Proudhon Library
P.-J. Proudhon, “Property is Theft” (manuscript)
The theory of indefinites explains how this proposition is an absolute truth, and how nevertheless [property] is an organic and social necessity.
Working Translations
Working Translations
“Analysis of the Doctrine of Babeuf” (1796)
Nature has given to each man an equal right to the enjoyment of all goods. The aim of society is to defend that equality, often attacked by the strong and the mean in the state of nature, and to increase the common enjoyments through the cooperation of all.
New Proudhon Library
Of Justice in the Revolution and in the Church: Popular Philosophy—Program (1860)
At the beginning of a new work, we should explain our title and our intentions.
Ever since humanity entered the period of civilization, for as long as anyone can recall, the people, said Paul Louis Courier, have prayed and paid.
They pray for their princes, for their magistrates, for their exploiters and their parasites;
They pray, like Jesus Christ, for their executioners;
They pray for the very ones who should, by rights, pray for them.
Anarchist Beginnings
Pierre Mualdes, “Etre anarchiste / To Be an Anarchist” (1924)
To be an anarchist is to be individualist, first of all. It is oneself that one is most keen to liberate, but as one’s total emancipation is intimately linked to that of one’s neighbors, one is communist by force of circumstance. No offense to the most affirmative anti-societarists: I also believe that man is an animal that instinct drives to live in society. A kind of human feeling is thus created that goes from the individual to the species, a feeling that the rabble of the rulers strives to channel to its own profit within the limits of a fatherland, but which has manifested even during the last butchery between “enemies” a feeling that knows no borders.
Featured articles
Utopian and Scientific
Working Translations
Joseph Leguépin, “Une sourdine / A Muzzle” (1916)
Joseph Leguépin, “Une sourdine,” Par delà la mêlée 1 no. 8 (25 mars 1916): 3. Working translation by Shawn P. Wilbur
Working Translations
Enzo Martucci, “Beyond All Morality” (1947)
Anarchy is neither moralism nor educationism, but free and unprejudiced satisfaction of all natural needs and feelings, permanent in time, even if they manifest themselves, with diverse degrees of intensity, under varied conditions and at various moments.
Working Translations
E. Armand, “La première impulsion / The First Impulse” (1916)
You reproach me for yielding too often to my first impulse — for treating as an adventure what is in reality only a banal event in my life;
Anarchist Beginnings
Tomás Ibáñez, “Pourquoi j’ai choisi l’anarchie / Why I Have Chosen Anarchy” (1962)
If, among the wide range of ideas that have presented themselves to me, I have finally chosen the libertarian ideal, it is because, like every person on the planet, I am fundamentally egoistic.