{"id":68,"date":"2025-10-15T16:04:10","date_gmt":"2025-10-15T16:04:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/anarchistfaq.org\/anarcho\/?p=68"},"modified":"2025-10-15T16:04:10","modified_gmt":"2025-10-15T16:04:10","slug":"pierre-joseph-proudhon-harbinger-of-anarchism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/anarchistfaq.org\/anarcho\/pierre-joseph-proudhon-harbinger-of-anarchism\/","title":{"rendered":"Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Harbinger of Anarchism"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

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 \u2013 for all his faults \u2013 an anarchist. It appeared in Black Flag Anarchist Review<\/a><\/em> Vol. 1 No. 2 (Summer 2021)<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Harbinger of Anarchism<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (1809-1865) is usually considered as the father of anarchism, someone who both raised the main ideas of libertarian socialist thought and named them when he proclaimed \u201cI am an anarchist\u201d in 1840.[1]<\/a> Yet he is regularly accused of being contradictory and an inspiration for many political ideologies, from anarchism to fascism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The latter claim is most associated with American professor J. Salwyn Schapiro and an article published in the prestigious The American Historical Review<\/em> entitled \u201cPierre Joseph Proudhon, Harbinger of Fascism\u201d.[2]<\/a> This was expanded four years later as a chapter in his book Liberalism and the Challenge of Fascism<\/em>.[3]<\/a> Schapiro rested his case on a series of quotations and references which presented Proudhon as hating democracy and socialism, a supporter of dictatorship, an opponent of the labour movement, a racist who viewed blacks as the lowest of all races, a supporter of the South during the American Civil War, an anti-feminist, an anti-Semite and as a despiser of the \u201ccommon man.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Schapiro\u2019s argument has been supported by many commentators on Proudhon and anarchism. For historian E.H. Carr, it \u201cdepicts [Proudhon] with skill and plausibility as the first progenitor of Hitlerism.\u201d[4]<\/a> It was later repeated by Socialist writer George Lichtheim in 1969 and, via Lichtheim, Marxist academic Paul Thomas in 1980.[5]<\/a> More recently, the introductory material to the Cambridge Texts edition of What is Property<\/em> included Schapiro\u2019s book in its list of \u201cmost useful studies\u201d of Proudhon (along with six other works which argue the opposite) and suggests his ideas have influenced \u201call parts of the political spectrum, not excepting fascism\u201d. Peter Marshall felt obliged to mention Schapiro\u2019s claims, if only in passing, in his well-known history of anarchism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Within left-wing activist circles, Schapiro\u2019s thesis is best known for its use by Marxist Hal Draper who repeated many of his quotations and claims in the influential pamphlet The Two Souls of Socialism<\/em>. [6]<\/a> Draper\u2019s account was restated in the 1980s by Leninist David McNally in his pamphlet Socialism from Below<\/em>[7]<\/a> which, likewise, repeated many of the quotations Schapiro first used. More recently, Marxist academic Alan Johnson championed Draper as a Marxist scholar who defended real socialism and, to illustrate his case, quoted Proudhon via Schapiro: \u201cProudhon (\u2018all this democracy disgusts me\u2019).\u201d[8]<\/a> Thus generations of Marxist activists have had Schapiro\u2019s claims on Proudhon as part of their ideological education and, via them, repeated to countless anarchists.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Was the thinker who influenced the likes of Alexander Herzen, Joseph D\u00e9jacque, Michael Bakunin, Peter Kropotkin, Emma Goldman, Rudolf Rocker and Daniel Gu\u00e9rin (to name just a few) misunderstood by them and really a proto-fascist?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To ask such a question should answer it but, as noted, Schapiro\u2019s claims are repeated to this day. Given this, an evaluation of Schapiro\u2019s work is well overdue. While Italian anti-fascist Nicola Chiaromonte[9]<\/a> provided a succinct critique to his original article at the time, this work is not well-known even though it \u201cis one of the best essays written on Proudhon\u201d.[10]<\/a> One Proudhon scholar simply noted that \u201cto argue that Proudhon was a proto-fascist suggests that one has never looked seriously at Proudhon\u2019s writings\u201d.[11]<\/a> Another, based on an extensive analysis of La guerre et la paix<\/em> and its place in Proudhon\u2019s thought, likewise dismisses Schapiro\u2019s claims: \u201cProudhon was no fascist\u201d.[12]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, no in-depth analysis of Schapiro\u2019s claims has been made by comparing them with the references he provided to support them. This lack has allowed Schapiro\u2019s use of quotations and summaries to remain unchallenged and protected by the status of \u201cpeer reviewed\u201d. Until this is done, any dismissals can themselves be dismissed as it cannot be denied that parts of Schapiro\u2019s account are correct, or at least partially so, and this lent credence to the rest. Yet, as will be shown, his case rests on poor scholarship as it is marked by invention, selective quoting, dubious translation and omission.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As Schapiro claims that an \u201cexhaustive examination of his writings convinced the author, reluctantly to be sure, that Proudhon was a harbinger of fascism in its essential outlook and its sinister implications\u201d, quoting from these writings is unavoidable. (ix )[13]<\/a> Once done, Schapiro\u2019s claims will be exposed as a complete distortion of Proudhon\u2019s ideas and, given their use by Marxists in their attacks on anarchism, relevant to anarchists today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On Democracy and Universal Suffrage<\/em><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The first, and most repeated, claim that Proudhon was a proto-fascist rests with his views of democracy. Schapiro makes many assertions on these in his original article but provides only three actual quotations. While supplemented by other quotations and claims, these remain the centrepiece of his revised chapter and show his technique at work. The first offered is the most requoted:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

Proudhon\u2019s contempt and hatred of democracy overflowed all decent bounds, and he descended to a degree of disgusting vilification, reached only by the fascists of our day. \u201cAll this democracy disgusts me,\u201d he wrote. \u201cIt wishes to be scratched where vermin causes itching, but it does not at all wish to be combed or to be deloused. What would I not give to sail into this mob with my clenched fists!\u201d (350)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The reference given is \u201cCorrespondance<\/em> XI: 197\u201d yet Proudhon did not write the text provided for Schapiro combines three separate sentences into one passage without indicating any missing text nor that they appear on different pages. Context is likewise removed as is the fact that Proudhon is referring to different things on the two pages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first sentence relates to Proudhon bemoaning how others on the left were attacking him as \u201ca false democrat<\/em>, a false friend of progress, a false republican\u201d due to his critical position on Polish independence.[14]<\/a> Unlike most of the French left, Proudhon opposed the creation of a Polish state as summarised immediately before the words Shapiro quotes:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

What is worse is that M. \u00c9lias Regnault [\u2026 while] not responding to any of the impossibilities<\/em> of reconstitution which I indicated, none the less persists in demanding the reestablishment of Poland<\/em>, on the pretext that nobilitarian [nobiliaire<\/em>], Catholic, aristocratic Poland, divided into castes, has a life of its own, and that it has the right to live this life regardless<\/em>![15]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Once the context is understood, Proudhon\u2019s meaning becomes clear. He is arguing that an independent Poland would not<\/em> be a democracy but rather a regime ruled by a nobility living on the backs of the peasantry. He is mocking those on the left who violate their own stated democratic principles by supporting the creation of a feudal regime as becomes clear from the next paragraph:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

All this democracy disgusts me<\/em>. Reason serves no purpose with it, nor principles, nor facts. It does not matter to it that it contradicts itself with every step. It has its hobby-horses, its tics and its fancies; it wants to be scratched where the maggots itch, but it will not hear of comb nor scrubbing<\/em>; it resembles that beggar saint who, gnawed alive by maggots, put them back into his wounds when they escaped.[16]<\/a> (italics<\/em> indicates words quoted by Schapiro)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

By ignoring the very obvious sarcasm and then removing without indicating most of this paragraph, including the key words that the left \u201ccontradicts itself with every step\u201d, Schapiro obscures Proudhon\u2019s point, namely that these French democrats are contradicting their own claimed principles by supporting the creation of an aristocratic and caste-divided regime. Proudhon makes this point elsewhere:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

May the Polish nobles support the idea of February [i.e., the social and democratic republic], the end of militarism and the constitution of economic right, and, by serving general civilisation, they will serve their country better than by a futile display of nationality.[17]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

In 1863, he lamented that \u201caristocratic Poland [\u2026] enjoys greater authority than universal suffrage itself\u201d in the French left, urging the Polish nobles to embrace the emancipation of the serfs and land reform as well as looking forward to \u201ca representative constitution, based on universal suffrage\u201d for both Poland and Russia.[18]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Schapiro does not explain why Proudhon opposed the Polish national movement and, like those he mocked, considered support for it as an example of \u201cliberal nationalism\u201d, the \u201cSiamese twin\u201d of democracy. (350) Proudhon\u2019s opposition to nationalism is instead portrayed as French nationalist in nature rather than being based on class-analysis.[19]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The last sentence quoted by Schapiro appears on a different page and by then Proudhon had changed subject. Rather than discussing democracy, Proudhon is referring to \u201ccertain patriots<\/em>\u201d who were slandering him as \u201ca conservative, a proprietor, an Orleanist, a bourgeois\u201d and seeking \u201cto stop the sale of my pamphlets\u201d before writing \u201cWhat would I not give to sail into this mob with my clenched fists!\u201d As can be seen, Schapiro\u2019s \u201cthis mob\u201d is not<\/em> referring to the people exercising their democratic rights but rather a group opposed to Proudhon\u2019s ideas whom he describes as a \u201chydra\u201d from whose \u201cjaws\u201d he sought to \u201cpull the republican idea from\u201d.[20]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In short, his most damning quotation, the one repeated by Marxists ever since, is simply selective quoting which turns Proudhon\u2019s arguments for<\/em> democracy \u2013 in which he wishes the democrats would be consistently in favour of it \u2013 into their opposite.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Much the same can be said of the second quotation. Schapiro does not ponder why, if Proudhon included \u201cpopular sovereignty\u201d in the \u201cpolitical poverties\u201d upon which he \u201cunleashed a furious, almost obscene assault\u201d, he criticised universal suffrage for resulting in \u201cthe strangling of the public conscience, the suicide of popular sovereignty, and the apostasy of the Revolution\u201d? (349) Moreover, the reference for this quotation does not actually provide this passage although it does mention its actual source.[21]<\/a> It is worth quoting:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

Q \u2014 What is your opinion on universal suffrage?<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

\n

A \u2014 As all constitutions have established it since \u201989, universal suffrage is the strangulation of the public conscience, the suicide of popular sovereignty, the apostasy of the Revolution. Such a system of votes can well, on the occasion, and despite all the precautions taken against it, give a negative vote to power, as did the last Parisian vote (1857): it is unable to produce an idea. To make the vote for all intelligent, moral, democratic, it is necessary, for having organised the balance of services and having ensured, by free discussion, the independence of the votes, to make the citizens vote by categories of functions, in accordance with the principle of the collective force which forms the basis of society and the State.[22]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Proudhon\u2019s arguments that centralised, unitarian democracy is fundamentally undemocratic and in favour of a decentralised, federalist, functional democracy are turned by Schapiro into opposition to democracy as such.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The third quotation, Schapiro suggests, showed that for Proudhon \u201c[u]niversal suffrage created the worst of all governments because it was \u2018the idea of the state infinitely extended\u2019\u201d. (349) This is referenced to Les Confessions d\u2019un r\u00e9volutionnaire<\/em> yet Schapiro fails to mention that Proudhon was not <\/em>referring to universal suffrage as such but rather \u201cgovernmental democracy\u201d and how he had \u201cproved\u201d it was \u201conly an inverted monarchy.\u201d An anarchist denouncing Statist universal suffrage is not the same as opposing democracy. Likewise, Schapiro fails to note that Proudhon continued by arguing that such a centralised system \u201cis the union of all agricultural holdings into a single agricultural holding; of all industrial enterprises into a single industrial enterprise\u201d, in other words combining economic power as well as political power into the hands of those at the top of the State.[23]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Moreover, Proudhon was quoting an earlier work, La D\u00e9mocratie<\/em>, issued days after the February Revolution in which he had argued that the democracy favoured by the Left \u2013 a centralised, unitarian one \u2013 denied the sovereignty of the People. It is worth discussing this pamphlet as it summarises Proudhon\u2019s argument that bourgeois democracy is, in fact, not that democratic as it empowers the handful of politicians who make up the government rather than the people they claim to represent. Thus, \u201c[a]ccording to democratic theory, due to ignorance or impotence, the People cannot govern themselves: after declaring the principle of the People\u2019s sovereignty, democracy, like monarchy, ends up declaring the incapacity of the People<\/em>!\u201d Such a regime is based on \u201cinequality of wealth, delegation of sovereignty and government by influential people. Instead of saying, as M. Thiers did, that the King reigns and does not govern<\/em>, democracy says that the<\/em> People reigns and does not govern<\/em>, which is to deny the Revolution.\u201d He contrasts democracy to a republic (which he calls a \u201cpositive anarchy\u201d) in which all citizens \u201creign and govern\u201d [24]<\/a> based on (male) universal suffrage bolstered by measures to make it more than just electing masters:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

