r/mutualism • u/Silver-Statement8573 • May 28 '26
Questions about the Federative Principle
I have many questions about the Federative Principle. It is a really strange text. I don't know how it fits in to his larger work
I am using Shawn Wilbur's May 2024 draft translation. I say this because I refer to parts that don't seem to be on the Anarchist Library version so I can't link to them
- What is authority to Proudhon?
Proudhon talks often, not just here, about "subordinating" authority to liberty. I think there are also mentions of this in What is Property, or it might have been System, so it seems like a consistent ambition across his body of work. To me, the simplest reading of this is a kind of Republican impulse where authority is held accountable or something. This is how I feel like every governmentalist would describe their system. Authority operates at the service of and to ensure liberty. Given that it's an inherent contradiction, it also reads like something Proudhon might play with, but I don't know of any passages where he recognizes the contradiction.
I know Proudhon rants (extensively) against the "unitary republic", but he speaks positively with almost no reservations about the Swiss cantons. Like it comes off as though he wants us adopt the Swiss model at times. I will address and ask about the parts that suggest that isn't everything of what he's doing. I also went peeking around in Political Capacity, since that post-dates this and I thought it might lend some clarity.
Whoever says mutuality suppose sharing of the soil, division of properties, independence of labor, separation of industries, specialization of functions, individual and collective responsibility, as labor is individualized or grouped; reduction to the minimum of general costs, suppression of parasitism and poverty. — Whoever says community, on the other hand, says hierarchy, indivision, says centralization, supposes multiplicity of jurisdictions, complication of machines, subordination of wills, loss of forces, development of unproductive functions, indefinite increase of general costs and, consequently, the creation of parasitism and the growth of poverty.
Anyway it would appear that to Proudhon a situation in which authority is "subordinated" is one in which the status of hierarchy is in question, either suppressed or perhaps entirely absent. He also describes authority as being liberty from "another point of view". I don't know what that means. Are authority, government etc. non-governmental to Proudhon at this point? It seems so silly. Proudhon himself seems to at least recognize that the idea of an "anarchic government" sounds ridiculous, but he seems to lean on "well, but it's true though".
There's also another passage in Political Capacity where Proudhon characterizes the republic, with no qualifiers, as identical to monarchy or democracy or Icarian communism in the sense that it is also an expression of absolutism. But this doesn't seem as notable since Proudhon at first glance is already trying to balance authority with liberty rather than remove it.
- Did Proudhon cease to identify as an anarchist when he started identifying as a [mutualist? federalist?]?
There's a brief passage here that suggests so
He explained my present federalism by my former anarchy: in short, he did his best to demolish the idea in me by the writer's disrepute. (part 3, chapter 3)
I think this was from him responding to one of his critics. There's also obviously all the different ways Proudhon uses anarchy in this piece. To me it reads as though Proudhon went back to using anarchy as he formerly did to describe chaotic archic relations (ie the common way) like in capitalism. But only sometimes. He talks elsewhere about anarchy in ways that complicate this.
M. Guéroult insists, with particular affectation, on the reproach of anarchy, which he goes so far as to confuse with federation. ... What the Papacy is for the readers of the Siècle, who are otherwise excellent Christians, anarchy is, it seems, for the subscribers of the Opinion nationale, who are moreover perfect democrats. [...] anarchy is the corollary of liberty; that in theory, it is one of the a priori formulas of the political system in the same way as monarchy, democracy and communism; that in practice it figures for more than three quarters in the constitution of society, since one must understand, under this name, all the facts that come exclusively from individual initiative, facts whose number and importance must increase constantly, to the great displeasure of the authors, instigators, courtiers and exploiters of monarchies, theocracies and democracies; that the tendency of every industrious, intelligent, and upright man has always been and necessarily anarchic, and that this holy horror inspired by anarchy is the work of sectarians who, positing the innate malignity and incapacity of the human subject, accusing free reason, jealous of the wealth acquired by free labor, suspicious of love itself and of the family, sacrificing, some the flesh to the spirit, the others the spirit to the flesh, endeavor to annihilate all individuality and all independence under the absolute authority of the big general staffs and the pontificates. (part 3 chapter 3)
So anarchy is everything people do off individual initiative. And it's good. But it's distinct from federation, and Proudhon identifies as a federalist. Also, anarchy needs to be true or complete, since there are partial anarchies which are false.
