Proudhon - A Biography

EPILOGUE
in Mexican agrarianism. In England, apart from the small anar­
chist movement, the mutualist influence seems to have been
strongest among the Guild Socialists.
Seminal social ideas and the movements they produce are sel­
dom coterminous, and thus we often find that potent theories
disappear from sight and re-emerge at some later point in history
like an underground river coming to the surface. Something of
this kind has happened to Proudhon’s teachings. The large
anarchist and syndicalist movements that stemmed from his in­
fluence were shaken by the rise o f the Comintern, and reduced
by the destruction o f the Spanish republic to mere skeleton
groups of devoted militants, idealistic literati and ageing senti­
mentalists.
But his ideas, divorced— as he doubtless would have preferred
them to be— from organisational trappings, are still alive in the
world. The absolute sacro-sanctity o f property, which he attacked
so resoundingly, can almost be regarded as a thing o f the past,
so few and so guilty supporters does it now find. His ideas of
mutual banking have found expression in thousands o f credit
unions all over the world, and his theory o f an abundant system
o f credit based, not on gold, but on total productivity, has been
reproduced, not only in the somewhat fantastic visions o f Social
Credit, but also in the ideas o f more orthodox economists who
have moved away from the gold standard towards more rational
bases for currency. The emergence o f totalitarianism and the
experience in many countries o f authoritarian socialist administra­
tions have led men to a new distrust o f the centralised State, while
the events o f the present century have more than underlined
Proudhon’s warnings o f the dangers of nationalism and have
given a new appeal to the federalist solution.
Proudhon, indeed, dealt with problems that are perennial, and,
while he expressed his ideas in a manner that was often chaotic
and sometimes appeared contradictory, while his positive vision
was not always so well developed as his critical insight, there are
many passages in his works which retain exceptional durability
and which at times offer a stimulating viewpoint that has not lost
in validity. Neither his writings nor his career can give any total
solution to our own difficulties, since they were inevitably con­
ditioned by the age in which he lived, but they contain so many
pertinent warnings and open so many vistas o f constructive