WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:01.679 Have you ever wondered who first looked at a 00:00:01.679 --> 00:00:05.700 society with all its rigid rules, the hierarchies, 00:00:05.700 --> 00:00:08.800 the sprawling bureaucracies, and proudly declared 00:00:08.800 --> 00:00:12.259 to the entire world, I am an anarchist? Most 00:00:12.259 --> 00:00:14.539 people today hear that word and immediately think 00:00:14.539 --> 00:00:17.019 of chaos or, you know, violent disorder. Right, 00:00:17.059 --> 00:00:19.679 exactly. But the person who actually first claimed 00:00:19.679 --> 00:00:22.460 that label saw as the ultimate, most rational 00:00:22.460 --> 00:00:26.019 form of order. So, welcome to the Deep Dive. 00:00:26.179 --> 00:00:29.059 Today, we are exploring the life, the underlying 00:00:29.059 --> 00:00:31.539 philosophy, and the intense contradictions of 00:00:31.539 --> 00:00:34.659 Pierre -Joseph Proudhon. He was this 19th century 00:00:34.659 --> 00:00:37.280 French philosopher whose ideas fundamentally 00:00:37.280 --> 00:00:39.880 shook the political landscape of Europe. Yeah, 00:00:39.939 --> 00:00:41.659 and for today's source material, we are relying 00:00:41.659 --> 00:00:44.039 on a highly comprehensive Wikipedia article. 00:00:44.259 --> 00:00:46.939 It details Proudhon's biography, the mechanics 00:00:46.939 --> 00:00:49.679 of his foundational political theories, his legendary 00:00:49.679 --> 00:00:52.579 feud with Karl Marx, and also some highly controversial 00:00:52.579 --> 00:00:54.539 personal views. Yeah, those views definitely 00:00:54.539 --> 00:00:56.920 complicate his legacy. They really do. Yeah. 00:00:57.000 --> 00:00:59.780 So our mission today is to essentially cut through 00:00:59.780 --> 00:01:02.539 all that historical noise. We want to give you 00:01:02.539 --> 00:01:05.359 a clear understanding of who this man was, how 00:01:05.359 --> 00:01:08.340 his specific brand of anarchism actually functioned, 00:01:08.340 --> 00:01:11.319 and why the frameworks he built are still visibly 00:01:11.319 --> 00:01:13.260 rippling through modern political and economic 00:01:13.260 --> 00:01:16.379 debates. Okay, let's unpack this. Because to 00:01:16.379 --> 00:01:19.400 really grasp... Proudhon's philosophy, you don't 00:01:19.400 --> 00:01:21.420 have to understand the soil he grew out of. I 00:01:21.420 --> 00:01:23.359 mean, he was not one of those wealthy aristocrats 00:01:23.359 --> 00:01:27.480 or bourgeois intellectuals who typically populated 00:01:27.480 --> 00:01:30.060 the Parisian socialist salons back in the 19th 00:01:30.060 --> 00:01:32.500 century. Not at all. He was born in 1809 in a 00:01:32.500 --> 00:01:35.599 suburb of Besançon, France. His father was a 00:01:35.599 --> 00:01:38.659 cooper, so a barrel maker and a brewer. And the 00:01:38.659 --> 00:01:41.239 family lived in severe poverty. He had absolutely 00:01:41.239 --> 00:01:44.040 no formal education as a young child, but his 00:01:44.040 --> 00:01:46.120 mother rigorously taught him to spell by the 00:01:46.120 --> 00:01:48.260 time he was three. And his early intellectual 00:01:48.260 --> 00:01:51.060 diet was incredibly sparse. Until he was about 00:01:51.060 --> 00:01:52.900 10 years old, he essentially only had access 00:01:52.900 --> 00:01:55.540 to the Gospels, a few local almanacs, and this 00:01:55.540 --> 00:01:57.799 popular romantic text called the Four Amon Brothers. 00:01:58.000 --> 00:02:01.540 Wow, that's it. Yeah, just those. But in 1820, 00:02:01.680 --> 00:02:04.620 his mother orchestrated this major turning point. 00:02:05.019 --> 00:02:07.319 She actually managed to get him enrolled in the 00:02:07.319 --> 00:02:10.000 city college. The tuition was completely out 00:02:10.000 --> 00:02:12.340 of their reach, of course, but a former employer 00:02:12.340 --> 00:02:14.659 of his father stepped in and helped secure a 00:02:14.659 --> 00:02:17.560 bursary to cover the costs. But getting in didn't 00:02:17.560 --> 00:02:19.780 just erase his class reality. Oh, definitely 00:02:19.780 --> 00:02:22.139 not. He was a kid showing up to this prestigious 00:02:22.139 --> 00:02:25.719 city college without shoes. He lacked the money 00:02:25.719 --> 00:02:28.360 to even buy the required textbooks, and he's 00:02:28.360 --> 00:02:30.780 completely surrounded by the children of the 00:02:30.780 --> 00:02:33.419 wealthy elite. He was mocked relentlessly for 00:02:33.419 --> 00:02:36.189 it. Right. But instead of retreating, that deep 00:02:36.189 --> 00:02:39.189 sense of alienation seemed to forge this fierce, 00:02:39.229 --> 00:02:41.830 independent intellect. Since he couldn't afford 00:02:41.830 --> 00:02:43.870 the course materials, he practically lived in 00:02:43.870 --> 00:02:46.590 the school library, just tearing through a massive 00:02:46.590 --> 00:02:49.129 volume of subjects completely on his own. You 00:02:49.129 --> 00:02:51.430 can immediately see the roots of his intense, 00:02:51.550 --> 00:02:54.150 lifelong class consciousness forming right there 00:02:54.150 --> 00:02:57.030 in that library. And that autodidactic drive, 00:02:57.110 --> 00:02:59.270 that really became the defining engine of his 00:02:59.270 --> 00:03:03.280 life. By 1827, economic realities forced him 00:03:03.280 --> 00:03:05.340 to start an apprenticeship at a local printing 00:03:05.340 --> 00:03:09.620 press. Now, Besançon was a major center for religious 00:03:09.620 --> 00:03:11.960 thought at the time, so the press was primarily 00:03:11.960 --> 00:03:14.919 churning out dense ecclesiastical and theological 00:03:14.919 --> 00:03:18.539 works. In Protono, wanting to be a meticulous 00:03:18.539 --> 00:03:20.419 proofreader, he actually taught himself Latin. 