Proudhon: Introduction to Mutualism and Anarchism

I look at the thought of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, his anarchism, his mutualism, and his theory of politics. Proudhon was the first self-declared anarchist. He wrote What is Property in 1840. He was not a wide-ranging and difficult writer, he wasn’t a system builder, he was critical of utopianisms, and was fascinated with contradictions. For Proudhon, The ideal society was a contractual one – where individuals are free to arrange their relationships under conditions of justice. But for justice to flourish, its laws had to be known to all. The tension between liberty and order is always at the heart of Proudhon’s politics. He intended his mutualist philosophy to be an approach to political life that could be a ‘synthesis of the notions of private property and collective ownership,’ a synthesis of liberty and order. Both private property and collective ownership had major flaws; so what could the solution be? As we saw in What is Property? Justice is at the heart of the solu