The non-polemical study of Proudhonian sociology may allow us to re-examine the relationship between this theory, whose vocation is explicitly revolutionary, and the work of Marx. We know that the tradition of orthodox Marxism persists in considering Proudhon as a theorist of the petty bourgeoisie incapable of formulating at a theory of revolution : his anti-statism would only be the expression of a class threatened by industrial development and his anarchism a new version of utopian socialism. On the contrary, one may wonder whether the vigour of Marx’s criticisms of Proudhon was not due to the proximity of their concerns, to their belonging to the same intellectual movement where differences were all the more sensitive as they were reduced.

In the wide range of nineteenth-century social theories, Proudhon and Marx pursued the same opponents. First of all, they denounced the individualistic postulates of political economy which led to the isolation of the regime of production from the social totality and to the denial of existing relations between the economy and social relationships.