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Title: Proudhon: Neither Washington nor Richmond
Author: Anarcho
Date: July 16, 2013
Language: en
Topics: Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, racism, sexism
Source: Retrieved on 24th April 2021 from https://anarchism.pageabode.com/?p=766

Anarcho

Proudhon: Neither Washington nor Richmond

“every individual is a child of his time” (Hegel)

The British anarchist Albert Meltzer once noted that since Marxists find

it hard to critique anarchism, they usually attack anarchists. In the

case of the earliest anarchist thinkers, Proudhon and Bakunin, this is

often easy to do as they were not consistently libertarian in their

views.

Kropotkin, infamously, supported the allies during the First World War,

Bakunin and Proudhon uttered various racist remarks while Proudhon’s

sexism and defence of patriarchy is simply atrocious. From this the

conclusion is drawn that anarchism itself is suspect and awkward facts

such that Kropotkin was very much in the minority while both Proudhon

and Bakunin explicitly argued for racial equality are ignored.

So by concentrating on these (non-libertarian) aspects of their ideas

and personalities the malicious can pain a radically false impression of

what they stood for as well as their legacy. They are aided by two

factors.

First, that there has been little of the relevant work is available in

English. Whether it is Proudhon, Bakunin or Kropotkin the bulk of their

writings have never been translated and, as a result, it makes it harder

(but not impossible) to fact check and draw upon other material to

present a truer picture.

Second, these subjects (racism and sexism, in particular) are unpleasant

and few people like to dwell upon them – particularly with people whose

contributions to anarchism are so significant. There is a tendency to

idolise those who added so much to a movement and anything which reminds

us that they are merely human and so, like us, able to make mistakes and

say stupid things is often avoided. This is the case in all movements,

including Marxism. Marxists, while having the added problem of being

named after an individual, have had an advantage that anarchists are,

rightly, unwilling to focus on personal failings of individual Marxist

thinkers in favour of more substantial critiques (like whether their

politics would produce a free society).

As such, it behoves anarchists to look at the likes of Proudhon in all

their aspects, including those which are at odds with the other ideas

they expounded so well. For if we do not do so, then those seeking to

attack anarchism will do so – and they have, repeatedly. That such

attacks paint a radically false impression of the ideas of these

thinkers should go without saying but, sadly, they have an impact far

wider than the poverty of their argument and evidence merit.

This can best be seen from Proudhon who has been subject to much

selective quoting. Indeed, his treatment shows that including references

does not ensure an accurate account of someone’s ideas is produced. We

will show this by discussing a hitherto un-translated chapter entitled

“Slavery and the Proletariat” from Proudhon’s classic 1863 work The

Federative Principle[1] on slavery in America as this shows Proudhon at

his best, as an advocate of equality between races as a necessary part

of equality between individuals.[2] This, as will be shown, is in stark

contrast to some of the received wisdom about the French anarchist.

Proudhon: Warts and All

In an article about Marx’s The Poverty of Philosophy on the webpage of

the International Socialist Organisation, Todd Chretien[3] states that

“Proudhon openly supported patriarchal family forms[4] and held

stridently anti-Semitic views, writing, for example, ‘The Jew is the

enemy of humankind. They must be sent back to Asia or be exterminated.

By steel or by fire or by expulsion the Jew must disappear.’”

Given that Marx’s book was written in response to Proudhon’s System of

Economic Contradictions, the uninformed reader may think that Chretien

was quoting that work. This is not the case. While Chretien is right

that these “certainly are despicable views” it is simply distortion to

state “they are not what made Proudhon popular, nor are they the views

he most openly popularised.” This is because this was never “openly

popularised” but rather a single, never repeated, rant in his private

notebooks from 1847 unknown to the wider public until the 1960s.

Hal Draper, whose hatred of anarchism bordered on the pathological, also

transformed this one-off private rant into a core part of Proudhon’s

ideas by asserting that he “advocated a pure-and-simple Hitlerite

extermination of the Jews” as well as “a program of government

persecution of Jews in mass pogroms as well as political extermination.”

(Socialism from Below [Atlantic Highlands: Humanities Press, 1992], 193)

The intellectual dishonesty of this should be clear and, unsurprisingly,

neither of them prove that this was anything more than a passing rant.

Significantly, no attempt is made to show that Proudhon held this view

before 1847 or after, either publicly or privately. In terms of the

former, it is the case that Proudhon’s anti-Semitism is limited to a few

passing Jewish stereotypes (which, sadly, reflected French culture at

the time) in a few of his minor articles and books. A reader consulting

his most important works would not come across a single anti-Semitic

remark and many proclamations in favour of racial equality. To quote one

of his most famous and most constructive works (General Idea of the

Revolution):

“There will no longer be nationality, no longer fatherland, in the

political sense of the words: they will mean only places of birth.

Whatever a man’s race or colour, he is really a native of the universe;

he has citizen’s rights everywhere.” (Property is Theft! A Pierre-Joseph

Proudhon Anthology [Oakland/Edinburgh: AK Press, 2011], 597)

There is a tendency to assume, at least implicitly, that a thinker does

not change their opinions nor raise and discard ideas. This seems the

case with Marxists, where the idolisation of Marx has produced a

tendency of implicit assumption that their Collected Works can be quoted

regardless of when the texts were written, as if it were the case that

everything essential was contained in, say, The Poverty of Philosophy or

The Manifesto of the Communist Party and the rest is just an extended

footnote.

The same can be said of Proudhon and so it does not escape the realms of

possibility that in December1847 something caused Proudhon’s (culturally

reflective, but still inexcusable) anti-Semitic feelings to intensify so

resulting in this rant. Significantly, Proudhon’s beloved mother died

that very month so suggesting that it reflected an outlet for the deep

despair he must have been feeling. Given that he never expressed this

view before 1847 nor afterwards it rant should be considered as a

quickly forgotten aberration produced by the pressures of a family

crisis rather than indicative of his politics.

