Anarchism Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3000 words

Anarchism - Essay Example He attended the local school but was primarily self-educated at the town's public library. Proudhon, was among the inventors of socialism, along wih Marx, Bakunin, Blanqui, Blanc, Herzen, Lassalle and Engles. Of these, Proudhon had the profoundest effect upon the workers' movement in the 19th century and his ideas influenced some of the most notable later anarchists, including both Tolstoy and Bakunin, both of whom knew Proudhon personally. Indeed, throughout his life Proudhon acquired and kept a remarkable collection of friends, and as his notoriety spread, acquaintances. Before Proudhon, the word 'anarchist' had been exclusively used as a derogatory epithet to be flung at one's political opponents. Proudhon was the first person to adopt the label with enthusiasm. He denounced the 'government of man by man' as 'oppression,' and in its place advocated a society based on 'equality, law, independence, and proportionality' which 'finds its highest perfection in the union of order with a narchy.' He defined 'anarchy' as 'the absence of a master, of a sovereign,' and envisaged a society in which 'the sovereignty of the will yields to the sovereignty of reason. For Proudhon: " Capital in the political field is analogous to "government". The economic idea of capitalism, the politics of government or of authority and the theological idea of the Church are three identical ideas, linked in various ways. To attack one of them is equivalent to attacking all of them. What capital does to labor, and the State to liberty, the Church does to the spirit. This trinity of absolutism is as baneful in practice as it is in philosophy. The most effective means for oppressing the people would be simultaneously to enslave its body, its will and its reason." ("What is Property", Pierre Proudhon 1840, page 23). One exception to this position was his Proudhon's sexism, causing Joseph Dejacque (as well as subsequent anarchists) to attack Proudhon's support for patriarchy as being inconsiste nt with his anarchist ideas. In his earliest works, Proudhon analyzed the nature and problems of the capitalist economy. While deeply critical of capitalism, he also objected those contemporary socialists who idolized association. In series of commentaries, from "What is Property" (1840) through the posthumously published "Theorie de la properiete" (Theory of Property 1863-64) he declared in turn that "property is theft", "property is impossible", "property is despotism", and "property is freedom". When he said property is theft, he was referring to the landowner or the capitalist who he believed stole the profits from laborers. For Proudhon, the capitalist employee was subordinated, exploited; his permanent condition is one of obedience. In asserting that property is freedom, he was referring not only to the product of an individual's labor, but to the peasant or artisans home and tools of his trade and the income he received by selling his goods. For Proudhon, the only legitimate source of property was labor. Proudhon was remarkably consistent in his thinking about economic issues, but that his rhetoric changed considerably over the years, and that the tactics he adopted in dealing with an understanding of "property" as always somewhat "impossible" shifted slightly. First published in 1840, Proudhon's