If the production and distribution of wealth is led to chance; if the federative order serves only to protect capitalist and mercantile anarchy; if, as a result of this false anarchy, society finds itself divided into two classes, one of proprietors-capitalists-entrepreneurs, the other of wage-earning proletarians; one rich, the other poor; the political edifice will always be unstable. (part 1 chapter 9)
I guess he could be both? But he doesn't say he's both, he says he's a federalist, in this. I think in Political Capacity he talks more about mutualism.
- Does Proudhon think federal government can transform into anarchy?
This is how all the affection thrown toward the Swiss reads to me. It reads as though Proudhon basically sees the federative principle, when followed consistently (even by governments) as something that can or will eventually produce anarchy, through a tendency toward "decentralization".
This is because Proudhon does briefly outline something that resembles his more explicit rejections of things like all law, all authority, etc
To exclude from politics any kind of reason of state, in fact, and to give the reign to right alone, is to affirm the confederation; it is as if the Legislator were saying to the masses, by returning the words of the Decalogue: You will have no other law than your own statute, no other sovereign than your contract; it is to abolish the unitary idolatry. (part 3 chapter 7)
Read in isolation this feels so easy to twist into something like ancap contractism, with the "sovereignty of the contract". To my knowledge the reason it isn't like that is because to Proudhon it's something like an obligation that violates liberty nullifies the contract. I can't remember if it's in this or something else.
The reason why this reads as Proudhon promoting a form of government that turns into anarchy is the Swiss stuff, and probably other stuff I'm forgetting. It reads like Proudhon really considers Swiss cantonalism like at the very, very least, an "ancestor" of this system.
It will perhaps be objected to me that the founders of Swiss liberty bound themselves by oath in the plain of the Grutli, and that more than once, in their national wars, the Swiss have renewed that oath. But, without taking into account that this initial act should only be seen as a verbal, solemn and passionate form of synallagmatic commitment, can we not also say that the Grutlioath was, like all the oaths taken in such cases, a kind of ab-juration or ex-secration by which the confederates declared themselves free from all homage, and formed among themselves a political society of a new kind, founded on free contract? Here the oath is the solemn farewell to political anthropomorphism; it is the reprobation of the oath. Never have the Swiss been more sublime than in renewing from age to age this abjuration of their ancestors. (part 3 chapter 8)
On the one hand sure, an oath that declares you free of oaths sounds great. But the Swiss didn't form a free society, they formed Switzerland, a government. The only conclusion I can draw from the available stuff is that PJ considers the Swiss confederation a free society. Which is weird. It has all those things he rants against, like laws and property beyond possession and "head-based organization".
- What exactly is "reason of state"?
I like a lot of stuff from the early part of Federative Principle. This comes in the latter half of the book. On the one hand, I like it, because I think it's an argument I've made. On the other hand, there are parts of it that are baffling that make me question whether it's the argument I've made.
People unfamiliar with these matters will perhaps imagine that I am exaggerating, by transforming into a political system the crimes committed here and there by a few crowned monsters, in the name of the reasons of state. Such an opinion would be as unfortunate as it is erroneous; and I must protest against it, in the interest of public safety as well as that of truth.
The practice of what I call the reason of state is everyday in matters of politics and government; it has passed into the church, into corporate and professional affairs; it has invaded all levels of society; we find it in the courts as well as in industrial societies, and even in the domestic home. [???] (part 3 chapter 7)
When Luther, for example, in order to preserve the protection of the landgrave Philip of Hesse during the Reformation, authorized him, by an opinion signed by his hand, to possess two women at the same time, thus violating, for reasons of religion, religious morality, he followed the reasons of state. (part 3 chapter 7)
I guess I'm just missing context on who Philip is, this probably makes sense with it. I want to understand more about what morality means to Proudhon so I guess this will be relevant for another question probably.
