Pierre-Joseph Proudhon: a biography - George Woodcock

Pierre-Joseph Proudhon: A Biography

Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (1809-65) was one of the most important social thinkers of the nineteenth century. A considerable amount has been written about him in French. The present work, however, is the first full-scale biography in English.

Proudhon has been called the father of anarchism, and he attained a certain notoriety during the nineteenth century for such aphoristic statements as "property is theft" and "God is evil." But Proudhon was much more than philosopher and literary iconoclast. His influence in France was immense, and his theories played a great part in the First International and the Paris Commune, in French syndicalism and in contemporary movements for currency reform. As a writer he was admired by Baudelaire, Saint-Beuve, and Victor Hugo; as a thinker he was respected by Tolstoy, Amiel, and Madame d'Agoult. Marx knew him, and it was around the rivalry of these two strong personalities that the leverages between libertarian and authoritarian socialism, developed in the first international, was crystallized.

Proudhon's significance also reaches forward into our own day, when his distrust of the State and his teaching of the need for world federation take on a new importance in a world that is threatened by explosive rivalries of great nationalistic States.

George Woodcock is one of Canada's most distinguished men of letter--journalist, poet, and author of more than forty books, among them Ghandi; Dawn and Darkest Hour: A Study of Aldous Huxley; Canada and Canadians; and The Crystal Spirit, a biography of George Orwell. In 1951-52, he held a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, under which research for the present book was carried out.

Available to purchase in-print here.

Attachments

Proudhon - A Biography.pdf (7.73 MB)

Comments

There's a typo when Woodcock…

There's a typo when Woodcock describes how Marx favorably commented on Proudhon's first book-length work What is Property?:

Woodcock wrote: Writing in the Neue Rheinische Zeitung in October, 1842, Marx was one of the first people outside France to recognize What is Property? He called it a 'penetrating work.' (44)

Woodcock meant the Rheinische Zeitung (1842-1843), as the Neue Rheinische Zeitung was only published from 1848 to 1849.

[/b]Woodcock wrote:[b] One…

Woodcock wrote: One cannot immediately dismiss Proudhon's statements with the amused contempt which at first sight their odd form seems to deserve. Women are certainly inferior in strength—though they are often superior in endurance, which creates a certain biological balance. It is also true that there has never been a great woman philosopher, and that women in general tend to base their moral judgments on emotional rather than rational criteria. But these criticisms are not universally applicable. Since Proudhon’s day ["since"?! what—did women suddenly start thinking after Proudhon died] many women have become excellent scientific workers; others, like Spiridonova, Louise Michel and Rosa Luxembourg [sic], have shown their devotion to the Revolution and their realisation of the full meaning of Justice as Proudhon saw it. (214)

Also—what?! Not being deemed "great" by some doesn't mean that there are not still others who appreciate the countless women philosophers/thinkers throughout history. Woodcock's remark is about as ridiculous as some of the misogynistic drivel in Proudhon's On Justice, which Woodcock is ostensibly critiquing in this section.

Other than that, as well as some other stuff (e.g. Woodcock's constant description of Marx as an "authoritarian"—Woodcock's biography reads like a hagiography at times), I will say that it is an informative work, but then again there also aren't too many scholarly accounts of Proudhon's life (in English) to compare it with. There is also some irony in how Woodcock lists Rosa Luxemburg among the counter-examples of "intelligent women revolutionaries" (as if we really needed such a list) when he characterizes Marx and the people he's influenced as "authoritarian socialists"; one almost wonders whether Woodcock was aware of the fact that Luxemburg was a Marxist.