00:03:20.879 --> 00:03:22.939 just to correct the text more accurately. Yeah, 00:03:23.020 --> 00:03:24.900 just so he could do his job better. Which is 00:03:24.900 --> 00:03:27.199 wild. But spending thousands of hours reading 00:03:27.199 --> 00:03:30.520 and correcting Christian theology had a really 00:03:30.520 --> 00:03:33.219 profound unintended effect on him. It really 00:03:33.219 --> 00:03:35.300 backfired from a religious standpoint. Totally. 00:03:35.680 --> 00:03:38.680 The deep exposure to those texts led him to systematically 00:03:38.680 --> 00:03:41.479 deconstruct his own religious beliefs, which 00:03:41.479 --> 00:03:43.659 eventually resulted in his total rejection of 00:03:43.659 --> 00:03:45.500 Christianity. The printing press was essentially 00:03:45.500 --> 00:03:48.060 his true university. And it wasn't just the texts 00:03:48.060 --> 00:03:50.300 he was reading. It was the collision with the 00:03:50.300 --> 00:03:53.819 actual authors. In 1829, the utopian socialist 00:03:53.819 --> 00:03:56.460 Charles Fourier came into the shop to oversee 00:03:56.460 --> 00:03:59.379 the printing of his latest book. Proudhon ended 00:03:59.379 --> 00:04:02.159 up supervising that run, which led to these deep, 00:04:02.159 --> 00:04:04.580 formative philosophical debates between the two 00:04:04.580 --> 00:04:07.780 of them. right there on the shop floor. Fourier's 00:04:07.780 --> 00:04:10.379 ideas about reorganizing society into cooperative 00:04:10.379 --> 00:04:13.520 communities, that left a permanent mark on Proudhon's 00:04:13.520 --> 00:04:16.500 thinking. And during this same period, he also 00:04:16.500 --> 00:04:18.839 formed a critical friendship with Gustave Fellow, 00:04:19.040 --> 00:04:22.480 a wealthy scholar from a family of French industrialists. 00:04:23.100 --> 00:04:25.620 Fellow was so impressed by the brilliant Latin 00:04:25.620 --> 00:04:27.819 corrections Proudhon was making on a manuscript 00:04:27.819 --> 00:04:30.930 that he actively sought the printer out. They 00:04:30.930 --> 00:04:33.730 spent their evenings intensely debating literature 00:04:33.730 --> 00:04:36.389 and philosophy, guys like Rousseau, Voltaire, 00:04:36.629 --> 00:04:39.089 Diderot. Follot was essentially filling in the 00:04:39.089 --> 00:04:42.050 gaps of Proudhon's education, exposing him to 00:04:42.050 --> 00:04:43.910 the broader Enlightenment thinkers he had missed 00:04:43.910 --> 00:04:46.350 while he was just immersed in theology. Follot 00:04:46.350 --> 00:04:48.470 actually offered to financially sponsor Proudhon 00:04:48.470 --> 00:04:50.730 so he could move to Paris and dedicate himself 00:04:50.730 --> 00:04:53.970 entirely to philosophy. So Proudhon makes the 00:04:53.970 --> 00:04:56.790 journey. Yeah. And he literally walks from Besançon 00:04:56.790 --> 00:05:00.019 to Paris. He walked all the way there. But when 00:05:00.019 --> 00:05:03.120 he arrives, he experiences a massive cultural 00:05:03.120 --> 00:05:06.189 and class shock. I mean, think about it. He's 00:05:06.189 --> 00:05:09.550 this rural, self -taught, working class artisan 00:05:09.550 --> 00:05:12.750 suddenly thrust into this circle of highly educated 00:05:12.750 --> 00:05:15.250 metropolitan academics. The imposter syndrome 00:05:15.250 --> 00:05:17.790 must have been visceral. Oh, completely. He felt 00:05:17.790 --> 00:05:20.930 totally alienated by the Parisian parlor socialists 00:05:20.930 --> 00:05:23.850 who just theorized about the working class without 00:05:23.850 --> 00:05:26.529 ever having callous hands themselves. And this 00:05:26.529 --> 00:05:29.110 wasn't just homesickness. This fundamental distrust 00:05:29.110 --> 00:05:32.550 of top -down academic socialism deeply informed 00:05:32.550 --> 00:05:34.600 his later rejection of state -led... communist 00:05:34.600 --> 00:05:36.879 theories. His time in Paris was ultimately cut 00:05:36.879 --> 00:05:39.230 short though. A cholera outbreak swept the city, 00:05:39.430 --> 00:05:42.050 Fallot fell ill and lost his funding, and Proudhon 00:05:42.050 --> 00:05:43.930 was forced to return home. But the intellectual 00:05:43.930 --> 00:05:46.589 fire had been lit. Exactly. He eventually won 00:05:46.589 --> 00:05:48.990 a scholarship from the Academy of Besançon, largely 00:05:48.990 --> 00:05:51.490 because the elite judges were astounded by the 00:05:51.490 --> 00:05:53.370 sheer depth of knowledge he had acquired while 00:05:53.370 --> 00:05:56.230 working as a manual laborer. He used that platform 00:05:56.230 --> 00:05:58.569 to start testing his radical ideas, literally 00:05:58.569 --> 00:06:00.730 smuggling critiques of authority and property 00:06:00.730 --> 00:06:03.709 into standard essay contests. That is so bold. 00:06:04.490 --> 00:06:06.990 But his true arrival on the historical stage 00:06:06.990 --> 00:06:10.829 happened in 1840. Right. 