Proudhon, Pierre‐Joseph (1809–65)

Abstract Pierre‐Joseph Proudhon was the first to clearly articulate a political philosophy of anarchism. Born in the Franche‐Comté region of France, Pierre‐Joseph's father was a cooper and his mother a cook. Proudhon's schooling was cut short due to the family's poverty, but when he later took work with a notable local printing press he taught himself Latin, Greek, and Hebrew while typesetting staple religious works. He was also exposed to more radical ideas while printing Charles Fourier's idiosyncratic works. At the age of 20, he won a scholarship to study in Paris, where he became intimately acquainted with radical European philosophy, from Kantian idealism to Michelet's universal history. However, it was the iniquities of bourgeois property relations that would inspire his first major work. What Is Property? Or an Investigation into the Principle of Right and of Government (1994 [1840]) made an instant mark and was quickly suppressed. Proudhon declared war on the established order with his now infamous view that “All property is theft!”