PROUDHON, PIERRE JOSEPH French socialist and political writer, was born on Jan. 15, 1809, at Besancon. He came of poor parents, and was mainly self-edu cated. At 19 he became a working compositor; and later, as a proofreader, he acquired a competent knowledge of theology and Hebrew, which he compared with Greek, Latin and French. On the strength of the knowledge acquired in this way he wrote an Essai de grammaire generale. In 1838 he obtained the pension Suard, a bursary of 1,500 francs a year for three years, for the encouragement of young men of promise, which was in the gift of the academy of Besancon.
In 1839 he wrote a treatise L'Utilite de la celebration du dimanche which contained the germs of his revolutionary ideas, and in the following year, after a short sojourn in Paris, he pub lished Qu'est-ce que la propriete? His famous answer, "La propriete, c'est le vol" (property is theft), displeased the academy of Besancon, and there was some talk of withdrawing his pension; but he held it for the regular period. For his third memoir on property, which took the shape of a letter to the Fourierist, Considerant, he was tried at Besancon but was acquitted. In 1846 he published his greatest work, the Systeme des contra dictions economiques ou philosophie de la misere. In 1847 he settled in Paris, and in the following year gained notoriety during the revolution. He was the moving spirit of the Representant du peuple and other journals of advanced views, and as member of assembly for the Seine department he proposed an impost of one third on interest and rent, which was rejected. His attempt to found a bank which should operate by granting gratuitous credit was also a complete failure. For his violent speeches, Proudhon suffered three years of imprisonment at Paris. As Proudhon aimed at economic rather than political innovation, he accepted the sec ond empire, and lived in comparative quiet till the publication of his work, De la Justice dans la revolution et dans l'eglise (1858), in which he attacked the church and other existing institutions. To escape imprisonment he fled to Brussels, returning later to France in broken health. He died at Passy on Jan. 16, 1865.
Personally Proudhon was one of the most remarkable figures of modern France. His life was marked by the severest sim plicity; he was affectionate in his domestic relations, a loyal friend, and strictly upright in conduct. He opposed the prevailing French socialism; and, though an enemy of the dominant ideas and institutions, he was free from feelings of personal hate. In all that he said and did he was the son of the people, who had not been broken to the usual social and academic discipline; hence his roughness, his one-sidedness, and his exaggerations; but he is always vigorous, and often brilliant and original.
Although in his own words "the great part of his publications formed only a work of dissection and ventilation, so to speak, by means of which he slowly makes his way towards a superior conception of political and economic laws," yet the groundwork of his teaching is clear. He believed in the absolute truth of a few moral ideas, with which it was his aim to mould and suffuse political economy. Of these fundamental ideas, justice, liberty
and equality were the chief. What he desiderated, for instance, in an ideal society was perfect equality of remuneration on the principle that the duration of labour is the just measure of value. He pursued this theory to its logical conclusion, but looked for ward to a period in human development when the present in equality in the capacity of men would be reduced to an inappre ciable minimum. From the principle of service as the equivalent of service is derived his axiom that property is the right of aubaine, i.e., the right in virtue of which the sovereign, from the earliest monarchy, claimed the goods of an unnaturalized stranger who had died in his territory. Property is a right of the same nature, with a like power of appropriation in the form of rent, interest, etc. Proudhon's aim was to realize a science of society resting on principles of justice, liberty and equality thus understood; "a science absolute, rigorous, based on the nature of man and of his faculties, and on their mutual relations, a science which we have not to invent, but to discover." But he saw that such ideas could only be realized through a long process of social transformation. He attacked the schools of Saint-Simon and Fourier for thinking that society could be changed off-hand by a ready-made and complete scheme of reform.
In social change Proudhon distinguishes between the transition and the perfection of achievement. With regard to the transition he advocated the progressive abolition of the right of aubaine, by reducing interest, rent, etc., but he had no clear conception of the goal. The organization he desired was one on collective prin ciples, a free association which would take account of the division of labour, and which would maintain the personality both of the man and the citizen. Connected with this was his famous paradox of anarchy, as the goal of the free development of society, by which he meant that through the ethical progress of men gov ernment should become unnecessary. "Government of man by man in every form," he says, "is oppression. The highest per fection of society is found in the union of order and anarchy." Proudhon, indeed, was the first to use the word anarchy, not in its revolutionary sense, but to express the highest perfection of social organization.
A complete edition of Proudhon's works, including his posthumous writings, was published at Paris (1875). See also P. J. Proudhon, sa vie et sa correspondance, by Sainte-Beuve (1875) ; Beauchery, Economic sociale de P. J. Proudhon (Lille, 1867) ; Spoll, P. J. Proudhon, etude biographique (5867) ; Marchegay, Silhouette de Proudhon (1868) ; Putlitz, P. J. Proudhon, sein Leben und seine Positiven Ideen (1881) : Diehl, P. J. Proudhon, seine Lehre and sein Leben (Jena, 1888-89) ; Miilberger, Studien uber Proudhon (Stuttgart, 1891) ; Desjardins, P. J. Proudhon, sa vie, ses oeuvres et sa doctrine (1896) ; Millberger, P. J. Proudhon (Stuttgart, 1899).