caption death_date death_place influenced era birth_place school_tradition influences main_interests notable_ideas birth_date image article_title name region
portrait by gustave courbet , 1865 19 january 1865 passy , paris , france karl silvio gesell , georges sorel , benjamin tucker , mário marx ferreira dos santos , kevin carson , mikhail bakunin , joseph déjacque , 19th-century philosophy besançon , france socialism , anarchism , mutualism hugo charles fourier grotius , jean-jacques rousseau , g.w.f. hegel , liberty justice , egalitarianism , property , authority , poverty , social property federation , anarchist gradualism is theft , anarchy is order , economic 15 january 1809 portrait of pierre joseph proudhon 1865.jpg pierre-joseph proudhon
 pierre-joseph proudhon western philosophy
pierre-joseph proudhon

pierre-joseph proudhon -lrb- ; 15 january 1809 -- 19 january 1865 -rrb- was a french politician and the founder of mutualist philosophy .
he was the first person to declare himself an anarchist and is widely regarded as one of the ideology 's most influential theorists .
proudhon is even considered by many to be the `` father of anarchism '' .
he became a member of the french parliament after the revolution of 1848 , whereafter he referred to himself as a federalist .
proudhon , who was born in besançon , was a printer who taught himself latin in order to better print books in the language .
his best-known assertion is that `` property is theft ! ''
, contained in his first major work , `` what is property ?
or , an inquiry into the principle of right and government '' -lrb- `` qu'est - ce que la propriété ?
recherche sur le principe du droit et du gouvernement '' -rrb- , published in 1840 .
the book 's publication attracted the attention of the french authorities .
it also attracted the scrutiny of karl marx , who started a correspondence with its author .
the two influenced each other : they met in paris while marx was exiled there .
their friendship finally ended when marx responded to proudhon 's `` the system of economic contradictions , or the philosophy of poverty '' with the provocatively titled `` the poverty of philosophy '' .
the dispute became one of the sources of the split between the anarchist and marxist wings of the international working men 's association .
some , such as edmund wilson , have contended that marx 's attack on proudhon had its origin in the latter 's defense of karl grün , whom marx bitterly disliked , but who had been preparing translations of proudhon 's work .
proudhon favored workers ' associations or co-operatives , as well as individual worker/peasant possession , over private ownership or the nationalization of land and workplaces .
he considered social revolution to be achievable in a peaceful manner .
in `` the confessions of a revolutionary '' proudhon asserted that , `` anarchy is order without power '' , the phrase which much later inspired , in the view of some , the anarchist `` circled-a '' symbol , today `` one of the most common graffiti on the urban landscape . ''
he unsuccessfully tried to create a national bank , to be funded by what became an abortive attempt at an income tax on capitalists and shareholders .
similar in some respects to a credit union , it would have given interest-free loans .
