Proudhon: From Anarchism to Federalism

Hello everyone,

The APROFED association is back again this week to present to you this time Pierre Joseph Proudhon , French journalist, economist, sociologist, philosopher and politician of the 19th ^century ( cf. Pierre-Joseph Proudhon — Wikipedia ).

Considered the father of modern anarchism , he opposed the centralized state, imposed authority, and hierarchical structures as early as 1840. For him, social order should be based on free and contractual relationships between individuals or groups.

Nevertheless, 10 years later, he developed a federalist philosophy and even explained in a letter how anarchism led him to federalism  : “To give you just one example of this method, I will point out in passing that if, in 1840, I began with anarchism, the conclusion of my critique of the idea of ​​government, it was because I had to end with federation, the necessary basis of the law of European nations and, later, of the organization of all states.”

In 1863, he even defended a social and political organization based on federations of communes or associations , autonomous but linked by mutual pacts, in a work entitled: On the Federal Principle.

He thus became one of the leading theorists of federalism in his time. His federalism was not simply an administrative division: it was a form of anti-state political organization , where power was decentralized to the point of disappearing in favor of collective autonomy. While rejecting the state, centralized authority, and imposed hierarchy, he proposed an organization of society based on the free association of autonomous entities, without a central authority.

His influence was such within anarchist and libertarian currents that he inspired men like Mikhail Bakunin or Pierre Kropotkin who also adopted federalism to their revolutionary, insurrectionary, socialist and communist ideas, for whom society can organize itself without a State, in federations of communes and workers while pooling resources.

Proudhon’s thought would also inspire libertarian municipalism in the 20th century, as dictated by Murray Bookchin, who took up Proudhon’s theories with autonomous communes linked in confederations, governed by citizens’ assemblies, with more emphasis on direct democracy and ecology.

Rojava, a Kurdish movement located in northern Syria, is currently applying some of these ideas.

From this initial desire for freedom, federalism emerged once again in the eyes of a Frenchman, later recognized globally as one of the only solutions for organizing societies.

The APROFED association