Proudhonism

Emerged in France in the 1840s, petty-bourgeois socialism in the workers’ movement, a kind of anarchist current. Its chief representative was Proudhon, whose representative works, The Philosophy of Poverty (1846) and Solution of the Social Problem (1848) systematically proclaimed his anarchist and reformist ideas.

The main contents of Proudhonism are as follows: (1) Advocating the theory of class reconciliation and proclaiming the synthesis of community and property. He held that what community and property sought was good, but what they incurred was bad. Community rejected the need for independence, and property was unsuited to the requirements of equality and law. He advocated combining the two to form a third form of social appropriation, “the synthesis of community and property, we shall call liberty.” In terms of class relations, Proudhon held that raising the status of the working class would not eliminate the bourgeoisie, nor would the bourgeoisie be in the position of the proletariat, and that the two classes should work hand in hand rather than fight each other. (2) Reforming the credit system and creating a national bank as the basic way to solve the contradictions of capitalism. That is, through the granting of interest-free loans, assistance is given to proletarians in acquiring small shares, starting up industries, and gradually buying up the means of production so that they can own them, in essence replacing the State with the co-operative system (or co-operation). (3) Preaching anarchism and opposing the revolutionary movement of the proletariat. Proudhon held that the era of revolution was over and that strikes were illegal. He opposed any form of organizational authority and put forth the political slogan “No more parties, no more authority, absolute liberty of the man and the citizen”; he opposed proletarian political struggle, violent revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat, the organization of trade unions and the struggle for strikes. Proudhonism had spread widely in France, Italy, Spain, Belgium and other countries where the petty bourgeoisie was dominant.

Marx and Engels carried out a long and effective struggle against Proudhonism. It mainly includes the following aspects: First of all, in response to Proudhon’s theory of class reconciliation, Marx pointed out that Proudhon’s theory of class reconciliation was “scientific charlatanism and political compromises.” “He wants to be the synthesis—he is a composite error. He wants to soar as the man of science above the bourgeois and the proletarians; he is merely the petty-bourgeois, continually tossed back and forth between capital and labor, political economy and communism.” Marx persistently maintained that the struggle for the emancipation of the working class and the resolution of the contradictions of capitalism could not be separated from the class struggle, and that it was only through a ruthless class struggle that all classes could be completely eliminated. Next, as for Proudhon’s proposition of reforming the credit system, Marx held that his wish to make of a particular application of credit—the pretended abolition of the rate of interest—to think to make that the basis of the social transformation—that was indeed a petty chandler’s fantasy. Finally, with regard to Proudhon’s anarchism, Marx held that he “spurn[ed] all revolutionary action, i.e., arising from the class struggle itself”, “the theoretical basis of his idea arises from a misunderstanding of the basic elements of bourgeois ‘political economy,’ namely of the relation between commodities and money.”