Maxime Leroy, Stirner vs. Proudhon (1905)

These are notes from the ongoing Proudhon seminar. Page numbers refer to the Benjamin R. Tucker translation of What Is Property? Chapter II covers “PROPERTY CONSIDERED AS A NATURAL RIGHT.—OCCUPATION AND CIVIL LAW AS EFFICIENT BASES OF PROPERTY. DEFINITIONS.” Proudhon announced in the first chapter that: “The first of these chapters [Ch. 2] will prove that the right of occupation OBSTRUCTS property; the second [Ch. 3] that the right of labor DESTROYS it.” So we know pretty much what to expect. p. 42: Property is defined as “the right to use and abuse one’s own within the limits of the […]

I have often seen the phrase “anarchy is order” attributed to Proudhon—and to Bakunin, and Bellarrigue, and Elisee Reclus, and a French singer-songwriter named Leo Ferre. Often the phrase is actually Bellegarrigue’s (“Anarchy is order; government is civil war”) or the phrase “Anarchy is order without power,” cited as appearing in the Confessions of a Revolutionary. That latter phrase does not seem to appear in that book (and I’ve searched pretty carefully) and it doesn’t really sound all that much like Proudhon. There are a number of places where he talked about the relationship between anarchy and order, and lots […]

Carnets, Vol. 2 (Carnet No. 5, 111-114): 166-167. — All the reformers preach charity: me, I preach hatred. Hatred is nothing other than the zeal for justice, for vengeance. Hatred has contributed as much to the progress of the good as love… Hatred, in the conditions of existence of man, is as necessary, as legitimate, as devotion. — It is the admission of our imperfection, the sentiment of our ugliness, the consciousness of our innate iniquity:… the reaction of our soul against its perverse inclinations and aberrations. Hatred has its excesses, its materialism, its blindness and its outbursts, like love, […]