In the end, we are all voters; we can choose the most worthy.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

\n

We can do more; we can follow them step-by-step in their legislative acts and their votes; we will make them transmit our arguments and our documents; we will suggest our will to them, and when we are discontented, we will recall and dismiss them.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

\n

The choice of talents, the imperative mandate, and permanent revocability are the most immediate and incontestable consequences of the electoral principle. It is the inevitable programme of all democracy.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

\n

No more than constitutional monarchy, however, does democracy agree to such a deduction from its principle.[25]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

In other words, democracy \u2013 considered as a centralised, unitarian representative regime \u2013 cannot achieve its stated goals of popular self-government and participation, meaning that Proudhon\u2019s argument which sought to show why governmental democracy was not democratic is turned, again, into an opposition to democracy as such. As Proudhon repeatedly argues, only a decentralised, federal and functional system could achieve a meaningful democracy by applying universal suffrage in every grouping within society (bar the family) whether political or economic:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

What then is universal suffrage, considered no longer in its [current] material operations, but in its life, in its idea?\u2026 It is the social power or collective force of the nation in its initiating form and now in the activity of its functions, that is to say in the full exercise of its sovereignty. [\u2026] In universal suffrage, in a word, we possess, but on a limited basis, or to put it better in an embryonic state, the entire system of future society. To reduce it to the nomination by the people of a few hundred deputies without initiative [\u2026] is to make social sovereignty a fiction, to stifle the Revolution in its very principle.[26]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

A centralised, unitarian republic would not secure democracy in the sense of active participation of the people in managing their common affairs for, as he put it in 1846, \u201cfrom the moment that the essential conditions of power \u2014 that is, authority, property, hierarchy \u2014 are preserved, the suffrage of the people is nothing but the consent of the people to their oppression.\u201d[27]<\/a> Hence the need for socio-economic federalism to make universal suffrage meaningful as \u201cthe division of the country into its natural groups, provinces or regions, departments, cantons, communes, trade associations [corporations<\/em>], etc.\u201d would ensure that \u201c[u]niversal suffrage, with its rational constituencies, is [\u2026] the Revolution, not only political, but economic\u201d.[28]<\/a> The creation of citizens \u201ccan only be achieved through decentralisation\u201d otherwise the people would \u201cenjoy only a fictitious sovereignty\u201d.[29]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Schapiro laments that in Du Principe federative<\/em> Proudhon makes it \u201cdifficult, very difficult, to get a clear idea of the scheme of economic government that Proudhon called \u2018mutualism\u2019.\u201d While Proudhon makes no mention of \u201ctwo national federations, one of producers and another of consumers\u201d in this work, he does mention a council \u201cchosen by the various associations\u201d to \u201cregulate their common affairs\u201d but Schapiro does not indicate how Proudhon thought these would be chosen. (353) Yet that work is clear on the internal processes within the various associations, arguing that there would be \u201cdemocratic equality and its legitimate expression, universal suffrage\u201d and so \u201cequality before the law and universal suffrage form the basis\u201d of \u201cgroups that make up the Confederation\u201d which would be \u201cgoverning, judging and administering themselves in full sovereignty according to their own laws\u201d. This ensured that \u201c[i]n the federative system, the social contract is more than a fiction, it is a positive, effective pact which has really been proposed, discussed, voted, adopted and which is regularly modified according to the will of the contractors. Between the federative contract and Rousseau\u2019s and \u201993, there is the whole distance from reality to hypothesis.\u201d[30]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

As this would refute his case, these \u2013 like so many other passages \u2013 go unmentioned by Schapiro. As Aaron Norland later summarised, \u201cProudhon sought to make certain that the sovereignty of the people, which Rousseau held could never be alienated, would indeed never be alienated\u201d and the \u201csurprising thing, particularly in view of the vituperation which Proudhon heaped upon Rousseau, is the extent to which the thought of Proudhon parallels that of Rousseau on many fundamental points.\u201d[31]<\/a> Schapiro does mention Proudhon\u2019s critique of Rousseau\u2019s democracy that \u201cit was \u2018disguised aristocracy,\u2019 because government was controlled by a few men, called \u2018representatives\u2019\u201d and used \u201cthe state to dominate the people\u201d and \u201cagainst the disinherited proletariat in the interest of the propertied class\u201d. (349-350) Yet rather than pursue this class analysis which is the basis of Proudhon\u2019s critique of (bourgeois) democracy, Schapiro hastily moves on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Space precludes discussing his other claims beyond noting that his evidence for Proudhon\u2019s \u201chatred\u201d of democracy turn out to be baseless, at best simply a product of selective quoting. It comes as no surprise, then, to discover Proudhon proclaiming that \u201cI am a democrat: my explanations, constantly repeated, of what I mean by an-archy<\/em> testify to that.\u201d[32]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

On Revolution and Louis-Napoleon<\/em><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Part of Schapiro\u2019s wider argument is that Louis-Napoleon was a proto-fascist Statesman. Given this, he is keen to show that Proudhon supported Louis-Napoleon\u2019s transformation of the Presidency into the position of Emperor and the Second Republic into the Second Empire:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

Forcefully and repeatedly Proudhon [La R\u00e9volution sociale d\u00e9montr\u00e9e par le coup d\u2019\u00c9tat du 2 d\u00e9cembre<\/em>] drove home the idea that a social revolution could be accomplished only through the dictatorship of one man. Because of party divisions the revolution, so necessary to France, could not come from the deliberations of a popular assembly but from the dictatorship of one man, supported by the people [\u2026] The \u201canarchist\u201d Proudhon [\u2026] now welcomed the constitution of the Second Empire that established the dictatorship of Louis Napoleon. (355-6)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

There are numerous issues with this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

First, Schapiro does not explain how Proudhon could have \u201chailed the dictatorial Second Empire as the long awaited, passionately hoped for, historical event that would usher in le troisi\u00e8me monde<\/em>\u201d in a book published in July 1852 when the Second Empire was created in December 1852. (354-5) When the book was published, Louis-Napoleon was still the democratically elected President of the Second Republic, albeit one who had disbanded the National Assembly in the name of universal (male) suffrage, rewrote the constitution to expand the powers of his position and had this ratified by 7,600,000 votes in a plebiscite. It could be argued that the differences between the Presidential regime of 1852 and the Second Empire are slight but the fact remains that Proudhon could not have commented upon an Empire that did not exist. Regardless, he had not \u201cwelcomed\u201d the coup of December 1851, writing that \u201cI accept the fait accompli \u2013 just as the astronomer, fallen into a cistern, would accept his accident\u201d.[33]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Second, in spite of Proudhon allegedly \u201crepeatedly\u201d proclaiming the need for dictatorship, Schapiro provides a single page as a reference. On that page Proudhon had this to say:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

I have already said how dictatorship, so familiar to the Romans, the abuse of which eventually engendered Caesarean autocracy, disgusted me. I consider it a theocratic and barbaric institution, in every case a threat to freedom; I reject it even more so when the delegation that it supposes is indefinite in its object and unlimited in its duration. Dictatorship then is for me nothing more than tyranny: I do not discuss it, I hate it, and if the opportunity arises, I assassinate it\u2026[34]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Proudhon then describes<\/em> (\u201cIt were as if [Louis-Napoleon] had said to the country\u201d) the regime created in December 1851 along the lines Schapiro summarises. It should go without saying that describing does not indicate agreement. Elsewhere, he notes that \u201cI am opposed to dictatorship, and any kind of coup d\u2019\u00c9tat\u201d and as \u201cGovernment is impossible\u201d then \u201cPersonal, or despotic, government is impossible\u201d.[35]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Third, Schapiro makes no attempt to explain Proudhon\u2019s ideas on revolution and social progress. Unless this is understood then his claim that Proudhon \u201chailed the overthrow of the Second Republic as a great step of progress\u201d can have a superficial appearance of validity. (335) However, once they are then its weakness becomes clear. For Proudhon, social and economic developments were moving in a progressive direction regardless of the political regime or politicians in office:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

Proudhon looked upon [revolution] as a slow evolutionary movement according to natural law, continuing in spite of changes in constitutions and forms of government. The laws of social economy he held to be independent of the will of man and of the legislator. The Revolution will be accomplished because there is a tendency<\/em> in the masses toward well-being and virtue. Society always advances. For these reasons Proudhon could write that the Revolution was furthered by the coup d\u2019\u00e9tat<\/em> of Louis Napoleon, December 2, 1851. His friends could scarcely comprehend the meaning of his book, La R\u00e9volution sociale d\u00e9montr\u00e9e par le coup d\u2019\u00c9tat du 2 d\u00e9cembre<\/em>. More exactly, it might have been entitled \u201cThe Revolution in spite of the coup d\u2019\u00e9tat<\/em> of December 2, 1851\u201d for in reality that is the thesis sustained. [\u2026] The Revolution moves on irresistibly because it is a deep undercurrent undisturbed by winds which ruffle the surface.[36]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Thus \u201cRevolution, both democratic<\/em> and social<\/em> [\u2026] is now for France, for Europe, a compulsory condition, almost a fait acompli\u201d.[37]<\/a> The political regime could act to encourage or hinder this progress and the various Assemblies and Governments of the Second Republic had very much hindered it (for example, the destruction of the clubs after the July Days of 1848 and the restrictions on universal suffrage passed in July 1850, both of which Proudhon denounced[38]<\/a>). So not only was socio-economic progress being hindered, the possibility of any reform was stymied. Proudhon argued that such a situation could not be maintained, something had to give. This proved to be the events of December 1851, subsequently ratified by a large majority of the (male) electorate (for Marx, Louis-Napoleon was \u201cthe \u201cchosen man of the peasantry\u201d, the \u201cmost numerous class of French society\u201d and so \u201cthe mass of the French people\u201d[39]<\/a>). The newly self-empowered President then launched a series of reforms without the conservative National Assembly there to block them or be dismissed as impossible by liberal economists.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thus the Second of December \u201cdemonstrated\u201d the social revolution because it removed what was hindering social progress. However, it had not \u201cdemonstrated\u201d the social revolution in its specific policies nor in the regime created. Louis-Napoleon, like all the previous post-February governments, had the choice of encouraging or hindering the progress of the Social Revolution. Although recognising the President\u2019s support in the bourgeoisie, Proudhon urged him to use the mandate of the plebiscite to implement economic and political reforms. The choice was either \u201cAnarchy or Caesarism [\u2026] you will never escape from this [\u2026] you are caught between the Emperor<\/em> and the Social <\/em>[Revolution]!\u201d[40]<\/a> As such, to accuse him of supporting Caesarism is staggering.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Moreover, Proudhon recognised that an autocratic regime while perhaps at best suitable to destroy what hindered social progress was unsuited to encourage it. This was why he urged democratic reforms on the President, arguing that he himself had \u201cdefended universal suffrage, as a constitutional right and a law of the state; and since it exists, I am not asking that it be suppressed, but that it be enlightened, that it be organised and that it live.\u201d The regime should \u201caffirm, without restriction or equivocation, the social revolution\u201d and this required \u201cthat it calls to itself, instead of a body of mutes, a true representation of the middle class and the proletariat\u201d:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

the affairs of individuals prosper only as long as they have confidence in the government; that the only way to give them this confidence is to make them themselves active members of the sovereign; that to exclude them from government is as much as to oust them from their industries and properties; and that a working nation like ours, governed without the perpetual control of the podium, the press and the [political] club, is a bankrupt nation.[41]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

