This context must inform our discussion of the relationship between anarchism and libertarianism, in which discussion we should also include a consideration of liberalism. Anarchism may be understood as a “creative synthesis,” borrowing Paul McLaughlin’s words, of classical liberalism’s opposition to and critique of domination and socialism’s opposition to and critique of exploitation. As classical political economy came, in the industrial era’s youth, to be associated (correctly or not) with a bourgeois apology for monopoly and the exploitative treatment of workers, many radicals searched for justice in a balancing of liberty and equality. The French anarchist Pierre‐​Joseph Proudhon was one such radical, a unique thinker whose work can help us better understand the historical intermingling of socialist, anarchist, liberal, and libertarian currents. The kinship connecting classical liberalism and early anarchism remains underappreciated, in part because the tag liberal is often applied as an epithet by contemporary radicals, including anarchists. David Goodway, who specializes in anarchist history, observes the “truth in the remark that Proudhon was a liberal in proletarian clothing,” sharing with classical liberals (radical ones in particular) “the ideal of a society based on contractual relationships between free and equal individuals.” In this vision at least, Proudhon was almost certainly influenced by Charles Comte and Charles Dunoyer, 3 students of economist Jean‐​Baptiste Say and publishers of the radical liberal journal Le Censeur (later Le Censeur Européen). Their liberalism is remarkable in its similarity to modern movement libertarianism. Historian Annelien de Dijn observes that the radical laissez‐​faire liberalism of Comte and Dunoyer was “developed as an alternative to both the Jacobins’ republicanism and the royalists’ aristocratic liberalism.” The general “admiration for the classical republics,” so central a feature of eighteenth century liberal thought, left Comte and Dunoyer cold; they were concerned not with the architectural design of the ideal polity, but rather with limiting the power and role of the state itself, allowing the productive, industrial spirit its freedom. Comte and Dunoyer pioneered class theory (the supposedly exclusive domain of socialists and communists) and, in foreseeing “a complete withering away of the state,” 4 skirted the edges of explicit anarchism.

Still, the apparent rift on the subject of economics asserted itself even in these early decades of the nineteenth century. Proudhon was a socialist who arraigned private property and classical political economy as it had been presented to that point. He declared that “property is theft!” and railed against the capitalist’s “right of increase,” the right to a stream of income for which the idle proprietor gave up no equivalent in exchange. How can we reconcile such ideas with libertarianism as we know it? First, Proudhon’s famous proclamation “property is theft!” must be among the most widely misunderstood statements in political theory; libertarians, for whom strong private property rights are so important, are apt to read it and conclude that Proudhon has nothing to contribute to contemporary libertarian theory. To draw this conclusion would be a mistake. Indeed, Proudhon’s distinctive critique of political economy on the one hand and state socialism on the other made him enemies on all sides.

To Marx, “Proudhon was the paradigmatic theorist of petty bourgeois socialism.” This was the critique to which Benjamin Tucker’s individualist anarchism, so deeply influenced by Proudhon’s work, would be subjected again and again as Tucker’s stature as a libertarian and socialist intellectual grew. David McNally follows Marx in arguing that Proudhon’s socialism regrettably reflected an “uncritical adoption of the presuppositions of bourgeois economics.” If What Is Property? was an attempt to “turn political economy’s premises … against its conclusions,” then, McNally argued, Proudhon ultimately failed to adequately criticize those premises. He rather accepted them, reconciling socialism and market exchange. Arguably, then, Proudhon’s project was as much a defense of liberal principles as it was a plea for socialism and working class revolution. That it was, in fact, both offers an important lesson for contemporary libertarians: liberalism, socialism, and libertarianism are genealogically intertwined, not hermetically sealed, unconnected currents. It is impossible to develop a nuanced understanding of one without an appreciation for the others. Again, as McLaughlin argues, anarchism is, at least in part, an attempt to take seriously and account for “the exploitative dimension of liberalism and the oppressive dimension of socialism.” He argues that the anarchist left that would emerge in the following decades was only indirectly influenced by Proudhon, 5 that Bakunin and others became its prime movers.

If Proudhon assailed nascent industrial capitalism, its brutal subjection of those without property to the will of the powerful, then he was no less forceful in his denunciations of communism and state socialism. Proudhon argues that