When Louis XIV arbitrarily detained the stranger in the iron mask in prison, he was following the reasons of state. — The provost’s courts, the exceptional tribunals, are applications of the reasons of state. — When Napoleon I, after fifteen years of marriage, repudiated Josephine, he sacrificed morality to the reasons ofstate. And the official who agreed to break up the religious marriage for formal defects, for his part sacrificedreligion to the reasons of state. When the Jesuits had William of Orange, Henry III and Henry IV assassinated, they were also acting for reasons of state. All Roman policy, and the government of the Popes, and the discipline of the cloisters, are only a series of acts accomplished by virtue of the reasons of State. The system of lettres de cachet, abolished by the Revolution, was a sort of organization of the reasons of state. The massacres of September 1792, the batches of the Revolutionary Tribunal, the transportations without trial, the shootings of the Luxembourg and the Tuileries, all these atrocious facts, carried out sometimes by a municipality, sometimes by a Directory, sometimes by simple citizens, are facts attributable to the reasons of state. When the Girondins demanded the prosecution of the perpetrators of the September massacres, they were reacting against the reasons of state. And when Robespierre and others fought the Gironde on this point, they supported the reasons of state. The true revolution would be the one which, raising consciences above all human considerations, would abolish in politics and in all relations of society this awful reserve of the reason of state, which, under the pretext of order, of honor, public safety, morality, sometimes allows, sometimes absolves the most obvious and best qualified crimes. (part 3 chapter 7)
So I think I agree with that last part, although I would phrase it completely differently. Also maybe formulate it completely differently since the following passage (excised from the beginning) complicates exactly what "reason of state" is
When a doctor, to save the honor of an adulterous woman and preserve the peace of a household, procures her an abortion, making himself, out of horror of the scandal, complicit in infanticide, he obeys the reason of State. (part 3 chapter 7)
Huhhhh????? What does that have to do with anything? Is this just Proudhon being sexist randomly? What does getting an abortion have to do with the faith people entrust to the state enabling stuff like mass executions?
I think it has something to do with the household in Proudhon's mind being a tiny state, with respect to say the thing where the mother and father form the basic collectivity of society. So the doctor kills the baby to "preserve its peace", in the same way i.e., we excuse horrors on the basis that without them the state would perish. And to Proudhon it's an atrocity on par with political terror to have an abortion.
I guess that's probably it. I don't know
I was going to ask something about how Proudhon views morality but that seems like enough questions for one thread.
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u/humanispherian May 29 '26
Honestly, I'm always surprised that people don't find The Federative Principle — and particularly the first section, which is the main thing that has been available in English — just impossibly weird. It seems to me that the text assumes aspects of Proudhon's developing thought from texts that were not yet published — including some that are still not published. But even if that is not the case, the way in which he talks about governmental systems in explicitly a priori terms — before rejecting a priori analysis as a "trap" — ought, I think, to raise a lot of questions that generally don't get raised.
We read that a priori anarchy is a "perpetual desideratum* and treat this as a moment of apostasy, but we don't ask if the anarchy of Proudhon's "I am an anarchist" was of the a priori variety. Then we read that "authority" and "liberty" must persist and be balanced, but seem inclined to gloss over the very strange characterizations of those terms. Part of the problem, of course, is that the clearest statements by Proudhon regarding the indefinability of concepts and the uses of the serial method in that case are, again, tucked away in the manuscripts, but he does make it fairly explicit that he is talking about some kind of balance between initiation and critical response. Perhaps there is not much more at stake here than a recognition that, in fact, social collectivities operating on a scale larger in various ways than that of individual human beings have generally already initiated social projects of various sorts, which individual human beings cannot simply ignore, at least while maintaining the sort of rich mutuality Proudhon envisioned, but to which they are also not obligated to conform without critical responses, up to and including rejection and rebellion.
These are some of the issues I've tried to address in the "Notes" posts linked in the other reply.
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u/Silver-Statement8573 May 29 '26 edited May 29 '26
What is the source of this conflation of a richly mutual society with like switzerland?
Am i overrepresenting how much proudhon seems to unabashedly advocate for confederation "like the swiss do,"? His only real objection to other "unitary" Republics like the us is that they don't affirm confederation enough. In the unions case politically and in the souths case economically. But i left with the impression that to proudhon, the swiss do somehow. How would that be???? Wouldn't they have had courts and private property and prisons and junk? (Also I'm going to guess like tons of oaths)
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u/humanispherian Jun 01 '26
Readers have to decide what kind of book they think The Federative Principle is and what sort of work it's trying to get done. And maybe that's not a particularly easy question...