Given that Leninists habitually quote this passage without indicating

that this was a solitary private rant not typical of his public

writings, the question arises why do they do this? Perhaps the answer

can be derived from a comment by Lenin who, in May 1907, defended

himself for the rhetoric he used against a group of Mensheviks:

“The wording is calculated to evoke in the reader hatred, aversion and

contempt… Such wording is calculated not to convince, but to break up

the ranks of the opponent… to destroy him… to evoke the worse thoughts,

the worst suspicions about the opponent.” (Collected Works 12: 424–5)

The wording of Draper and Chretien reflects thus the “struggle to

destroy the hostile organisation, destroy its influence over the masses

of the proletariat.”[5] (Collected Works 12: 427) The “worse suspicions”

and “worse thoughts” are produced and so potential recruits are

insulated from ideas which may present a more consistent (if not always

consistently applied by Proudhon and Bakunin) socialist alternative to

the state capitalism of Leninism.

Quoting a single rant from his private notebook presents a false

impression of Proudhon’s ideas on race. Worse, by not indicating where

this text comes from it suggests a false context. To suggest that a

never repeated comment made in a private notebook and completely unknown

until over a century later was part of his public work or a central

aspect of Proudhon’s ideas presents a completely false impression of

both them and their influence – particularly given his discussion of

race in The Federative Principle.

J. Salwyn Schapiro, Harbinger of Confusion

The key work in trying to present Proudhon as a fascist was American

professor J. Salwyn Schapiro and his 1945 article “Pierre Joseph

Proudhon, Harbinger of Fascism” (The American Historical Review 50: 4).

This was subsequently referred to by Draper in his pamphlet “Socialism

from Below”[6] and from there repeated by Leninists to this day. Sadly

for Leninists Schapiro’s work is seriously flawed, attributing to

Proudhon numerous ideas that he explicitly opposed. This can be seen

from Schapiro’s account of Proudhon’s views on race.

First, what is his thesis? That there are “sinister overtones that

haunt” Proudhon’s work and in “the powerful polemist of the

mid-nineteenth century it is now possible to discern a harbinger of the

great world evil of fascism.” (717) This is the worse kind of

anachronism, seeking to (re-)define Proudhon in terms of an ideology

that did not come into existence until 70 years after his death. A

movement, in fact, which would never have appeared if Proudhon’s

mutualism had been successful as the erosion of the state and capitalism

Proudhon wanted would have removed the soil upon which fascism grew.

Even Schapiro had to admit to some difficulties in his case, such as the

awkward fact that Proudhon’s “teachings [were] misunderstood as anarchy

by his disciples” (737) and that there was “no hint of the totalitarian

corporative state in Proudhon’s writings” as the “economic condition of

France, in his day, was such that a totalitarian state of the fascist

type was inconceivable.” (736) Apparently Proudhon conceived of

something (a fascist regime) which was also “inconceivable”!

Schapiro exaggerates Proudhon’s anti-Semitism to lay the ground for his

assertion that Proudhon exposed “racialism” and “its division of mankind

into creative and sterile races” which “led Proudhon to regard the Negro

as the lowest in the racial hierarchy.” (729) Significantly Schapiro

makes no attempt to prove this claim by anything as trivial as evidence.

His sole attempt to do so was as follows:

“During the American Civil War he favoured the South, which, he

insisted, was not entirely wrong in maintaining slavery. The Negroes,

according to Proudhon, were an inferior race, an example of the

existence of inequality among the races of mankind. Not those who

desired to emancipate them were the true friends of the Negroes but

those ‘who wish to keep them in servitude, yea to exploit them, but

nevertheless to assure them of a livelihood, to raise their standard

gradually through labour, and to increase their numbers through

marriage.” (729)

Schapiro fails to note that War and Peace was not written during the

American Civil War. It was finished and presented to the publishers on

the 28^(th) of October 1860 and finally appeared in print on the 21^(st)

of May 1861 (George Woodcock, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon: A Biography

[Montréal: Black Rose, 1987], 233). The American Civil War started on

April 12^(th), 1861 and the North made abolition of slavery a war goal

in 1862 (the following year saw President Lincoln issue the Emancipation

Proclamation). So Proudhon’s comment in War and Peace was not related to

the American Civil War although it reflected the tensions of the period

and the possibility of war. In order to discuss Proudhon’s ideas on race

during the Civil War as Schapiro claims he is doing we need to turn to

1863’s The Federative Principle, a work which he ignores – for good

reason, as we will see.

What of the work he does quote from, War and Peace? Nowhere does

Proudhon proclaim “the Negro as the lowest in the racial hierarchy” and

while he notes “the existence of inequality among the races of mankind”

he does not mention a “division of mankind into creative and sterile

races.” This inequality of races is reflecting what Proudhon considers

as marking his world but this does not mean, as Schapiro is keen to

suggest, that he was happy with it. This can be seen, ironically, from

Proudhon’s talk of “inferior” and “superior” races which he clearly does

not consider as unchangeable and so argues that “a superior race” has to

“raise” the so-called “inferior” races “up to our level.” Which means

that “superior” and “inferior” was not considered as intrinsic (if it

were then this levelling of races would be impossible) but rather a

product of history – and just as economic inequalities could be ended,

so could the racial ones (particularly given that he used the word

“race” very loosely, talking, for example, of “the English race”). He

was also very clear on who he was arguing against, namely those who

would free the slaves by “making them perish in the desolation of the

proletariat.” (Oeuvres Complètes [Lacroix edition] 13: 223) We will

return to this point as it is an important part of Proudhon’s argument.

