important books, Justice
in the Revolution and in the Church (1858) and the Principle
of Federation (1863).
In the
Principle of Federation (1863)
he argued that nationalism inevitably leads to war. To reduce the
power of nationalism Proudhon called for a Federal Europe. Proudhon
believed that Federalism was "the supreme guarantee of all liberty
and of all law, and must, without soldiers or priests, replace both
feudal and Christian society." Proudhon went on to predict that
"the twentieth century will open the era of federations, or humanity
will begin again a purgatory of a thousand years."
The International
Working Men's Association was established in 1864. In the organization
Proudhon's followers clashed with those of Karl
Marx and Mikhail Bakunin. Proudhon,
unlike the other two men, believed socialism was possible without
the need for a violent revolution.
Proudhon's
views were to have a profound effect on several writers in Russia
including Alexander Herzen, Peter
Lavrov, Peter Kropotkin and Leo
Tolstoy. Pierre-Joseph Proudhon died in 1865.
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