This text is the translation of the first part of a book published in French in 2009, Études proudhoniennes, L’économie politique (Éditions du Monde libertaire. This first part develops a thesis concerning Proudhon’s methodological approach of economy I had started to study in an article, “La Question économique”, published in a French anarchist magazine, La Rue, revue culturelle et littéraire d’expression anarchiste, n° 33, 2nd term, 1983.

The reader will quickly realize I am not acquainted with philosophical vocabulary in English and that I am a poor translator. This translation has been made quite quickly and needs to be revised and improved, but I do hope the English reader will at least roughly understand what it is about in general terms.

The references which are mentioned are naturally French references. Many authors I quote are Marxist authors the English speaking reader has certainly never heard about and I didn’t bother to find an English publication for there certainly are none.

Concerning Marx and Engels, I tried as much as possible to find the English version of their writings, which I found on the Internet. I simply mentioned the title of the book.

Concerning Proudhon, it seems the only book that has been translated is the Système des contradictions économiques, or System of Economic contradictions, available on the Internet. I mention this book either under the French or the English title.

The motivation for this translation is that I realized that the English speaking readers seem to have a very scarce knowledge of Proudhon, which is quite surprising for he laid the foundations of anarchist doctrine. Although he can be associated with no anarchist organization, he developed most of the concepts which characterize the anarchist doctrine, as well as most of the concepts Marx uses in economy.

Not being particularly a “Proudhonian” myself, my intention is not to “rehabilitate” this author but to give credit for his contribution to the founding of anarchist doctrine.