Proudhon - A Biography

EPILOGUE
chastity, and rejected with suspicious violence the enticements of
carnal love. Yet he did not affect the narrow existence o f the
ascetic, and in its own way his life was full and rich. His letters
were illuminated by humour and magnanimity, he delighted in
good conversation, he loved wine in moderation and appreciated
good food, he was responsive to natural beauty. His scholarship
was vast, and his knowledge o f French and classical literature
was almost encyclopaedic. He applauded and understood the most
vital painting o f his time, he liked music and (though he dis­
trusted actresses) enjoyed the theatre, and he combined an appre­
ciation of good craftsmanship with an unostentatious plainness
in his daily living. If one adds to these facts the bold and arresting
nature o f his thought, the penetrating and often prophetic insight
he displayed into the world o f his time, and the strong and subtle
prose in which he expressed his ideas, the finished picture of
Proudhon, even taking into account the defects which his very
largeness of nature made the more apparent, is that o f a man
whose vitality, integrity and humanity were unusual in his or any
age.
I began this chapter by remarking that the identification of
Proudhon as a peasant radical seemed nearer to the truth than
most of the other generalisations that have sought to explain his
career. Today, when the unsatisfied demands o f the world’s
peasants have taken on an imperative urgency, such a role seems
more relevant than it may have appeared to Proudhon’s immediate
successors, but it would be wrong to regard him as nothing more
than a prophet o f the Jacquerie. Experience soon gave him a much
broader view o f the fife o f the poor than could be found within
the village, and it is illuminating to recall the stages o f develop­
ment which his thought underwent as his knowledge of the
various sections of the working class became progressively more
comprehensive.
What is Property?, written in 1840, presented a vision of social
reorganisation that seemed to take into account only the farmer
and the handicraftsman. By 1848, however, contact with the
Lyons weavers had made Proudhon conscious o f the need for
co-operation, and his vision of the People’s Bank was based on
the idea o f association for the exchange of products between
peasants and small workshop groups. Later, the spread of indus­
trialism and o f the railroads revealed to him that the larger pro-