Apparently I missed a post on the C4SIF site last March, claiming that Proudhon was an advocate of intellectual property. Now, as I am a notorious softy on that question (or self-serving reactionary, depending on who you ask), I’m less inclined to “pistols at dawn” than some might be, but it doesn’t sound much like the Proudhon I know. You can check the comments for some discussion with Stephan Kinsella about the question, which is rendered more difficult because the text at issue is from the half-translated and notoriously difficult System of Economic Contradictions.
Anarchism
Mutualism is Approximate (from LeftLiberty 2)
Mutualism: The Anarchism of Approximations[continued from Part II]__________ Mutualism is approximate. Mutualism values justice, in the form of reciprocity. Mutualism is dialectical. (Or “trialectical.” Or serial.) Mutualism is individualism and socialism—or it is neither. Mutualism recognizes positive power. Mutualism is progressive and conservative. Mutualism is market anarchism. __________ Philosophical Observations (continued) Mutualism is approximate. It rejects absolutism, fundamentalism, and the promotion of supposedly foolproof blueprints for society. What it seeks to approximate, however, is the fullest sort of human freedom. In The Theory of Property, Proudhon claimed that “humanity proceeds by approximation,” and proceeded to list seven “approximations” that he […]
Proudhon Library
On the Absolute (1851)
P.-J. Proudhon, Carnets, Vol. 4 (Carnet no. 9, 112-115): 287-290 [112] July 26 [1851]. — On the Absolute. — All the religions, all the old metaphysics, are based on the notion of the absolute, on the concepts of Substance-Cause, indivisibly united. Now, that conception is nothing other than a datum or hypothesis of the understanding, according to the first experience. It is soon contradicted by a more attentive observation of phenomena and their laws. Enlightened by the sequence and series of natural and human facts, the mind soon abandons this inexact, chimerical point of view, full of obscurities and contradictions, […]
New Proudhon Library
P.-J. Proudhon, “What, Finally, is the Republic?”
Written sometime around 1858, since Proudhon cites the recent publication of 1848 : Historical revelations: inscribed to Lord Normanby, which appeared in that year, “Qu’est-ce que enfin que la République?” seems to have remained an unpublished manuscript until it was included in the posthumous collection Napoléon III, which is a bit of a hodgepodge, with some changes in formatting and some apparent errors in transcription. For this working page, I have tried to restore the majority of the text to the form present in the manuscript, but, for my own purposes, I have included both the uninterrupted program of La […]