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.
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon: A Biography
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.
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Proudhon - A Biography.pdf
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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 meant the Rheinische Zeitung (1842-1843), as the Neue Rheinische Zeitung was only published from 1848 to 1849.
[/b]Woodcock wrote:[b] One…
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.