In this Proudhon was simply repeating arguments he had made before 1851 and would repeat afterwards. So, for example, ten years later we find him arguing that civilisation \u201conly advances through the influence that political groups wield upon one another, in the fullness of their sovereignty and their independence. Set a higher power over them all, to judge and constrain them and the great organisation grinds to a halt. Life and thought are no more.\u201d[42]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Similarly with Schapiro\u2019s claim that Proudhon thought it \u201cwas possible and desirable [\u2026] that one party should swallow all the other parties\u201d, a party of the working classes (proletarians, artisans and peasants), \u201chad a sinister significance.\u201d (356) He fails to mention that Proudhon also stated that \u201c[t]o impose silence upon [parties] by means of the police\u201d was \u201cimpossible\u201d and that \u201cthat ideas can only be fought by ideas\u201d. Parties, like the State, reflected the fact that the \u201cvices of th[e] economic regime produce inequality of fortunes, and consequently class distinction; class distinction calls for political centralisation to defend itself; political centralisation gives rise to parties, with which power is necessarily unstable and peace impossible. Only radical economic reform can pull us out of this circle\u201d.[43]<\/a> It is hardly \u201csinister\u201d to suggest that elimination of classes would produce the end of parties and the State.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Schapiro, likewise, fails to mention that Proudhon had earlier raised both the hope of seeing the end of parties while also proudly proclaiming that he \u201cbelong[ed] to the Party of Labour\u201d for there were \u201cbut two parties in France: the party of labour and the party of capital\u201d.[44]<\/a> As such, his use of the term party indicated a tendency which could include a diversity of views and groupings while the latter would disappear naturally along with the classes they reflect.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rather than support dictatorship, Proudhon in fact argued that the President introduce democratic reforms alongside economic ones for \u201crepresentative government\u201d was \u201ca necessary transition to industrial democracy\u201d and \u201cindustrial freedom and political freedom are interdependent; that any restriction on the latter is an obstacle for the former\u201d.[45]<\/a> Louis-Napoleon, as he constantly stressed, had a choice of promoting the Social Revolution (which was defined as a \u201csocial and democratic\u201d movement) or pursuing his own agenda and promoting reaction \u2013 the \u201cAnarchy or Caesarism\u201d of the title of the book\u2019s final chapter. As the former option meant eliminating the powers that he had just seized, unsurprisingly Proudhon\u2019s call fell on deaf ears. By December 1852, over five months after Proudhon\u2019s work was published, Louis-Napoleon gave his answer to the question it raised: he chose Emperor<\/em> rather than weaken his power by the democratic political and economic reforms Proudhon called for.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All this makes attempts to portray Proudhon as advocating dictatorship misleading. However, he did not make himself as clear as he should have:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

Hence, despite the caricatures, Proudhon was no sycophantic admirer of the Prince President, willing to go to any lengths to curry favor. On the contrary, the dictator would have to go extraordinarily far in Proudhon\u2019s direction to enlist his support. He would have to reform the constitution by making it more democratic [\u2026] Bonaparte would have to carry out social and economic, as well as political, reform. [\u2026] No doubt the book, strictly interpreted, does rule out collaboration. So exacting are the conditions set for collaboration that they could not possibly be met. Such a strict interpretation is too subtle, however, because it overlooks the book\u2019s impact on its audience. The rather casuistic argument of the R\u00e9volution sociale<\/em> was sure to go over the public\u2019s head [ \u2026] Hence the book was bound to strengthen the new regime, rather than the cause of freedom, whatever its author\u2019s intention.[46]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Moreover, knowing the President well (he was, after all, in prison when the coup of December 1851 occurred for publicly attacking him as a demagogue seeking to become Emperor), the book at times flattered Louis-Napoleon and tempted him to reforms by indicating that it would secure him a place in the history books. Such passages when quoted out of context make a flawed work look worse than it actually is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Which raises an obvious question: why did Proudhon pursue such a work, particularly given the reservations he expressed in letters while writing it? Simply put, he viewed the regime as secure due to its popular support and the lack of any possibility of a successful revolt against it. As Leninist John Ehrenberg suggests, \u201cProudhon did not really support the coup\u201d and \u201chis hope was not to apologise for Louis-Napoleon but to salvage some good out of what initially seemed a hopeless situation\u201d.[47]<\/a> Rather than express support for dictatorship as Schapiro claims, the reality is much more banal: \u201cI ask nothing better than to see the [government] I am paying for make some changes and proceed according to my principles\u201d.[48]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fourth, Louis-Napoleon\u2019s police understood Proudhon\u2019s argument and refused to allow its publication. Proudhon then appealed to the President himself and presumably amused and flattered that his old enemy had written what appeared to be a supportive book about him, ensured its publication. Suffice to say, the authorities did not make the same mistake again and Proudhon was unable to publish under his own name for a number of years and then only on economic matters. With the publication of his first political work (De la justice dans la R\u00e9volution et dans l\u2019\u00c9glise<\/em>) in 1858, Proudhon soon found himself charged with corrupting public morals and went into exile in Belgium where he could publish freely. Schapiro\u2019s summary of this period leaves much to be desired, writing that \u201c[d]uring the period of the Second Empire, Proudhon was actively engaged in writing. Book after book and pamphlet after pamphlet poured from his busy pen\u201d before noting his \u201carrest was ordered but he fled to Brussels\u201d. (335) The implied cosiness with the regime did not exist and while Schapiro wants to portray Proudhon as a Bonapartist, the Bonapartists themselves were very aware of his politics and acted accordingly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fifth, Schapiro fails to mention Proudhon\u2019s arguments against having a President in the first place and his articles warning that Louis-Napoleon had eyes on becoming Emperor are summarised as Proudhon being \u201carrested on the charge of writing violent articles against President Louis Napoleon and sentenced to prison for three years.\u201d (335) Nor does he mention Proudhon\u2019s writings (published from prison) defending the Constitution and universal suffrage against the attacks upon both by the reactionary National Assembly. This is understandable, given that it would be difficult to portray him as an advocate of dictatorship by the head of the State when he opposed having such a position considering it, amongst other things, \u201croyalty\u201d, \u201cthe violation of revolutionary principles\u201d, and \u201ccounter-revolution\u201d.[49]<\/a> If Proudhon had been listened to, then Louis-Napoleon would never have become Emperor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On Capitalism and Socialism<\/em><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

As well as being a \u201cpassionate hater of democracy\u201d, Schapiro claims that Proudhon viewed \u201csocialism\u201d in the same light. (362) He warms to this theme:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

In discussing the social and political issues of his day Proudhon did not at all apply his anarchist views. They seemed to form no part of his vigorous attacks on the ideas of his opponents, whether left or right. His hatred of socialism, which Proudhon regarded as the worst of all social poisons, drove him to advocate anarchy as its very opposite. What he really saw in anarchy was not a solution of social problems but an antidote to socialism. (363)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

He contrasts Proudhon to socialists who \u201cdirected their attacks on the capitalistic system of production; hence they sought to substitute socialization for private ownership \u2013 the Utopians, through cooperative societies, and the Marxists, through government ownership.\u201d Proudhon\u2019s \u201canticapitalism was not the same as that of the socialists [\u2026] Not the system of production, but the system of exchange was the root of evil of capitalism.\u201d (342)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is a key aspect of his case, with Schapiro quoting Marxist Franz Neumann that \u201c[i]n singling out predatory capital, National Socialism treads in the footsteps of Proudhon who, in his Id\u00e9e g\u00e9n\u00e9rale de la R\u00e9volution au 19e<\/sup> si\u00e8cle<\/em> demanded the liquidation of the Banque de France and its transformation into an institution of public utility\u201d. (366-7) Schapiro fails to mention that Naumann is explicitly repeating Marx on Proudhon and stresses that \u201cNational Socialist anti-capitalism has always exempted productive capital, that is, industrial capital, from its denunciations and solely concentrated on \u2018predatory\u2019 (that is, banking) capital\u201d.[50]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Proudhon, then, is a proto-fascist because he focused exclusively on finance capital, exempted productive capital, rejected socialisation of the means of production and co-operatives societies. Yet unlike his claims on democracy, Schapiro provides few references: the reader is given passing comments about Proudhon\u2019s Syst\u00e8me des contradictions \u00e9conomiques<\/em>, his opposition to the \u201cright to work\u201d at the start of the 1848 Revolution and his conflicts with the likes of Louis Blanc. (334) This lack of evidence is understandable as every single link in the chain of reasoning to reach his conclusion is wrong.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

First, while Proudhon did seek \u201cto find a solution of the social problem other than that presented by the socialists or by the classical economists\u201d in 1846, (334) Schapiro forgets that while the latter mostly agree on what they advocated, the former are marked by a series of schools. This was the case in 1846 and the number of schools has been added to since then, not least by Marxism (itself hopelessly subdivided) and revolutionary anarchism (collectivist, communist and syndicalist). It is perfectly feasible to criticise certain forms of socialism and still be a socialist:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

As a critic, having had to proceed to the search for social laws by the negation of property, I belong to the socialist protest: in this respect I have nothing to disavow of my first assertions, and I am, thank God, true to my background. As a man of achievement and progress, I repudiate with all my might socialism, empty of ideas, powerless, immoral, capable only of producing dupes and crooks [\u2026] and here is, in a few words, my profession of faith and my criterion on all past, present and future organisational utopias:<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

\n

Whoever calls upon power and capital to organise labour is lying,<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

\n

Because the organisation of labour must be the downfall of capital and power.<\/em>[51]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Thus Blanc \u201cis never tired of appealing to authority\u201d, \u201cplaces power above society\u201d and \u201cmakes social life descend from above\u201d while \u201csocialism loudly declares itself anarchistic\u201d and \u201cmaintains that [social life] springs up and grows from below\u201d.[52]<\/a> A few years later, Proudhon reiterated that \u201cBlanc represents governmental socialism, revolution by power, as I represent democratic socialism, revolution by the people. An abyss exists between us\u201d.[53]<\/a> He rejected Blanc\u2019s \u201csystem of organisation by the State\u201d because it was \u201cstill the same negation of freedom, equality and fraternity\u201d as under capitalism for \u201cthe only change is the shareholders and the managers\u201d with \u201cnot the slightest difference in the situation of the workers\u201d.[54]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Second, like many commentators, Schapiro does not appreciate that Proudhon separated ownership and use, arguing that while the former must be \u201cundivided\u201d, the latter must be \u201cdivided\u201d. If this were not ensured, then the liberty promised by socialism would become the tyranny of community.[55]<\/a> Thus we find Schapiro quoting Proudhon arguing that mutualism would be created \u201cwithout confiscation, without bankruptcy, without an agrarian law, without common ownership, without state intervention, and without the abolition of inheritance.\u201d (344) However, looking at the source (Proudhon\u2019s famous speech to the Constituent National Assembly in which he also proudly proclaimed that \u201cSocialism made the February Revolution\u201d) the term Proudhon actually uses is \u201ccommunity\u201d (communaut\u00e9<\/em>) and this cannot be translated as \u201ccommon ownership\u201d without seriously distorting what Proudhon meant by the term, why he opposed it and what he advocated in its stead. [56]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Communaut\u00e9<\/em> is often rendered as \u201ccommunism\u201d in English translations of Proudhon\u2019s work which, while closer to what was meant (particularly given the characteristics of the Stalinist regime in the USSR), is not quite correct. Regardless, capitalism was marked by divided use and divided ownership while \u201cCommunity\u201d was based on undivided use and undivided ownership. Both, as a result, were exploitative and oppressive and had to be replaced by what, in 1840, Proudhon referred to as a \u201cthird form of society, the synthesis of community and property\u201d which he then termed liberty. Invoking the well-known philosophical triad, community was \u201cthe first term of social development\u201d (\u201cthe thesis<\/em>\u201d) while \u201cproperty, the reverse of community, is the second term\u201d (\u201cthe antithesis<\/em>\u201d) and \u201c[w]hen we have discovered the third term, the synthesis, we shall have the required solution.\u201d[57]<\/a> This \u201cthird social form\u201d would be based on divided use and undivided ownership. The former is needed to secure workers\u2019 freedom to control both their labour and its product, the latter is needed to end master-servant relations (wage-labour) within the workplace by making every new recruit automatically involved in its management (and so control their labour and its product).[58]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Shapiro ignores this but proclaims that this \u201cnew system would inaugurate what Proudhon called le troisi\u00e8me monde<\/em>\u201d yet the page Schapiro references does not contain the term, which is unsurprising as Proudhon never used it.[59]<\/a> (353) Proudhon did indicate that he opposed private and State ownership in favour of \u201cuniversal association\u201d (the 1840s) or \u201cagricultural industrial federation\u201d (the 1860s). As he put it in 1846:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