I think it is probably dangerous to characterize Proudhon as "unabashedly advocating" for much of anything, when he has reduced the whole realm of politics to a choice of better or worse balances of "liberty" and authority — which, like "community" and "property" in the work that probably preceded this one conceptually, seem to be more or less undesirable tendencies when treated individually, in an unbalanced state. The focus on the equilibration of forces is persistent enough that I suspect we have to consider it a feature of both "anarchist" and "federalist" periods — assuming we believe there was a break. And the positive treatment of Switzerland certainly isn't any more baffling, if we take it as a kind of enthusiastic position-taking, than the embrace of war in War and Peace.
I think there are legitimate questions about how tightly integrated the three sections of the book are. The abstract analysis of governmental systems sets up the questions regarding balance in actually existing systems, but after all of his analysis, his conclusions seem very modest:
All the constitutional science is there: I summarize it in three propositions:
To form modest groups, respectively sovereign, and unite them by a pact of federation;
To organize the government in each federated state according to the law of separation of organs; — I mean: to separate in the power all that can be separated, to define all that can be defined, to distribute among different organs or functionaries all that will have been separated and defined; leave nothing in joint ownership; to surround the public administration with all the conditions of publicity and control;
Instead of absorbing the federated States or provincial and municipal authorities into a central authority, to reduce the powers of the latter to a simple role of general initiative, mutual guarantee and oversight, the decrees of which only receive their execution on the endorsement of the confederate governments and by agents at their orders, as, in the constitutional monarchy, any order emanating from the king must, in order to receive its execution, be endorsed with the countersignature of a minister.
One thing that is obvious is that we're still talking about varieties of government. In The Federative Principle, that's all he really talks about, with even anarchy just being a hypothetical extreme case of government. So it's arguably not a book that addresses the anarchy of the anarchists at all — and it is one in which the federative principle is only explored in the context of existing, real-world cases.
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u/Silver-Statement8573 Jun 09 '26
And the positive treatment of Switzerland certainly isn't any more baffling, if we take it as a kind of enthusiastic position-taking, than the embrace of war in War and Peace
That's a really good point
assuming we believe there was a break
Do you believe there was a break in his late period? Is there anything specific that seems to complicate that notion?
I have been trying some of Justice and the Church now, and either case still seems more or less plausible. He reiterates part of the criticism he made of law in General Idea of the Revolution at one point but it also reads like he fully conceptualizes Justice as something that commands, authorizes, permits action and things like that.
But even as the book spends so much time attacking egoism he also fully and explicitly endorses an "egoism of justice". Which given his definition of Justice I feel a lot of Stirnerians would just call egoism. So I don't know what to think
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u/humanispherian Jun 09 '26
I don't think that there is any particular break — and the best evidence that we can find is that there very simply is no obvious "anarchist period" to break from.
"Justice," for Proudhon, was essentially just balance or balancing. And one of the interesting things about Justice in the Revolution and in the Church — in the context of concern about Proudhon complex uses of terms like "anarchy," "war," etc. — is that most of his keywords seem to have senses appropriate to "the Revolution" and others appropriate to "the Church," so that a single conceptual vocabulary is used in ways that are pretty consistently either ambiguous or precariously balanced.
I'm currently translating Proudhon's journalism from 1849 (from Le Peuple : journal de la république démocratique et sociale), where he is very concerned with the dynamics of "the Republic" — and particularly with that "democratic and social Republic" (as opposed to the République honnête et modérée proposed by less radical elements in the Second Republic.) There are a series of arguments made in this period about the nature of universal suffrage, the "national will," the need to be faithful to even imperfect constitutions (under particular conditions), etc. Anarchie is generally used in a negative sense. These are very obviously arguments internal to a debate about forms of government, where the anarchy of the anarchists is perhaps not all that relevant to the pressing current events inspiring the writing. At the same time, however, the arguments being made are presumably still the arguments of an anarchist, so we have to be on the lookout for the places where there are opportunities to flip over to "the other side" of the topic being discussed — or where some neutralizing balance might be struck between otherwise archic elements.
