A review of a good book on Proudhon’s ideas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (1809-1865), the first person to proclaim himself an anarchist, is rarely treated with respect. Thanks to various hatchet-jobs (Marx, Schapiro, Draper), if he is mentioned it is often with contempt but usually with incomprehension. The notion that he was contradictory is so well engrained in the secondary literature (itself usually based on repeating previous secondary sources) that what Proudhon actually argued is lost. It is so bad that many people think he advocated ideas he publicly refuted holding.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Given this, Alex Prichard\u2019s Justice, Order and Anarchy: The International Political Theory of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon<\/em> (Routledge, 2013) is a breath of fresh air. It ranks with K. Steven Vincent\u2019s Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and the Rise of French Republican Socialism <\/em>as an accurate exploration of Proudhon\u2019s ideas within the context in which he wrote. In eight chapters Prichard summarises Proudhon\u2019s ideas as well as the history and current state of International Relations (IR) Theory. He shows how Proudhon\u2019s much misunderstood (and misrepresented) War and Peace<\/em> (1861) can be used to show that the ordered \u201canarchy\u201d between states on an internal level can be used to expand anarchy downwards rather than expand hierarchy upwards (into regional and global governments).<\/p>\n\n\n\n Prichard argues that \u201cinternational anarchy\u201d could be \u201ca template for theorising republican freedom more generally\u201d (91) and so IR can enrich anarchism just as anarchism can enrich it. It is an interesting position which Prichard explains persuasively by looking at Proudhon\u2019s War and Peace<\/em>. A much misrepresented work (deliberately so, by the likes of Schapiro and Draper), Prichard shows its aim clearly: to understand war in order to transcend it. War was the product of an unequal society and could only be ended by economic and social reform \u2013 by giving \u201cdemocratic control\u201d to the workers. (132) As Proudhon argued, \u201cthe organisation of peace\u201d was only possible by working people \u201ccreating economic equilibrium\u201d and so putting \u201can end to war.\u201d (quoted 132)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Those who view War and Peace<\/em> as a quasi-fascist celebration of war would be well served reading this book. Indeed, it was Proudhon who first coined the term militarism and used it to describe a development he opposed. (58) Sadly, Prichard\u2019s otherwise excellent discussion of War and Peace<\/em> also includes a slightly misleading discussion of Proudhon\u2019s alleged racism. He suggests its discussion of slavery was \u201cracist\u201d as it was based on \u201cinequality between races\u201d with its talk of superior and inferior races. (120) Yet Proudhon\u2019s language here reflects the assumptions of many nineteenth century thinkers (including Marx) and Prichard ignores his comment that \u201ca superior race\u201d has to \u201craise\u201d the so-called \u201cinferior\u201d races \u201cup to our level\u201d (not to mention that Proudhon used the word \u201crace\u201d very loosely, talking, for example, of \u201cthe English race\u201d).[1]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n This inequality of races reflects what Proudhon considered as marking his world but this does not mean that he was happy with it nor thought it intrinsic for if it were then this levelling up of races would be impossible. Rather it was a product of history and just as economic inequalities could be ended, so could the racial ones. While patronising and wrong, Proudhon\u2019s comments in War and Peace<\/em> reflect the cultural assumptions of his time rather than a racist position \u2013 as shown in works like General Idea of the Revolution<\/em> in which he proclaimed racial equality.[2]<\/a> It is best seen in the chapter \u201cSlavery and the Proletariat\u201d in Proudhon\u2019s The Federative Principle<\/em>[3]<\/a> which argues for full civil rights for all, black and white, as well as the abolition of chattel slavery and wage-slavery as blacks should be \u201cas free as the whites by nature and human dignity.\u201d The \u201cfederative principle\u201d is \u201cclosely related to that of the social equality of races and the equilibrium of fortunes.\u201d Economic, political and racial inequality \u201care one and the same problem\u201d which \u201cthe same theory\u2026 can resolve\u201d.[4]<\/a> It is unfortunate that this important chapter is not discussed.[5]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Prichard recounts the essentials of Proudhon\u2019s ideas and so shows the reader why they should read more. His alternative to capitalism, as indicated in The Federative Principle<\/em>, is to replace both slavery and wage-slavery with co-operative socialism.[6]<\/a> Prichard sketches this vision of \u201cdirect democracy in the workplace and federating according to trade, function and need\u201d (136) in which \u201call groups and individuals are self-governing\u201d (146) including the municipality, city and above.