http://libertarian-labyrinth.blogspot.com/2011/06/proudhons-critics.html
We know that Proudhon took equality, reciprocity and justice as his most
important keywords, and that he was developing a theory of "right"
which quite explicitly did not privilege the strong over the weak, which
should, in fact, have been capable of recognizing any number of
mutually incommensurable "strengths," each with its own attendant
"right" (with "right" meaning essentially something like "weight and
standing in the balances of justice.") We also know that he was working
on a descriptive, historical account of the development of justice and
right—a work that started in the later chapters of his first memoir on
property—which traced the development of those notions from the "age of
heroes," where they were manifested precisely in "force and fraud"
through progressive evolutions. And, of course, we don't have much doubt
that Proudhon had some basic prejudices about the capabilities of
women. Putting those pieces together is no easy task. Proudhon's
treatment of "droit"—which indicates, at various times, either the line
of development implied by any organized collectivity, the dominant means
of justifying (that is, balancing) the claims of various collectivities
in a given era, or the various forms of legal right (etc.?)—just
complicates the problems, but, I think, it complicates it in ways that
are ultimately at least potentially useful. It's probably a general rule
that the more ambitious the theoretical formulation, the more—and more
disastrous—possibilities of it going badly wrong along the way. And the
more anarchistic the nature of the project—the more resistant it
is to the application of any particular, fixed criterion or criteria—the
higher the stakes. Proudhon's theory of rights and forces,
individualities and collectivities, had at least its share of logical
ways to go wrong—and his own individual prejudices, although they did
not prevent him from envisioning a general system in which difference
and equality would not be at odds, side-tracked him long before he
recognized the implications of that system for "the woman question."
And, of course, he was called out for it, and continues to be called out
for it.
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