Basic Biographical Information
Pierre Joseph Proudhon, influential printer and author, was born in 1809 in Besançon, France to a family of modest means. Educated at home by his mother, he eventually chose to learn the printing trade and ultimately attended college on scholarship. His supervision of the printing of Charles Fourier’s classic Le Nouveau monde industriel et sociétaire (1829) made a great impression on him. Proudhon moved to Paris in 1838 and began writing himself, publishing the book, Qu’est-ce que la propriété? (What is Property?) in 1840. Following the publication of a fairly radical newspaper in 1848, he was imprisoned for 3 years and, after his release, fled to Belgium. He died in 1865, just 3 years after his return to France.
Major Accomplishments/Contributions
Proudhon’s writings inspired mutual societies, the workers’ movement and other collective endeavors in Europe, especially during the nineteenth century. In What is Property?, originally printed in 1840, he...
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Proudhon, P. J. (1966). Qu’est-ce que la propriété? Ou recherches sur le principe du droit et du gouvernement. Paris: Garnier-Flammarion.
Proudhon, P. J., Kelley, D. R., & Smith, B. G. (2002). What is property? Reprint. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (Cambridge texts in the history of political thought).
Woodcock, G. (1987). Pierre-Joseph Proudhon. A Biography (3rd ed.). Montréal: Black Rose Books.
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Labigne, A., List, R. (2010). Proudhon, Pierre Joseph. In: Anheier, H.K., Toepler, S. (eds) International Encyclopedia of Civil Society. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-93996-4_273
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-93996-4_273
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