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

Anarchism - Essay modelHe attended the local school but was primarily self-educated at the towns public library. Proudhon, was among the inventors of socialism, on 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 twain 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. forrader Proudhon, the word anarchist had been exclusively used as a derogatory epithet to be flung at ones political opponents. Proudhon was the first person to adopt the label with enthusiasm. He denounced the disposal of man by man as oppression, and in its infinite advocated a society based on equality, law, independence, and proportionality which finds its highest perfection in the uni on of order with anarchy. He specify anarchy as the absence of a master, of a sovereign, and envisaged a society in which the reign 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 ternion of absolutism is as baneful in practice as it is in philosophy. The most effective delegacy 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 riddance to this position was his Proudhons sexism, causing Joseph Dejacque (as well as subsequent anarchists) to attack Proudhons support for patriarchy as universe inc onsistent with his anarchist ideas. In his earliest works, Proudhon analyzed the nature and problems of the capitalist economy. While deeply decisive of capitalism, he also objected those contemporary socialists who idolized association. In series of commentaries, from What is Property (1840) through the posthumously publish Theorie de la properiete (Theory of Property 1863-64) he declared in turn that property is theft, property is unachievable, 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 individuals labor, but to the peasant or artisans domicil and tools of his trade and the income he received by selling his goods. For Proudhon, the only legitimate s ource of property was labor. Proudhon was unco consistent in his thinking about economic issues, but that his rhetoric changed considerably over the years, and that the evasive action he adopted in dealing with an understanding of property as always somewhat unattainable shifted slightly. First published in 1840, Proudhons