[7]<\/a> Even the military \u201cought to be democratically run and accountable to society.\u201d (146)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Which raises the issue of the one area of life where Proudhon excluded liberty, the family. Prichard does not avoid the issue and points to his sexism as \u201cthe most egregious example of the absence of consistency in Proudhon\u2019s theory\u201d and subjects it to an immanent critique, \u201cusing Proudhon\u2019s own concepts against his theory\u201d. (106) Prichard is right to do this for, while repulsive, his anti-feminism should not be used for a blanket rejection of all his ideas given the otherwise appealing nature of his vision of a federated self-managed society. So if you conclude that \u201ceach locale should be run by the people\u201d and \u201cautonomy of groups ought to stretch to the factories and workshops\u201d for \u201cdemocracy to be meaningful it had to be the expression of our existence in natural groups that we are part of\u201d (55) then why exclude the family? Subsequent anarchists corrected this inconsistency and embraced full equality and justice for all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Thus, ironically, Proudhon helped others in \u201cthe extension of republican freedom\u201d to \u201cthe everyday practices of gender inequality, the regimes of domination structured by the state and private property\u201d and so on. He can also help us today to reclaim \u201cthe emancipatory potential of anarchy.\u201d (159) Prichard\u2019s book will ensure that Proudhon is taken seriously not only in academia but also in activist circles precisely because he takes his ideas seriously and shows their relevance when they were written and now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This is another joy of Prichard\u2019s book: it places Proudhon\u2019s works into their political and social context. Much of his output was polemics with other French thinkers, most of whom are now forgotten. While this dates his work it does show that while he is often portrayed as an isolated intellectual in fact Proudhon was very much part of the wider political debate \u2013 both within and outwith the socialist movement. So Prichard is right to stress that \u201c[r]ecounting Proudhon\u2019s intellectual context and his engagement with it will help us better situate anarchism in the history of political thought.\u201d (68) This can be seen from his account of Rousseau, Kant and Comte and their relation with Proudhon. As well as refuting \u201cthe standard Anglophone, neo-Kantian interpretations of Proudhon\u2019s thought\u201d (95) he also shows how Proudhon\u2019s work can only be understood in terms of \u201ca direct engagement with what he saw as Rousseau\u2019s broken promises\u201d (70) over political and economic freedom and equality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This engagement is particularly relevant given the current (recurring!) talk of the population feeling alienated by a political system that does not reflect their views. While Proudhon would have agreed with much of this critique he would have noted that this is not a \u201cfailure\u201d of the system but rather what it was designed to do. As Prichard summarises, \u201cthe system of universal suffrage asks groups to relinquish this collective capacity in favour of individual political subjectivity and alienate their political force to representatives who may or may not reflect their interests.\u201d (132)<\/p>\n\n\n\n For Proudhon, the state was an instrument of class power and could never be reformed by the people. This analysis is reflected in his writings on nationalism, as Prichard\u2019s account clearly shows. Proudhon\u2019s opposition to national liberation movements was informed by a simply question \u2013 who benefits from the centralisation promised by nationalism? \u201cThe people? No. The upper classes.\u201d It was \u201csimply a form of bourgeois exploitation under the protection of bayonets.\u201d (quoted 56) As Prichard notes, an \u201cunderstanding of the class basis of politics was central to [Proudhon\u2019s] understanding the possibilities and problems inherent in the unification\u201d demanded by nationalist movements. (144) The notion of some that we are solely indebted to Marx for class analysis does a disservice to earlier socialists like the French anarchist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Talking of Marx, Prichard\u2019s discussion of Proudhon\u2019s critique of nationalism provokes the reader to consider the paradox of Marx\u2019s position, namely that the centralised bourgeois state was creating the preconditions of socialism \u2013 why would the weapons forged by the bourgeoisie to secure its rule \u201cbecome champions of the socialist cause\u201d? (57) It has not turned out that way and bourgeois rule seems more secure than ever in our era of centralised nation states. As Proudhon concluded, the Jacobin vision of a centralised republic rendered \u201cliberty impossible and the Revolution illusionary.