Western Philosophy
19th-century philosophy |
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Name
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Birth
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January 15, 1809
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Death
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January 19, 1865
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School/tradition
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Socialism, Anarchism, Mutualism
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Main interests
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Egalitarianism, property, authority
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Notable ideas
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Property is theft, Anarchy is order
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Influenced
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Bakunin, Déjacque, Depreux, Marx, Kropotkin,
Sorel, Tucker, Tolstoy, Wilson
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Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (pronounced [ˈpruːd ɒn] in British English, [pʁu dɔ̃]
in French) (January 15, 1809 – January 19, 1865) was a French mutualist political philosopher of the
socialist tradition. He was the first individual to call himself an "anarchist" and is considered among the first anarchist thinkers. He was a
workingman, a printer, who taught himself to read Latin so as to print books in that language well. Proudhon is most famous for
his assertion that "Property is theft!", in What is Property? Or, an Inquiry into the Principle of Right and Government (original title:
Qu'est-ce que la propriété? Recherche sur le principe du droit et du gouvernement), his first major work, published in
1840.
The publication of "What is Property?" attracted the attention of the French authorities, and also of Karl Marx who started up a correspondence with Proudhon. The two men influenced each other; they met in
Paris when Marx was exiled there. Their friendship ended completely when Marx wrote
a response to Proudhon's The System of Economic Contradictions, or The Philosophy of
Poverty entitled The Poverty of Philosophy. Their dispute
was one of the origins to the split between the anarchists and the Marxists in the
International Working Men's Association. Some historians such as
Edmund Wilson have contended that Marx's attack on Proudhon arose from the latter's
defense of Karl Grun, whom Marx bitterly disliked, but who had been preparing translations of Proudhon's work. There was also a
disagreement between the followers of Mikhail Bakunin and Proudhon. Proudhon believed
that collective ownership was undesirable (favoring individual worker ownership over collective union worker ownership) and that
social revolution could be achieved in a peaceful manner.
In his book The Confessions of a Revolutionary, Proudhon wrote among other things, the well known phrase, anarchy is
order (which inspired the famous Circle-A anarchism symbol). He attempted to
create a national bank that gave out interest-free loans, similar in some respects to
credit unions.
Biography
Early years
Proudhon was born in Besançon; his father was a brewer's cooper. As a boy, he herded cows and followed other simple pursuits of a like nature. But he was not
entirely self-educated; at sixteen Proudhon entered his town's college, though his family was so poor that he could not procure
the necessary books. He had to borrow them from his fellow students in order to copy the lessons. At nineteen he became a working
compositor; afterwards he rose to be a corrector for the press, proofreading
ecclesiastical works, and thereby acquiring a very competent knowledge of theology. In this
way also he came to learn Hebrew, and to compare it with Greek, Latin and French; and it was the first proof of his intellectual audacity
that on the strength of this he wrote an Essai de grammaire génerale. As Proudhon knew nothing whatever of the true
principles of philology, his treatise was of no value. In 1838
he obtained the pension Suard, a bursary of 1500 francs a year
for three years, for the encouragement of young men of promise, which was in the gift of the Academy of
Besançon.
Interest in politics
In 1839 he wrote a treatise L'Utilité de la célébration du dimanche, which contained the seeds of his revolutionary
ideas. About this time he went to Paris, where he lived a poor, ascetic and studious life - making acquaintance, however, with
the socialistic ideas which were then fomenting in the capital. In 1840 he published his first work Qu'est-ce que la
propriété. His famous answer to this question, La propriété, c'est le vol (property is theft), naturally did not
please the academy of Besançon, and there was some talk of withdrawing his pension; but he held it for the regular period. For
his third memoir on property, which took the shape of a letter to the Fourierist, M.
