Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

Bakunin Library

Bakunin to Proudhon, November 11, 1864

June 22, 2015 Shawn P. Wilbur
November 11, Paris My dear Proudhon – I have just arrived in Paris and I will remain here only a very few days. You friend, and now mine also, Felix Delhasse has given me your address at Passy. I would like to come there to see you. But knowing that you are ill, I did not want to risk the journey before being sure that you would be in a state to receive me. So please inform me or have me informed in a few words, if I should come or not. Address your response to me in a double […]
Proudhon Library

From “The System of Economic Contradictions”

March 29, 2015 Shawn P. Wilbur
[I discovered that one section of the chapter on property did not appear among the translations I have posted online. After some searching, however, it did appear among my working files.] II The subject and object of science are found; the truth of thought and being are authentically established: it remains for us to find the method. Philosophy, in it more or less deep researches on the object and legitimacy of thought, has not been slow to perceive that it followed, without knowing it, certain forms of dialectic which recurred unceasingly, and which, studied more closely, were soon recognized as […]
Proudhon Library

The Present Utility and Future Possibility of the State (Sixth article)

December 22, 2014 Shawn P. Wilbur
(La Voix du Peuple, N 102. — 11 janvier 1850.)   Regarding Louis Blanc.—The Present Utility and Future Possibility of the State.    (Sixth article.)   The following objection has been addressed to me: Your theory is only a sophism. This so-called anarchic organization of credit and banks is only a delegation by the people renewed by the State, a little State alongside the State. So where, if you please, is the difference between the two systems? Why believe that the present state, which is already organized, should not add circulation and credit to its present responsibilities, and administer the […]
Proudhon Library

Principles of the Philosophy of Progress (IV and V)

November 17, 2014 Shawn P. Wilbur
IV.—OF COMPLEX COLLECTIVE ACTION. Everyone has read, in A. Smith, J.-B. Say, and others, the marvelous results of that force; but what few people have noticed, no doubt, is the technical inexactitude with which these two masters of the science explain its nature. They have not seen that what they call division of labor or separation of industries is only an application, in reverse, of the collective force, so that the same scientific demonstration suits them both. And because they have not seen it, not only have they been led to omit from their treatises the initial force, which is […]
Contr'un

Reading “The Third Social Form” — I

August 12, 2014 Shawn P. Wilbur
[one_third padding=”0 10px 0 0px”][/one_third][two_third_last padding=”0 0px 0 10px”] We have a lot of issues on our plate, but for now let’s stick to the reading of the passage from What is Property? The first thing that strikes me, looking again at this section, is just how rich this early text is with indications and anticipations of Proudhon’s later work. Then I’m struck by how opaque some of those bits can be, given the state of his development in 1840. I would have to work back through the rest of the text to see just how much of this set […]
Contr'un

Another look at Proudhon (and an invitation to experiment)

August 6, 2014 Shawn P. Wilbur
[one_third padding=”0 10px 0 0px”][/one_third][two_third_last padding=”0 0px 0 10px”] It is a well-known fact of anarchist history (a term that we’ll be giving some special attention in the coming months) that even the founding figures of the anarchist tradition did not often identify themselves as anarchists until sometime fairly late in the 19th century. Over the weekend, I had a chance to spend some time examining just when, and under what circumstances, that self-identification became more common. There seems to have been a fairly serious shift in the 1870s and 1880s, with a fairly rapid convergence of anti-authoritarians of various […]
Proudhon Library

Principles of the Philosophy of Progress (II and III)

July 21, 2014 Shawn P. Wilbur
II.—THE FORCE IN THE SOCIAL BEING. 1.—There exists between men a tendency or attraction that pushes them to group and act, for their own great interest and the most complete development of their individuality, collectively and as a mass. What is the principle of that tendency? The same as that of the attraction between all beings: It is a property and a condition of their existence (p. 2); it is impossible to know more of it, and consequently senseless to ask more. Let us limit ourselves to reasoning from the point of view of the aim. The tendency in the […]
Proudhon Library

DILEMMA: Red or White (from “Economy”)

July 7, 2014 Shawn P. Wilbur
Ms. 2863 (Economy) Paris, March 16 DILEMMA: Red or White A captain of the line assures me—the papers friendly to the government will say tomorrow if the information is exact—that on the occasion of the next elections, the order has been given to prevent, by all possible means, the gentlemen of the military from attending the electoral gatherings. Any disobedience in this regard will be punished by eight days in jail. The government is right. It is consistent with itself. It follows, imperturbably, like Mr. Cabet, its straight line. For sixty years, the French people, leading the rest of the […]
Contr'un

Un Etat, c’est moi

July 6, 2014 Shawn P. Wilbur
[two_third padding=”0 10px 0 10px”] The manuscript of Proudhon’s Pologne keeps slowly giving up its secrets, and some of them are perfectly designed to blow 21st century anarchist minds. Reexamining The Theory of Property as Chapter VII of Pologne has meant that one of the things I have become most interested in is the reason why a “guarantism” involving individual property seems to be called for by the social and political evolution described in the first six chapters. That has meant reuniting the two manuscripts on the Besançon site, as much as is possible, and looking particularly closely for whatever […]
Proudhon Library

A passage missing from “The Theory of Property”

July 5, 2014 Shawn P. Wilbur
PROJECT: Principles of Nationality and Property I think that most of the concerns that readers have had regarding The Theory of Property have involved the possibility that something alien to Proudhon’s thought might have been introduced by the editors. Having checked most of the published work against the manuscript, I feel fairly confident that that wasn’t the case. It has been a bit more complicated to determine if any important parts of Proudhon’s argument were excluded from the published text. At some point, I will have a copy of the manuscript with all of the material that was incorporated marked […]