Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
Pierre-Joseph Proudhonwas a French politician and the founder of mutualist philosophy. He was the first person to declare himself an anarchist and is widely regarded as one of the ideology's most influential theorists. Proudhon is even considered by many to be the "father of anarchism". He became a member of the French Parliament after the revolution of 1848, whereafter he referred to himself as a federalist...
NationalityFrench
ProfessionEconomist
Date of Birth15 January 1809
CountryFrance
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon quotes about
The elements of justice are identical with those of algebra.
All men in their hearts, I say, bear witness to these truths; they need only to be made to understand it.
As soon as I set foot in the parliamentary Sinai, I ceased to be in touch with the masses.
Communism is inequality, but not as property is. Property is exploitation of the weak by the strong. Communism is exploitation of the strong by the weak.
AXIOM. — Property is the Right of Increase claimed by the Proprietor over any thing which he has stamped as his own.
To name a thing is easy: the difficulty is to discern it before its appearance.
it is the liberty that is the mother, not the daughter, of order.
It is a proof of philosophical mediocrity, today, to look for a philosophy.
Tormented by conflicting feelings, I appealed to reason ; and it is reason which, amid so many dogmatic contradictions, now forces the hypothesis upon me. A priori dogmatism, applying itself to God, has proved fruitless: who knows whither the hypothesis, in its turn, will lead us? I will explain therefore how, studying in the silence of my heart, and far from every human consideration, the mystery of social revolutions, God, the great unknown, has become for me an hypothesis, I mean a necessary dialectical tool.
Communism--the first expression of the social nature--is the first term of social development--the thesis; property, the reverse of communism, is the second term--the antithesis. When we have discovered the third term, the synthesis, we shall have the required solution.
Property is impossible.
Anarchy is... a form of government or constitution in which public and private consciousness , formed through the development of science and law , is alone sufficient to maintain order and guarantee all liberties.
The notion of anarchy ...means that once industrial functions have taken over from political functions, then business transactions and exchange alone produce the social order.
Anarchy, the absence of a master, of a sovereign.