Either competition, \u2014 that is, monopoly and what follows; or exploitation by the State [\u2026]; or else, in short, a solution based upon equality, \u2014 in other words, the organisation of labour, which involves the negation of political economy and the end of property.[60]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Rather than State control or planning, Proudhon argued that each association would control its own affairs and decide what to produce, for whom, when and at what price. Schapiro recognises this when he wrote \u201c[p]rivate enterprise would remain, and competition, the vital force that animated all society, would continue to regulate market prices\u201d. (344) However, he contradicts himself by stating that \u201c[u]nder mutualism there would be organized, in each industry, voluntary autonomous associations of producers with the object of exchanging commodities. Production was to be individual, not collective. Proudhon was an anticollectivist.\u201d (352)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is not explained how production organised by associations can be individual rather than collective. Proudhon, however, is clear and advocated workers\u2019 associations to achieve what in the 1850s he termed \u201cindustrial democracy\u201d but which he had raised repeatedly throughout his quarter century of writing. That Schapiro ignores this core aspect of Proudhon\u2019s economic vision is telling in spite of mentioning works \u2013 Qu\u2019est-ce que la propri\u00e9t\u00e9? <\/em>(1840), Syst\u00e8me des contradictions \u00e9conomiques<\/em> (1846), Id\u00e9e g\u00e9n\u00e9rale de la R\u00e9volution au dix-neuvi\u00e8me si\u00e8cle<\/em> (1851), Manuel du Sp\u00e9culateur \u00e0 la Bourse<\/em> (1857) and Du Principe f\u00e9d\u00e9ratif<\/em> (1863) and De la Capacit\u00e9 politique des classes ouvri\u00e8res<\/em> (1865) \u2013 where this is advocated.[61]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Indeed, workers\u2019 control is such an obviously core aspect of any genuine form of socialism that even Leninists pay lip-service to it. Significantly, while Schapiro notes that Proudhon \u201cdenounced capitalism as f\u00e9odalit\u00e9 industrielle<\/em>\u201d (industrial feudalism) he did not indicate where. (340) This is understandable for Proudhon argued that \u201cindustrial democracy must follow industrial feudalism\u201d,[62]<\/a> which is hard to square with Schapiro\u2019s claim that Proudhon hated democracy in \u201cits ideals, its methods, and its organization.\u201d (349)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet economic democracy can take many forms. Rather than one giant all-embracing centralised Association advocated by many of his contemporaries, Proudhon advocated associations united by federal and contractual links. As such, he should be considered one of the first market socialists as well as, as Steven K. Vincent has persuasively shown, a leading thinker of the associationist socialism of mid-nineteenth century France.[63]<\/a> He did, as Schapiro notes, aim to universalise property but this does not mean opposing socialisation. Recognising the nature of the economy of his time, Proudhon\u2019s theory of \u201cpossession\u201d allowed both artisan and peasant production to co-exist with collective production by workers\u2019 associations all united within socio-economic federalism:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

Proudhon and Bakunin were \u201ccollectivists,\u201d which is to say they declared themselves without equivocation in favour of the common exploitation, not by the State but by associated workers of the large-scale means of production and of the public services. Proudhon has been quite wrongly presented as an exclusive enthusiast of private property.[64]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Proudhon, in short, was not against common ownership but rather State control. As he summarised during the 1848 Revolution, \u201cunder universal association, ownership of the land and of the instruments of labour is social <\/em>ownership\u201d with \u201cdemocratically organised workers\u2019 associations\u201d forming \u201cthat vast federation of companies and societies woven into the common cloth of the democratic and social Republic.\u201d[65]<\/a> Proudhon, then, advocated workers\u2019 co-operatives because his opposition to capitalism included a critique of industrial capital as the wage-labour it created produced both exploitation and oppression.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Schapiro, ironically, admits as much in passing when, referencing Id\u00e9e g\u00e9n\u00e9rale<\/em>, he correctly summarised its analysis that \u201c[b]y its perversion of the principle of the division of labour, capitalism made the worker more productive and more dependent at the same time. As a consequence, all the advantages under the new industrial system went to capital, not labour.\u201d (340) By noting this aspect of Proudhon\u2019s ideas, he not only refutes his own claims but Neumann\u2019s which he used as supporting evidence that Proudhon \u2013 like fascists \u2013 focused exclusively on finance capital. Presumably Schapiro hoped his readers would forget this or consider it Proudhon\u2019s rather than his contradiction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Third, Schapiro fails to place Proudhon\u2019s ideas on credit within his wider ideas. He rightly notes that Proudhon sought to \u201cuniversalize bills of exchange\u201d as a circulating medium (rather than \u201clabour notes\u201d, as falsely asserted by Marx) but contrasts Proudhon\u2019s r\u00e9volution par le credit<\/em> with socialism. (342-3) Yet this was seen not as an end in itself but rather as the means to a wider economic transformation, namely the replacement of wage-labour by association. As Proudhon put it, thanks to its \u201cover-arching mandate, the Exchange Bank is the organisation of labour\u2019s greatest asset\u201d for it allows \u201cthe new form of society to be defined and created among the workers\u201d in which \u201call the workshops are owned by the nation, even though they remain and must always remain free.\u201d[66]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Recognising the difficulties inherent in State control, for Proudhon labour had to organise itself. To do this working people needed the means of production in their hands and there are two ways to secure this: by seizing it or by buying it. As he opposed the former, only the latter remained. That later anarchists argued for revolutionary expropriation rather than reforming the credit system should not obscure the similar reasoning behind each.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fourth, anarchism played a key part in his critique of State socialism as can be seen, for example, in his polemic with Louis Blanc and Pierre Leroux between November 1849 and January 1850[67]<\/a> which fed directly into General Idea of the Revolution in the Nineteenth Century<\/em>. These works reflected how the 1848 Revolution \u201cwas an important turning point for Proudhon\u201d and \u201canarchism emerged as central to his thought\u201d.[68]<\/a> Decades later, Peter Kropotkin pointed to these debates and noted their continued relevance to libertarians: \u201cMany admirable pages can be found there on the State and Anarchy which it would be very useful to reproduce for a wide audience.\u201d[69]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

More could be written on this subject, such as Schapiro\u2019s conflation of opposing strikes with opposing the labour movement and, in one quotation, his wilful mistranslation of ouvri\u00e8res associations<\/em> as \u201ctrade unions\u201d rather than co-operatives, his insertion of the word \u201chostile\u201d and the failure to indicate that this was discussing Proudhon\u2019s views on a specific form of workers\u2019 association (those advocated by the Louis Blanc influenced Luxembourg Commission of 1848-9). (347-8) However, enough has been discussed to show that Proudhon attacked capitalism as system of production and<\/em> exchange, denounced industrial capital and<\/em> banking capital, combining his call for the transformation of the Banque de France with the replacement of capitalist firms with democratically-run workers\u2019 associations (indeed his analysis of how exploitation occurred within production was the basis of his vision of socialism rooted in transforming production[70]<\/a>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Socialism, as Schapiro rightly suggested, \u201caimed to destroy the bourgeois ruling class in the only way that it could be destroyed as a class, namely by abolishing property altogether\u201d. (338) Proudhon agreed but the current regime of property and classes can be abolished in many ways. It was to the Frenchman\u2019s credit that he predicted that nationalising property, placing it into the hands of the State, would not abolish the ruling class but simply create a new one \u2013 the bureaucracy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On War and Peace<\/em><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The next charge against Proudhon is that he was a warmonger and militarist. This is his argument from the original article:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

What astounded Proudhon\u2019s contemporaries [\u2026] was his glorification of war. Hatred of war and longing for universal peace has been an almost universal characteristic of all modern revolutionary thinkers [\u2026] The contradictions between the revolutionist Proudhon and the revolutionary thought of his day became even more puzzling, even more strange, when Proudhon appeared as a glorifier of war for its own sake. His book La Guerre et la paix<\/em>, which appeared in 1861, was a hymn to war, intoned in a more passionate key than anything produced by the fascists of our time. [\u2026] War was the revelation of religion, of justice, and of the ideal in human relations. [\u2026]<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

\n

In the view of Proudhon war was not a social evil that would be eradicated in the course of human progress. He was convinced that war was an instinct inherent in the very nature of man and was itself the prime source of human progress. Therefore it would last as long as man existed and as long as moral and social values prevailed in human society [\u2026] Almost every page of La Guerre et la paix<\/em> contains a glorification of war as an ideal and as an institution. (\u201cPierre Joseph Proudhon, Harbinger of Fascism\u201d, 729-30)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Schapiro clearly assumes his reader\u2019s ignorance of Proudhon work for this summary is a complete distortion of its argument. Likewise, he does not seek to explain how his admission that Proudhon \u201crepudiated violent methods\u201d and advocated a \u201cpeaceful revolution\u201d can be reconciled with this portrayal of Proudhon as a warmonger and precursor of the violent methods of fascism. (341)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This summary fails to mention that while the first volume of La Guerre et la paix<\/em> does indeed extol \u201cthe right of war\u201d, the second volume discusses how war becomes corrupted (so generating numerous social evils) and how to end it by understanding its root cause.[71]<\/a> This may lead the impatient reader to draw the wrong conclusion: indeed, in Book One, Proudhon, as if he is aware that he may be tempting the patience of his reader, notes that \u201cI shall conclude by opposing the war-mongering status quo<\/em>, opposing the institutions of militarism\u201d[72]<\/a> As he put it in a letter:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

How could you have supposed that I wanted, by a sort of panegyric or apotheosis of war, to perpetuate the military regime? [\u2026] my thesis: War is finished, society no longer wants it<\/em>. [\u2026] I will confine myself to pointing out to you, so that you may understand me with less difficulty, that in order to put an end to war, it was not a question of declaring against it as the friends of peace<\/em> do; it was necessary to begin by recognising [\u2026] its principle, its role, its mission, its purpose; this done, it was proved then, and only then, that the goal being reached or on the eve of being reached, war was finished, and finished not by the good pleasure of nations and governments, but by the fulfilment of its mandate.[73]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Thus the somewhat abstract discussion of \u201cthe right of war\u201d and how it generated other rights (including political, social and economic ones) lays the ground for the denunciation of warfare as barbaric (particularly in an age where indiscriminate killing was becoming the norm as war was increasingly industrialised) and how to end it. The contrast between the ideal and the practice was due to the \u201cprimary, universal and ever constant cause of warfare, however ignited and whatever prompts it\u201d being \u201cthe BREAKDOWN OF ECONOMIC EQUILIBRIUM\u201d. Thus \u201cwar, even between the most honourable nations, and whatever the officially professed motives, henceforth does not appear to be anything other than a war for exploitation and property, a social war. Suffice to say that, until such time as economic rights are secured, both between nations and between individuals, war can do nothing else on the globe.\u201d[74]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

