Proudhon - A Biography

A PERSONAL PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION
that their own master, Bakunin, had once declared that ‘Proudhon
is the master of us all.’
A basic anarchist who had laid down in books like General Idea
of the Revolution the fundamentals of libertarian beliefs but had been
virtually rejected by his successors; a man who had declared ‘I build
no system’ and ‘I create no sect,’ and whom Victor Considerant,
the Phalansterian, once described as ‘that strange man who was
determined that none should share his views’; a man who evoked
‘irony, true liberty’ as his muse, and after his one bitter experience
of parliamentary activity during the 1848 Revolution declared, ‘to
indulge in politics is to wash one’s hands in shit’; Proudhon seemed
the ideal companion with whom to walk through the wilderness of
my own doubts. And, indeed, I found him so, discovering that we
had not only our ideas but also the poverty and pride and the rural
background of our childhood and youth in common. All biographers,
if they are serious, identify with their subjects, temporarily losing
themselves as actors do in their parts, and during the period when
I was writing of Proudhon my identification with him went so far
that I developed serious asthma, the sickness from which he died.
I had not suffered from it before and I have not suffered from it
since.
The completion of my book on Proudhon coincided with an
incident that turned out to be of great importance to my life. I had
been teaching for a year on a temporary basis at the University of
Washington, and was now offered a permanent post in the Department
of English, and as I still had not yet succeeded in establishing myself
as a writer in Canada, I decided to accept it, with the prospect of
an American literary career. I had to return to Canada and get an
immigrant’s visa that would enable me to live and work in the
United States. It was then that the American authorities turned up
the facts about my past as an anarchist activist— the past from
which I had already distanced myself mentally. At that time I was
working on the final revision of my book, and Proudhon was much
in my mind on the day I went down to the consulate in Vancouver
for the crucial interview. I imagine that my past as editor of Freedom
was enough, under the McCarran Act, to keep me out, but the
consul had the air of giving me a last chance when he asked if I
was still an anarchist. I thought a moment and, with Proudhon in
my mind, answered, ‘fundamentally and philosophically, yes.’ It
was enough for him, and for me. I was excluded in perpetuity from
xv