Considérant, he was tried at Besançon but was acquitted. In 1846 he published his greatest work, the Système des
contradictions économiques ou Philosophie de la misère. For some time Proudhon carried on a small printing establishment at
Besançon, but without success; afterwards he became connected as a kind of manager with a commercial firm in Lyon. In 1847 he
left this employment, and finally settled in Paris, where he was now becoming celebrated as a leader of innovation. In this year
he also became a Freemason[1]
Proudhon and the 1848 Revolution
Proudhon was surprised by the 1848 Revolution. He participated in the
February uprising and the composition of what he termed "the first republican proclamation" of the new republic. But he had
misgivings about the new provisional government, headed by Dupont de
l'Eure (1767-1855), who, since the French Revolution in 1789, had been a
longstanding politician, although often in the opposition. Beside Dupont de l'Eure, the provisional government was dominated by
liberals such as Lamartine (Foreign Affairs),
Ledru-Rollin (Interior), Crémieux (Justice), Burdeau (War), etc., because it was
pursuing political reform at the expense of the socio-economic reform, which Proudhon considered basic. As during the 1830
July Revolution, the Republican-Socialist Party had set up a counter-government in the
Hotel de Ville, including Louis Blanc,
Armand Marrast, Ferdinand Flocon, and the workman Albert.
Proudhon published his own perspective for reform, Solution du problème social (Solution of the Social Problem),
in which he laid out a program of mutual financial cooperation among workers. He believed this would transfer control of economic
relations from capitalists and financiers to workers. The central part of his plan was the establishment of a bank to provide
credit at a very low rate of interest and the issuing "exchange notes" that would circulate instead of money based on gold.
During the Second French Republic (1848-1852) Proudhon made his biggest impact
on the public through his journalism. He was involved with four different newspapers: Le Représentant du Peuple (February
1848 - August 1848); Le Peuple (September 1848 - June 1849); La Voix du Peuple (September 1849 - May 1850); Le
Peuple de 1850 (June 1850 - October 1850). His polemical writing style, combined with his perception of himself as a
political outsider, produced a cynical, combative journalism that appealed to many French workers, although it alienated others.
He repeatedly criticised the policies of the government, and promoted reformation of credit and exchange. To this end, he
attempted to establish a popular bank (Banque du peuple) early in 1849, but despite over 13,000 people signing up (mostly
workers), receipts were limited falling short of 18,000FF and the whole enterprise was essentially stillborn.
Proudhon stood for the constituent assembly in April 1848, but failed to get elected, although his name appeared on the
ballots in Paris, Lyon, Besançon, and Lille. However he was later
successful, in the complementary elections held on June 4, and served as a deputy during the debates over the National Workshops, created by the February 25, 1848 decree passed by Republican Louis Blanc. The
Workshops were to give work to the unemployed. Proudhon was never enthusiastic about such workshops, perceiving them to be
essentially charitable institutions that did not resolve the problems of the economic system. Still, he was against their
elimination unless an alternative could be found for the workers who relied on the workshops for subsistence.
He was shocked by the violence of the June Days Uprising in 1848, provoked by the
closing of the National Workshops . Visiting the barricades personally he later reflected that his presence at the
Bastille at this time was "one of the most honorable acts of my life." But in general during
the tumultuous events of 1848, Proudhon opposed insurrection preaching peaceful conciliation,
a stance that was in accord with his lifelong stance against violence. He disapproved of the revolts and demonstrations of
February, May, and June, 1848, though sympathetic to the social and psychological injustices that the insurrectionaries had been
forced to endure.
Proudhon died on January 19, 1865, and he is buried in Paris, at the cemetery of Montparnasse (2nd division, near the Lenoir
alley, in the tomb of the Proudhon family).
Political philosophy
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.[2] |
” |
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 declared in turn 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."[3]
In asserting that property is freedom, he was referring not only to the product of an individual's labor, but to the
peasant or artisan's 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 the means of production[4] [...] The right to product is exclusive [...] the right to means is common"
and applied this to the land ("the land is [...] a common thing"[5]) and workplaces ("all accumulated capital being social property, no one can be its exclusive
proprietor"[6]). 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. Proudhon was one of the main influence for the theorization, at the end of the 19th century and in the 20th
century, of workers' self-management (autogestion).
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."[7]
He continued to oppose both capitalist and state property. In Theory of Property he maintains: "Now in 1840, I
categorically 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 claimed forms of exploitation would disappear along with the state.
Proudhon 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.