1840 is when he drops 00:06:10.829 --> 00:06:13.949 the absolute blockbuster, his first major work, 00:06:14.050 --> 00:06:16.689 What is Property? And right there in the text 00:06:16.689 --> 00:06:20.329 is the explosive foundational declaration, property 00:06:20.329 --> 00:06:23.389 is theft. What's fascinating here is the precise 00:06:23.389 --> 00:06:25.689 mechanical definition he applies to the word 00:06:25.689 --> 00:06:27.970 property. Because if you just read that slogan 00:06:27.970 --> 00:06:30.790 on a bumper sticker, it's incredibly easy to 00:06:30.790 --> 00:06:33.490 misunderstand his entire political economy. Yeah, 00:06:33.529 --> 00:06:36.250 people hear that and panic. Right. Proudhon was 00:06:36.250 --> 00:06:39.629 drawing a strict, rigid boundary between property 00:06:39.629 --> 00:06:42.110 and what he defined as possession. I think we 00:06:42.110 --> 00:06:44.680 need to push on that distinction. Because a skeptical 00:06:44.680 --> 00:06:46.339 listener is immediately going to ask, well, if 00:06:46.339 --> 00:06:47.839 property is theft, does that mean I don't own 00:06:47.839 --> 00:06:50.000 the house I live in or the tools I use to do 00:06:50.000 --> 00:06:52.959 my job? How does society even function without 00:06:52.959 --> 00:06:55.500 basic ownership? And that's the crucial misunderstanding. 00:06:55.899 --> 00:06:58.540 He wasn't attacking the concept of personal belongings, 00:06:58.759 --> 00:07:01.180 the house you occupy, your toothbrush, the tools 00:07:01.180 --> 00:07:03.019 you use for your labor, the land you actively 00:07:03.019 --> 00:07:05.839 cultivate. He categorized all of that as possession. 00:07:06.160 --> 00:07:09.079 OK, so possession is legitimate. Yes, possession 00:07:09.079 --> 00:07:11.819 is legitimate and it is strictly tied to actual 00:07:11.819 --> 00:07:15.079 use and occupancy. When Proudhon declared property 00:07:15.079 --> 00:07:18.319 as theft, he was targeting a very specific economic 00:07:18.319 --> 00:07:21.740 mechanism. He meant unearned income derived purely 00:07:21.740 --> 00:07:24.459 from a legal title. He meant rent, interest, 00:07:24.699 --> 00:07:27.579 and the extraction of surplus value by a capitalist. 00:07:27.920 --> 00:07:31.139 So if I build a plow and rent it out to a farmer, 00:07:31.279 --> 00:07:33.920 Proudhon says that rent is theft because I'm 00:07:33.920 --> 00:07:36.439 no longer actively using the plow. I'm just leveraging 00:07:36.439 --> 00:07:39.019 a piece of paper, a title, to extract the fruits 00:07:39.019 --> 00:07:41.730 of someone else's labor. Precisely. He analyzed 00:07:41.730 --> 00:07:44.290 the concept of collective force. A capitalist 00:07:44.290 --> 00:07:46.670 might pay 100 individual workers their daily 00:07:46.670 --> 00:07:49.629 individual wage, but the capitalist pockets the 00:07:49.629 --> 00:07:52.389 massive surplus value generated by their coordinated 00:07:52.389 --> 00:07:55.029 collective effort. It's the synergy of the group 00:07:55.029 --> 00:07:57.569 that generates the real value. Exactly. Proudhon 00:07:57.569 --> 00:07:59.569 argued that the system demands something for 00:07:59.569 --> 00:08:02.149 nothing. It allows a minority of property owners 00:08:02.149 --> 00:08:04.529 to essentially subjugate a propertyless majority 00:08:04.529 --> 00:08:07.370 through the relentless mechanisms of debt, rent, 00:08:07.550 --> 00:08:10.730 and wage labor. And he defended this thesis with 00:08:10.730 --> 00:08:14.449 absolute ferocity. He got into a highly publicized 00:08:14.449 --> 00:08:17.269 written debate over the legitimacy of charging 00:08:17.269 --> 00:08:19.730 interest with the prominent liberal economist 00:08:19.730 --> 00:08:22.550 Frederick Bastiat. Bastiat argued that capital 00:08:22.550 --> 00:08:24.550 is inherently productive and therefore deserves 00:08:24.550 --> 00:08:27.769 a return. Proudhon vehemently disagreed. He really 00:08:27.769 --> 00:08:30.329 did. He viewed interest as a structural monopoly 00:08:30.329 --> 00:08:32.610 that parasitically drains the working class. 00:08:33.210 --> 00:08:37.100 And he did not hold back at all. In one of his 00:08:37.100 --> 00:08:39.659 responses to Bastiat, he wrote, Your intelligence 00:08:39.659 --> 00:08:42.179 is asleep, or rather, it has never been awake. 00:08:42.519 --> 00:08:44.919 You are a man for whom logic does not exist. 