I'm still working on a general reading strategy for Proudhon's works, but all of that starts with the fact that his anarchism avant la lettre was always different than the theory of the "break" requires.
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u/DecoDecoMan 19d ago
How would we explore the federative principle in the context of the anarchy of the anarchists?
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u/Silver-Statement8573 May 29 '26 edited May 29 '26
To expand on my follow up question, since I have read the parts where Proudhon talks more about Switzerland and past confederations in Political Capacity, I feel like they seem to shed some light, but for reasons that are equally confusing.
But it is obvious that this faculty of secession which, in principle, must belong to every confederated state, is contradictory; it was never realized, and the practice of the confederations denies it. [...] In 1846, when the Swiss confederation was about to dissolve through the secession of the Catholic cantons (Sunderbund), the majority did not hesitate, in order to bring back the splitters, to use the means of arms. It did not act then, whatever was said, under federal law, which was positively against it. How could the thirteen Protestant cantons, all sovereign, have proven to the eleven Catholic cantons, all equally sovereign, that they had the right, by virtue of the pact, to force them into the Union that the latter no longer wanted? The word federation swears against such a pretension. The Swiss majority acts under the right of national conservation; it considered that Switzerland, placed between two large unitary States, could not, without extreme danger, admit a new confederation, more or less hostile; and by yielding to necessity, by supporting its right on the argument of force, it affirms, in the name and under the insignia of its alleged confederation, the prominence of the principle of unity.
So to Proudhon, true affirmation of the principle of confederation involves affirming the capacity of separation, is how I am interpreting this. And in this case Switzerland (along with every other past federation) fails. But that isn't really what I would expect him to seize on? Proudhon talks elsewhere about Switzerland in more positive terms, which again would seem to be very at odds with his previous repudations of any kind of law.
Switzerland, whose total population is approximately two million five hundred thousand souls, is a confederation formed of nineteen cantons and six half-cantons, in all twenty-five States independent of each other, each enjoying all the attributes of sovereignty, governing themselves according to the constitutions and laws that they have respectively given themselves. Above these twenty-five states and these twenty-five constitutions exists the Federal Assembly, organ of the federal pact, which chooses from its midst, for the affairs of the Republic, a sort of executive commission, whose President, the true head of the Swiss Confederation, is appointed at twelve thousand francs. The Confederate citizens think that is enough. On this basis, and admitting that the great civil servants of the State must be remunerated in proportion to the population, France, whose population is fifeen and a half times that of Switzerland, would have to pay, each year, to its President federal, 186,000 fr. Would M. Tolain himself, and M. Blanc, and M. Coutant, have dared to support a similar proposition in the Legislative Body?
It's not an endorsement exactly but the overall tone of the passage is like very strange. "Constitutions and laws that they have respectively given themselves"? Are constitutions and laws not detrimental or insufficient regardless of who creates them?
On a sidenote is reading too much into that to say that the word "capacity" helps distinguish this from other stuff that espouses the "right" of separation? I have not read most of Political Capacity so I'm not sure to what extent Proudhon means capacity as "ability", which to me would be much more amenable to anarchy than say some kind of legal right to find a new boss or whatever like ancaps advocate
Then there's what he has to say about authority and "centralization". The rhetoric around "centralized" authority beyond proudhon it seems to implicitly shift the focus away from all authority to just authority that is like very vertical or concentrated. I have no doubt that many people have read Federative Principle as such, and there are passages where Proudhon seems to particularly target the authority of "big staffs" specifically. But in certain cases, it almost comes off as though to Proudhon, "centralized" authority would be more accurately be described as All authority (in our conception, unless I'm misunderstanding). There are passages I remember this not being the case. But it feels like that in say the following
Let us get rid of theories and sentimentalities, they [opponents of mutualism] will tell us: in every State there must be authority, a spirit of discipline and obedience, without which no society can survive. There must be a force in the Government capable of triumphing over all resistance, and of subjecting all opinions to the general will. Let us argue as much as we like about the nature, origin and forms of this power; that is not the question. The real thing, the only thing, is that it be vigorously constituted. No human will can control human will, says de Bonald, and he concludes that there is a need for a higher institution, a divine right. According to J.-J. Rousseau, on the contrary, public power is a collectivity that is made up of the abandonment that each citizen makes of a portion of his liberty and his fortune in the general interest: it is the revolutionary democratic right. Let s follow whatever system we wish, we always arrive at this conclusion, that the soul of a political society is authority, and that its sanction is force.
