I’ve posted a working translation of Proudhon’s “Catechism of Marriage,” from the fourth volume of Justice in the Revolution and in the Church. It’s strange stuff, and unappealing in a variety of ways, but I think it is relatively clear what Proudhon is up to—and where he goes wrong.
Contr'un
Proudhon’s “New Theory” (3 of 3)
[Part 1] [Part 2] §2.—Abstention from all regulatory law in that which concerns the possession, production, circulation and consumption of things. Analogies from love and art. Mobilization of the immovable. Character of the true proprietor. If the reader has understood what has just been said, from the political point of view, of property, namely: one the one hand, that it can only be a right if it is function; on the other, that it is in the very abuse of property that it is necessary to seek that function, he will have not trouble grasping what remains to be said […]
Contr'un
Absolutes and Approximations (More Notes on the Development of Proudhon’s Thought)
“Humanity proceeds by approximations.” — Proudhon, Theory of Property — This statement by Proudhon was one of the central elements of what was, in retrospect, the first attempt to understand mutualism as a neo-Proudhonian anarchism in the unfinished series on “The Anarchism of Approximations,” way back in 2007.
Proudhon Library
REVOLUTIONARY PRACTICE.—Propositions (1851)
Carnet 8, 322 REVOLUTIONARY PRACTICE.—Propositions: Every revolution is caused by the displacement of interests; the oscillation of ideas; the exhaustion of an ideal. These three causes do not form a triad: the first two are correlatives of one another; — the 3rd is an addition of the mind: (the first two are objective; the 3rd subjective). The Ideal is the infinite in thought. It demands a real and intelligible basis. It strays from it endlessly. There is a tendency of the mind to give the ideal an ontological value apart from its basis; to affirm as reality what had at […]