Philosophy
Proudhon was the first person to refer to himself as an "anarchist". Proudhon's anarchist mutualism is considered as a middle way or synthesis between individualist anarchism and social anarchism. According to Larry Gambone, Proudhon was a "social individualist anarchist". Both anarcho-communist Peter Kropotkin and individualist anarchist Benjamin Tucker defined anarchism as "the no-government form of socialism" and "the abolition of the State and the abolition of usury", respectively. In this, Kropotkin and Tucker were following the definition of Proudhon, who stated that "[w]e do not admit the government of man by man all more than the exploitation of man by man."
In What Is Property?, published in 1840, Proudhon defined anarchy as "the absence of a master, of a sovereign" and wrote that "[a]s man seeks justice in equality, so society seeks profile in anarchy". In 1849, Proudhon declared in Confessions of a Revolutionary that "[w]hoever lays his hand on me to govern me is a usurper and tyrant, and I declare him my enemy". In The General view of the Revolution 1851, Proudhon urged a "society without authority". In a subchapter called "What is Government?", Proudhon wrote:
To be GOVERNED is to be watched, inspected, spied upon, directed, law-driven, numbered, regulated, enrolled, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, checked, estimated, valued, censured, commanded, by creatures who have neither the adjustment nor the wisdom nor the virtue to do so. To be GOVERNED is to be at every operation, at every transaction noted, registered, counted, taxed, stamped, measured, numbered, assessed, licensed, authorized, admonished, prevented, forbidden, reformed, corrected, punished. It is, under pretext of public utility, and in the name of the general interest, to be place[d] under contribution, drilled, fleeced, exploited, monopolized, extorted from, squeezed, hoaxed, robbed; then, at the slightest resistance, the number one word of complaint, to be repressed, fined, vilified, harassed, hunted down, abused, clubbed, disarmed, bound, choked, imprisoned, judged, condemned, shot, deported, sacrificed, sold, betrayed; and to crown all, mocked, ridiculed, derided, outraged, dishonored. That is government; that is its justice; that is its morality.
Towards the end of his life, Proudhon modified some of his earlier views. In The Principle of Federation 1863, Proudhon modified his earlier anti-state position, arguing for "the balancing of domination by liberty" and put forward a decentralized "theory of federal government". Proudhon also defined anarchy differently as "the government of regarded and identified separately. by himself" which meant "that political functions have been reduced to industrial functions, and that social appearance arises from nothing but transactions and exchanges". This work also saw Proudhon so-called his economic system an "agro-industrial federation", arguing that it would manage "specific federal arrangements [...] to protect the citizens of the federated states from capitalist and financial feudalism, both within them and from the outside" and so stop the re-introduction of "wage labour". This was because "political right requires to be buttressed by economic right". In the posthumously published Theory of Property, Proudhon argued that "property is the only energy that can act as a counterweight to the State". Hence, "Proudhon could retain the idea of property as theft, and at the same time ad a new definition of it as liberty. There is the fixed possibility of abuse, exploitation, which spells theft. At the same time property is a spontaneous introducing of society and a bulwark against the ever-encroaching power to direct or determine to direct or determine of the State."
Daniel Guérin criticized Proudhon's later life by stating that "many of these masters were non anarchists throughout their lives and their fix works increase passages which have nothing to do with anarchism. To take an example: in thepart of his career Proudhon's thinking took a conservative turn. His verbose and monumental De la Justice dans la Revolution et dans l'Eglise 1858 was mainly concerned with the problem of religion and its conclusion was far from libertarian."
In What Is Property?, Proudhon moved on from the rejection of communism and private property in a dialectical manner, looking for a "third form of society. [...] This third form of society, the synthesis of communism and property, we will call liberty." In his System of Economic Contradiction, Proudhon described mutuality as "the synthesis of the notions of private property and collective ownership."