00:08:45.600 --> 00:08:47.759 Scientifically, Mr. Bastiat, you are a dead man. 00:08:47.940 --> 00:08:50.519 That is just a devastating surgical rhetorical 00:08:50.519 --> 00:08:53.299 strike. An absolute masterclass in 19th century 00:08:53.299 --> 00:08:55.820 insults. It really highlights how uncompromising 00:08:55.820 --> 00:08:58.000 he was regarding the mathematical realities of 00:08:58.000 --> 00:09:01.419 working class exploitation. But what is property 00:09:01.419 --> 00:09:04.100 is historically monumental for another reason. 00:09:04.600 --> 00:09:06.940 In this exact text, Proudhon became the first 00:09:06.940 --> 00:09:09.679 person to proudly and explicitly adopt the label 00:09:09.679 --> 00:09:11.820 anarchist. But again, he's redefining terms. 00:09:12.000 --> 00:09:14.440 When he says anarchy, he doesn't mean a Mad Max 00:09:14.440 --> 00:09:17.159 wasteland of violence and chaos. No, not at all. 00:09:17.659 --> 00:09:20.419 He traced the etymology to its Greek roots and 00:09:20.419 --> 00:09:23.419 archos, meaning without a ruler. He defined anarchy 00:09:23.419 --> 00:09:26.179 strictly as the absence of a master, of a sovereign. 00:09:26.679 --> 00:09:28.700 Proudhon fundamentally believed that society 00:09:28.700 --> 00:09:31.440 does not need top -down state coercion to function. 00:09:31.580 --> 00:09:34.360 It can govern itself. Yes. In fact, he argued 00:09:34.360 --> 00:09:36.700 that society naturally seeks order and equilibrium 00:09:36.700 --> 00:09:39.490 through free association decentralized contracts 00:09:39.490 --> 00:09:42.409 and mutual agreements among equals. The state, 00:09:42.429 --> 00:09:45.190 in his view, was simply the violent enforcement 00:09:45.190 --> 00:09:48.110 arm of the property owning class. To truly grasp 00:09:48.110 --> 00:09:50.190 the sheer contempt he had for state bureaucracy, 00:09:50.509 --> 00:09:52.610 you have to hear his famous definition of what 00:09:52.610 --> 00:09:55.809 it means to be ruled. This is from his 1851 work, 00:09:55.970 --> 00:09:58.529 The General Idea of the Revolution. He wrote, 00:10:12.400 --> 00:10:17.600 It just keeps going. It does. He continues. Saying 00:10:17.600 --> 00:10:19.919 that to be governed is to be fleeced, exploited, 00:10:20.120 --> 00:10:21.899 extorted, and at the very first word of complaint, 00:10:22.059 --> 00:10:25.179 you are repressed, fined, despised, harassed, 00:10:25.179 --> 00:10:28.820 tracked, abused, clubbed, disarmed, choked, imprisoned. 00:10:29.340 --> 00:10:31.639 When you map that onto the modern landscape of 00:10:31.639 --> 00:10:33.820 mass surveillance, algorithmic data tracking 00:10:33.820 --> 00:10:37.139 and sprawling administrative states, that critique 00:10:37.139 --> 00:10:40.139 cuts incredibly deep today. It really resonates 00:10:40.139 --> 00:10:42.519 with how a lot of people feel about data privacy 00:10:42.519 --> 00:10:44.539 and bureaucracy right now. If we connect this 00:10:44.539 --> 00:10:46.639 to the bigger picture, we begin to see the immense 00:10:46.639 --> 00:10:49.720 friction his philosophy generated. He is launching 00:10:49.720 --> 00:10:53.120 a simultaneous dual front war. He is systematically 00:10:53.120 --> 00:10:56.000 attacking the foundations of capitalist property 00:10:56.000 --> 00:10:58.580 rights while equally attacking the foundation. 00:10:58.639 --> 00:11:01.759 of centralized state power. And this dual framework 00:11:01.759 --> 00:11:04.399 attracted the intense attention of radical circles 00:11:04.399 --> 00:11:07.220 across Europe, which brings him into direct contact 00:11:07.220 --> 00:11:09.879 with a young, highly influential thinker named 00:11:09.879 --> 00:11:12.159 Karl Marx. Here's where it gets really interesting, 00:11:12.299 --> 00:11:14.580 because the relationship between Poudon and Marx 00:11:14.580 --> 00:11:16.659 is one of the most consequential ideological 00:11:16.659 --> 00:11:20.100 feuds of the 19th century. Initially, there was 00:11:20.100 --> 00:11:23.379 profound mutual respect. They were frequent pen 00:11:23.379 --> 00:11:27.049 pals. When Marx read What is Property? He praised 00:11:27.049 --> 00:11:29.750 it as epoch -making. Marx respected Proudhon 00:11:29.750 --> 00:11:32.149 precisely because Proudhon wasn't just a bourgeois 00:11:32.149 --> 00:11:35.809 theorist. He was an authentic, self -taught proletarian 00:11:35.809 --> 00:11:38.570 who had actually worked a manual trade. They 00:11:38.570 --> 00:11:40.850 spent significant time together in Paris during 00:11:40.850 --> 00:11:44.049 Marx's exile, debating political economy deep 00:11:44.049 --> 00:11:47.169 into the night. But the ideological bedrock beneath 00:11:47.169 --> 00:11:49.110 them was entirely different and a rupture was 00:11:49.110 --> 00:11:51.179 inevitable. The breaking point occurred in the 00:11:51.179 --> 00:11:54.480 mid -1840s over a specific publication. Proudhon 00:11:54.480 --> 00:11:56.759 released a dense theoretical work titled The 00:11:56.759 --> 00:11:59.279 System of Economic Contradictions, which carried 00:11:59.279 --> 00:12:02.039 the subtitle The Philosophy of Poverty. And Marx 00:12:02.039 --> 00:12:04.990 immediately responds with a Brutal book -length 00:12:04.990 --> 00:12:07.450 takedown, flipping the subtitle to create a legendary 00:12:07.450 --> 00:12:10.409 burn. He titled his critique The Poverty of Philosophy. 