There is much about Proudhon’s arguments that are patronising and plain

wrong. Sadly, it very much reflected the period and many on the left

expressed similar viewpoints. Marx, for example, in the early 1850s

argued that slavery in Jamaica had been marked by “freshly imported

BARBARIANS” in contrast to the United States where “the present

generation of Negroes” was “a native product, more or less Yankeefied”

and “hence capable of being emancipated.” (Collected Works 39: 346) The

many comments by Marx and Engels on the progressive role of imperialism

in replacing traditional societies (habitually labelled as “savages” and

“barbarians”) by capitalist social relationships are also relevant in

this context.[7] Thus Proudhon reflected the ideas of his time with

regards to race and like many nineteenth century radicals considered

Western Europe as a “superior” civilisation that other peoples/races

(“inferior”) should follow. So, in and of itself, this reference does

not prove what Schapiro wishes it to.

Significantly, Schapiro fails to discuss Proudhon’s arguments in The

Federative Principle which was (unlike War and Peace) written during the

American Civil War and included a whole chapter on the issue of slavery

and race (“Slavery and the Proletariat”). However, reading that chapter

explains why – it sheds considerably more light on Proudhon’s opinions

on race than does War and Peace and shows that he was not the racist

Schapiro seeks to present him as. A more accurate account of Proudhon’s

position on the American Civil War is given by Ralph Nelson:

“But it would be naive to think that it is just the peculiar institution

of slavery that Proudhon detests. He finds in the North also the

principle of inequality and class distinction. If he is critical of both

sides in the war, it is because the federative principle is incompatible

with inequality, whether the agrarian variety of master and slave or the

modern version of capital and labour ...

“Proudhon didn’t really believe that the Union side would emancipate the

Negro, but would fix on deportation as the solution to the problem. The

union could be saved only by the liberation of the Negroes, granting

them full citizenship, and by a determination to stop the growth of the

proletariat. For what is gained for the former slaves, if emancipation

means that they will become members of the proletariat? He notes that

the situation in Russia after the emancipation of the serfs (1861) is

analogous. Liberated serfs without land would be helpless. Economic

guarantees must be developed alongside political ones. The corollaries

of equality before the law are racial equality, equality of condition,

and an approach toward equality of fortunes.” (Ralph Nelson, “The

Federal Idea in French Political Thought”, Publius 5: 3, 41)

As Proudhon argued in Part One of The Federative Principle, “can a State

with slaves belong to a confederation? It seems not, no more than an

absolutist State: the enslaving of one part of the nation is the very

negation of the federative principle.” Thus “a better application of the

principles of the pact” would be “progressively raising the Black

peoples’ condition to the level of the Whites.” However, the North

“cares no more than the South about a true emancipation, which renders

the difficulty insoluble even by war and threatens to destroy the

confederation.” (Property is Theft!, 698–9) Here we see the same

“levelling” arguments from War and Peace. In Part Three he is more

explicit and argued for full equality between blacks and whites. To

quote one of many relevant passages:

“To save the Union, two things were necessary through common accord and

energetic will: 1) free the blacks and give them civil rights, of which

the northern states only granted half and the southern states did not

want to grant at all; 2) energetically resist the growing [size of the]

proletariat, which entered into no one’s perspective.” (Oeuvres

Complètes [Lacroix edition] 8: 228)

It is hard to square this advocacy of racial equality rights with

Schapiro’s thesis and, unsurprisingly, he does not mention it.

It must also be noted that many European and North American thinkers

espoused some version of “racial equality” while also advocating racist

beliefs. Moreover, many (white) abolitionists also held racist views

with some arguing that once slavery was abolished the freed slaves

should be expelled from the United States because they were an

“inferior” race. This can be seen from Lincoln himself for while being

opposed to slavery also proclaimed in a debate at Charleston in

September 1858 that he had “not, nor ever have been, in favour of

bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white

and black races” nor “of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of

qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people.” If

the two races did “remain together there must be the position of

superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favour of

having the superior position assigned to the white race.” (quoted by

Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States: 1492-Present [New

York: HarperCollins Books, 2003], 188) Lincoln “could not see blacks as

equals, so a constant theme in his approach was to free the slaves and

to send them back to Africa.” (Zinn, 188)

Given Proudhon’s critiques it seems likely that his words were addressed

against Lincoln as representative of dominant anti-slavery perspective

in America. It is therefore ironic, in the light of Schapiro’s claims,

to read Proudhon dismissing these (racist) positions in The Federative

Principle. “If Mr. Lincoln teaches his compatriots to overcome their

revulsion,” he argued “grants the blacks their civil rights and also

declares a war on [what creates] the proletariat, the union will be

saved.” He stressed “with regard to black workers, that physiologists

and ethnographers recognise them as part of the same species as whites;

that religion declares them, along with the whites, the children of God

and the church, redeemed by the blood of the same Christ and therefore

spiritual brothers; that psychology sees no difference between the

constitution of the Negro conscience and that of the white, no more than

between the comprehension of one and the other.” This meant that blacks

should be “as free as the whites by nature and human dignity.” Therefore

“the principle of equality before the law must have as corollaries: 1)

the principle of equality of races, 2) the principle of equal conditions

and 3) the principle of increasingly similar, although never completely

equal, fortunes.” (Oeuvres Complètes 8: 230, 232–3, 234) In short:

“In a federal republic, the proletariat and slavery both seem

unacceptable; the tendency must be to abolish them both… Instead of

rejecting and humiliating those people, must not all Anglo-Saxons, both

northern and southern, receive them in harmony and hail them as fellow

citizens and equals?… grant equal political rights to both the

emancipated blacks and those kept in servitude until now.” (Oeuvres

Complètes 8: 231)

He opposed deportation as “a crime equal to that of the slavers” and

instead argued that the slaves had “acquired the right of use and

habitation on American soil.” As well as arguing that Black people were

equal to Whites and had the right to live where ever they wished with

full civil rights, he also argued against those who considered abolition

of slavery the only goal that justice demanded that the freed slaves be

given means of production (land, tools, workplaces) as well as economic

guarantees. So “the conversion of black slaves to the proletariat” would

mean that “black servitude will only change its form” rather than ended.

These economic reforms had to be extended to the white proletariat as

both “slavery and the proletariat are incompatible with republican

values” (Oeuvres Complètes 8: 233, 230, 229, 227) All this, like so much

more, is ignored by Schapiro.

