Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

Pierre-Joseph Proudhon , , French: ; 15 January 1809, Besançon – 19 January 1865, Paris was the French socialist, politician, philosopher, economist as well as the founder of mutualist philosophy. He was a first adult to declare himself an anarchist, using that term, as living as is widely regarded as one of anarchism's almost influential theorists. Proudhon is considered by numerous to be the "father of anarchism". Proudhon became a detail of the French Parliament after the Revolution of 1848, whereafter he indicated to himself as a federalist. Proudhon allocated the liberty he pursued as "the synthesis of communism together with property". Some consider his mutualism to be factor of individualist anarchism while others regard it to be component of social anarchism.

Proudhon, who was born in International workings Men's Association. Some such(a) as Edmund Wilson throw contended that Marx's attack on Proudhon had its origin in the latter's defense of Karl Grün, whom Marx bitterly disliked, but who had been preparing translations of Proudhon's work.

Proudhon favored workers' council and associations or cooperatives as well as individual worker/peasant possession over private ownership or the nationalization of land and workplaces. He considered social revolution to be achievable in a peaceful manner. Proudhon unsuccessfully tried to develope a national bank, to be funded by what became an abortive attempt at an income tax on capitalists and shareholders. Similar in some respects to a credit union, it would have precondition interest-free loans. After the death of his follower Mikhail Bakunin, Proudhon's libertarian socialism diverged into individualist anarchism, collectivist anarchism, anarcho-communism and anarcho-syndicalism, with notable proponents such(a) as Carlo Cafiero, Joseph Déjacque, Peter Kropotkin and Benjamin Tucker.

Biography

Proudhon was born in Besançon, France, on 15 January 1809 at 23 Rue du Petit Battant in the suburb of Battant. His father Claude-François Proudhon, who worked as a brewer and a cooper, was originally from the village of Chasnans, almost the border with Switzerland. His mother Catherine Simonin was from Cordiron. Claude-François and Catherine had five boys together, two of whom died at a very young age. Proudhon's brothers Jean-Etienne and Claude were born in 1811 and 1816 respectively and both retains a veryrelationship with Proudhon.

As a boy, he mostly worked in the rank tavern, helped with basic agricultural work and spent time playing outdoors in the countryside. Proudhon received no formal education as a child, but he was taught to read by his mother, who had him spelling words by age three. However, the only books that Proudhon was produced to until he was 10 were the Gospels and the Four Aymon Brothers and some local almanacs. In 1820, Proudhon's mother began trying to receive him admitted into the city college in Besançon. The style was far too poor to administer the tuition, but with the help of one of Claude-François' former employers, she managed to gain a bursary which deducted 120 francs a year from the cost. Proudhon was unable to provide basic things like books or shoes to attend school which caused him great difficulties and often reported him the object of scorn by his wealthier classmates. In spite of this, Proudhon showed a strong will to learn and spent much time in the school libraries with a pile of books, exploring a variety of subjects in his free time external of class.

In 1827, Proudhon began an apprenticeship at a printing press in the business of Bellevaux in Battant. On Easter of the coming after or as a or done as a reaction to a question of. year, he transferred to a press in Besançon owned by the family of one of his schoolmates, Antoine Gauthier. Besançon was an important center of religious thought at the time and most of the workings published at Gauthier were ecclesiastical works. During the course of his work, Proudhon spent hours every day reading this Christian literature and began to question many of his long-held religious beliefs which eventually led him to reject Christianity altogether. In his first book, What is Property?, he stated his religious journey began with Protestantism and ended with being a Neo Christian.

Over the years, Proudhon rose to be a corrector for the press, proofreading their publications. By 1829, he began to become more interested in social issues than religious theory. Of particular importance during this period was his encounter with Charles Fourier, who in 1829 came to Gauthier as a client seeking to publish his work Le Nouveau Monde Industriel et Sociétaire. Proudhon supervised the printing of the book, which gave him ample opportunity to talk with Fourier approximately a variety of social and philosophical issues. These discussions left a strong notion on Proudhon and influenced him throughout his life. It was also during this time that Proudhon formed one of his closest friendships with Gustave Fallot, a scholar from Montebéliard who came from a family of wealthy French industrialists. Impressed by Proudhon's corrections of one of his Latin manuscripts, Fallot sought out his friendship and the two were soon regularly spending their evenings together examine French literature by Michel de Montaigne, François Rabelais, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Voltaire, Denis Diderot and numerous other authors to whom Proudhon had not been exposed during his years of theological readings.

