Queer Places:
23 rue du petit Battant, Besançon (Doubs, France).
Cimetière du Montparnasse
Paris, City of Paris, Île-de-France, France
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (15 January 1809, Besançon – 19 January 1865, Paris) was a French socialist,[6][7][8][9] politician, philosopher, economist and the founder of mutualist philosophy. He was the first person to declare himself an anarchist,[10][11] using that term, and is widely regarded as one of anarchism's most influential theorists. Proudhon is considered by many to be the "father of anarchism".[12] Proudhon, who was born in Besançon, was a printer who taught himself Latin in order to better print books in the language. His best-known assertion is that "property is theft!", contained in his first major work, What Is Property? Or, an Inquiry into the Principle of Right and Government, published in 1840. The book's publication attracted the attention of the French authorities. It also attracted the scrutiny of Karl Marx, who started a correspondence with its author. The two influenced each other and they met in Paris while Marx was exiled there. Their friendship finally ended when Marx responded to Proudhon's The System of Economic Contradictions, or The Philosophy of Poverty with the provocatively titled The Poverty of Philosophy. After the death of his follower
Mikhail Bakunin, Proudhon's libertarian socialism diverged into individualist anarchism, collectivist anarchism, anarcho-communism and anarcho-syndicalism, with notable proponents such as Carlo Cafiero, Joseph Déjacque, Peter Kropotkin and Benjamin Tucker.[20]
Proudhon was born in Besançon, France, on 15 January 1809 at 23 Rue du Petit Battant in the suburb of Battant.[25] His father Claude-François Proudhon, who worked as a brewer and a cooper,[26] was originally from the village of Chasnans, near the border with Switzerland. His mother Catherine Simonin was from Cordiron.[25] Claude-François and Catherine had five boys together, two of whom died at a very young age. Proudhon's brothers Jean-Etienne and Claude were born in 1811 and 1816 respectively and both maintained a very close relationship with Proudhon.[26]
As a boy, he mostly worked in the family tavern, helped with basic agricultural work and spent time playing outdoors in the countryside. Proudhon received no formal education as a child, but he was taught to read by his mother, who had him spelling words by age three. However, the only books that Proudhon was exposed to until he was 10 were the Gospels and the Four Aymon Brothers and some local almanacs. In 1820, Proudhon's mother began trying to get him admitted into the city college in Besançon. The family was far too poor to afford the tuition, but with the help of one of Claude-François' former employers, she managed to gain a bursary which deducted 120 francs a year from the cost. Proudhon was unable to afford basic things like books or shoes to attend school which caused him great difficulties and often made him the object of scorn by his wealthier classmates. In spite of this, Proudhon showed a strong will to learn and spent much time in the school library with a pile of books, exploring a variety of subjects in his free time outside of class.[27]
In 1827, Proudhon began an apprenticeship at a printing press in the house of Bellevaux in Battant. On Easter of the following year, he transferred to a press in Besançon owned by the family of one of his schoolmates, Antoine Gauthier.[28] Besançon was an important center of religious thought at the time and most of the works published at Gauthier were ecclesiastical works. During the course of his work, Proudhon spent hours every day reading this Christian literature and began to question many of his long-held religious beliefs which eventually led him to reject Christianity altogether.[29] In his first book, What is Property?, he stated his religious journey began with Protestantism and ended with being a Neo Christian.[30]
Over the years, Proudhon rose to be a corrector for the press, proofreading their publications. By 1829, he began to become more interested in social issues than religious theory. Of particular importance during this period was his encounter with Charles Fourier, who in 1829 came to Gauthier as a customer seeking to publish his work Le Nouveau Monde Industriel et Sociétaire. Proudhon supervised the printing of the book, which gave him ample opportunity to talk with Fourier about a variety of social and philosophical issues. These discussions left a strong impression on Proudhon and influenced him throughout his life.[31] It was also during this time that Proudhon formed one of his closest friendships with
Gustave Fallot, a scholar from Montebéliard who came from a family of wealthy French industrialists. Impressed by Proudhon's corrections of one of his Latin manuscripts, Fallot sought out his friendship and the two were soon regularly spending their evenings together discussing French literature by Michel de Montaigne, François Rabelais, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Voltaire, Denis Diderot and many other authors to whom Proudhon had not been exposed during his years of theological readings.[32]
"Every man has secrets that he confides only to his friend, and he does not mention them to his woman",
Proudhon wrote in the posthumous work (it will be published in 1875, ten years after his death), La Pornocratie ou les femmes dans les temps modernes.
His friend was Gustave Fallot, whom he met at the age of 22 and with whom he went to live in Paris sharing everything, "room, bed, table, books, money". "As I met you, I loved you", the young
Proudhon wrote to him almost immediately on 5 December 1831. Proudhon's Correspondence was published posthumously, in 1875.
But the cholera epidemic of 1836 took Gustave away, and the pain Proudhon felt ("I felt that half of my life and my soul had been stolen from me: I was alone in the world") plunged him into the blackest despair. He
spent a whole hour in disconsolate meditation at Fallot's grave at Père-Lachaise.
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