If war is primarily driven by economic forces, then \u201cpeace cannot be established permanently, other than by means of the abolition of the very cause of war\u201d. A new economic regime in which labour governs \u201cmust replace the political or war regime\u201d and \u201cuniversal disarmament will take place\u201d only when \u201cwar has found its successor.\u201d Under mutualism, struggle would exist \u201cbut not a bloody, armed struggle, but rather a struggle involving labour and industry\u201d. In short, \u201c[o]nly working humanity is capable of putting an end to war, by creating economic balance, which presupposes a radical revolution in ideas and morals.\u201d The \u201cconstitution of right in humanity is the very abolition of war; it is the organisation of peace [\u2026] We need PEACE today; the world does not understand and no longer wants anything else.\u201d[75]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

War could now be ended because \u201cthe Revolution has made the public conscience the sole interpreter of right, the sole judge of the temporal and the sole sovereign, which constitutes true democracy and marks the end of priesthood and militarism.\u201d Thus, in a mutualist society, \u201cwar no longer has the slightest reason to be waged\u201d as it would ensure \u201cthe abolition of the military regime and the subordination of political right to economic right.\u201d This was because \u201cnationality, no more than war, serves no purpose. Nationalities have to be increasingly erased by the economic constitution, the decentralisation of states, the mixing of races and the permeability of continents.\u201d Unsurprisingly, the work\u2019s final sentence is \u201cHUMANITY DOES NOT WANT ANY MORE WAR.\u201d[76]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Parts of the first volume can make uncomfortable reading because Proudhon is describing the world as it is, the world where might indeed made right regardless of the fine words used to justify reasons of State. He plays the part of devil\u2019s advocate to better convince his critics when, in the second volume, he shows how the instincts and forces which create conflict can be transformed to create peace. Likewise, Schapiro fails to mention that Proudhon\u2019s anti-militarism is reflected in other works. In 1851, it was the case that \u201c[i]n place of standing armies, we will put industrial associations\u201d[77]<\/a> while in 1863 he noted that a \u201cconfederated people would be a people organised for peace; what would they do with armies?\u201d[78]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Schapiro, then, shamelessly distorts Proudhon\u2019s ideas. These were hardly difficult to grasp. For example, a contemporary review in the New York Times<\/em> correctly summarised it:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

According to him, there exists one cause [\u2026] which tarnishes war [\u2026] which will long hinder its perfection: it is the rupture of the economic equilibrium [\u2026] This is the origin of most wars. The vice is chronic, incurable, and sullies forever the divine ideal [\u2026] But in the very midst of this despairing doctrine a ray of light appears \u2013 namely, Peace. For we must not mistake him \u2013 he, like the rest of us, wishes to attain that. He does not pretend to do away with war [\u2026] but he hopes to transform it, to bring it into a second state, purer and more perfect than the first, and this state is simply \u2014 Peace. [\u2026] He deifies war and recommends peace. The process is curious and the result instructive.[79]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Likewise, anarcho-pacifist Bart de Ligt correctly summarised Proudhon\u2019s conclusion that \u201cit was therefore necessary [\u2026] to change the military society into an industrial society as swiftly as possible.[80]<\/a> Significantly, the structure and aim of La Guerre et la paix<\/em> are noted by every other commentator on it.[81]<\/a> The introduction to the edition Schapiro uses also indicated this so perhaps this explains why he rewrote his argument and admitted that \u201cProudhon comes to the paradoxical conclusion\u201d that war\u2019s \u201cprimal cause is poverty, and only when poverty is abolished will war disappear\u201d, making a mockery of his earlier claim that Proudhon did not think war could be eradicated nor wished it to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On Slavery and Race<\/em><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Schapiro is correct to note Proudhon\u2019s anti-Semitism and uses it as means to generalise about his views on race:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

Anti-Semitism, always and everywhere, the acid test of racialism, with its division of mankind into creative and sterile races, led Proudhon to regard the Negro as the lowest in the racial hierarchy. During the American Civil War he favored the South, which, he insisted, was not entirely wrong in maintaining slavery. The Negroes, according to Proudhon, were an inferior race, an example of the existence of inequality among the races of mankind. Not those who desired to emancipate them were the true friends of the Negroes but those \u201cwho wish to keep them in servitude, yea to exploit them, but nevertheless to assure them of a livelihood, to raise their standard gradually through labor, and to increase their numbers through marriage.\u201d (359)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Schapiro references a single page in La Guerre et la paix<\/em> and there are numerous issues with this summation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

First, Proudhon made no reference to Negroes being \u201cthe lowest in the racial hierarchy\u201d nor the \u201cdivision of mankind into creative and sterile races\u201d and so these are an invention by Schapiro.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Second, in terms of \u201cinferior\u201d and \u201csuperior\u201d races, the position expressed by Proudhon was commonplace at the time as was its rationale, namely the conquest of other races by whites. Given how prevalent this perspective was, it would have been noteworthy if Proudhon had not subscribed to it in some form.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To take a pertinent example, \u201cMarx and Engels were endowing \u2018races\u2019 with inferior and superior qualities all the time\u201d and \u201c[f]or present-day standards, the racism displayed by Marx and Engels was outrageous and even extreme. For nineteenth-century standards, though, it was not.\u201d[82]<\/a> The latter\u2019s public comments on Slavs and other peoples he deemed \u201cnon-historic\u201d and so suitable for being, at best, civilised by their superiors or, if needed, wiped out down to their very names is a notable example of these views.[83]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Similarly with John Stuart Mill, who took it for granted that there were \u201csuperior\u201d peoples (\u201cfrom difference of race, more civilized origin, or other peculiarities of circumstance\u201d) and those who are an \u201cinferior and more backward portion of the human race\u201d.[84]<\/a> Liberty, however, \u201cis meant to apply only to human beings in the maturity of their faculties\u201d and so \u201cwe may leave out of consideration those backward states of society in which the race itself may be considered as in its nonage.\u201d \u201cDespotism,\u201d Mill stressed, \u201cis a legitimate mode of government in dealing\u201d with such peoples, \u201cprovided the end be their improvement, and the means justified by actually effecting that end.\u201d[85]<\/a> Moreover, war to bring civilization to such inferior races was justified as it will \u201cbe for their benefit that they should be conquered and held in subjection by foreigners.\u201d[86]<\/a> Schapiro fails to mention this when proclaiming Mill a \u201cPioneer of Democratic Liberalism\u201d (256)[87]<\/a> but more recent commentators do.[88]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Regardless of what Schapiro implied, Proudhon \u2013 like Marx, Engels and Mill \u2013 did not view existing inequalities between races as fixed. He argued that \u201cthe human person remains sacred, and that all that we have to do ourselves, as a superior race, with regard to the inferior ones, is to raise them up to our level, that is to attempt to improve, fortify, instruct and ennoble them.\u201d[89]<\/a> Paternalistically racist, to be sure, but hardly the biological deterministic racism Schapiro suggests and rather than being proto-Nazi were similar to almost all the progressive liberal and socialist thinkers of his time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Third, Proudhon submitted his manuscript at the end of October 1860 and it was finally published, by a different company, on 21 May the following year, a few weeks after the War broke out on the 12 April. As such, his comments cannot be considered as \u201cfavor[ing] the South\u201d during a war which had not yet started as Schapiro must have been aware of, as these dates are mentioned in the introduction to the edition he quotes from. Likewise, it is clear from the text of the book itself that war had not yet erupted and that in this chapter he is \u201cputting forward is not so much my own opinion as forecasts regarding disputes that may possibly be settled by force of arms.\u201d[90]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fourth, Proudhon\u2019s \u201cdefense of Negro slavery\u201d must be placed in context. (359) The first volume of La Guerre et la paix<\/em>, as noted above, is marked by a desire to play devil\u2019s advocate and, as such, these comments cannot be taken as completely reflective of his views. As is clear from the text, Proudhon is commenting upon the debates in America in the period immediately before<\/em> the outbreak of the Civil War. He did not think that White Americans wanted to wage war to free their compatriots and limited his comments to the two positions articulated in respectable debate: retain slavery or turn the slaves into proletarians. As he put immediately before the words quoted by Schapiro, the latter \u201cknowingly or unknowingly, it matters not, seriously consider making [the former slaves] perish in the desolation of the proletariat\u201d[91]<\/a>. Thus:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

Do we forget that, since abolition of the feudal system, in our industrialist society liberty is, for individuals weak in body and mind, whose family has not been able to guaranteed an income, something worse than slavery \u2013 the proletariat? Force requires it to be so, as long as it remains the dominant law of society; and I say that the right which still dominates us today is not the right of labour, which is still not recognised, [\u2026] it is still, whatever we say, the pure right of force.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

\n

Certainly, I have no intention of renouncing here my own thesis and combating precisely what I intend to rehabilitate, when I stand, on behalf of the blacks, against the hypocritical thought that, under the pretext of emancipating them, tends to do nothing less than cast them under the pure regime of force, and turn them into a proletarian sludge a hundred times more hideous than that of our capitals.[92]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Schapiro ignores all this but, by limiting his comments to these two positions, Proudhon failed to articulate his own stance and effectively discusses what was possible in America under the prevailing circumstances. This is suggested by Proudhon failing to ponder why the American ruling class \u2013 who, at best, wished to cast blacks into \u201cthe desolation of the proletariat\u201d or, at worse, were slavers \u2013 would allow the placing of slavery \u201cunder the supervision of governments\u201d for the benefit of anyone other than themselves. He was well aware that the law is hardly \u201cthe protector of the weak\u201d nor the proletariat of the so-called superior races.[93]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

During the war Proudhon raised a libertarian alternative to these two forms of exploitation and oppression which rejects the pathetic suggestion in La Guerre et la paix<\/em> of regulating slavery to reform it away. Given that this book argued that war could only be ended by socio-economic transformation, a work expressing his ideas on this is far more reflective of his views on race and slavery than the deliberate exaggerations of its first volume. He did so in an important book which did<\/em> appear during the conflict, namely 1863\u2019s Du Principe federative<\/em>, which Schapiro references but ignores its discussion of these issues, undoubtedly because to do so would refute his claims.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Proudhon first raises these issues in a footnote:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

The federative public law raises several difficult questions. For example, can a State with slaves belong to a confederation? It seems not, no more than an absolutist State: the enslaving of one part of the nation is the very negation of the federative principle. In this respect, the Southern States of the United States would be even more justified to ask for separation since the Northern States do not intend to grant, at least for quite some time, the emancipated Blacks their political rights. However we see that Washington, Madison and the other founders of the Union did not agree; they admitted States with slaves into the federal pact. It is also true that we now see this unnatural pact tearing itself apart, and the Southern States, to maintain their exploitation, tend towards an unitarist constitution, whilst the Northern ones, to maintain the union, decree the deportation of the slaves [to Africa].[94]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