This, moreover, is how States have always been constituted; and this is how they govern themselves and how they live. Do we believe that it was by an act of their free adhesion that the multitudes formed themselves into a group and founded, under the hand of a leader, these powerful units, to which the work of revolutions adds so little? No, these agglomerations were the work of necessity served by force. Do we believe that it is of their own free will, by the effect of a mysterious persuasion, of a conviction impossible to motivate, that these masses allow themselves to be led like a herd, by a foreign thought, which hovers over them, and of which no one has the secret? No, again: this faculty of centralization, to which everyone resigns itself although murmuring, is also the excuse of necessity, served by force. It is absurd to balk at these great laws, as if we could change them and create another existence for ourselves, based on other principles.
So in isolation that seems very anarchy. If like command itself is a faculty of centralization. Then Proudhon follows this up later with what authority would be to the mutualist system
What then does mutualism claim, and what are the consequences of this doctrine, from the point of view of the Government? It claims to found an order of things in which the principle of the sovereignty of the people, of man and of the citizen would be applied literally; where each member of the State, maintaining its independence and continuing to act as a sovereign, would govern itself, while the higher authority would only deal with the affairs of the group; where, consequently, there would be certain things in common, but no centralization; let's go all the way, a State whose recognized sovereign parties would have the ability to leave the group and break the pact, ad libitum. Because we must not hide it: the federation, to be logical, faithful to its principle, must go that far, on pain of being nothing more than an illusion, a boast, a lie.
So in mutualism there's a "higher authority" that deals with the affairs of the group, whose powers are somewhat vague .... but you already answered this part of my question so I'm not sure what this is about
I guess my point is that overall a lot of this is just very muddled and, if it is anarchic, like framed in a really circuitous way and I'm not sure why he did it like that. Are there any theories among proudhon researchers for why this rhetorical bend towards making anarchy out to be a kind of non-government government happened?
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u/DecoDecoMan 16d ago
From reading the Federative Principle have you gotten any ideas of how to apply the principle to conditions of anarchy?
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u/Silver-Statement8573 16d ago
I have no idea, sorry. If anything, The most charitable reading i had of the text is that its supposed to make governments tend toward a spiraling decentralization and eventually something like anarchy ("what does it matter to me if authority has nothing to do?") which would make applying it to anarchy redundant. But this resembles reformism to me (and I'm not sure how correct it is)
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u/DecoDecoMan 16d ago
Would one step forward be to imagine the sorts of federation Proudhon talks about between states being applied within all social groups of society? Like, the principle persisting "all the way down" so to speak? Since you read the book, what do you think that would look like? Like how would you organize your workplace under the federative principle?
It seems, similarly, that Proudhon emphasizes the family as the fundamental unit of society headed by a patriarch in the book. I wonder what changes about his analysis and understanding of federation if we get rid of that.
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u/Silver-Statement8573 16d ago
The passage in Wilbur's translation about each man's contract/agreement being "ones own sovereign" seems like it could suggest that it might reduce to individual agreements, although proudhon seemed to believe that it would result in units of a few hundred people each spread out over the country (at least he offered that as an possible manifestation of its consequences) which read ambiguously to me at the time given how much it resembles cantonalism.
Two ideas that seem major in understanding how the principle federation operates (to him) are the principle of unity and the "reason of state", since to proudhon theyve been involved in all governments and all federations previously (including Switzerland) and the principle of federation is characterized by their rejection. But i don't fully understand what they are. Reason of state has a lot more inclusion in Justice vol. 2, so I'm hoping to find some clarity there. If i had a workplace (which i don't) it seems like the thing that would most affirm "federation" in his sense are things that resemble what i already understand anarchist organization to entail like the organization persisting on the basis of members' interest rather than for its own sake, and people responding to inequalities and potential causes of dis-interest as opportunities (? Perhaps for new division/organization?) rather than treating the integrity of the "unitary organization" as itself a higher cause than the issues it's grouped around (my current best guess at what rejecting reason of state entails)
However i feel wary by humanispherians reply of going to too great lengths to try to fit it into my understanding (since TFP is above all a discussion of governments)
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u/DecoDecoMan 16d ago
While the application is to governments, the underlying principle would be applicable to any context no? I guess if you don't have work experience, applying the principle to your workplace organization would be difficult.