00:12:10.769 --> 00:12:13.570 A very clever title. Very clever, yeah. Let's 00:12:13.570 --> 00:12:15.070 dig into the actual mechanics of this split, 00:12:15.149 --> 00:12:17.549 because this isn't just a clash of egos. It's 00:12:17.549 --> 00:12:20.450 a fundamental clash over how human liberation 00:12:20.450 --> 00:12:23.110 is actually achieved. Exactly. The divide was 00:12:23.110 --> 00:12:26.389 structural. Marx's framework was built on dialectical 00:12:26.389 --> 00:12:29.740 and historical materialism. He believed that 00:12:29.740 --> 00:12:32.600 history moves through inevitable stages of class 00:12:32.600 --> 00:12:35.580 struggle and that the proletariat must engage 00:12:35.580 --> 00:12:38.860 in a revolutionary political struggle to actively 00:12:38.860 --> 00:12:41.620 seize the apparatus of the state. Seize the state 00:12:41.620 --> 00:12:44.059 to change the system. Yes. Once the state is 00:12:44.059 --> 00:12:46.320 captured, it can be used to dismantle capitalism 00:12:46.320 --> 00:12:49.100 and establish communism. But Pudon looked at 00:12:49.100 --> 00:12:51.679 that and saw a horrific trap. Right, because 00:12:51.679 --> 00:12:54.360 for Proudhon, the state itself is the mechanism 00:12:54.360 --> 00:12:57.440 of tyranny. If the workers seize this centralized 00:12:57.440 --> 00:12:59.740 state, they haven't abolished authority. They've 00:12:59.740 --> 00:13:02.100 just installed a new set of masters. The boot 00:13:02.100 --> 00:13:03.980 is still on the neck. It's just painted red. 00:13:04.360 --> 00:13:07.480 Precisely. Proudhon completely rejected the necessity 00:13:07.480 --> 00:13:10.340 of violent political revolution or the dictatorship 00:13:10.340 --> 00:13:13.179 of the proletariat. He advocated for peaceful, 00:13:13.360 --> 00:13:15.860 systemic economic reform from the ground up. 00:13:15.980 --> 00:13:18.639 He wanted to build alternative economic structures 00:13:18.639 --> 00:13:21.279 like mutual credit banks and worker cooperatives 00:13:21.279 --> 00:13:23.320 that would simply render the state obsolete. 00:13:23.600 --> 00:13:26.860 Just bypass the state entirely. Exactly. In his 00:13:26.860 --> 00:13:29.659 letters to Marx, Proudhon explicitly warned against 00:13:29.659 --> 00:13:32.779 creating a new dogmatic religion of state socialism. 00:13:33.679 --> 00:13:36.480 He urged Marx, do not let us become the leaders 00:13:36.480 --> 00:13:38.580 of a new intolerance. That's quite a warning. 00:13:38.759 --> 00:13:41.980 It is. Furthermore, Marx aggressively dismantled 00:13:41.980 --> 00:13:44.519 Proudhon's economic math, arguing that Proudhon 00:13:44.519 --> 00:13:46.440 failed to understand the historical evolution 00:13:46.440 --> 00:13:49.399 of capital and treated economic categories as 00:13:49.399 --> 00:13:52.000 eternal moral concepts rather than transient 00:13:52.000 --> 00:13:54.500 historical phases. And this philosophical divorce 00:13:54.500 --> 00:13:57.519 had massive real world consequences. This wasn't 00:13:57.519 --> 00:13:59.679 just two guys arguing in letters. It literally 00:13:59.679 --> 00:14:01.919 laid the foundation for the permanent schism 00:14:01.919 --> 00:14:04.590 between the the Marxist wing, and the anarchist 00:14:04.590 --> 00:14:06.789 wing of the global socialist movement. A division 00:14:06.789 --> 00:14:10.690 that still exists today. Yeah. This divide eventually 00:14:10.690 --> 00:14:13.090 fractured the First International, which was 00:14:13.090 --> 00:14:15.570 the premier global organization uniting various 00:14:15.570 --> 00:14:18.590 19th century left -wing, communist, and labor 00:14:18.590 --> 00:14:21.730 groups. The friction between Marxist state socialists 00:14:21.730 --> 00:14:23.750 and the anarchists who followed Proudhon's intellectual 00:14:23.750 --> 00:14:27.330 successor, Mikhail Bakunin, literally tore the 00:14:27.330 --> 00:14:29.480 international labor movement in half. And there 00:14:29.480 --> 00:14:32.580 is a profound historical irony embedded in this 00:14:32.580 --> 00:14:36.220 feud. Scholars deeply analyze how Marxists later 00:14:36.220 --> 00:14:39.399 popularized the theory of surplus value, the 00:14:39.399 --> 00:14:41.620 foundational critique that capitalists steal 00:14:41.620 --> 00:14:43.980 the extra value generated by the workers' labor. 00:14:44.240 --> 00:14:46.600 Yet the architectural blueprint for that exact 00:14:46.600 --> 00:14:49.279 concept was laid out directly in Proudhon's early 00:14:49.279 --> 00:14:52.759 writings years before Marx codified it in Capital. 