For Proudhon, \u201ca better application of the principles of the [Federative] pact\u201d would include \u201cprogressively raising the Black peoples\u2019 condition to the level of the Whites\u201d but \u201cLincoln\u2019s message leaves no doubt on the matter. The North cares no more than the South about a true emancipation, which renders the difficulty insoluble even by war and threatens to destroy the confederation.\u201d[95]<\/a> He expanded on these comments in a subsequent chapter (\u201cSlavery and the Proletariat\u201d).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It must be remembered that while the war has long been portrayed by the winners as a crusade against slavery, in reality while maintaining slavery was undoubtedly one of the main driving forces for the secession of the Southern States, its ending was not a factor for the North: not only did slave States fight for it, Northern politicians also explicitly argued that it was waging war solely over maintaining the Union. Ending slavery came to the fore as a war measure with the issuing of the Emancipation Proclamation in September 1862 which applied only to the rebel States, so freeing those slaves it could not reach and keeping those it could liberate in chains. Lincoln himself personally opposed slavery but did not view black people as equals, aiming to free the slaves but then deport them to Africa.[96]<\/a> Indeed, in late 1861 Lincoln took steps to initiate a formal colonisation programme and the following year saw Congress passing legislation providing funding for this under the direct guidance of the White House.[97]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Readers of Schapiro\u2019s work would be surprised to discover Proudhon criticised all this. Both races were equal (\u201cpsychology sees no difference between the constitution of the negro conscience and that of the white, no more than between the comprehension of one and the other\u201d) and any attempt to deport blacks was \u201ca crime equal to that of the slavers\u201d for \u201cby a century of servitude\u201d they have \u201cacquired the right of use and of habitation on American soil\u201d. He urged Whites in both the North and the South to \u201creceive [blacks] in comradeship and welcome them as fellow citizens, equals and brothers\u201d as well as \u201cgranting to blacks hitherto kept in servitude, along with freedmen, equal political rights\u201d. However, to ensure \u201cthey do not fall into a worse servitude than whence they came\u201d, reforms were needed that \u201calso bestows upon them land and ownership\u201d and \u201cproviding possessions for the wage-workers [of both races] and organising, alongside political guarantees, a system of economic guarantees\u201d. This was because \u201cthe principle of equality before the law must have as a corollary, 1) the principle of equality of races, 2) the principle of equality of conditions, 3) that of ever more approached, although never achieved, equality of fortunes\u201d.[98]<\/a> In short:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

Two things would have been necessary, by common accord and energetic will, to save the Union: 1) free the blacks and give them citizenship, which the States in the North only half granted and which those of the South did not want at all; 2) energetically fight the growth of proletariat, which did not enter the views of anyone.[99]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

If this were not done, then \u201cit is clear that black servitude will only change its form\u201d as they would now join the White proletariat at the mercy of the capitalist class. Proudhon mocked the liberalism which \u201capplauds the conversion of the slavery of the Blacks into the proletariat\u201d as it \u201cdoes not support slavery, of course!\u2026 but accommodates itself wonderfully to the most brazen exploitation\u201d. It cannot see the Northern ruling class was fighting for economic interests rooted in \u201cthe cold calculation\u201d that \u201cit is more to the advantage of the capitalist\u201d to \u201cuse free<\/em> workers, who support themselves with their wages, than enslaved workers who give more trouble than wage-workers and produce proportionally less profit regardless of [the costs of] their subsistence\u201d.[100]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

While this falls foul of the perfectionist fallacy, it rests on an analysis which Schapiro denies Proudhon had, an opposition to the social relations within production under capitalism:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

But it would be naive to think that it is just the peculiar institution of slavery that Proudhon detests. He finds in the North also the principle of inequality and class distinction. If he is critical of both sides in the war, it is because the federative principle is incompatible with inequality, whether the agrarian variety of master and slave or the modern version of capital and labour [\u2026]<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

\n

Proudhon didn\u2019t really believe that the Union side would emancipate the Negro, but would fix on deportation as the solution to the problem. The union could be saved only by the liberation of the Negroes, granting them full citizenship, and by a determination to stop the growth of the proletariat. For what is gained for the former slaves, if emancipation means that they will become members of the proletariat? He notes that the situation in Russia after the emancipation of the serfs (1861) is analogous. Liberated serfs without land would be helpless. Economic guarantees must be developed alongside political ones.[101]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

This opposition to both sides is a far cry from Schapiro\u2019s account. Yet it can be criticised for \u201cProudhon suggests that nothing will have been gained if the blacks were freed only to become wage earners, as if the condition of the wage-earner were not closer to the realization of personal autonomy than the condition of a well-treated slave.\u201d[102]<\/a> While undoubtedly downplaying the specific horrors of slavery, Proudhon (given his opposition to violence and war) had little option for he could not call for slave revolts as did his contemporary Joseph D\u00e9jacque who pointed to the example of abolitionist John Brown.[103]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet Proudhon\u2019s analysis was astute, given the fate of the newly liberated slaves. Rather than being provided with the resources to labour for themselves, they were cast as Proudhon feared into the proletariat. This, as one contemporary Black newspaper rightly argued, meant the \u201cslaves were made serfs and chained to the soil\u2026 Such was the boasted freedom acquired by the coloured man at the hands of the Yankees.\u201d[104]<\/a> The failure after the war to provide a solid economic footing for the freed slaves is now considered a cause of the failure of Reconstruction and W.E.B. DuBois captured that failure well in 1935: \u201cThe slave went free; stood a brief moment in the sun; then moved back again toward slavery\u201d.[105]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rather than favour the South, Proudhon opposed both sides as they were \u201cfighting only over the type of servitude\u201d and so should \u201cbe declared equally blasphemers and renegades of the federative principle, and shunned by [other] nations\u201d.[106]<\/a> While Proudhon\u2019s positions on black slavery, race, and the American Civil War all have their issues and can, and should, be critiqued, Schapiro preferred method of invention and omission should play no part in it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On Legacies<\/em><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Proudhon during his lifetime was, rightly, considered a man of the left and demonised by the right. This changed, as Schapiro recounts, around 50 years after his death thanks to the activities of French neo-royalists before the First World War, when sections of the right celebrated certain aspects of Proudhon\u2019s ideas. From there to fascism, with Schapiro noting that three fascists claimed Proudhon as an intellectual precursor. (363-4, 368-9)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet this appreciation by the right was as selective as Schapiro\u2019s own account and, as such, can be dismissed. As Individualist anarchist Benjamin R. Tucker noted with regards to the neo-royalists, \u201c[o]ne of the methods of propagandism practised by these agitators is the attempt to enrol among their apostles all the great dead who, if living, would look with scorn upon their ways and works. Every great writer who has criticised democracy and who, being in his grave, cannot enter protest, is listed as a royalist, a nationalist, and an anti-Dreyfusard.\u201d However, \u201cit is not to be inferred that, because Proudhon destroyed Rousseau\u2019s theory of the social contract, he did not believe in the advisability of a social contract, or would uphold a monarch in exacting an oath of allegiance. [\u2026] All this, however, is carefully concealed\u201d while the group \u201cutterly ignores the affirmative statements of its stolen hero\u201d.[107]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

That reactionary ideologues (whether Action fran\u00e7aise<\/em> or Nazis) tried to attract socialists to the right by seeking to appropriate the legacy of socialists long dead comes as no surprise. That self-proclaimed anti-fascists unquestionably repeat their claims and, worse, their techniques does. Yet the fact remains that Proudhon expressed some horrible things at times. Few thinkers are completely consistent, and Proudhon\u2019s most blatant inconsistencies were the sexism and anti-Semitism which Schapiro rightly points to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet Proudhon\u2019s defence of patriarchy hardly squares with his advocacy of anarchy and his claim \u201cthat the social revolution is the negation of all hierarchy, political and economic\u201d.[108]<\/a> In this, sadly, he did not rise above the dominant ideas and attitudes of his time as he did in other areas (Kropotkin dismissed his writings on woman as something \u201cwhich most modern writers will, of course, not agree\u201d[109]<\/a>). Schapiro attributes Proudhon\u2019s anti-feminism to him being a warmonger but as he was no militarist its roots reflect his cultural background. (361) Still, Schapiro quite rightly criticised Proudhon\u2019s anti-feminism yet, unlike his earliest critics on this issue like Joseph D\u00e9jacque and Andr\u00e9 L\u00e9o, did not note the very obvious contradiction between this aspect of his ideas and his associationism (perhaps because Schapiro fails to discuss that accurately). These critics used Proudhon\u2019s core ideas against him and argued for association within the family as elsewhere.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

D\u00e9jacque <\/em>proclaimed Proudhon<\/em> \u201c<\/em>a liberal<\/em> and not a LIBERTARIAN, you want free trade for cotton and candles and you advocate protectionist systems for man against woman in the circulation of human passions; you cry out against the high barons of capital and you wish to rebuild the high barony of the male upon the female vassal\u201d. It was \u201cunderstandable\u201d and \u201crevolutionary to \u201cplace the question of the emancipation of woman in line with the question of the emancipation of the proletarian\u201d.[110]<\/a> L\u00e9o<\/em>, challenging Proudhon\u2019s followers after his death, stressed the obvious contradiction:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

These so-called lovers of liberty, if they cannot all take part in the direction of the State, at least they will be able to have a little kingdom for their personal use, each at home. When we put gunpowder to divine right, it was not for every male (Proudhonian style) to have a piece. Order in the family without hierarchy seems impossible to them. \u2013 Well, then, and in the State?[111]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Neither thought this position nullified his other ideas and demanded consistency by applying associationist ideas in the home.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then there is his anti-Semitism, the other bigotry Schapiro gets correct. Yet this is hardly the proof of fascism which Schapiro claims as it predates fascism by centuries and not all fascist movements or regimes expressed it. While Nazism did, Italian (initially) and Austrian fascism did not (indeed, notable Jewish Italians were senior fascists until the late 1930s). A few passing anti-Semitic comments in private letters and in published works shows how central it was to Proudhon\u2019s ideas. Indeed, the reader of his most important works would not realise that Proudhon was anti-Semitic, an awkward fact which Schapiro does his best to hide.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So while it would be possible to go through the thousands of pages of the 26 volumes of Proudhon\u2019s Oeuvres completes <\/em>(in the Lacriox edition), the 8 volumes of his Oeuvres posthumes<\/em>, the 14 volumes of correspondence and four volumes of his Carnets<\/em> to extract all anti-Semitic remarks and so create a small pamphlet, it would achieve very little other than save a neo-Nazi some time and effort. Proudhon\u2019s anti-Semitism was a personal bigotry, reflective of his culture and time, which played no role in his politics while he regularly raised ideas which rose above it:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

There 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.[112]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The best of Proudhon can be used to critique his worst and it should never be forgotten that almost all of Proudhon\u2019s writings (published, unpublished and private) could be read without coming across a single anti-Semitic utterance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So any neo-Nazi seeking inspiration in Proudhon\u2019s works after reading Schapiro would feel cheated. Even those who pay lip-service to decentralised ethnically pure communities would be horrified by Proudhon\u2019s advocacy of racial equality and mixing, his opposition to the expulsion of blacks from America as well as what became known as segregation. His few scattered anti-Semitic remarks would give little comfort.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Conclusions<\/em><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Articles about Proudhon usually tell us more about the authors and their political drives than about their subject. Rather than take the time to understand Proudhon and the era which shaped his views, commentators have tended to be dismissive of him and proclaim his ideas as contradictory. This, in turn, made it easy to treat any contradictions and inconsistencies in Schapiro\u2019s argument about Proudhon\u2019s alleged fascist tendencies as if they were Proudhon\u2019s instead. Likewise, while some may point to these very different interpretations as showing the much-asserted inherently contradictory nature of his ideas, in reality some interpretations are simply weak or baseless: Proudhon being claimed as both an anarchist and a fascist reflects nothing more than the quality and accuracy of the interpretations the is subject to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A hostile engagement with a thinker can be productive and shed light on the subject, one also driven by bad-faith is counter-productive and misleading. As shown, Schapiro\u2019s account of Proudhon\u2019s ideas was such an endeavour, expressed by invention, selective quoting, mistranslation and omission. He was clearly of the opinion that context \u2013 whether in terms of wider society, chronology, texts quoted or other relevant works by Proudhon \u2013 is a burden to both the writer and the reader. It is Schapiro himself who created the \u201csinister overtones that haunt his pages of which the present-day reader becomes aware\u201d (336) and Chiaromonte was right to argue that Schapiro had gone beyond \u201cmisunderstanding and lack of sympathy\u201d into \u201cbeing inexcusably devious, and should know much better.\u201d[113]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet without being championed as Schapiro was by Draper, Chiaromonte\u2019s article has been unfortunately forgotten. Indeed, in the 1980s Draper felt able to proclaim that he \u201cbasic study of Proudhon\u2019s authoritarian ideology was published by the liberal historian J. Salwyn Schapiro [. . .] After four decades, no one has even tried to refute it.\u201d[114]<\/a> Yet incisive as it was, Chiaromonte did not show the depths that Schapiro went to twisting Proudhon\u2019s ideas to fit into his thesis. So the main reason for the subsequent lack of engagement with Schapiro\u2019s \u201cbasic study\u201d was that no one familiar with Proudhon\u2019s ideas would take it seriously and, moreover, would appreciate how much work it would take to systematically debunk its many distortions and inventions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In short, bad faith and being spectacularly wrong has its advantages \u2013 particularly when discussing a thinker\u2019s whose ideas are relevantly unknown outwith their native tongue. This does not mean that Proudhon\u2019s ideas are somehow above criticism. Draper was, for example, right to critique and mock his repulsive and pathetic defences of patriarchy but he unsurprisingly erred by seeking to portray it as consistent with anarchism rather than \u2013 as Joseph D\u00e9jacque rightly argued \u2013 being in contradiction to it. Given Draper\u2019s influence in the Trotskyist-left, this makes debunking Schapiro relevant to all libertarians.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The best that can be said of Schapiro\u2019s work is that it based on an implicit de-contestation of the concepts he is discussing. Words like democracy, socialism, republic, association, and so on, do not have the single (bourgeois) definitions he assumes. For Schapiro democracy is the democratic State and socialism is State socialism and anyone who criticises these is opposed to both democracy and socialism \u2013 even if, like Proudhon, they constantly stress that they are both democrats and socialists while defending libertarian forms of these against authoritarian ones. As Proudhon put it in 1863:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

