Author

: Anarcho

Title

: Proudhon: “start by being right”

Date

: 2025

Notes

: This article discusses various claims made against Proudhon by the likes of Engels, Schapiro, Draper and others. Some are correct (if usually exaggerated), most are false. It argues that any critique Proudhon should start by being accurate, something which should go without saying but all-too-often is ignored. It first appeared in

Black Flag Anarchist Review

Vol. 5, No. 1 (Spring 2025).

Source

: Retrieved on 2026-07-25 from

anarchistfaq.org

I will start with an admission. Once, a long time ago, I wrote a letter to a Marxist paper angrily proclaiming how dare they use Proudhon to attack anarchism when he was

not

an anarchist. Suffice to say, this just showed my ignorance – not least in being unaware of the source of the article’s attacks, it being a rehash of Hal Draper rather than some original piece.

Luckily it remained unsent (not least because it got a bit long…) for I made a terrible mistake – I took the time to read Proudhon. This was driven by my work on

An Anarchist FAQ

and the need to present anarchist views on capitalism. As many have noted, unlike Marxism, there is not a huge amount of anarchist writings on economics. The exception is Proudhon, particularly in the 1840s. So I read the first two

Memoirs

on property (as translated by Tucker) and these opened my eyes. I then moved onto volume 1 of

System of Economic Contradictions

and, while hard going in certain chapters (whose relevance to analysing capitalism is hard to grasp), it was not the book I had been led to think it was by Marxist accounts. All this motivated me to work on

Property is Theft!

[1]

and whilst working on other projects, I have kept an interest on Proudhon ever since.

I mention this to put the following discussions in context for it is all too easy to think that just become someone proclaims something it means they know what they are talking about, particularly if they have academic credentials. Worse, it is all too easy to assume that they are being accurate and would not just distort or make things up. Even “peer review” can mean little, if the subject is relative obscure and the peers in question know little about the subject and assume an honesty which may, with a little investigation, be proven to be lacking.

So nothing should be taken for granted when reading about Proudhon (or anarchism in general). If a claim looks strange, it is always worthwhile investigating whether it is actually true or not. If a reference is provided, I’ve discovered it is always wise to check the source to confirm that it is as suggested (I’ve found that in far too many cases it does not). However, I appreciate – from experience! – that this can be time consuming and difficult to do as the material can be hard to access. Still, it should be done. Distortions, however, can sometimes have an element of truth about them. This makes them plausible – as will be shown, Proudhon

did

write “All this democracy disgusts me” and he

was

anti-Semitic. However, context and accuracy

matter

. This may involve discussing unpleasant subjects but that does not mean allowing inaccuracies or exaggerations to go unchallenged. Doing so may see the accusation of “apologetics” levelled but that would be a superficial response.

Yet criticism can be valid in spite of this. Marxists, for example, never note that the valid criticisms they make of Proudhon – his racism, sexism, opposition to strikes

[2]