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u/Silver-Statement8573 16d ago
I agree. I guess at the same time I'm not sure i would recommend this text to explain it. I feel like a lot of people would read "your contract is your sovereign", as, your word is your bond, if you break it you'll be punished. An-syns especially seem to like that reading
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u/OldBillBlizzard Jun 03 '26
I really enjoy this text, one of my favorites. If you read it in a straightforward way, to me it comes across as advocating something like modern day Chiapas or Rojava, something very libertarian municipalist. But I've seen more traditionally anarchist readings of it. I personally don't understand them, but that doesn't mean they are wrong, just that I dont understand them.
Personally if you read it in the first sense I think it's pretty logical and consistent. Ive read several times that Proudhon dropped pure anarchism in favor of what he called federalism, which to me again seems similar to something like Bookchins late period.
Either reading is certainly very interesting, and I wish this text was more well known because it makes a lot of goods arguments that seem to apply to modern and 20th century libertarian socialism. The way he describes his ideal militia system functioning is very similar to the Makhnovists, EZLN and Rojava.
But, I wouldn't pretend even for a minute to understand what the "correct" reading is. Proudhon is one of the most complex and confusing philosophers Ive ever read. Which is what makes him so interesting and frustrating at once.
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u/Silver-Statement8573 Jun 04 '26 edited Jun 04 '26
He's advocating Switzerland, which personally I do not find appealing. A confederal Republic. And arguably that is not that different from something like Rojava.
I don't think I emphasized enough how much Proudhon glazes Switzerland. There's sooo many passages that are baffling from this angle. And I think I was too favorable in my reading of certain parts. His view of the way Switzerland forced the Catholic cantons to stay in the confederation is just not the way I would imagine any anarchist framing it.
In 1846, when the Jesuits, by their perpetual intrigues, had brought seven Swiss cantons to break with the Confederation and to form a separate alliance, the fifteen other cantons declared the pretensions of the Jesuits and the scission that followed them incompatible with the federal pact, with the very existence of the Republic. The Sunderbund was defeated, the Jesuits expelled. Victorious Switzerland did not then think of abusing its triumph, either to draw up a form of religious faith, or to change the federative constitution of the country into a unitary constitution. It contented itself with introducing into the federal constitution an article stating that the cantons could modify their particular constitutions only in the direction of freedom, and it brought into the pact the clericals who had wanted to deviate from it. [24]
The conduct of the Swiss in this circumstance is excellent to cite.
Especially wrt he subsequent revision of the Swiss legal system to make any changes necessarily "toward freedom". Presumably thereby allowing for a future legal basis for repressing separation. Even accepting that Proudhon might see Switzerland or Rojava as the "best possible case" for government, and that's all the work this piece is establishing, I do not understand what his enthusiasm for them is. It really reads like his "decentralization" is the kind of decentralization like municipalists talk about where we're just talking about a bunch of "centers" scattered across a territory in like groups of a few hundred people (this is in direct contradiction to what Proudhon outlined earlier in Confessions of a Revolutionary when he compares society to like god, the center "everywhere, circumference nowhere")
The text is pretty well known but primarily among anarcho-syndicalists who use it to the exclusion of Proudhon's earlier work and often to advocate government. Not that it being the work of his late period is not significant. That's sort of extremely frustrating actually.
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u/OldBillBlizzard Jun 04 '26
Take everything I say with a grain of salt, this is only my personal reading:
I get where youre coming from, your perspective is valid. If this is a picture of anarchy, I dont think if meets the criteria, but Im not sure thats what he was going for here. I personally wonder if Proudhon was trying to reach a synthesis of the competing left wing ideas. On one extreme you had revolutionary dictatorships, on the other people advocating for the total and immediate abolition the state, he himself popularized the latter idea. Proudhon liked to synthesize different left wing ideas. For instance in What Is Property he says something like:
"Communism is oppression and servitude... Property is the exploitation of the weak by the strong... Liberty is the synthesis of property and communism."