Whoever says republic, says federation, or says nothing;<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

\n

Whoever says socialism, says federation, or yet again says nothing.[115]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Once this is understood, the confusion that Louis Blanc, for example, felt as regards Proudhon\u2019s ideas is understandable for he was a Jacobin who desired a centralised, unitarian, \u201cOne and Indivisible\u201d Republic and a Socialist who desired centralised, State owned and controlled non-market economy. Someone like Proudhon who advocated a republic based on socio-economic federalism as well as a socialism based on workers\u2019 control within a market economy of peasants, artisans and workers\u2019 associations would obviously puzzle him as it went against his assumptions of what Socialist Democracy meant. Likewise, Proudhon pointed out that certain ideas would fail to produce their stated goals. Instead of popular sovereignty, Statist democracy would empower a few politicians and bureaucrats; instead of ending exploitation, Statist socialism would change the exploiter from the boss to the bureaucrat. Rather than show Proudhon\u2019s opposition to socialism or democracy, it shows his opposition to very specific forms of both and, in this, latter anarchists like Bakunin, Kropotkin and Tucker followed him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Once the extent of Schapiro\u2019s bad-faith is understood, then \u2013 for all his failings \u2013 Proudhon can be seen for what he is: the harbinger of anarchism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

End Notes<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

[1]<\/a> Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, \u201cWhat is Property?\u201d, Property is Theft! A Pierre-Joseph Proudhon Anthology<\/em> (Oakland\/Edinburgh: AK Press, 2011), Iain McKay (ed.), 133.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[2]<\/a> J. Salwyn Schapiro, \u201cPierre Joseph Proudhon, Harbinger of Fascism\u201d, The American Historical Review <\/em>50: 4 (July 1945).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[3]<\/a> J. Salwyn Schapiro, Liberalism and the Challenge of Fascism: Social Forces in England 1815-1870<\/em> (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1949).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[4]<\/a> E.H. Carr, \u201cProudhon: Robinson Crusoe of Socialism\u201d, Studies in Revolution<\/em> (London: Macmillan, 1950), 40.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[5]<\/a> George Lichtheim, The Origins of Socialism<\/em> (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1969), 86; Paul Thomas, Karl Marx and the anarchists<\/em> (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1980), 186.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[6]<\/a> The Two Souls of Socialism<\/em>, (Berkeley: Independent Socialist Committee, 1966), 10-11. He added his own (non-referenced) quotations into the mix: \u201cFor Proudhon, see the chapter in J.S. Schapiro\u2019s Liberalism and the Challenge of Fascism<\/em>, and Proudhon\u2019s Carnets<\/em>\u201d. (27) Much reprinted, this pamphlet was included in a collection of his writings entitled Socialism From Below<\/em> (Alameda: Center for Socialist History, 2001).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[7]<\/a> David McNally, Socialism from Below: The History of an Idea<\/em> (Chicago: International Socialist Organisation, 1984).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[8]<\/a> Alan Johnson, \u201cDemocratic Marxism: The Legacy of Hal Draper\u201d, Marxism, the Millennium and Beyond<\/em> (New York: Palgrave, 2000), Mark Cowling and Paul Reynolds (eds.), 202.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[9]<\/a> Nicola Chiaromonte, \u201cPierre-Joseph Proudhon: an uncomfortable thinker\u201d, Politics<\/em> (January 1946).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[10]<\/a> Robert L. Hoffman, Revolutionary Justice: The Social and Political Theory of P.-J. Proudhon<\/em> (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1972), 204.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[11]<\/a> Steven K. Vincent, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and the Rise of French Republican Socialism<\/em> [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984), 234.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[12]<\/a> Alex Prichard, Justice, Order and Anarchy: The International Political Theory of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon<\/em> (London: Routledge, 2013), 171.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[13]<\/a> Schapiro draws most from Proudhon\u2019s correspondence (22 references) followed by La R\u00e9volution sociale d\u00e9montr\u00e9e par le coup d\u2019\u00c9tat du 2 d\u00e9cembre <\/em>(14 references) and so hardly representative of his writings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[14]<\/a> Correspondance de P.-J. Proudhon<\/em> (Paris: Lacroix, 1875) XI: 196.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[15]<\/a> Correspondance<\/em> XI: 197.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[16]<\/a> Correspondance<\/em> XI: 197.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[17]<\/a> \u201cLa Guerre et la paix\u201d, Oeuvres compl\u00e8tes<\/em> (Paris: Rivi\u00e8re, 1927) VI: 506.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[18]<\/a> \u201cSi les trait\u00e9s de 1815 ont cess\u00e9 d\u2019exister ? : actes du futur congr\u00e8s\u201d, Oeuvres compl\u00e8tes <\/em>(Paris: Rivi\u00e8re, 1952) XIII: 417, 412, 426-7.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[19]<\/a> Also see Prichard\u2019s discussion of Proudhon\u2019s views on Poland (59-64). Nor does Schapiro explain why a proto-fascist would be opposed to nationalism nor why one would seek to federalise all nations, including France (Prichard, 57-8).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[20]<\/a> Correspondance<\/em> XI: 198.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[21]<\/a> Arthur Desjardins, P.-J. Proudhon:<\/em> sa vie, ses \u0153uvres, sa doctrine<\/em> (Paris: Perrin, 1896). It should be noted that in the pages Schapiro references (II: 214ff), Desjardins had no doubt that Proudhon was an anarchist and links his ideas on federalism to later anarchists like Bakunin, Reclus and Kropotkin as well as the Paris Commune.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[22]<\/a> \u201cJustice in the Revolution and in the Church\u201d, Property is Theft!<\/em>, 676-7. It should also be noted that immediately before this, Proudhon dismissed dictatorship out of hand (676).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[23]<\/a> \u201cLes confessions d\u2019un r\u00e9volutionnaire pour servir \u00e0 l\u2019histoire de la r\u00e9volution de f\u00e9vrier\u201d, Oeuvres compl\u00e8tes<\/em> (Paris: Rivi\u00e8re, 1929) VII: 185.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[24]<\/a>\u201cSolution to the Social Problem\u201d, Property is Theft!<\/em>, 278, 267, 280.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[25]<\/a> \u201cSolution to the Social Problem\u201d, 273; Also see, \u201cElection Manifesto of Le Peuple<\/em>\u201d, Property is Theft!<\/em>, 379.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[26]<\/a> \u201cLes d\u00e9mocrates asserment\u00e9s et les r\u00e9fractaires\u201d, Oeuvres compl\u00e8tes<\/em> XIII: 84.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[27]<\/a> Syst\u00e8me des contradictions \u00e9conomiques ou Philosophie de la mis\u00e8re<\/em> (Paris: Guillaumin, 1846) I: 357.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[28]<\/a> \u201cLes d\u00e9mocrates asserment\u00e9s\u201d, 86.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[29]<\/a> \u201cLa R\u00e9volution sociale d\u00e9montr\u00e9e par le coup d\u2019\u00c9tat du 2 d\u00e9cembre\u201d, Oeuvres compl\u00e8tes<\/em> (Paris: Rivi\u00e8re, 1936) IX: 135.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[30]<\/a> \u201cDu Principe F\u00e9d\u00e9ratif et de la n\u00e9cessit\u00e9 de reconstituer le parti de la r\u00e9volution\u201d, Oeuvres compl\u00e8tes<\/em> (Paris: Rivi\u00e8re, 1959) XV: 544, 545-6, 318. Also see, \u201cThe Political Capacity of the Working Classes\u201d, Property is Theft!<\/em>, 760-1.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[31]<\/a> Aaron Noland, \u201cProudhon and Rousseau\u201d, Journal of the History of Ideas<\/em>, Vol. 28, No. 1 (January-March 1967), 51, 54.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[32]<\/a> \u201cM\u00e9langes: Articles de Journaux 1848-1852 III\u201d, \u0152uvres compl\u00e8tes de P.-J. Proudhon<\/em> (Paris: Lacroix, 1871) XIX: 32.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[33]<\/a> \u201cLa R\u00e9volution sociale\u201d, 112.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[34]<\/a> \u201cLa R\u00e9volution sociale\u201d, 215.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[35]<\/a> \u201cLa R\u00e9volution sociale\u201d, 202, 287.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[36]<\/a> William H. George, \u201cProudhon and Economic Federalism\u201d, Journal of Political Economy<\/em> 30: 4 (August 1922), 537.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[37]<\/a> \u201cLa R\u00e9volution sociale\u201d, 266.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[38]<\/a> As regards the former, the \u201corganisation of popular societies was the pivot of democracy, the cornerstone of republican order\u201d for \u201c[u]nder the name of clubs, or any other you please to use, it is a matter of the organisation of universal suffrage in all its forms, of the very structure of Democracy itself.\u201d (\u201cConfessions of a Revolutionary\u201d, Property is Theft!<\/em>, 407, 461).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[39]<\/a> \u201cThe Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte\u201d, Marx-Engels Collected Works<\/em> (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1979) XI: 187.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[40]<\/a> \u201cLa R\u00e9volution sociale\u201d, 294.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[41]<\/a> \u201cLa R\u00e9volution sociale\u201d, 170-1, 269, 258, 274.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[42]<\/a> \u201cLa Guerre et la paix\u201d, 293. This work also sees Proudhon counting himself amongst the \u201crepublicans and socialists of 1848\u201d and describing himself \u201cas a democrat\u201d. (6, 10)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[43]<\/a> \u201cLa R\u00e9volution sociale\u201d, 268, 266.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[44]<\/a> Property is Theft!<\/em>, 397, 475, 381.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[45]<\/a> \u201cLa R\u00e9volution sociale\u201d, 258, 274.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[46]<\/a> Alan Ritter, The Political Thought of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon<\/em> (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969), 188-9.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[47]<\/a> John Ehrenberg, Proudhon and His Age<\/em> (Amherst, New York: Humanity Books, 1996), 129.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[48]<\/a> \u201cLa R\u00e9volution sociale\u201d, 113. Lest we forget, he had made the same demand of the National Assembly in 1848 and received a similar response.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[49]<\/a> \u201cThe Constitution and the Presidency\u201d, Property is Theft!<\/em>, 370.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[50]<\/a> Franz Neumann, Behemoth: the structure and practice of national socialism 1933-1944<\/em> (New York: Oxford University Press, 1942), 320-1.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[51]<\/a> Syst\u00e8me des contradictions \u00e9conomiques<\/em> II: 396.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[52]<\/a> \u201cSystem of Economic Contradictions\u201d, Property is Theft!<\/em>, 205. Proudon\u2019s returned to the \u201cfrom below\u201d and \u201cfrom above\u201d perspectives, which Draper utilised without acknowledgment, in Confessions of a Revolutionary<\/em> (Property is Theft!<\/em>, 398-9).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[53]<\/a> Les Confessions<\/em>, 200.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[54]<\/a> \u201cM\u00e9langes: Articles de Journaux 1848-1852 III\u201d, \u0152uvres compl\u00e8tes de P.-J. Proudhon<\/em> (Paris: Lacroix, 1871) XIX: 118.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[55]<\/a> \u201cThe members of a community, it is true, have no private property; but the community is proprietor, and proprietor not only of the goods, but of the persons and wills.