Now it’s time to get back to anti-capitalist libertarianism, which can be called both anarchism and libertarian socialism. The last two installments, Parts II and III, focused on classical liberalism and the political events surrounding it, so that some form of representative government with a parliament answerable to the people replaces an absolutist monarchy where kings acted like dictators. The historical context was one where feudalism was giving way to capitalism and getting the government to serve the capitalists, the owners of property whom John Locke was addressing with his classical liberalism triad of life, liberty, and property.
Contrary to the capitalist libertarianism most of us are accustomed to in the United States, the original French version of libertarianism was “socialist” in that the means of production were to be socially owned and run, that is, by the workers cooperating with one another in contrast to the hierarchical capitalist system. Furthermore, there is anti-state socialism or anarchism versus the state socialism of Marx. So the French libertarians of the 1800’s were anti-state anti-capitalist socialists who called themselves both anarchists and libertarian socialists. The French word libertaire was used to evade the French ban on anarchist publications. In this tradition, the terms “libertarianism” and “libertarian socialism” are generally used as synonyms for anarchism, derived from the Greek ἀναρχία, i.e. (from ἄναρχος, anarchos, meaning “one without rulers”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarian_socialism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchism
The first modern proponent of anarchism, under the influence of the French Revolution, was Englishman William Godwin (1756-1836) whose aim was the complete overthrow of all existing political, social, and religious institutions. He said monarchy was unavoidably corrupt and he desired a government of the simplest construction, came to consider “government by its very nature counteracts the improvement of the original mind”. He argued that government is a corrupting force in society, perpetuating dependence and ignorance, but that it will be rendered increasingly unnecessary and powerless by the gradual spread of knowledge and the expansion of human understanding. He follows Tom Paine’s view in Common Sense that “society is in every state a blessing… government even in its best state is but a necessary evil” by seeing society as antecedent to government with its principles setting the bounds of its legitimacy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Godwin
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (1809-1865) was the first person to declare himself an anarchist, founder of the mutualist philosophy, considered by many to be the “father of anarchism”. Hubert Largardelle credits Proudhon with being the first anarcho-syndicalist. The syndicalist school of anarchism, anarcho-syndicalism, states the state’s primary purpose is to protect private property and therefore economic, social, and political privilege, thereby denying most citizens the material independence and social autonomy enjoyed by the aristocrats running the state. The workers organize and govern themselves in solidarity, through direct action and direct democracy. Anarcho-syndicalists maintain that a Marxist “worker’s state” cannot be successful in serving the workers over the ruling capitalist elites. The state will inevitably empower itself or the existing elite at the expense of the workers.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-syndicalism
Proudhon is famous for saying “property is theft” which meant that the landowner or capitalist stole profits from the workers. He favored workers’ associations or co-operatives, as well as individual worker/peasant possession, over private ownership or nationalization of land and workplaces. He considered social revolution to be achievable in a peaceful manner.
He clarified that anarchy is order without power and that property is freedom, referring to property as the product of an individual’s labor. In fact, he regarded labor as the only legal innate source of property. What one produces is his property and anything beyond that is not, asserted Proudhon. He declared property defined as such is the only power that can act as a counterweight to the state. As an anti-capitalist or libertarian socialist he favored collective ownership of the means of production.
He was not a communist and strenuously rejected the ownership of the products of labor by society. “The right means is common; the right to product is exclusive”. He called the use-ownership “possession” and his economic system mutualism. He opposed both capitalism and state ownership of property, arguing for small-scale property ownership associated with peasants and artisans.. He believed that property should be equally distributed and limited to size to that actually used by individuals, families, and workers’ associations. In his vision, self-employed artisans, peasants, and cooperatives would trade their products on the market. For Proudhon, factories and other large workplaces would be run by “labor associations” operating on directly democratic principles. The state would be abolished; instead, society would be organized by a federation of “free communes” (a commune is a local municipality in French). In 1863 Proudhon said: “All my economic ideas as developed over twenty-five years can be summed up in the words: agricultural-industrial federation. All my political ideas boil down to a similar formula: political federation or decentralization.”
Proudhon opposed the charging of interest and rent, but did not seek to abolish them by law: “I protest that when I criticized… the complex of institutions of which property is the foundation stone, I never meant to forbid or suppress, by sovereign decree, ground rent and interest on capital. I think that all these manifestations of human activity should remain free and voluntary for all: I ask for them no modifications, restrictions or suppressions, other than those which result naturally and of necessity from the universalization of the principle of reciprocity which I propose.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre-Joseph_Proudhon
Proudhon criticized the authoritarian socialists of his time period, including the state socialist Louis Blanc. He made few public criticisms of Marx who at that time was a relatively minor thinker. Proudhon’s book What is Property?influenced the young Karl Marx’s ideas on the abolition of private property.
Marx’s The Poverty of Philosophy, written as a refutation of Proudhon’s The Philosophy of Poverty, was the beginning of a historic rift between libertarian and authoritarian Socialists and between anarchists and Marxists. After Proudhon’s death, the First International Working Men’s Association dissolved in the feud between Marx and Proudhon’s disciple Mikhail Bakunin. After Bakunin’s death, his libertarian socialism diverged into anarchist communism and collectivist anarchism, with notable proponents such as Peter Kropotkin and Joseph Déjacque.
http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Pierre-Joseph_Proudhon
Proudhon also clashed with Joseph Déjacque, the anarcho-communist noted in Part I as the first self-described libertarian. Proudhon emphasized the worker is entitled to the product of his labor whereas Déjacque said
“It is not the product of his or her labor that the worker has a right to, but to the satisfaction of his or her needs, whatever may be their nature.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchism
There are other important anarchists we’ll see in Part V.