dermine the respect for authority as such. Absolute monarchy as well
as constitutional, the Republic just as much as Imperialism, the
dictatorship of an individual just as much as that of the mob, had all
alike failed to remove pauperism, misery, and crime, or even to
alleviate them; was it not then natural for superficial minds to
conclude that the radical fault lay in the authoritative form of
society in the State as such? did not the thought at once suggest
itself that a further extension of Fourier's system of the formation
of groups on the basis of the free initiative of the individual might
be attempted without taking the State into account at all? But here
was a further point at which a system of social and political
Anarchism might begin with some hope of success, and here it actually
did begin with Proudhon.

CHAPTER II

PIERRE JOSEPH PROUDHON

Biography -- His Philosophic Standpoint -- His Early Writings
-- The "Contradictions of Political Economy" -- Proudhon's
Federation -- His Economic Views -- His Theory of Property --
Collectivism and Mutualism -- Attempts to Put his Views into
Practice -- Proudhon's Last Writings -- Criticism.

The man who had such a powerful, not to say fateful, influence upon
the progress of the proletarian movement of our century was himself
one of the proletariat class by birth and calling.

Pierre Joseph Proudhon was born 15th January, 1809, in a suburb of
Besancon. His father was a cooper, his mother a cook; and Pierre
Joseph, in spite of his thirst for knowledge, had to devote himself to
hard work, instead of completing his studies; he became a proofreader
in some printing works at Besancon, and as a journeyman printer
wandered all through France. Having returned to Besancon, he entered
the printing house again as a factor. In the year 1836 he founded,
with a fellow-workman in the same town, a little printing shop,
which, however, he wound up after his partner had died in 1838, being
determined to change the occupation he had followed so far, for
another for which he had already long been preparing by diligent study
both during his wanderings and in his leisure hours in past years.
Proudhon's activity as an author began in the year 1837. The Academy
at Besancon had to award a three years' scholarship, which had been
founded by Suard, the secretary of the French Academy, for poor young
men of Fr