Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

Contr'un

Authority, Liberty and the Federative Principle

February 19, 2020 Shawn P. Wilbur
Related links: Initial Thoughts Proudhon’s Du principe fédératif et de la nécessité de reconstituer le parti de la révolution occupies an interesting place among his works. It has been, prior to my translation of Théorie de la propriété, the only extended portion of Proudhon’s final major project, the study of Poland, available in English. And my sense is that it has been considered one of the “good” late works, like De la capacité politique des classes ouvrières, rather than one of the potentially “bad” works, like the work on property—while also being, of course, the work most often cited in […]
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Proudhon’s Barbaric Yawp (1840)

February 5, 2020 Shawn P. Wilbur
Every story has to start somewhere. And when the story is that of anarchist history, it seems hard to find a more likely place to begin than Proudhon’s 1840 declaration—je suis anarchiste—which we generally treat as the first instance of at least one kind of anarchist position-taking.

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French texts

Proudhon’s “What is Property” reviewed in “La Phalange” (1840)

September 16, 2019 Shawn P. Wilbur
This is the review referrred to by Proudhon in the Second Memoir. Nous extrayons de l’Impartial de Besançon un fort bon article contenant une réfutation d’un livre de M. Proudhon, intitulé : Qu’est-ce que la Propriété ? Cet article est l’ouvrage d’un de nos amis, M. Hippolyte Renaud, capitaine d’artillerie. Il est à remarquer qu’aucun des journaux plus ou moins conservateurs, qui nous accusent quelquefois de vouloir détruire la Propriété, sans d’ailleurs donner aucune preuve à l’appui de leurs accusations, n’a essayé de réduire à leur juste valeur les fausses théories dirigées récemment contre la Propriété par les Egalitaires, Communistes et […]
Proudhon Library

Notes on Proudhon and the family

May 2, 2019 Shawn P. Wilbur
To say anything that is not simply superficial about Proudhon’s infamous anti-feminism requires us to look closely at the content and development of arguments scattered through his works. As part of that process, I’m gathering material from exchanges scattered across various social media platforms that has addressed the question in one way or another. Together with the translations from Sylvain Maréchal, whose theory of patriarchal government seems destined to be some kind of foil for Proudhon’s thought, I hope this notes will form the basis of a more systematic study.

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Proudhon Library

“The Complete Works of P.-J. Proudhon” (advertisement)

May 1, 2019 Shawn P. Wilbur
[one_third padding=”0 10px 0 0px”]   [/one_third][two_third_last padding=”0 0px 0 10px”] Under the title Complete Works, we collect all the publications (books, pamphlets, and journal articles) published during Proudhon’s lifetime, which it would be impossible to find stocked in bookstores today. These works, along with his “posthumous works,” which will be published in the same format and by the same house, will comprise –- if we may allow ourselves to say so –- a veritable Encyclopedia of the issues raised by the Social Revolution. Philosophy, ethics, politics, economics, religious exegesis, literary and artistic criticism: nothing has escaped the great thinker, […]
Contr'un

Reading “What is Property? — The Third Social Form

May 1, 2019 Shawn P. Wilbur
[one_third padding=”0 10px 0 0px”] Back in 2014, in the midst of some very general questioning of how we tell anarchist history, I retranslated some of the final sections of Proudhon’s What is Property? and started a close reading of the material. It was two years before I got a chance to fully complete the translation and it’s only really now, in the context of a group reading of the work on Reddit, that I’m getting a chance to return to the close reading. The largest distraction, of course, has been that more general questioning, which has borne fruit quite […]
Proudhon Library

Notes on “What is Property?” (2019)

April 20, 2019 Shawn P. Wilbur
Commentary on What is Property? These notes are from a group reading of the book on Reddit. While fragmentary, they do raise a number of questions that I haven’t had a chance to raise elsewhere. If nothing else, I’m archiving them to use in a future revision of Tucker’s translation. CHAPTER ONE: Think of this work specifically as a product of the French June Monarchy and as a prize essay, written as a kind of “open letter” to a panel of judges at the academy where he had been studying. It actually became a regular feature of many of Proudhon’s […]
Proudhon Library

P.-J. Proudhon, “Le droit au travail et le droit de propriété” (1848)

April 16, 2019 Shawn P. Wilbur
[one_third padding=”0 10px 0 0px”][/one_third][two_third_last padding=”0 0px 0 10px”] LE DROIT AU TRAVAIL ET LE DR0IT DE PROPRIÉTÉ PAR P. J. PROUDHON REPRÉSENTANT DU PEUPLE PARIS 1848 —- PROLOGUE Il est deux points sur lesquels j’ai besoin d’édifier mes lecteurs, et qui motivent cette publication. 1° Je n’ai pas pris la parole sur le droit au travail, lors de la discussion du préambule de la Constitution, d’abord parce que le droit au travail, tel qu’il m’est donné de le comprendre, étant repoussé par tout le monde, par la gauche révolutionnaire comme par la droite conservatrice, je n’avais rien de mieux […]
Contr'un

“Labor destroys Property” (Notes on “What is Property?”)

February 11, 2019 Shawn P. Wilbur
[one_third padding=”0 10px 0 0px”] This is another bit extracted from a social media exchange elsewhere, dealing with the progression of Proudhon’s argument against both property in materials and property in product in “What is Property?” Even if it is a bit out-of-context, it should help emphasize how important getting through all of Chapter III is to understanding Proudhon’s point. And once you’ve done that, you can start your collection of weird conclusions drawn by people who didn’t get all the way through. [/one_third][two_third_last padding=”0 0px 0 10px”] I don’t think it’s unreasonable, particularly when dealing with a book that […]
Proudhon Library

Frederick R. Burton, “Spencer and Proudhon” (1892)

December 22, 2018 Shawn P. Wilbur
[one_third padding=”0 10px 0 0px”][/one_third][two_third_last padding=”0 0px 0 10px”] Spencer and Proudhon. To the Editor of Liberty: About a year ago I enjoyed the highly esteemed privilege of a conversation with Mr. Herbert Spencer. That the distinguished philosopher did the lion’s share of the talking was natural and satisfactory. It was evident that he had prepared himself in some measure for the meeting, for he discoursed fluently on three or four topics without so much as a pause for questions. I was pleased to discover from this slight personal contact what I had gathered from so much study of his […]