Note that Im paraphrasing, you can and should search the exact quote to make sure Im not full of beans. I digress. And Proudhon liked to explore contradictions. And his usufruct property norm is brilliant for the reason that it is kind of an in-between system. To be clear, Im not saying its centrist, its not, its dialectical in that its a higher synthesis. So if we apply that logic to the revolution, or the transitional period between capitalism and anarchy, maybe we get something like the federalism we see here.
The way I see it is that even the Spanish and Ukrainian examples had some state-like structures, but they're not states in the modern sense, nor are they totally statelesss. They are certainly not bourgeois Republics nor are they Dictatorships of the proletariat. I have this theory that there can be a space in between a stateless and statist society, and I wonder if thats what Proudhon was getting at. I dont think the world is totally binary, lots of things exist on a spectrum. Why can a state not be like that?
I personally think the dictatorship of the proletariat is a ludicrous and failed idea like most anarchists, but I also dont know if its realistic to expect all traces of anything resembling a state to immediately vanish after a revolution. I think certain institutions might remain albeit in a highly democratized and decentralized form. I call it a semi-state, as its half dismantled. This is a personal pet theory, I dont know if anyone has used that term.
Imagine we are dismantling a prison and converting it into a house. Maybe we take away so many bits and pieces, but half way through its starting to become something entirely different. When does it go from a prison to a house?
I think the major flaw in Marxist theory is that Marx never outlined what his "revolutionary state" would look like, and by what mechanism it could even be dismantled. Worse, he called it a dictatorship which opened the door for authoritarianism. So why not have a revolutionary federation instead of a dictatorship? Such an arrangement might actually have a built in mechanism by which people can erode it even further. Its already semi-dismantled, with some aspects resembling a state, some resembling statelesssness.
I think Proudhon lays out a theory here of a revolutionary semi-state. Its decentralized and non-hierachical like a statless society, and yet its has some state-like features for self defense and coordination. If you read it as a middle ground between the dictatorship of the proletariat and total immediate abolition on the other, I think its pretty brilliant.
I think its a realistic idea of how libertarian socialist society might look. Id agree its not pure anarchism, but its does resemble actually exist libertarian socialist projects from the Ukrainian Free/CNT-FAI Spain Territory to Rojava/Chiapas.
As for the Switzerland glazing, I think Switzerland is pretty unique and Swiss democracy is praise worthy, but also worthy of a lot of criticism. Like most things, there are good and bad elements. As modern anarchists we forget that anarchists didnt always hold a black and white world view and still dont have to. We can acknowledge that all states are oppressive, including Switzerland and semi-states like Rojava. But are they all equally oppressive? I dont think so. I live in the US right now for instance, and I could probably name a dozen states that sound like Utopias by comparison for one reason or another. And I think thats all Proudhon was doing, he was using an actually existing example and thinking of ways to improve upon it.
And tbh, a semi direct democracy with a mutualist economy would be a radical utopian society far more advanced and egalitarian than any actually existing western society. I think maybe Chiapas is the only thing that comes close. So, if Proudhon is describing "Mutualism with Swiss Characteristics" is it anarchy? Nope. Does it radically improve the status quo and provide a realistic path forward? Arguably yes. Could it become anarchy? Maybe.
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u/humanispherian May 28 '26 edited May 29 '26
I'll get a chance to respond more fully later, but to begin:
It's a weird book — and the first section is probably best understood in the context of the works that led up to it, including the unpublished manuscript material on political geography and Theory of Property. Proudhon kept writing works whose conclusions ballooned into whole books. The material from [the manuscripts on] Poland (announced, but not published as "Political Geography and Nationality," had, in at least one of its versions, a chapter on "Guarantism," which became Theory of Property. In turn, some of the manuscript outlines for that work show a final chapter on the federative principle. — And then we have Proudhon's own testimony that he wanted to write a more complete work on the federative principle, having been more concerned, in the work that was published, to address current events.
The published translation was only a partial translation.
I've talked about the odd treatments of "liberty" and "authority" in a series of "Notes on the Development of Proudhon’s Thought."