[P2P-F] proudhon and property law

Fri Jun 3 20:43:52 CEST 2011

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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