Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

French politician, philosopher, anarchist and socialist (1809-1865)

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Lived 1809–1865, aged 56France

France

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Era
1809–1865
Aged 56

Summary

Updated 2026-09-07

He coined the phrase "property is theft!" and became the first person to publicly claim the label anarchist — not as an insult but as a position. His 1840 pamphlet launched a political tradition and a lifelong argument with Marx.

Biography

About

Born in Besançon in 1809, Proudhon was a printer who taught himself Latin to set books he couldn't otherwise read. What Is Property?, published in 1840, caught the attention of both French authorities and Karl Marx, who began a correspondence that turned into a Paris friendship during Marx's exile. The friendship shattered when Marx answered Proudhon's The System of Economic Contradictions with The Poverty of Philosophy, a dispute that helped split the anarchist and Marxist wings of the International Working Men's Association. Elected to the French Parliament after the 1848 Revolution, Proudho…

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In their own words

Sourced, dated quotes from Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

said1863

All my economic ideas as developed over twenty-five years can be summed up in the words: agricultural-industrial federation.

— Du principe Fédératif [Principle of Federation] (1863)

Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

said1840

The nineteenth century is in my eyes a creative age in which new principles are produced but in which nothing written will endure.

— Preface

Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

said1840

I should like to restore with one hand what I destroy with the other. When pruning an old tree one should avoid destroying the buds and fruit; you know this is as well as anyone.

— Preface

Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

said1840

If we pass from physical nature to the moral world, here we still find ourselves subject to the same deceptions of appearance, to the same influence of spontaneity and habit.

— Chapter One

Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

said1840

Justice is not the work of the law: on the contrary, the law is only the declaration and application of what is just in all circumstances where men have relations with one another.

— Chapter One

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