Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

Proudhon Library

On the necessity of following the revolution

January 8, 2016 Shawn P. Wilbur
[From Proudhon’s Carnets] Necessity of renouncing every utopia, every system, and of following the revolution. If not, nothing. There are Communists who still say every day: I am a communist first, a revolutionary after. — I have not, after February, proposed the abolition of property, although I have posited and confirmed on several occasions that proposition: Property is theft. Neither have I proposed to the equality of wages, of consumption, and of all goods: although I have constantly repeated that absolute equality is the law of society, because it is its tendency. That is because we do not make revolution […]
Proudhon Library

REVOLUTIONARY PRACTICE.—Propositions (1851)

January 8, 2016 Shawn P. Wilbur
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 […]
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Notes on An-archy (Carnet No. 9)

December 21, 2015 Shawn P. Wilbur
[from Carnet No. 9] [19] Revolutionary practice. — The great principles of society are principles of DIRECTION, rather than of application. So obviously we must act in politics as if we were pursuing the complete destruction of all government, not as if, presently, every governmental force must cease. Similarly [in the case of], property is theft… Similarly [in the case of], God is the Devil… Similarly [in the case of], Association, the salariat, etc., etc. No authority either of government over man; it is the law of direction! — Thus, simplification, repeal of the laws, abrogation of authority, greater and […]
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Association.—PENALTY, death penalty (Carnet No. 4, 1847)

December 12, 2015 Shawn P. Wilbur
P.-J. Proudhon, Carnets, Vol. 2, Carnet No. 4, P. 25-26. Association.—Penalty, death penalty. Its legitimacy. Identity of justice and vengeance (talion, expiation, penitence, excommunication, etc.); Hatred, natural passion, legitimate and holy! Zelus domus tuæ comedit me! said Elijah. It is the hatred of the miscreant. To hate is to desire the death of someone, their retrenchment, they’re a long month. To hate is to wish the death of someone, their removal in some way. Man naturally, legally and honestly hates everything that harms him or does him ill: injustice, rudeness, ingratitude, discord, guile, perfidy, coarseness, dirtiness, cruelty, despotism, folly, mockery […]
Contr'un

Proudhon on Land Value Taxation

December 2, 2015 Shawn P. Wilbur
[This was written for the C4SS mutual exchange on occupancy-and-use land tenure and refers to the recently posted “General Summary” from The Theory of Taxation.] NOTE ON PROUDHON AND LAND VALUE TAXATION Those who have read all the contributions to this conversation so far might well marvel at how many different Proudhons had been invoked in its course. I think all of us are still in the blind man and the elephant stage with Proudhon, to some extent at least. His writings pose remarkable difficulties, beginning with the difficulty of even knowing what genre of writing we are dealing with […]
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Proudhon on “the American question”

November 10, 2015 Shawn P. Wilbur
[from a letter to Gustave Chaudey, September 1, 1862.] On the American question, I can only tell you that my opinion changes every day; I have no faith in the philanthropy of the North; I do not accept that the federal Constitution prevents the separation; on both these connections, the English public is entirely turned around. Then there is the fact that the armies of the North experience failure upon failure; England, Belgium and France, devoured by pauperism, are clamoring for cotton; and if the imperial government, joining with a certain felicity the two questions of Mexico and the Confederates, […]
Proudhon Library

Unanimity.—Universal Consent (c. 1852)

October 30, 2015 Shawn P. Wilbur
[“Economie,” manuscripts at Gallica] Unanimity.—Universal Consent P.-J. Proudhon There are things, in the moral order, about which the human race is unanimous; there are even many of them. So isn’t it possible that all the questions of politics, economics and morals could be simplified or clarified in such a way that the response to them would be unanimous? In this way, the direct government of the people would be possible. It is according to that idea, confirmed by the testimony of the sciences, that [Pierre-Napoléon] Domenjarie [1852] has written his pamphlet, La loi morale, loi d’unanimité, which we have read […]
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P.-J. Proudhon, Theory of Taxation (1861)

October 29, 2015 Shawn P. Wilbur
[two_third padding=”0 10px 0 10px”] THEORY OF TAXATION […] Relation of the State and Liberty, according to modern right. Modern right, by introducing itself in the place of the ancient right, has done one new thing: it has put in the presence of one another, on the same line, two powers which until now had been in a relation of subordination. These two powers are the State and the Individual, in other words Government and Liberty. The Revolution, indeed, has not suppressed that occult, mystical presence, that one called the sovereign, and that we name more willingly the State; it […]
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“Questions Eliminated…” and “Revolutionary Practice”

September 29, 2015 Shawn P. Wilbur
[I’ve been working through the texts in Ms. 2867, part of Economie, looking for material to include in the forthcoming edition of The Philosophy of Progress, and I’ve been finding all sorts of interesting things. The following section comes immediately after the “New Propositions Demonstrated in the Practice Of Revolutions,” so we should perhaps understand by “this organization” the program laid out at the end of that section: “To set aside the notion of substance and Cause, and move onto the terrain of Phenomena and Law, or of the Group.” While the translation here has a fair number of gaps […]
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New Propositions Demonstrated in the Practice Of Revolutions

September 28, 2015 Shawn P. Wilbur
NEW PROPOSITIONS DEMONSTRATED IN THE PRACTICE OF REVOLUTIONS 1 — The interests established by society are mobile, subject to a constant and fundamentally unstable shifting. 2 — Fixity, permanence or perpetuity in the relations of interests is a chimera. 3 — That mobility of interests is the primary source of revolutions. 4 — An interest, however unjust it may be, can only be abolished on the condition of being replaced by another, which itself could appear every bit as unjust later. 5 — The human mind has a horror of the void; it does not accept pure negation, even if […]