The analysis in The Federative Principle ties into comments made in War

and Peace, where Proudhon did not discuss all possibilities as regards

American slavery but focused on just one: turning chattel-slaves into

wage-slaves. Hence his comment on “the hypocritical thought that, under

pretext of emancipating them [the slaves], tends to do nothing less than

cast them under the pure regime of force, and to make of them a

proletariat a hundred times more abject and revolting than that of our

capitals.” (Oeuvres Complètes 13: 222–3) This means his argument in 1861

would have been different if the dominant anti-slavery voices had sought

to turn the slaves into free workers who had their own land and tools.

As he clarified two years later, real emancipation required “providing

possessions for the wage-workers and organising, alongside political

guarantees, a system of economic guarantees.” (Oeuvres Complètes 8: 231)

This position, as Howard Zinn noted, was shared by many Negroes at the

time who “understood that their status after the war, whatever their

situation legally, would depend on whether they owned the land they

worked on or would be forced to be semislaves for others.” (196) For

Proudhon, this position was a logical aspect of his ideas as all forms

of inequality were linked and emancipation would be limited without

social transformation:

“The federative principle here appears closely related to that of the

social equality of races and the equilibrium of fortunes. The political

problem, the economic problem and the problem of races are one and the

same problem, and the same theory and jurisprudence can resolve that

problem.” (Oeuvres Complètes 8: 232)

This reflected War and Peace that modern war was rooted in inequality

and “whatever the officially declared reasons” it existed only “for

exploitation and property” and “until the constitution of economic

right, between nations as well as between individuals, war does not have

any other function on earth.” Given this, radical economic reform was

required and “[o]nly the toiling masses are able to put an end to war,

by creating economic equilibrium, which presupposes a radical revolution

in ideas and morals.” (Oeuvres Complètes [Lacroix edition] 14: 327, 272,

300)

Given this analysis that war was always driven by economic (class)

interests it becomes clear why Proudhon could not side with either the

North or the South as both were “fighting only over the type of

servitude” and so both must “be declared equally guilty blasphemers and

betrayers of the federative principle and banned from all nations.”

(Oeuvres Complètes 8: 234) Rather than support the South, as Schapiro

would have it, Proudhon attacked the North for its hypocrisy and

centralising tendencies and the South for its slavery. His analysis is

echoed by Howard Zinn who argued that the war “was not over slavery as a

moral institution… It was not a clash of peoples… but of elites. The

northern elite wanted economic expansion – free land, free labour, a

free [national] market, a high protective tariff for manufacturers, a

bank of the United States. The slave interests opposed all that”.

(188–9) So slavery was never the driver for the war, regardless of how

this has retroactively become the main cause (because this fits into the

self-image and rhetoric of America far better than the grim reality).

There is an obvious flaw in this position of “Neither Washington or

Richmond”, namely that “Proudhon suggests that nothing will have been

gained if the blacks were freed only to become wage earners, as if the

condition of the wage-earner were not closer to the realization of

personal autonomy than the condition of a well-treated slave.” (Ralph

Nelson, 43) Yet his fears should not be ignored as the Southern states

“enacted ‘black codes’ which made the freed slaves like serfs” after the

end of the Civil War (Zinn, 199) As Negro newspaper put it: “The slaves

were made serfs and chained to the soil… Such was the boasted freedom

acquired by the coloured man at the hands of the Yankees.” (quoted by

Zinn, 196–7) Unsurprisingly, the state “set limits to emancipation.

Liberation from the top would go only so far as the interests of the

dominant groups permitted.” (Zinn, 171–2)

Given Proudhon’s reformism and opposition to violence and war Proudhon

had little choice. He could have argued for a slave revolt – but since

he rejected insurrection by the working class in Western Europe, it was

unlikely that he would recommend this libertarian position in America.

Instead, he suggested reforms to avoid the possibility of war in War and

Peace and the good example of economic reform to abolish wage-labour by

the (capitalist!) North in The Federative Principle. Neither was

realistic nor particularly libertarian but it is distortion of epic

proportions to paint Proudhon as a Nazi as Schapiro did.

Significantly, Schapiro mentions The Federative Principle once in

passing and does not quote from it. This is unsurprising as it destroys

has claims that Proudhon opposed democracy (“In each of the federated

states… universal suffrage form its basis” (Property is Theft!, 716)),

favoured warmongering militarism (“A federated people would be a people

organised for peace; what would they do with armies?” (Property is

Theft!, 719)) while its discussion of agricultural-industrial federation

and advocacy of workers associations refute Schapiro’s assertion that

Proudhon’s “anticapitalism was not the same as that of the socialists

who attacked capitalism primarily as a system of production” as he

“launched his attack on capitalism as a system of exchange.” (722)

Anyone familiar with Proudhon’s ideas would know that he opposed both

industrial and financial capital, both the system of exchange and of

production. It is untrue to suggest that Proudhon “stress[ed] banking

and Jewish bankers for his line of attack against the established order”

(734) as the latter are not mentioned in his works on credit reform

while the former are part of a general critique of capitalism which

aimed to end both wage-labour (industrial capital) and usury (financial

capital) by means of co-operative workplaces and credit. The claim that

Proudhon focused on finance reforms and ignored the relations within

production is not tenable given how often he stressed the need to

organise labour and how the organisation of credit was viewed as the

best means of doing so as it would reflect objective circumstances

rather than the visions of a few reformers at the top (Property is

Theft!, 288, 374–5, 499–500).

This can be seen in The Federative Principle which, while predominantly

focused on social organisation, discusses economic federalism and

introduces a change in terminology – the “universal association” of the

1840s now became the “agricultural-industrial federation.” Yet the basic

idea is the same and Proudhon acknowledges this by stating that “[a]ll

my economic ideas, elaborated for twenty-five years, can be summarised

in these three words: Agricultural-Industrial Federation.” (Property is

Theft!, 714) The links to the universal association are clear enough:

“We are socialists… under universal association, ownership of the land

and of the instruments of labour is social ownership… We do not want

expropriation by the State of the mines, canals and railways: it is

still monarchical, still wage-labour. We want the mines, canals,

railways handed over to democratically organised workers’ associations…

We want these associations to be models for agriculture, industry and

trade, the pioneering core of that vast federation of companies and

societies woven into the common cloth of the democratic and social

Republic.” (Property is Theft!, 377–8)

Thus “the federative principle… has for its first consequence the

administrative independence of the assembled localities; for its second

consequence the separation of power in each sovereign State; [and] for

its third consequence the agricultural-industrial federation.” The

latter was required “to shield the citizens of the contracting State

from bankocratic and capitalist exploitation as much from the inside as

from the outside.” This would end “economic serfdom or wage-labour, in a

word, the inequality of conditions and fortunes” by “a combination of

work to allow each worker to evolve from a mere labourer to a skilled

worker or even an artist, and from a wage-earner to their own master.”

(Property is Theft!, 712–3)

For Schapiro, Proudhon’s support for “possession” meant “the private

ownership of the instruments of production” (721) and so ignores his

many comments in support of social or common ownership. (Property is

Theft!, 105, 112, 137, 149, 153, 377). Indeed, in 1849 he angrily

refuted the suggestion he favoured “individual ownership” and stated he

had “never penned nor uttered any such thing: and have argued the

opposite a hundred times over.” Instead, he wished “an order wherein the

instruments of labour will cease to be appropriated and instead become

shared” or, as he put it in 1846, “a solution based upon equality,— in

other words, the organisation of labour, which involves the negation of

political economy and the end of property.” (Property is Theft!, 498–9,

202)

So if socialism, as Schapiro states, means “abolishing property

altogether” (719) then Proudhon was a socialist, albeit one who favoured

workers self-management of production over a centrally planned state

socialism (better termed state capitalism). As the workers would manage

their work and land/workplaces, the means of production would be

socialised yet remain “private enterprise” (736) in the sense of not

being government owned or run.

Needless to say, Schapiro ignores the numerous arguments Proudhon made

for workers’ associations (“industrial democracy”) to replace

wage-labour from What is Property? in 1840 to his death 25 years later.

(Property is Theft!, 610, 119, 744–53) This is particularly ironic as

Proudhon’s position on the American Civil War was driven by his

opposition to wage-labour and so opposition to industrial rather than

just financial capital. Nor does Schapiro present the necessary

historical context to show that Proudhon directed his fire against a

specific form of democracy (the centralised and statist form advocated

by the Jacobins and their followers on the French left) rather than all

forms of it. Unsurprisingly, he completely ignores Proudhon’s many

arguments for decentralised, federal and industrial forms of democracy,

for example:

“Unless democracy is a fraud, and the sovereignty of the People a joke,

it must be admitted that each citizen in the sphere of his industry,

each municipal, district or provincial council within its own territory,

is the only natural and legitimate representative of the Sovereign, and

that therefore each locality should act directly and by itself in

administering the interests which it includes, and should exercise full

sovereignty in relation to them.” (Property is Theft!, 595)

And:

“Besides universal suffrage and as a consequence of universal suffrage,

we want implementation of the imperative mandate [mandat impératif].

Politicians balk at it! Which means that in their eyes, the people, in

electing representatives, does not appoint mandatories but rather abjure

their sovereignty!… That is assuredly not socialism: it is not even

democracy.” (Property is Theft!, 379)

But what can you expect from someone who turns a book (War and Peace)

written to understand and end war by means of radical economic reform,

whose last sentence was “HUMANITY DOES NOT WANT ANY MORE WAR” (Oeuvres

Complètes 14: 330), into a work which proclaimed that “war was not a

social evil that would be eradicated in the course of human progress”?

(730)

This is a common aspect of Schapiro’s article. On almost every point he

attributes to Proudhon ideas the Frenchman repeatedly rejects, usually

in the very books Schapiro references. He proclaims that Proudhon

expressed nothing but “hatred of socialism” (732) yet while the

Frenchman attacked specific forms of socialism (state socialism) he

repeatedly proclaimed himself and his ideas socialist as “socialism… is

the Revolution.” We discover how Proudhon “welcomed the constitution of

the Second Empire that established the dictatorship of Louis Napoleon”

(727) in a book which was written before its creation. And best not

ponder too hard how a book in which Proudhon stated he was “opposed to

dictatorship and any type of coup d’État” and was “repelled by

dictatorship,” considering it “a theocratic and barbarous institution,

in every case a menace to liberty,” for the Revolution had to be “both

democratic and social” and so having “defended universal suffrage,” he

did “not ask that it be repressed” but rather “that it be organised, and

that it lives” (December 2, 1851: Contemporary Writings on the coup

d’état of Louis Napoleon [Garden City, N.J.; Doubleday, 1972], John B.

Halsted (ed.), 300, 276, 283, 289, 261) also saw him, according to

Schapiro, “[f]orcefully and repeatedly” drive home “the idea that a

social revolution could be accomplished only through the dictatorship of

one man” and advocate “personal dictatorship”! (727, 732)

So much for Proudhon “the passionate hater of democracy and of

socialism” who “first sounded the fascist note of a revolutionary

repudiation of democracy and of socialism.” (731, 734)

This explains why there are so few direct quotes from Proudhon’s books

in Schapiro’s article. Schapiro did what the fascists did – trawl

through Proudhon’s works to find a few words to quote selectively or out

of context.[8] His thesis would only be plausible if you were unfamiliar

with Proudhon’s writings and, thanks to the rhetoric used, it ensures

that you would remain so and so his distortions remain unknown. His task

is aided by there being little of Proudhon’s voluminous writings

translated into English (the first comprehensive anthology, Property is

Theft!, only appeared in 2011).

This shows the importance of returning to the original texts and not

relying upon summaries, particularly from critics. So, for example,

those who read Marx’s The Poverty of Philosophy probably think that

Proudhon’s System of Economic Contradictions was presenting a fully

worked out “system” in the same manner as the Utopian socialists. The

reality is radically different: the “system” the book discusses is the

capitalist system and its numerous contradictions (which could only be

resolved by transcending it). There are a few passages which do present

aspects of what a free society would be like but this minor aspect of a

work whose focus is a critique of capitalism along with criticisms of

those socialists who rejected this kind of analysis in favour of

presenting detailed visions of future communities, whom he rightly

labelled as Utopian long before Marx did.

Anarchists need to look at our history, warts and all, for if we do not

then others will. As such, “Slavery and the Proletariat” from The

Federative Principle is of interest for anarchists because it helps

combat the false impressions about Proudhon’s ideas by showing his

position on race and his anti-capitalism. It confirms K. Steven

Vincent’s summary that “to argue that Proudhon was a proto-fascist

suggests that one has never looked seriously at Proudhon’s writings.”

(Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and the Rise of French Republican Socialism

[Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984], 234)

If Proudhon did attack the Jacobin tradition and Rousseau as well as

state socialism it was for different reasons and ends than the

reactionaries. This does not mean we should glibly ignore his racism or

sexism, far from it, but we need to put them into context. Proudhon’s

private correspondence reflects his personal bigotries far more than his

public writings however to trawl through these letters and private

notebooks for the rare stupid and repulsive quote will do little more

than distort his ideas and his influence. Indeed, by this method the

most unlikely of people can be made to look to fascists – most

obviously, Marx and Engels.

Marx and Engels, Harbingers of Fascism?

First, it must be stressed that in no way is it being suggested that

Marx and Engels were precursors of Nazism. Rather, we are using them to

show how dishonest the selective quoting of the likes of Draper is by

using an example closer to home than Proudhon.

Doing so shows the all too obvious weakness of this approach. As we will

show, it is extremely easy to find equally racist remarks from both Marx

and Engels towards numerous peoples but reprehensible as these are, no

sensible person would suggest that Marxism should be abandoned as a

result. That many of their opinions reflected the assumptions of their

time and, like Proudhon, they often failed to rise above them is no

basis to dismiss their contributions to socialism or the main thrust of

their politics.

We cannot hope to do justice to the numerous bigotries of Marx and

Engels here[9] and so we will concentrate on what Draper would label

“Hitlerite” if Proudhon had suggested it – what Engels termed

“nonhistoric” peoples (usually the Slavs) as well as Jews. We will draw

upon Roman Rosdolsky’s important work “Engels and the ‘Nonhistoric’

Peoples: The National Question in the Revolution of 1848.” (Critique:

Journal of Socialist Theory, No. 18/19)

Unsurprisingly, given the times, Marx and Engels made numerous

anti-Semitic remarks both in private and public. During the 1848

revolution, the paper Marx edited (Neue Rheinische Zeitung) published

the reports of Müller-Tellering who expressed “an all too maniacal

hatred” of Jews (193). Engels wrote “very unpleasant passages on the

(Polish) Jews” (116), describing them as “the very incarnation of

haggling, avarice and sordidness” and the meanest of all races” with

“its lust for profit.” The Austrian Jews had “exploited the revolution

and are now being punished for it” while “anyone who knows how powerful”

they were. He generalised by suggesting that “Jews are known to be

cheated cheats everywhere” and, according to Marx, they had put

themselves “at the head of the counter-revolution” and so the revolution

had “to throw them back into their ghetto.” (quoted 192, 203,196)

Marx’s paper “did not dissociate itself from the anti-Semitic ‘popular

opinion’”[10] (201) and its articles resulted in some of its backers who

were Jewish to demand the return of their money as it preached

“religious hatred.” (191)

Yet the despicable attitude expressed against Jews in Neue Rheinische

Zeitung is the least of the issues of concern here. As John-Paul Himka,

the translator of Rosdolsky’s work, noted this newspaper contained “some

embarrassing statements made by Marx and, above all, Engels with regards

to East European peoples” and “had characterised most of the Slavic

people… as nonhistoric, counter-revolutionary by nature and doomed to

extinction. The statements, moreover, were saturated with insulting

epithets… and ominous-sounding threats… Such sentiments had a

particularly nasty ring in the immediate postwar years, in the wake of

Nazi brutality in Eastern Europe…” (1)

Thus we find Engels’ asserting that the Slavs have been “forced to

attain the first stage of civilisation only by means of a foreign yoke,

are not viable and will never be able to achieve any kind of

independence” and that the conquered should be grateful to the Germans

for “having given themselves the trouble of civilizing the stubborn

Czechs and Slovenes, and introducing among them trade, industry, a

tolerable degree of agriculture, and culture!” (Marx-Engels Collected

Works 8: 238)

Worse, Engels proclaimed that “one day we shall take a bloody revenge on

the Slavs for this cowardly and base betrayal of the revolution” and

“hatred of the Russians was, and still is, the first revolutionary

passion of the Germans”. The revolution could only be secured “against

these Slavs peoples by the most decisive acts of terrorism” and “a war

of annihilation and ruthless terrorism, not in the interests of Germany

but in the interests of the revolution!” There would be “a bloody

revenge in the Slav barbarians” and a war which will “annihilate all

these small pig-headed nations even to their very names” and “will not

only cause reactionary classes and dynasties to disappear from the face

of the earth, but also entire reactionary peoples. And that too is an

advance.” (quoted, 85, 86)

In short, Engels advocated ethnic cleansing in the name of the

revolution against those whom he considered “nonhistoric” peoples. This

was recognised by leading Marxist Karl Kautsky who, rightly, denounced

Engels for advocating that “they had to be exterminated” (quoted 90)

Rosdolsky’s comments show the limitation of Leninist ideology:

“What Engels really wished to make ‘disappear from the face of the

earth’ were the Slavic national movements, the political parties… and

their leadership; it was against these that ‘ruthless terrorism’ had to

be applied. The peoples themselves, the masses of their population,

would be subjected by the victorious ‘revolutionary nations’ to a (not

altogether peaceful) Germanisation” (86)

While Rosdolsky quotes the Russian proverb “You can’t leave out one word

from a song” he decides to add a few. Engels is very clear and he writes

of peoples and nations, not parties or movements. He did not call for a

war between classes but between peoples. Thus it was Slavs as such and

Jews as such which were counter-revolutionary by nature and had to be

repressed (by means up to and including genocide). Rather than explain

the actions of (a part of) these peoples by their class position or the

class dynamics of the revolution, Engels explained them in terms of

their nature. If the actions of these “nonhistoric” peoples is explained

in this manner then there is little option than to conclude, like Marx

and Engels, that these peoples had to be wiped out down “to their very

names” or thrown “back into their ghetto.”