\u201d (Proudhon, \u201cWhat is Property?\u201d, Property is Theft!<\/em>, 131)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[56]<\/a> \u201cAddress to the Constituent National Assembly\u201d, Property is Theft!<\/em>, 349, 345.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[57]<\/a> \u201cWhat is Property?\u201d, Property is Theft!<\/em>, 136, 130 (although \u201ccommunity\u201d is translated as \u201ccommunism\u201d).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[58]<\/a> Iain McKay, \u201cProudhon, Property and Possession,\u201d Anarcho-Syndicalist Review<\/em> 66 (Winter 2016), 26-29.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[59]<\/a> Nor does Proudhon use the term troisi\u00e8me forme de soci\u00e9t\u00e9<\/em> on the page Schapiro references. It cannot be a coincidence that \u201cThird Reich\u201d could be, with sufficient perseverance, translated as troisi\u00e8me monde<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[60]<\/a> \u201cSystem of Economic Contradictions\u201d, Property is Theft!<\/em>, 202.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[61]<\/a> Extracts from all these works, including relevant sections on workers\u2019 associations, are included in Property is Theft!<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[62]<\/a> \u201cStock Exchange Speculator\u2019s Manual\u201d, Property is Theft!<\/em>, 610.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[63]<\/a> Vincent, 140-165.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[64]<\/a> Daniel Gu\u00e9rin, \u201cFrom Proudhon to Bakunin\u201d, The Radical Papers <\/em>(Montr\u00e9al: Black Rose, 1987), Dimitrios I. Roussopoulos (ed.), 32; Daniel Gu\u00e9rin, Anarchism: From Theory to Practice<\/em> (New York\/London: Monthly Review Press, 1970), 44-9.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[65]<\/a> \u201cElection Manifesto of Le Peuple<\/em>\u201d, Property is Theft!<\/em>, 377-8.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[66]<\/a> \u201cLetter to Louis Blanc\u201d, Property is Theft!<\/em>, 296-7.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[67]<\/a> These articles are included in Oeuvres compl\u00e8tes<\/em> (Paris: Rivi\u00e8re, 1923) II along with \u201cId\u00e9e g\u00e9n\u00e9rale de la R\u00e9volution au dix-neuvi\u00e8me si\u00e8cle\u201d. A few of these articles are contained in Property is Theft!<\/em> (\u201cResistance to the Revolution,\u201d \u201cLetter to Pierre Leroux,\u201d and \u201cIn Connection with Louis Blanc\u201d) while another has been published elsewhere: \u201cRegarding Louis Blanc: The Present Utility and Future Possibility of the State,\u201d Anarcho-Syndicalist Review<\/em> 66 (Winter 2016).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[68]<\/a> Ehrenberg, 116.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[69]<\/a> Peter Kropotkin, Modern Science and Anarchy<\/em> (Chico\/Edinburgh: AK Press, 2018), 205; Also see, 227.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[70]<\/a> Iain McKay, \u201cProudhon\u2019s Constituted Value and the Myth of Labour Notes,\u201d Anarchist Studies<\/em> 25: 1 (Summer 2017).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[71]<\/a> For good introductions to this book and its major themes, see Prichard (2013).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[72]<\/a> \u201cLa Guerre et la paix\u201d, 49.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[73]<\/a> Correspondance de P.-J. Proudhon<\/em> (Paris: Lacroix, 1875) XI: 118-9.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[74]<\/a> \u201cLa Guerre et la paix\u201d, 326, 465.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[75]<\/a> \u201cLa Guerre et la paix\u201d, 477, 485, 498, 487.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[76]<\/a> \u201cLa Guerre et la paix\u201d, 508, 507, 503, 506, 540.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[77]<\/a> \u201cGeneral Idea of the Revolution\u201d, Property is Theft!<\/em>, 592.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[78]<\/a> \u201cThe Federative Principle\u201d, Property is Theft!<\/em>, 719.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[79]<\/a> New York Times<\/em>, 2 September 1861.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[80]<\/a> Bart de Ligt, The conquest of violence: an essay on war and revolution<\/em> (London: G. Routledge & Sons, 1937), 76.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[81]<\/a> Prichard; 132-3; George Woodcock, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon: A Biography<\/em> (Montreal: Black Rose: 1987), 233-5; Hoffman, 262-6; Ehrenberg, 143-5.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[82]<\/a> Erik van Ree, \u201cMarx and Engels\u2019s theory of history: making sense of the race factor\u201d, Journal of Political Ideologies<\/em>, vol. 24 no. 1, 66, 67.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[83]<\/a> Roman Rosdolsky, \u201cEngels and the \u2018Nonhistoric\u2019 Peoples: The National Question in the Revolution of 1848\u201d, Critique: Journal of Socialist Theory<\/em> 18\/19 (1986). This provides an excellent overview, although Rosdolsky tries to downplay the ethnic cleansing aspects of Engels\u2019 articles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[84]<\/a> John Stuart Mill, \u201cConsiderations on Representative Government\u201d, The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill<\/em> (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1977) XIX: 418-9, 549.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[85]<\/a> \u201cOn Liberty\u201d, The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill<\/em> (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1977) XVIII: 224.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[86]<\/a> John Stuart Mill, \u201cA Few Words on Non-Intervention,\u201d The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill<\/em> (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1984) XXI: 118.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[87]<\/a> Schapiro dispassionately recounts Mill expressing views which are heatedly denounced as proto-fascist when Proudhon utters them. Why similar notions provoke different responses when written in French rather than English is not explained.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[88]<\/a> Don Habibi, \u201cThe Moral Dimensions of J. S. Mill\u2019s Colonialism\u201d, Journal of Social Philosophy<\/em> 30: 1 (Spring 1999); Beate Jahn, \u201cBarbarian Thoughts: Imperialism in the Philosophy of John Stuart Mill\u201d, Review of International Studies<\/em> 31: 3 (July 2005).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[89]<\/a> \u201cLa Guerre et la paix\u201d, 179.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[90]<\/a> \u201cLa Guerre et la paix\u201d, 167.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[91]<\/a> \u201cLa Guerre et la paix\u201d, 179.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[92]<\/a> \u201cLa Guerre et la paix\u201d, 178.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[93]<\/a> \u201cLa Guerre et la paix\u201d, 179-80.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[94]<\/a> \u201cThe Principle of Federation\u201d, Property is Theft!<\/em>, 698-9.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[95]<\/a> \u201cThe Principle of Federation\u201d, 699.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[96]<\/a> Howard Zinn, Chapter 9, A People\u2019s History of the United States: 1492-Present <\/em>(New York: HarperCollins Books, 2003). This is reflected in Proudhon\u2019s letters in which he noted \u201cthe care taken by the North not to speak of slaves, and thereby to retain a part of the southern States\u201d while the South demanded \u201cseparation\u201d in order to \u201cmaintain the slavery without which they pretend not to be able to live\u201d. (Correspondance de P.-J. Proudhon<\/em> [Paris: Lacroix, 1875] XII: 17, 80) If the South were \u201cbrazen slavers\u201d, the North are \u201chypocritical exploiters\u201d and both share a \u201chorror\u201d of different races expressed in the former \u201cwho exploit blacks\u201d and the latter \u201cwho exterminate the Redskins\u201d. (Correspondance de P.-J. Proudhon<\/em> [Paris: Lacroix, 1875] XIV: 277, 77-8)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[97]<\/a> Phillip W. Magness and Sebastian N. Page, Colonization after Emancipation: Lincoln and the Movement for Black Resettlement<\/em> (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2011).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[98]<\/a> \u201cDu Principe F\u00e9d\u00e9ratif \u201c, 538, 539-40, 542.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[99]<\/a> \u201cDu Principe F\u00e9d\u00e9ratif\u201d, 535.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[100]<\/a> \u201cDu Principe F\u00e9d\u00e9ratif\u201d, 536, 539-40.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[101]<\/a> Ralph Nelson, \u201cThe Federal Idea in French Political Thought\u201d, Publius<\/em> (Summer 1975) 5: 3, 41<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[102]<\/a> Nelson, 43.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[103]<\/a> Joseph D\u00e9jacque, \u201cLa Guerre Servile\u201d, \u00c0 bas les chefs! \u00c9crits libertaires (1847-1863) <\/em>(Paris: La Fabrique, 2016), 186-191.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[104]<\/a> Quoted by Zinn, 196-7.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[105]<\/a> W.E.B. DuBois, Black Reconstruction in America: Toward a History of the Part Which Black Folk Played in the Attempt to Reconstruct Democracy in America, 1860-1880<\/em> (New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 2013), 26.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[106]<\/a> \u201cDu Principe F\u00e9d\u00e9ratif\u201d, 541.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[107]<\/a> Benjamin R. Tucker, \u201cLego et Penso: Proudhon and Royalism\u201d, The New Freewoman: An Individualist Review<\/em>, Vol. 1 No. 8 (10 October 1913), 156-7.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[108]<\/a> \u201cLa R\u00e9volution sociale\u201d, 283.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[109]<\/a> \u201cEthics: Origin and Development\u201d, Direct Struggle Against Capital: A Peter Kropotkin Anthology<\/em> (Edinburgh\/Oakland\/Baltimore: AK Press, 2014), Iain McKay (ed.), 218.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[110]<\/a> Joseph D\u00e9jacque, \u201cDe l\u2019\u00eatre-humain m\u00e2le et femelle \u2013 Lettre \u00e0 P.J. Proudhon\u201d, \u00c0 bas les chefs!<\/em>, 119, 118.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[111]<\/a> Andr\u00e9 L\u00e9o, La Femme et les M\u0153urs : monarchie ou libert\u00e9<\/em> (Paris: au journal Le Droit des femmes<\/em>, 1869), 128.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[112]<\/a> \u201cGeneral Idea of the Revolution in the Nineteenth Century\u201d, Property is Theft!<\/em>, 597.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[113]<\/a> Chiaromonte, 28.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[114]<\/a> Hal Draper, Women and Class: Towards A Socialist Feminism<\/em> (Alameda: Center for Socialist History, 2011), 181-2.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[115]<\/a> Proudhon, \u201cDu Principe F\u00e9d\u00e9ratif\u201d, 383-4.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 \u2013 for all his faults \u2013 an anarchist. It appeared in Black […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-68","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anarchisthistory","category-proudhon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/anarchistfaq.org\/anarcho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/anarchistfaq.org\/anarcho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/anarchistfaq.org\/anarcho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anarchistfaq.org\/anarcho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anarchistfaq.org\/anarcho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=68"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/anarchistfaq.org\/anarcho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":69,"href":"https:\/\/anarchistfaq.org\/anarcho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68\/revisions\/69"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/anarchistfaq.org\/anarcho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anarchistfaq.org\/anarcho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anarchistfaq.org\/anarcho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}