00:14:52.860 --> 00:14:54.980 That is ironic. Despite drawing heavily from 00:14:54.980 --> 00:14:57.799 Proudhon's economic critiques, Marx ensured that 00:14:57.799 --> 00:15:00.000 Bakunin and the anarchist faction were ultimately 00:15:00.000 --> 00:15:03.029 expelled from the First International. To understand 00:15:03.029 --> 00:15:05.090 what Proudhon was trying to build in opposition 00:15:05.090 --> 00:15:07.470 to both capitalism and Marxist state communism, 00:15:07.610 --> 00:15:10.309 we have to examine his core economic system, 00:15:10.509 --> 00:15:13.570 which he called mutualism. Mutualism was his 00:15:13.570 --> 00:15:16.549 synthesis, his attempt to forge a viable third 00:15:16.549 --> 00:15:20.470 path. It rejected the exploitative private property 00:15:20.470 --> 00:15:23.450 of capitalism, but it equally rejected the authoritarian 00:15:23.450 --> 00:15:27.000 centralization of state communism. In a mutualist 00:15:27.000 --> 00:15:29.580 society, the means of production, the factories, 00:15:29.720 --> 00:15:32.340 the land, the infrastructure are not owned by 00:15:32.340 --> 00:15:35.559 absentee capitalists or by a massive state bureaucracy. 00:15:35.940 --> 00:15:38.100 They're managed directly by democratic associations 00:15:38.100 --> 00:15:40.639 of the workers themselves. Yes. So it's essentially 00:15:40.639 --> 00:15:43.639 a free market, but an anti -monopoly free market. 00:15:43.820 --> 00:15:46.200 Yeah. Self -employed artisans, farmers and worker 00:15:46.200 --> 00:15:48.679 cooperatives produce goods and freely exchange 00:15:48.679 --> 00:15:50.940 them based on the actual labor time required 00:15:50.940 --> 00:15:52.779 to make them. There is no state interference. 00:15:53.000 --> 00:15:55.570 There is no wage labor where a boss. extract 00:15:55.570 --> 00:15:57.789 profit, and there are no landlords collecting 00:15:57.789 --> 00:16:00.590 rent. He envisioned an interconnected web of 00:16:00.590 --> 00:16:02.830 these cooperatives, calling it an agricultural 00:16:02.830 --> 00:16:05.629 -industrial federation. This federated approach 00:16:05.629 --> 00:16:08.750 also drove his fiercely anti -nationalist views. 00:16:09.490 --> 00:16:12.250 Perdon argued vehemently against war and militarism. 00:16:12.330 --> 00:16:14.610 He viewed them as archaic tools used by ruling 00:16:14.610 --> 00:16:17.169 classes to distract and destroy the working class. 00:16:17.470 --> 00:16:20.269 He boldly stated that the end of militarism should 00:16:20.269 --> 00:16:23.389 be the primary mission of the 19th century. He 00:16:23.389 --> 00:16:25.549 believed that citizenship shouldn't be tied to 00:16:25.549 --> 00:16:28.070 blood or a patch of dirt, but should simply be 00:16:28.070 --> 00:16:31.610 an acquired right for anyone, anywhere, based 00:16:31.610 --> 00:16:34.809 on mutual economic participation. But history 00:16:34.809 --> 00:16:37.210 rarely moves in a straight line, and neither 00:16:37.210 --> 00:16:40.490 did Proudhon's philosophy. Later in his life, 00:16:40.590 --> 00:16:43.590 we see a massive, almost paradoxical pivot regarding 00:16:43.590 --> 00:16:46.570 his most famous slogan. We do. In works like 00:16:46.570 --> 00:16:49.009 Theory of Property, he dramatically modifies 00:16:49.009 --> 00:16:52.049 his stance, moving from property is theft to 00:16:52.049 --> 00:16:54.049 explicitly stating that property is liberty. 00:16:54.539 --> 00:16:57.059 What drives a man who built his entire reputation 00:16:57.059 --> 00:16:59.759 on attacking property to suddenly declare it 00:16:59.759 --> 00:17:02.039 the engine of freedom? It requires looking at 00:17:02.039 --> 00:17:04.000 the historical context unfolding around him. 00:17:04.259 --> 00:17:06.519 Proudhon had witnessed the failures of the 1848 00:17:06.519 --> 00:17:08.480 revolutions and the subsequent rise of Napoleon 00:17:08.480 --> 00:17:11.859 III in France. He watched an authoritarian empire 00:17:11.859 --> 00:17:14.900 consolidate terrifying centralized power. He 00:17:14.900 --> 00:17:17.180 realized that a massive centralized state is 00:17:17.180 --> 00:17:20.000 a leviathan that can effortlessly crush isolated 00:17:20.000 --> 00:17:22.309 individuals. So he needed a counterweight. He 00:17:22.309 --> 00:17:24.769 concluded that the only social force powerful 00:17:24.769 --> 00:17:26.990 enough to act as a permanent bulwark against 00:17:26.990 --> 00:17:29.250 the tyrannical overreach of the state was private 00:17:29.250 --> 00:17:32.529 property. If an individual has absolute domain 00:17:32.529 --> 00:17:35.089 over their land or their share in a cooperative, 00:17:35.450 --> 00:17:38.630 the state cannot easily subjugate them. However, 00:17:38.789 --> 00:17:41.690 he maintained a crucial caveat for property to 00:17:41.690 --> 00:17:44.190 act as a guarantor of liberty rather than a tool 00:17:44.190 --> 00:17:46.869 of exploitation. It had to be radically decentralized, 00:17:47.470 --> 00:17:51.160 widely distributed and egalitarian. Property 00:17:51.160 --> 00:17:54.019 remains theft when it is hoarded by a tiny elite 00:17:54.019 --> 00:17:57.140 to extract rent from the masses. But property 00:17:57.140 --> 00:17:59.480 becomes liberty when it is universally distributed 00:17:59.480 --> 00:18:02.180 to secure the independence of every individual 00:18:02.180 --> 00:18:05.000 against the government. It's a fascinating evolution 00:18:05.000 --> 00:18:08.259 based on the immediate terror of authoritarianism. 