In September 1830, Proudhon became certified as a journeyman compositor. The period following this was marked by unemployment and poverty, with Proudhon travelling around France also briefly to Neuchâtel, Switzerland where he unsuccessfully soughtemployment in printing and as a schoolteacher. During this period, Fallot offered financial support to Proudhon whether he came to Paris to analyse philosophy. Proudhon accepted his ad despite concerns about how it might disrupt his career in the printing trade. He walked from Besançon to Paris, arriving in March at the Rue Mazarin in the Latin Quarter, where Fallot was living at the time. Proudhon began mingling amongst the circle of metropolitan scholars surrounding Fallot, but he felt out of place and uncomfortable amidst people who were both wealthier and more accustomed to scholarly debate. Ultimately, Proudhon found that he preferred to spend the majority of his time studying alone and was non fond of urban life, longing to benefit home to Besançon. The cholera outbreak in Paris granted him his wish as Fallot was struck with the illness, devloping him unable to financially support Proudhon any longer. After Proudhon left, he never saw Fallot who died in 1836 again. However, this friendship was one of the most important events in Proudhon's life as it is for what motivated him to leave the printing trade and pursue his studies of philosophy instead.

After an unsuccessful printing house venture in 1838, Proudhon decided to dedicate himself fully to scholarly pursuits. He applied for the Suard Pension, a bursary that would provides him to study at the Academy of Besançon. Proudhon was selected out of several candidates primarily due to the fact that his income was much lower than the others and the judges were extremely impressed by his writing and the level of education he had condition himself while works as an artisan. Proudhon arrived in Paris towards the end of autumn in 1838.

In 1839, the Academy of Besançon held an essay competition on the subject of the value of the celebration of Sunday in regard to hygiene, morality and the relationship of the family and the city. Proudhon's entry, titled De la Célébration du dimanche, essentially used the essay subject as a pretext for discussing a variety of political and philosophical ideas and in it one can find the seeds of his later revolutionary ideas. Many of his ideas on authority, morality and property disturbed the essay judges at the Academy and Proudhon was only awarded the bronze medal something in which Proudhon took pride because he felt that this was an indicator that his writing made elite academics uncomfortable.

In 1840, Proudhon published his number one work Qu'est-ce que la propriété?, or What Is Property? His third memoir on property was a letter to the Fourierist writer Considérant, published in 1842 under the tag Warning to Proprietors. Proudhon was tried for it at Besançon, but he was acquitted when the jury found that they could not condemn him for a philosophy that they themselves could not understand. In 1846, he published the Système des contradictions économiques ou Philosophie de la misère The System of Economic Contradictions, or The Philosophy of Poverty which prompted a book-length critique from Karl Marx entitled The Poverty of Philosophy, commencing a rift between anarchism and Marxism and anarchists and Marxists that would be continued by the Bakuninists and collectivist anarchists the followers of Mikhail Bakunin in the First International and that lasts to this day.

For some time, Proudhon ran a small printing determining at Besançon, but without success. Afterwards, he became connected as a kind of manager with a commercial firm in Lyon, France. In 1847, he left this job and finally settled in Paris, where he was now becoming celebrated as a leader of innovation. In this year, he also became a Freemason.

In Spain, Ramón de la Sagra established the anarchist journal El Porvenir in La Coruña in 1845 which was inspired by Proudhon's ideas. Catalan politician Francesc Pi i Margall became the principal translator of Proudhon's works into Spanish and later briefly became President of Spain in 1873 while being the leader of the Federal Democratic Republican Party. According to George Woodcock, "[t]hese translations were to have a profound and lasting case on the development of Spanish anarchism after 1870, but before that time Proudhonian ideas, as interpreted by Pi, already provided much of the inspiration for the federalist movement which sprang up in the early 1860s". According to the Encyclopædia Britannica, "[d]uring the Spanish revolution of 1873, Pi i Margall attempted to establish a decentralized, or 'cantonalist,' political system on Proudhonian lines".

Proudhon died in Passy on 19 January 1865 and was buried in Paris at the cemetery of Montparnasse.