Social anarchism, also known as left-wing anarchism or socialist anarchism, is an anarchist tradition that sees individual liberty and social solidarity as mutually compatible and desirable.
It advocates for a social revolution to eliminate hierarchical power structures, such as capitalism and the state. In their place, social anarchists encourage voluntary social collaboration through mutual aid and envision non-hierarchical forms of social organization, such as networks of popular assemblies and worker cooperatives.
Social anarchism in the context of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (/ˈpruːdɒ̃/, also US: /pruːˈdoʊn/; French:[pjɛʁʒozɛfpʁudɔ̃]; 15January 1809 – 19January 1865) was a French anarchist, socialist, philosopher, and economist who founded mutualist philosophy and is considered by many to be the "father of anarchism". He was the first person to call himself an anarchist, and is widely regarded as one of anarchism's most influential theorists. Proudhon became a member of the French Parliament after the Revolution of 1848, whereafter he referred to himself as a federalist. Proudhon described the liberty he pursued as the synthesis of community and individualism. Some consider his mutualism to be part of individualist anarchism while others regard it to be part of social anarchism.
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 (Qu'est-ce que la propriété? Recherche sur le principe du droit et du gouvernement), 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. The dispute became one of the sources of the split between the anarchist and Marxist wings of the International Working Men's Association. Some such as Edmund Wilson have contended that Marx's attack on Proudhon had its origin in the latter's defense of Karl Grün, whom Marx bitterly disliked, but who had been preparing translations of Proudhon's work.
While right-libertarianism is widely seen as synonymous with libertarianism in the United States, left-libertarianism is the predominant form of libertarianism in Europe. In the United States, left-libertarianism is the term used for the left wing of the American libertarian movement, including the political positions associated with academic philosophers Hillel Steiner, Philippe Van Parijs, and Peter Vallentyne that combine self-ownership with an egalitarian approach to natural resources. Although libertarianism in the United States has become associated with classical liberalism and minarchism, with right-libertarianism being more known than left-libertarianism, political usage of the term libertarianism until then was associated exclusively with anti-capitalism, libertarian socialism, and social anarchism; in most parts of the world, such an association still predominates.
