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Proudhon and the problem of method
René Berthier
Article published on 9 June 2012
last modification on 3 July 2023

by Eric Vilain

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 done, for practical reasons, 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 French Marxist authors the English speaking reader has certainly never heard about and I didn’t bother to find an English version 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.

It seems the only book that has been translated in English is the "Système des contradictions économiques" (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 the anarchist doctrine. Although he can be associated with no anarchist organisation, he developed most of the concepts which characterize the anarchist doctrine, as well as most of the concepts Marx uses in economy.

There is another reason why I decided to translate this text. Two years ago I read "Black Flame: The Revolutionary Class Politics of Anarchism and Syndicalism", written by Lucien van der Walt and Michael Schmidt (AK Press). I think this is probably one of the most interesting books on anarchism written in the last 50 years. But I realised that the bibliography concerning Proudhon refers to only one very small book (80 pages) written about him in the 30’. Of course I can’t blame the authors of "Black Flame" for the dramatic absence of information available in English concerning Proudhon. This is why I thought necessary to translate this passage of my own book on Proudhon.

But why this particular passage? Because in my mind Proudhon’s approach to political economy is probably what is most innovative.
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, particularly in a field that is little known: methodology.

While it is legitimate to compare Proudhon’s economic thought with that of Marx, this comparison must be made in “fair play”: we must relate what is comparable. “The System of Economic Contradictions” was published in 1846, while Book I of “Capital” was published in 1867.
While Proudhon is undoubtedly a precursor of Marx in terms of both the method of exposition and the concepts (categories) employed, it is clear that Marx had more than twenty years to complete and improve what Proudhon had sketched out.

As his correspondence shows, Marx was permanently confronted with followers who did not understand much about his theories, and this goes for Germany as well as France. Bebel read "Capital" two years after it was published and Marx wrote to Engels that Liebknecht had not read fifteen pages of the book (Marx to Engels, 25 January 1868). As soon as Volume I of “Capital” was published, Marx sent a copy to Bakunin, who was then in Italy.
Bakunin was probably one of the rare who had actually read the book and he always considered it as a necessary reference for the workers:

“This work should have been translated into French long ago, for none, as far as I know, contains such a profound, luminous, scientific, and decisive analysis, and, if I may so express it, such a mercilessly unmasking, analysis of the formation of bourgeois capital and of the systematic and cruel exploitation that this capital continues to exert over the work of the proletariat. The unique defect of this work, perfectly positivist, with all due respect to La Liberté of Brussels, – positivist in the sense that, based on a thorough study of economic facts, it admits of no other logic than the logic of facts, – its only defect, I say, is to have been written, partly, but in part only, in a style that is too metaphysical and abstract, which has probably misled La Liberté of Brussels and which makes it difficult to read and almost out of reach for the majority of the workers. And it is the workers above all who should read it, nevertheless. The bourgeois will never read it, or, if they read it, they will not understand it, and if they understand it, they will never speak of it because this work is nothing but a death sentence scientifically motivated and irrevocably pronounced, not against them as individuals but against their class.” (Bakunin, Œuvres, Vol. 3, Paris, Stock, 1908, pp. 209.)

The collectivists of the First International agreed with Bakunin on that point: so Carlo Cafiero, a follower of Bakunin (ex-follower of Engels), wrote an “Abstract” of “Capital” so that it could be read by the workers, and James Guillaume, another of Bakunin’s followers, wrote a preface. A particularly non-sectarian attitude.