Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 26, 2025
This was in 1843, thus shortly after the appearance of Proudhon's sensational book on property, where the word was first definitely adopted as the badge of a party. Hess was born at Bonn in 1812, and was meant for a merchant's life, but turned his attention to studies picked up later, more especially to Hegelian philosophy, and entered upon the career of literature.
Among these is a Catechism of Modern Freemasonry, the Revolutionary Catechisms, not to be compared with the later catechism of Netschajew, which was wrongly ascribed to Bakunin; also the wordy essay on Federation, Socialism, and Anti-theology, which as a proposal designed for the central committee of the League of Freedom and Peace at Geneva, but never published, presents a short reprint of Proudhon's Justice; and lastly, a fragment published in 1882 by C. Cafiero and Elisée Reclus, after his manuscript, Dieu et l'État, which seems intended to lay a philosophic foundation for Bakunin's Anarchism.
He is apparently a philanthropist of the purest water, wishing to see the foundation of an universal brotherhood of humanity, based upon what he regards as the innate feeling of solidarity in man; we seem to see in this Proudhon's "justice," Comte's "love," in short, the moral order of the world, however materialist Kropotkin may be in action, and however much he may deny all moral element therein.
And what is the opposite the hindrance of these principles? It is inequality, injustice, slavery, which means property. This is the reason why Proudhon's doctrine of property stands at the centre of his system, which it by no means exhausts; it is the reason why he always proceeded from this point, and always returned to it again.
We may cite Proudhon's Philosophie de la Misere as an example of this form. The Socialistic bourgeois want all the advantages of modern social conditions without the struggles and dangers necessarily resulting therefrom. They desire the existing state of society minus its revolutionary and disintegrating elements. They wish for a bourgeoisie without a proletariat.
These found their way deep into the heart of the masses, even to the peasants. It must not be forgotten that to the Russian peasants, with their already existing collectivist village communities, Proudhon's ideas were far more easy to understand than an educated Frenchman or German found them.
Now and then a coarse word, a few personalities, too bitter and quite unjust or injurious, will have to be suppressed in printing; time, however, as it passes away, permits many things and renders them inoffensive. Am I right in saying that Proudhon's correspondence, always substantial, will one day be the most accessible and attractive portion of his works?"
The doctrine of propaganda, which since Proudhon's time has always accompanied a certain form of Anarchist theory, is a foreign element, having no necessary or internal connection with the fundamental ideas of Anarchism.
Since the criticism of political economy forms the chief subject of interest, we need not here examine the legal section of the book, which criticizes law from the standpoint of law. Proudhon's book is therefore scientifically surpassed by the critical school of political economy, even of political economy as conceived by Proudhon.
On the other hand, Proudhon's doctrines, which in their native France could not find acceptance, gained a few proselytes among the Radical Democrats, and especially among the Communists of Switzerland and the Rhine.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking