Pierre-Joseph Proudhon: A Biography Book

Not the most exciting biography in the world, but an enjoyable read if you know nothing about the father of anarchism.

Proudhon was equal parts impressive and exasperating. On the one hand, he came from a very poor background and rose up to be a feared dissident - espousing a new way of thinking that was pacifist and would go on to influence great thinkers (Victor Hugo and Tolstoy) as well as create great enemies (Marx). Some of Proudhon's ideas only took traction much longer after he was dead, namely the notion of banks for the people and that war is evil. Others, like the idea that property should be done away with, are still out of fashion... Also, he was a deeply spiritual person and saw within anarchism what sounded to me like Taoism - without knowing of it (a century later Ursula K. Le Guin would bring these two philosophies beautifully together.)

On the other hand, Proudhon was a sexist - like all other male French revolutionaries - and apparently a huge antisemite (not mentioned in this biography.) His family have never released his private diaries, which might be because of this.

Proudhon loved to walk, was good to his close friends, loved his three daughters and his wife (who bossed him around by the end of his life - good!) and was self-taught. He also had a dodgy fashion sense and stuck out like a sore thumb in fashionable Paris. He viewed himself as a journalist - everything he published at the time was quickly sold out and often confiscated by the government, for inciting hatred against the church/government/the rich - but he's now more remembered for anarchism.

To him, anything fixed and unchanging was bad - any political theory should reflect the truth that life is in a constant flux of change. That's why he constantly changed and updated his political views, often building on what was happening in Europe or what he'd written before. I've never read any of his work but it sounds like they are full of paradoxes.

The most intriguing surprise in this biography was to learn that Tolstoy - who only visited France a few times and met Proudhon - was also an anarch-pacifist.