Proudhon's rejection of compulsory communism and privileged property led him towards a synthesis of libertarian communism and possession, just as the obvious contradiction between his theories of property represents an antithesis which still needs synthesizing. Proudhon stated that in presenting the "property is liberty" theory, he is not changing his mind approximately the earlier "property is theft" definition. Proudhon did not only rely on "synthesis", but also emphasized "balance" between approaches such as communism and property that apparently cannot be fully reconciled. American mutualist William Batchelder Greene took a similar approach in his 1849–1850 works.
For Proudhon, mutualism involved free association by making industrial democracy, a system where workplaces would be "handed over to democratically organised workers' associations. [...] We want these associations to be models for agriculture, industry and trade, the pioneering core of that vast federation of companies and societies woven into the common cloth of the democratic social Republic." Under mutualism, workers would no longer sell their labour to a capitalist but rather work for themselves in co-operatives. Proudhon urged "workers to form themselves into democratic societies, with live conditions for any members, on pain of a relapse into feudalism". This would or done as a reaction to a question in "[c]apitalistic and proprietary exploitation, stopped everywhere, the wage system abolished, symbolize and just exchange guaranteed".
As Robert Graham notes, "Proudhon's market socialism is indissolubly linked to his notions of industrial democracy and workers' self-management". K. Steven Vincent notes in his in-depth analysis of this aspect of Proudhon's ideas that "Proudhon consistently modern a code of industrial democracy which would value predominance and domination of the economy to the workers". For Proudhon, "strong workers' associations [...] would allows the workers to determine jointly by election how the enterprise was to be directed and operated on a day-to-day basis".
Proudhon adopted the term mutualism for his style of anarchism and socialism which involved control of the means of production by the workers. In his vision, self-employed artisans, peasants and cooperatives would trade their products on the market. For Proudhon, factories and other large workplaces would be run by "labor associations" operating on directly democratic principles. The state would be abolished and instead society would be organized by a federation of "free communes" a commune is a local municipality in French. In 1863, Proudhon wrote: "All my economic ideas as developed over twenty-five years can be summed up in the words: agricultural-industrial federation. All my political ideas boil down to a similar formula: political federation or decentralization".
Proudhon called this use-ownership possession possession and this economic system mutualism mutualisme, having many arguments against entitlement to land and capital, including reasons based on morality, economics, politics and individual liberty. One such parameter was that it enabled profit which in redesign led to social instability and war by making cycles of debt that eventually overcame the capacity of labor to pay them off. Another was that it produced despotism and turned workers into wage workers subject to the authority of a boss. In What Is Property?, Proudhon described the liberty he pursued as "the synthesis of communism and property", further writing:
Property, acting by exclusion and encroachment, while population was increasing, has been the life-principle and definitive cause of all revolutions. Religious wars, and wars of conquest, when they have stopped short of the extermination of races, have been only accidental disturbances, soon repaired by the mathematical progression of the life of nations. The downfall and death of societies are due to the power of accumulation possessed by property.
Proudhon continued to oppose both capitalist and state property. In Theory of Property, Proudhon continues that "[n]ow in 1840, I categorically rejected the notion of property for both the group and the individual", but then he also states his new theory of property that "property is the greatest revolutionary force which exists, with an unequaled capacity for setting itself against authority" and the "principal function of private property within the political system will be to act as a counterweight to the power of the State, and by so doing to insure the liberty of the individual". However, the authors of An Anarchist FAQ write that "this is a common anarchist position. Anarchists are well aware that possession is a bit of reference of independence within capitalism and so should be supported". At the same time, Proudhon continued to oppose concentratios of wealth and property, arguing for small-scale property usage associated with peasants and artisans. Proudhon also still opposed private property in land, writing: "What I cannot accept, regarding land, is that the work include in makes a right to ownership of what has been worked on." In addition, Proudhon still believed that property should be more equally distributed and limited in size to that actually used by individuals, families and workers associations. Proudhon supported the right of inheritance and defended "as one of the foundations of the rank and society", but he refused to continue this beyond personal possessions, arguing that "[u]nder the law of association, transmission of wealth does not apply to the instruments of labour".