00:18:08.730 --> 00:18:11.289 But to truly understand historical figures, we 00:18:11.289 --> 00:18:13.349 cannot exclusively focus on their brilliant theories 00:18:13.349 --> 00:18:15.769 or their structural critiques. We're obligated 00:18:15.769 --> 00:18:17.789 to examine their deep and sometimes catastrophic 00:18:17.789 --> 00:18:20.670 flaws. We absolutely must. Now, it's important 00:18:20.670 --> 00:18:23.549 that we remain strictly impartial here and simply 00:18:23.549 --> 00:18:26.130 report what the source material states. We are 00:18:26.130 --> 00:18:29.289 not taking a moral or political side, just acting 00:18:29.289 --> 00:18:32.200 as neutral guides to the text. And the historical 00:18:32.200 --> 00:18:34.940 texts outline several deeply controversial aspects 00:18:34.940 --> 00:18:37.920 of Proudhon's life that we must report impartially 00:18:37.920 --> 00:18:40.759 to provide the full picture. That is vital context. 00:18:41.000 --> 00:18:43.720 The texts extensively cover the highly disturbing 00:18:43.720 --> 00:18:45.980 contents found in Proudhon's private diaries, 00:18:46.079 --> 00:18:48.380 his carnets, which were published long after 00:18:48.380 --> 00:18:51.180 his death. These private writings revealed intense, 00:18:51.440 --> 00:18:54.940 paranoid, and virulent anti -Semitism. He privately 00:18:54.940 --> 00:18:57.380 wrote that the Jewish race was the enemy of humanity, 00:18:57.619 --> 00:18:59.819 and he went so far as to call for their expulsion 00:18:59.819 --> 00:19:02.640 from France or their outright extermination. 00:19:02.759 --> 00:19:04.980 Scholars who study Proudhon are quick to note 00:19:04.980 --> 00:19:07.200 that this horrific prejudice was not integrated 00:19:07.200 --> 00:19:10.039 into his published economic theories or his public 00:19:10.039 --> 00:19:12.839 political frameworks, but it remains a glaring, 00:19:12.839 --> 00:19:15.539 deeply disturbing reality of his private worldview. 00:19:15.900 --> 00:19:18.880 The historical record also details his intense 00:19:18.880 --> 00:19:22.700 and vocal anti -feminism. Proudhon operated from 00:19:22.700 --> 00:19:25.940 a deeply patriarchal framework. He publicly argued 00:19:25.940 --> 00:19:28.259 that a woman's only natural roles in society 00:19:28.259 --> 00:19:31.700 were to be a courtesan or housekeeper. He believed 00:19:31.700 --> 00:19:34.500 that men were biologically mandated to use physical 00:19:34.500 --> 00:19:36.660 strength to subordinate women within the family 00:19:36.660 --> 00:19:39.460 unit. He codified these views in a track called 00:19:39.460 --> 00:19:42.180 La Pornocratie, which historians cite as one 00:19:42.180 --> 00:19:44.539 of the most consistently extreme anti -feminist 00:19:44.539 --> 00:19:47.359 tracks of the entire 19th century. This massive 00:19:47.359 --> 00:19:50.279 contradiction did not go unnoticed by his contemporaries. 00:19:50.380 --> 00:19:52.900 It raised an immediate question. How can you 00:19:52.900 --> 00:19:55.500 demand absolute political anarchy and equality 00:19:55.500 --> 00:19:58.180 in the public sphere while demanding absolute 00:19:58.180 --> 00:20:00.920 monarchical tyranny in the domestic sphere? A 00:20:00.920 --> 00:20:02.799 libertarian communist of the era named Joseph 00:20:02.799 --> 00:20:05.680 Desjardins publicly excoriated Proudhon for this 00:20:05.680 --> 00:20:08.240 hypocrisy. Dejac essentially told Proudhon that 00:20:08.240 --> 00:20:10.500 his subjugation of women completely invalidated 00:20:10.500 --> 00:20:12.619 his claim to the title of anarchist. There is 00:20:12.619 --> 00:20:14.940 also an ongoing historical debate regarding how 00:20:14.940 --> 00:20:17.099 his legacy was interpreted in the 20th century. 00:20:17.519 --> 00:20:20.440 Extreme right -wing reactionary groups in France, 00:20:20.539 --> 00:20:23.460 most notably the Circle Proudhon founded in 1911, 00:20:23.799 --> 00:20:26.539 actively tried to co -opt his philosophy as a 00:20:26.539 --> 00:20:29.079 precursor to fascism. They were attracted to 00:20:29.079 --> 00:20:31.859 his traditionalist social views, his anti -Semitism, 00:20:32.059 --> 00:20:35.059 and his critiques of liberal democracy, attempting 00:20:35.059 --> 00:20:38.299 to fuse his mutualist economics with extreme 00:20:38.299 --> 00:20:41.279 French nationalism. However, the texts heavily 00:20:41.640 --> 00:20:44.000 emphasized that a wide consensus of modern historians 00:20:44.000 --> 00:20:47.220 and political scientists fiercely reject this 00:20:47.220 --> 00:20:49.960 fascist classification. Scholars like Kay Steven 00:20:49.960 --> 00:20:52.700 Vincent and Ian McKay argue that trying to shoehorn 00:20:52.700 --> 00:20:55.160 Proudhon into the fascist tradition requires 00:20:55.160 --> 00:20:57.680 entirely ignoring the actual structural mechanics 00:20:57.680 --> 00:21:00.160 of his philosophy. They point out that Proudhon's 00:21:00.160 --> 00:21:03.039 lifelong, unwavering dedication to anti -nationalism, 00:21:03.180 --> 00:21:05.740 his total opposition to dictatorship, and his 00:21:05.740 --> 