Pierre-Joseph Proudhon Quotes on Knowledge
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (1809–1865), whose What Is Property? (1840) supplied the nineteenth-century socialist tradition with the famous answer "property is theft" and the long System of Economical Contradictions (1846) provoked Marx's response in The Poverty of Philosophy (1847), defended a mutualist anarchism whose distinctive epistemological character is the analysis of social and economic concepts as constitutive contradictions whose dialectical interplay generates the actual movement of history. The framework treats the categories of political economy — value, exchange, property, credit — as antinomic structures whose proper philosophical analysis exhibits both the necessity of each pole and the practical task of holding them in productive tension within the federative society Proudhon envisaged.
Quotes
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“La République est l'organisation par laquelle toutes les opinions, toutes les activités demeurant libres, le Peuple, par la divergence même des opinions et des volontés, pense et agit comme un seul homme. Dans la République, tout citoyen, en faisant ce qu'il veut et rien que ce qu'il veut, participe directement à la législation et au gouvernement, comme il participe à la production et à la circula”
Idée générale de la revolution au XIXe siècle (1851), p. 235, as cited in Anarchism (1908) by Paul Eltzbacher, p. 76 -
“To be governed is to be watched over, inspected, spied on, directed, legislated at, regulated, docketed, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, assessed, weighed, censored, ordered about, by men who have neither the right , nor the knowledge , nor the virtue . ... To be governed is to be at every operation, at every transaction, noted, registered, enrolled, taxed, stamped, measured, numbered, ass”
Idée Générale de la Révolution au XIXe Siècle [ The General Idea of the Revolution ] (1851); quoted in The Anarchists (1964) by James Joll, Ch. 3, p. 78 -
“Du principe Fédératif [ Principle of Federation ] (1863)”
All my economic ideas as developed over twenty-five years can be summed up in the words: agricultural-industrial federation. All my political ideas boil down to a similar formula: political federation or decentralization. -
“I stand ready to negotiate, but I want no part of laws: I acknowledge none; I protest against every order with which some authority may feel pleased on the basis of some alleged necessity to over-rule my free will. Laws: We know what they are, and what they are worth! They are spider webs for the rich and mighty, steel chains for the poor and weak, fishing nets in the hands of government .”
As quoted in "The Authority Principle" in No Gods, No Masters : An Anthology of Anarchism (1980) Daniel Guérin, as translated by Paul Sharkey (1998), p. 90 -
“Sociability is the attraction felt by sentient beings for each other; justice is the same attraction, accompanied by reflection and knowledge.”
What is Property?(1840) | Ch.V -
“I should like to restore with one hand what I destroy with the other. When pruning an old tree one should avoid destroying the buds and fruit ; you know this is as well as anyone.”
What is Property?(1840) | Preface -
“I have found more peace in the knowledge of truth than anger in the feeling of oppression, and the most precious fruit that I could want to collect in this memoir would be to inspire my readers with that peace of mind arising from the clear perception of evil and its causes.”
What is Property?(1840) | Preface