Legacy
Although overshadowed in his time by Karl Marx, who dismissed him as a bourgeois socialist for his pro-market views,[8] Proudhon had an immediate and lasting influence on the anarchist movement, and, more recently, in the
aftermaths of May 1968 and after the end of the Cold War. He
was first used as a reference, surprisingly, in the Cercle Proudhon, a right-wing
association formed in 1911 by George Valois and Edouard
Berth. Both had been brought together by the syndicalist Georges Sorel. But they would tend toward a synthesis of socialism and nationalism, mixing Proudhon's mutualism with Charles Maurras'
integralist nationalism. George Valois would found in 1925 the Faisceau, the first fascist league which took its name from Mussolini's fasci.
Historian of fascism, in particular of French fascists,
Zeev Sternhell, has noted this use of Proudhon by the far-right. In The Birth Of
Fascist Ideology, he state that:
"the Action Française...from its inception regarded the author of La
philosophie de la misère as one of its masters. He was given a place of honour in the weekly section of the journal of the
movement entitled, precisely, 'Our Masters.' Proudhon owed this place in L'Action française to what the Maurrassians saw as his
antirepublicanism, his anti-Semitism, his loathing of Rousseau, his disdain for
the French Revolution, democracy, and parliamentarianism: and his championship of the nation, the family, tradition, and the
monarchy."
But Proudhon's legacy has not been limited to the instrumentalization of his thought by the revolutionary right (la droite révolutionnaire). He also influenced the non-conformists of the 1930s [9], as well as classical anarchism. In the 1960s, he became the main influence of autogestion (workers' self-management) in France, inspiring the CFDT trade-union, created in 1964, and the PSU (Unified Socialist Party), founded in 1960 and led until 1967 by Édouard Depreux. Autogestion in particular influenced the LIP
self-management experience in Besançon.
Finally, Proudhon's thought has seen some revival since the end of the Cold War and the fall
of the "real socialism" in the Eastern Bloc. It can
be loosely related to modern attempts at direct democracy. The Groupe Proudhon,
related to the Fédération Anarchiste (Anarchist Federation), published a review from 1981
to 1983 (period which exactly corresponds with the 1981 election of
Socialist candidate François
Mitterrand and the economic liberal turn of 1983 taken by the Socialist
government), and then again since 1994. It is staunchly anti-fascist, related to the
SCALP sections (Section Carrément Anti Le Pen).
[10].
Criticisms and anti-semitism
Stewart Edwards, the editor of the Selected Writings Of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, remarks: "Proudhon's diaries (Garnets, ed. P.
Haubtmann, Marcel Rivière, Paris 1960 to date) reveal that he had almost paranoid feelings of hatred against the Jews, common in
Europe at the time. In 1847 he considered publishing...an article against the Jewish race, which he said he 'hated.' The proposed
article would have 'Called for the expulsion of the Jews from France... The Jew is the enemy of the human race. This race must be
sent back to Asia, or exterminated. H. Heine, A. Weil, and others are simply secret spies. Rothschild, Crémieux, Marx, Fould,
evil choleric, envious, bitter men etc., etc., who hate us' (Garnets, vol. 2, p. 337: No VI, 178)".
J. Salwyn Schapiro wrote in 1945:
Proudhon had the tendency, inevitable in the Anti-semite, to see in the Jews the prime source of the nation's misfortunes, and
to associate them with persons and groups that he hated...Anti-semitism, always and everywhere, the acid test of racialism, with
its division of mankind into creative and sterile races, led Proudhon to regard the Negro as the lowest in the racial hierarchy.