Regardless of what drove these rants, as Rosdolsky rightly states “it no

way nullifies the fact that they made entire peoples the object of this

hatred and proclaimed a ‘war of annihilation’ against them.” (87) If

these anti-Semitic reports and articles about civilising or wiping out

the Slavs had been published between 1918 and 1939 rather than in 1848–9

we could easily guess which movement’s papers they would have appeared

in.[11]

Ignoring the genocidal ethnic cleansing proclaimed against the Slavs

(bar Poles) and other “nonhistoric” people, Engels wrote of the war

which “broke out over Texas” between Mexico and the USA and how it was

good that “that magnificent California was snatched from the lazy

Mexicans, who did not know what to do with it” by “the energetic

Yankees.” (quoted, 159) He failed to mention that the revolt of 1836

over Texas which was the root of the 1846 war was conducted by

“planters, owners of Negro slaves, and their main reason for revolting

was that slavery had been abolished in Mexico in 1829.” (160) In fact in

1845 a majority of voters in the Republic of Texas approved a proposed

constitution that specifically endorsed slavery and the slave trade and

was later accepted by the U.S. Congress. Unlike Engels, Northern

abolitionists attacked this war as an attempt by slave-owners to

strengthen the grip of slavery and ensure their influence in the federal

government and publicly declared their wish for the defeat of the

American forces. Henry David Thoreau was jailed for his refusal to pay

taxes to support the war and penned his famous essay Civil Disobedience.

(Zinn, 155–7)

Rosdolsky rightly comments on how “inappropriate, in fact perverse, was

Engels’ illustration.” (160)

So we find distinct parallels between the standard Marxist critique of

Proudhon and the many racist and anti-Semitic remarks by Marx and Engels

as well as their siding with slave states against abolitionist ones and

calls for national hatred and the annihilation of whole peoples.

Strangely, most Marxists (rightly) condemning Proudhon for his bigotries

are silent about this.

To state the obvious, Marx and Engels “had exactly the same position

vis-à-vis the Jews” and “both of them shared their antipathy to the Jews

with very many other socialists of the past (including, to mention only

a few, Fourier, Proudhon and Bakunin).”(197) However, as Rosdolsky

suggests, it was “only after the Dreyfus case [in the 1890s] was the

peril of anti-Semitism recognised in all its magnitude and unequivocally

opposed” (201) and so we should not inflict views shaped by events and

developments in culture and science that occurred after Proudhon, Marx

and Engels died upon them. To ignore this obvious point for anarchist

thinkers while assuming it for Marx and Engels, as many Marxists do,

seems hypocritical.

So this sort of approach is of little use. For example, Tristram Hunt

raises “the rather ahistoric question as to whether Engels was a racist”

and notes that in “his elemental outbursts… there are palpably racist

inclinations”: “Like many in his milieu, he certainly thought western

Europeans were more civilised, advanced and cultured than Africans,

Slavs, Arabs and the slaves of the American South.” (The frock-coated

communist: the revolutionary life of Friedrich Engels [London: Allen

Lane, 2009], 262–3) Few sensible people who dismiss Marxism simply on

these grounds particularly, as Rosdolsky suggests, “it is very easy to

put three-quarters of the thinkers, writers and politicians of the past

into the camp of anti-Semitism.” In terms of Marxist theory, the idea of

“non-historic” peoples “stood in contraction to the materialist

conception of history” and “smacks of metaphysics” while it “explains

absolutely nothing.” (197, 128) That Proudhon’s (few) racist comments

are equally in contradiction with anarchism should go without saying

but, sadly, such common sense seems lost on a quite a few Marxists.

In Conclusion

The translator of Rosdolsky’s work quotes a letter from one British

Marxist asking for it not to be translated as it would “create confusion

in the anti-imperialist movement” and be “used by the opportunists to

attack Marx-Engels.” This position, the translator notes, was

“distressingly prevalent on the English-speaking left.”(4) Anarchists

can do better and follow in Rosdolsky’s footsteps especially since

Proudhon’s actual legacy on race (as expressed in The Federative

Principle and elsewhere) is not represented by a single, private, never

repeated rant written in December 1847, a rant usually quoted without

indicating its source.

This does not mean that Proudhon (any more than Bakunin) was a paragon

of anarchist consistency but rather was a person rooted in a specific

historical context, a human being like any other with all the

contradictions, complexities and confusions that that implies. They made

comments which were reflective of the wider culture they grew up and

lived within) and which could not reflect what happened 100 years later

nor the scientific developments we now take for granted.

While we may wish great thinkers to be better than us, the fact is that

they share our limitations and, as such, never totally live up to the

ideals they express at their best. Thus Proudhon argued publicly for

racial equality and when so doing did not make an exception for Jews yet

this was combined with personal bigotries which were sometimes expressed

in print (more so in his correspondence). Proudhon did not attempt to

explain this inconsistency (much like Bakunin who did the same).

