An Anarchist FAQ

Writings by Anarcho

articles and essays on anarchism, anarchist history, marxism and current affairs as well as reviews

Category: Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

  • Black Flag: Anarchist Review Spring 2025 issue now out

    The new issue of Black Flag: Anarchist Review is now available:

    https://www.blackflag.org.uk

    Following on from our “Kropotkin special” to mark the 180th anniversary of his birth, this issue is a “Proudhon special” to mark the 160th anniversary of his death – and the 185th anniversary of his proclaiming “I am an anarchist” in What is Property? and so anarchism as a named socio-economic theory. His answer to his book’s title (“Property is theft”) is so memorable it even featured in the film Oppenheimer, where it was attributed to Marx (much to the annoyance of various internet Marxists)

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  • The 1848 Revolutions: An Anarchist Perspective

    This is a write-up of a talk I gave at the Sparrow’s Nest Archive in Nottingham on 23 June 2018. The talk was advertised by the following text:

    The Revolutions of 1848 remain the most widespread revolutionary wave in European history. While remembered as essentially liberal in nature, aiming at ending the old monarchical regimes they were also note-worthy for the advent of the industrial working class as a factor in social struggle. So as well as political change, the social question was raised while the events of 1848 shaped the ideas of Marx and Proudhon. So on their 170th anniversary, we look at the 1848 revolutions and their lessons for today.

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  • Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Harbinger of Anarchism

    American academic J. Salwyn Schapiro claims that Pierre-Joseph Proudhon was a fascist have been repeated by Marxists ever since he made them. This article exposes his bad-faith as well as the many distortions and inventions Schapiro inflicted on Proudhon, showing that he was – for all his faults – an anarchist. It appeared in Black Flag Anarchist Review Vol. 1 No. 2 (Summer 2021)

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  • The Poverty of (Marx’s) Philosophy

    A review of Marx’s The Poverty of Philosophy which indicates various distortions of Proudhon’s work. It also discusses how Marx in 1867 applied the methodology he had attacked Proudhon for using twenty years earlier. It appeared in Anarcho-Syndicalist Review R No. 70 (Summer 2017)

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  • Proudhon: Neither Washington nor Richmond

    A discussion of Proudhon’s views during the American Civil War which indicates that the common assertion that he supported the South is inaccurate. Rather, he opposed both sides and argued for full political-economic rights for blacks as well as economic reforms to abolish the proletariat. It appeared in Anarcho-Syndicalist Review, No. 60 Summer 2013.

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