During the American Civil War he favored the South, which, he insisted, was not
entirely wrong in maintaining slavery. The Negroes, according to Proudhon, were an inferior race, an example of the existence of
inequality among the races of mankind... His book La Guerre et la paix, which appeared in 1861, was a hymn to war, intoned
in a more passionate key than anything produced by the fascists of our time...Almost every page of La Guerre et la paix
contains a glorification of war as an ideal and as an institution...His hysterical praise of war, like his ardent championship of
the dictatorship of Louis Napoleon, like his unwavering support of the middle class, was an integral part of his social
philosophy... In the powerful polemist of the mid-nineteenth century it is now possible to discern a harbinger of the great world
evil of fascism. An irritating enigma to his own generation, his teachings misunderstood as anarchy by his disciples, Proudhon's
place in intellectual history is destined to have a new and greater importance. It will come with the re-evaluation of the
nineteenth century, as the prelude to the world revolution that is now called the second World War.[11]
Quotes
Proudhon's essay on What Is Government? is quite well known:
To be GOVERNED is to be watched, inspected, spied upon, directed, law-driven, numbered, regulated, enrolled, indoctrinated,
preached at, controlled, checked, estimated, valued, censured, commanded, by creatures who have neither the right nor the wisdom
nor the virtue to do so. To be GOVERNED is to be at every operation, at every transaction noted, registered, counted, taxed,
stamped, measured, numbered, assessed, licensed, authorized, admonished, prevented, forbidden, reformed, corrected, punished. It
is, under pretext of public utility, and in the name of the general interest, to be place[d] under contribution, drilled,
fleeced, exploited, monopolized, extorted from, squeezed, hoaxed, robbed; then, at the slightest resistance, the first word of
complaint, to be repressed, fined, vilified, harassed, hunted down, abused, clubbed, disarmed, bound, choked, imprisoned, judged,
condemned, shot, deported, sacrificed, sold, betrayed; and to crown all, mocked, ridiculed, derided, outraged, dishonored. That
is government; that is its justice; that is its morality. (P.-J. Proudhon, General Idea of the Revolution in the Nineteenth
Century, translated by John Beverly Robinson (London: Freedom Press, 1923), pp. 293-294.)
Another famous quote was his "dialogue with a Philistine" in What is Property?:
"Why, how can you ask such a question? You are a republican."
"A republican! Yes; but that word specifies nothing. Res publica; 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."
"What! "you would have a monarchy?"
"No."
" A Constitutionalist?"
"God forbid."
"Then you are an aristocrat?"
"Not at all!"
"You want a mixed form of government?"
"Even less."
"Then what are you?"
"I am an anarchist."
"Oh! I understand you; you speak satirically. This is a hit at the government."
"By no means. I have just given you my serious and well-considered profession of faith. Although a firm friend of order, I am (in
the full force of the term) an anarchist. Listen to me."
Bibliography
- Qu'est ce que la propriété? (What is Property?, 1840)
- Warning to Proprietors (1842)
- Système des contradictions économiques ou Philosophie de la misère (The System of Economic Contradictions or the
Philosophy of Misery, 1846)
- Idée générale de la révolution au XIXe siècle (General Idea of the
Revolution in the Nineteenth Century, 1851)
- Le manuel du spéculateur à la bourse (The Manual of the Stock Exchange Speculator, 1853)
- De la justice dans la révolution et dans l'Eglise (Of Justice in the Revolution and the Church, 1858)
- La Guerre et la Paix (War and Peace, 1861)
- Du principe Fédératif (Principle of Federation, 1863)
- De la capacité politique des classes ouvrières (Of the Political Capacity of the Working Class, 1865)
- Théorie de la propriété (Theory of Property, 1866)
- Théorie du mouvement constitutionnel (Theory of the Constitutionalist Movement, 1870)
- Du principe de l'art (The Principle of Art, 1875)
- Correspondences (Correspondences, 1875)
See also
Notes
- ^ Henri du Bac. The Un-Marxian Socialist: A Study of Proudhon . New
York: Sheed and Ward, 1848. p. 9.
- ^ P.-J. Proudhon, Les confessions d'un révolutionnaire, (Paris:
Garnier, 1851), p. 271., quoted by Max Nettlau, A Short History of Anarchism, pp. 43-44
- ^ General Idea of the Revolution in the Nineteenth Century (1851), Sixth Study, § 3 ¶ 5.
- ^ P.-J Proudhon, What Is Property? (Dover, 1970), p. 109.
- ^ P.-J Proudhon, What Is Property? (Dover, 1970), p. 92.
- ^ P.-J Proudhon, What Is Property? (Dover, 1970), p. 120.
- ^ Copleston, Frederick. Social Philosophy in France, A History of
Philosophy, Volume IX, Image/Doubleday, 1994, p. 67
- ^ Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party,
part 3, section 2.
- ^ Jean-Louis Loubet del Bayle, A 2001 Interview
(p.3) in the Revue Jibrile (French)
- ^ Drapeau Noir (Black Flag), review of the Groupe Proudhon (French)
- ^ Schapiro, J. Salwyn (1945). "Pierre Joseph Proudhon, Harbinger of Fascism". American Historical Review 50 (4): 714-737.
Works online
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