00:21:07.980 relentless advocacy for federalism and decentralized 00:21:07.980 --> 00:21:10.859 economic power put him in direct irreconcilable 00:21:10.859 --> 00:21:15.619 Because fascism is fundamentally reliant on a 00:21:15.619 --> 00:21:17.940 massive, supreme, and centralized authoritarian 00:21:17.940 --> 00:21:20.259 state, which is the exact opposite of what he 00:21:20.259 --> 00:21:22.940 wanted. Exactly. So what does this all mean? 00:21:23.859 --> 00:21:27.000 How do we synthesize the life of Pierre -Joseph 00:21:27.000 --> 00:21:30.819 Proudhon? We are looking at a self -taught, impoverished 00:21:30.819 --> 00:21:33.380 printer who walked across France and ended up 00:21:33.380 --> 00:21:35.720 authoring texts that shook the absolute foundations 00:21:35.720 --> 00:21:39.059 of political science. He coined the term anarchism. 00:21:39.160 --> 00:21:41.980 He went toe to toe with Karl Marx over the destiny 00:21:41.980 --> 00:21:44.500 of the working class and his intricate designs 00:21:44.500 --> 00:21:47.000 for mutualism and worker cooperatives heavily 00:21:47.000 --> 00:21:49.440 influenced global labor movements. Yet he was 00:21:49.440 --> 00:21:52.660 a man harboring severe toxic prejudices and profound 00:21:52.660 --> 00:21:56.039 internal contradictions. He is undeniably a complex, 00:21:56.279 --> 00:21:58.599 heavily layered figure. But if we connect his 00:21:58.599 --> 00:22:00.779 foundational work to the bigger picture, the 00:22:00.779 --> 00:22:03.180 core architectural problem Proudhon was desperately 00:22:03.180 --> 00:22:05.960 trying to solve remains entirely unresolved today. 00:22:06.400 --> 00:22:08.640 How to balance individual liberty with a fair 00:22:08.640 --> 00:22:11.160 community. Precisely. He was agonizing over the 00:22:11.160 --> 00:22:13.559 balance of power. How do we build a society that 00:22:13.559 --> 00:22:15.599 prevents the massive concentration of wealth 00:22:15.599 --> 00:22:18.259 from exploiting the working class without simultaneously 00:22:18.259 --> 00:22:20.740 creating an all -powerful centralized government 00:22:20.740 --> 00:22:23.559 that inevitably crushes individual freedom? That 00:22:23.559 --> 00:22:25.640 tension is still the defining political question 00:22:25.640 --> 00:22:28.700 of the modern era. Exactly. And before we close 00:22:28.700 --> 00:22:30.660 out, I want to leave you with a very specific, 00:22:30.880 --> 00:22:33.700 tangible concept from Proudhon's life to chew 00:22:33.700 --> 00:22:37.079 on. He didn't just theorize. He attempted to 00:22:37.079 --> 00:22:39.819 build the infrastructure of his philosophy. He 00:22:39.819 --> 00:22:42.539 once tried to establish a national bank or a 00:22:42.539 --> 00:22:44.700 bank of the people. But it functioned entirely 00:22:44.700 --> 00:22:47.079 differently than a modern bank. It was designed 00:22:47.079 --> 00:22:49.660 to be capitalized by progressive tax on the wealthy. 00:22:50.220 --> 00:22:53.099 And its sole, singular purpose was to provide 00:22:53.099 --> 00:22:55.920 purely interest -free credit and loans directly 00:22:55.920 --> 00:22:58.849 to everyday people and worker cooperatives. It 00:22:58.849 --> 00:23:01.190 was a mechanical attempt to permanently break 00:23:01.190 --> 00:23:03.970 the cycle of debt, which he identified as the 00:23:03.970 --> 00:23:06.910 primary chain binding the working class to poverty. 00:23:07.150 --> 00:23:10.309 So here is the final provocative thought for 00:23:10.309 --> 00:23:12.250 you to take away from this deep dive. I want 00:23:12.250 --> 00:23:13.970 you to mentally pull up your own bank statement 00:23:13.970 --> 00:23:16.109 today. Look at your credit cards. Look at your 00:23:16.109 --> 00:23:18.750 mortgage. Look at your student loans. And I want 00:23:18.750 --> 00:23:20.849 you to imagine what your daily life, what your 00:23:20.849 --> 00:23:23.529 personal debt, and what the entire economic structure 00:23:23.529 --> 00:23:26.089 of your community would look like tomorrow if 00:23:26.089 --> 00:23:28.789 the very concept of charging interest was suddenly 00:23:28.789 --> 00:23:31.430 and permanently abolished, exactly as Proudhon 00:23:31.430 --> 00:23:34.170 envisioned. How drastically would that shift 00:23:34.170 --> 00:23:38.210 the balance of power in your world? It is a profound 00:23:38.210 --> 00:23:41.069 structural thought experiment. and one that proves 00:23:41.069 --> 00:23:43.450 the arguments forged in 19th century printing 00:23:43.450 --> 00:23:46.490 presses are still echoing directly into our modern 00:23:46.490 --> 00:23:49.130 lives. They absolutely are. Thank you for joining 00:23:49.130 --> 00:23:51.630 us on this deep dive into the shoeless scholar 00:23:51.630 --> 00:23:54.450 of Besançon. We hope you walk away with a much 00:23:54.450 --> 00:23:56.529 deeper understanding of the roots of anarchism 00:23:56.529 --> 00:23:58.809 and a sharp new perspective on the invisible 00:23:58.809 --> 00:24:01.730 economic forces around you. Take care, and we'll 00:24:01.730 --> 00:24:02.410 see you next time.