Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

Biography

Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (1809–1865) was a French politician, philosopher, and economist who was the first person to call himself an "anarchist" and is regarded as one of the founders of anarchist thought. Born in Besançon to a working-class family, Proudhon was largely self-educated, working as a printer while studying philosophy and economics. His first major work, What Is Property? (1840), answered its own title question with the provocative declaration "Property is theft!"—an argument that private ownership of the means of production constitutes exploitation of labor. Proudhon advocated mutualism: a system of reciprocal exchange among independent producers and workers’ cooperatives, without either state control or capitalist exploitation. His thought influenced both the anarchist and socialist traditions, though he fiercely opposed Marx’s authoritarian socialism. Proudhon was elected to the French National Assembly in 1848, where he was the only member to vote against the new constitution. His prolific output includes The Philosophy of Poverty (1846), which provoked Marx’s angry response The Poverty of Philosophy, and numerous works on federalism, war, and social organization.