That the worse of Proudhon’s sexism and racism came to light after his

death does little to mitigate their stupidity yet Proudhon, in spite of

his many limitations (sexism, racism, reformism, opposition to strikes),

deserves better than the likes of Schapiro and Draper. They should not

be allowed to complete the hopes of French reactionaries and fascists by

helping turn a man of the left into a man of the right.

We should be discussing more important subjects than the (recognised and

lamented) limitations of specific individuals. Socialist politics is not

a popularity contest and so this does not get us very far. Indeed, its

only feasible purpose is to put people off political threats when you

consider your own ideas weak in comparison. Simply put, if you do not

feel confident of winning the argument once people are familiar with the

ideas in question then the best thing to do is ensure that no one reads

them.

The problem with Proudhon is that for all his great insights and

analysis, he also made some glaringly stupid comments and mistakes. He

simply did not, for example, see the very obvious contradiction in his

egalitarian and libertarian ideas and his defence of patriarchy and his

(occasion) racist comment. He was all too often a “man of his times” and

used language which in the 20^(th) and 21^(st) centuries would simply

not be tolerated. Thus the use of terms of “inferior” and “superior” in

relation to races, terms which can be quoted out of context to give a

radically false impression of his ideas.

This, sadly, was precisely what Schapiro and Draper did while ignoring

how Proudhon repeatedly proclaimed equality of races and civil rights

for all, regardless of colour and race, in his published works. That

quotes like these were ignored by the far-right writers who sought to

appropriate Proudhon goes without saying, but why should anarchists?

Particularly as they are in published texts and, as such, had influence

– unlike a single private rant and a few passing anti-Semitic comments.

The likes of Proudhon, Bakunin, Marx and Engels were people of their

times and so it is unsurprising that certain of their opinions shock and

disgust us. The question is, are these views at the core of their

politics or do they reflect personal bigotries in contradiction with

them? In all four cases, the answer is obvious and so such attacks on

Proudhon fail to convince – particularly if they are generalised to all

anarchists, as if Proudhon’s opposition to strikes or his sexism were

remotely applicable to the likes of Bakunin, Kropotkin or Goldman!

Dismissing a theory based on the personal failings of those who advocate

only convinces the superficial. Proudhon rejected many of the

assumptions of his times, yet he did not rise above all of them. Yet we

can overcome the limitations of Proudhon the man by Proudhon the

theorist. His errors are best addressed by applying the best of his

ideas, as contemporary (Joseph Déjacque) and subsequent (Bakunin and

Kropotkin) anarchists did by pointing out that he ignored his own

lessons. Hence the development of the best of Proudhon’s ideas into

consistent egalitarianism across genders, support of strikes and unions,

social ownership of both the means of production and its output

(libertarian communism) and social revolution.

[1] “L’esclavage et le prolétariat.”, Third Part, Chapter IX, Oeuvres

Complètes [Lacroix edition] 8: 227–34. Translated by Ian Harvey and

available in full at:

anarchism.pageabode.com

[2] Special thanks to Ian Harvey for taking the time to translate this

chapter, not to mention his contributions to Property is Theft! which

ensured this anthology is as comprehensive as it is.

[3] “The poverty of Proudhon’s anarchism”, 9^(th) May 2013,

socialistworker.org

[4] Chretien is right to point to Proudhon’s anti-feminism and defence

of patriarchy as being lamentable aspects of his ideas yet he fails to

note Proudhon was expressing the traditional patriarchal views of most

of the French working class, the class he was part of. Nor does he

mention that Marx did not consider that Proudhon patriarchal views

worthy of public criticism (which is important to note if you wish to

play the “my dead thinker is nicer than yours” card).

[5] Lenin’s aim was “to wage an immediate and merciless war of

extermination” (Collected Works 12: 427) against opponents, although

obviously in 1907 this was considered as a battle of ideas. Sadly, when

the Bolsheviks seized power this soon became a literal war which, by

1921, was effectively a “merciless war of extermination” against all

non-Bolshevik parties and groups.

[6] It should be stressed that Proudhon was the first socialist to argue

the importance of social change “from below” against reform “from

above”, which means that Draper smears Proudhon while appropriating his

terminology. (Property is Theft!, 205, 398)

[7] Thus, for example, Marx proclaimed that the British were a “superior

civilisation” to “Hindoo civilisation” and “India has no history at

all.” The mission of British imperialism was “the annihilation of

Asiatic society, and the laying of the material foundations of Western

society in Asia.” (Karl Marx on colonialism and modernization: his

despatches and other writings on China, India, Mexico, the Middle East

and North Africa [Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Books, 1969], Shlomo Avineri

(ed.), 231–3)

[8] The French reactionaries admitted as much: “the royalists saw

Proudhon as their passport into nonroyalist territory… [their] interest

in Proudhon was to be very selective… they knew what they were looking

for and passed over anything else… Proudhon… was seen primarily as a

bridge to the Left.” (Paul Mazgaj, The Action Française and

Revolutionary Syndicalism [Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina

Press, 1979], 176)

[9] Peter Fryer’s “Engels: A Man of His Time” in John Lea and Geoff

Pilling (eds.), The condition of Britain: Essays on Frederick Engels

(London: Pluto Press, 1996) can be consulted for those interested in

such matters.

[10] A few years earlier Engels had suggests that the “success” of a

crude anti-Semitic text entitled Rothschild I. King of the Jews “shows

how much this was an attack in the right direction.” (Marx-Engels

Collected Works 6: 62–3)

[11] Although we must not forget the “Schlageter Line” of the German

Communist Party in 1923 that involved co-operation with fascist groups

under the slogan “national Bolshevism.” Joint meetings were held and

continued until “the Nazis leadership placed a ban on further

co-operation.” (E.H. Carr, The Interregnum 1923–1924 [Harmondsworth:

Penguin, 1969], 183) In the early 1920s the USSR under Lenin recognised

Mussolini’s fascist regime and entered into trade agreements with it.

The USSR also entered into an agreement with the German state to supply

weapons, prompting the council communists to wonder how many communists

shot during the 1923 putsch were killed by Soviet supplied weapons.