\u201d (quoted 149) Nationalism, however, allowed the ruling classes \u201cto avoid the question of economic disenfranchisement and exploitation, uniting a people in heritage while eliding material inequality or explaining it away in terms of a necessary evil in the interests of the good of the nation as a whole. In practice this meant the poor being dominated by the rich.\u201d Nationalism is, ironically, \u201cthe executioner of nationalities\u201d (54) as, for Proudhon, centralisation would \u201cerase any kind of indigenous character in the various localities of a country.\u201d (quoted 54)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Prichard\u2019s book reminds us how important Proudhon\u2019s grasp of class and its impact is on his analysis, something that is often overlooked. He \u201copposed to any project of unification that did not place socialism at its heart.\u201d (54) Regardless of the claims of some, Proudhon was well aware that capitalism was an exploitative system marked by class inequalities which had to be ended to achieve real, meaningful, freedom for all. Prichard deserves to be thanked for bringing to the fore this aspect of his ideas, given how many secondary sources paint a radically different picture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In addition Prichard also gives a useful summary of Proudhon\u2019s ideas on justice, noting that he argued that \u201cour conscience, while socially formed, is our nonetheless.\u201d It is \u201chistorically and socially formed\u201d but \u201cour moral feeling comes from within us.\u201d (99) Thus there is an interplay between our natures and external conditions, a position which reflects the current work on the evolution of ethics popularised in Richard Dawkins\u2019 The God Delusion<\/em>. Kropotkin in Ethics<\/em> discussed these aspects of Proudhon\u2019s legacy and, as Prichard notes, these \u201chave been taken up again in contemporary primatology\u201d in its discussions on \u201cwhat in human action is innate and what nurtured through social life.\u201d (100) That the human race does seem have an (evolved) intrinsic sense of justice would not come as a surprise of the Frenchman and given his recognition that societies evolve (for example, System of Economic Contradictions<\/em>) we can be sure that, like Kropotkin, he would have embraced Darwinian theory. This is an area of research which should be pursued further.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In contrast, developments in science have not treated Marx\u2019s comment that Proudhon \u201cdoes not know that the whole of history is nothing but a continuous transformation of human nature\u201d well.[8]<\/a> While Proudhon acknowledged that different circumstances and systems bring forth different aspects of human nature, he did not share Marx\u2019s belief that we were a blank slate waiting to be shaped by the forces of history (whether economic or more prosaic). The more sophisticated Marxists undoubtedly recognise the pre-Darwinian nature of Marx\u2019s glib comment but that rarely makes them take Proudhon any more seriously than the others.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To conclude: barring a few minor issues, this is an excellent book which will benefit all those who read it, whether seeking an introduction to IR or the ideas of Proudhon. Proudhon may be flawed both as a person and politically, but he defined anarchism both negatively (opposition to state and capitalism) and positively (vision of a bottom-up, federated, self-managed society and economy created by working class people themselves). Prichard\u2019s book will help us remember why Proudhon was Europe\u2019s leading socialist thinker in his lifetime and why the likes of Bakunin, Kropotkin and Rocker were so influenced by him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n [1]<\/a> Oeuvres Compl\u00e8tes<\/em> [Lacroix edition] 13: 223<\/p>\n\n\n\n [2]<\/a> \u201cThere will no longer be nationality, no longer fatherland, in the political sense of the words: they will mean only places of birth. Whatever a man\u2019s race or colour, he is really a native of the universe; he has citizen\u2019s rights everywhere.\u201d (Property is Theft! A Pierre-Joseph Proudhon Anthology<\/em><\/a> [Edinburgh\/Oakland: AK Press, 2011], Iain McKay (ed.), 597)<\/p>\n\n\n\n [3]<\/a> \u201cL\u2019esclavage et le prol\u00e9tariat.\u201d, Third Part, Chapter IX, Oeuvres Compl\u00e8tes<\/em> [Lacroix edition] 8: 227-34. Translated by Iain McKay at: https:\/\/anarchistfaq.org\/pit\/online\/slavery.html<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n [4]<\/a> Oeuvres Compl\u00e8tes<\/em> 8: 232<\/p>\n\n\n\n [5]<\/a> See my \u201cNeither Washington nor Richmond: Proudhon on Racism and the Civil War\u201d<\/a>, Anarcho-Syndicalist Review<\/em>, Number 60, Summer 2013.<\/p>\n\n\n\n [6]<\/a> This raises a trivial issue, namely Prichard quoting Proudhon using the term \u201ccorporation\u201d. (146) He unfortunately does not note that the Frenchman did not mean the capitalist company but rather a federation of workers\u2019 co-operatives. He presents, as noted, Proudhon\u2019s ideas well so the reader should be able to work that out for themselves but explicitly noting this would have been wise.<\/p>\n\n\n\nEnd Notes<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n