Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

Pierre-Joseph Proudhon was a French anarchist, socialist, philosopher, and economist who founded mutualist philosophy and is considered by many to be the "father of anarchism".

Pierre-Joseph Proudhon 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.

For Proudhon, as he wrote in the sixth study of his General Idea of the Revolution in the Nineteenth Century, the capitalist's employee was "subordinated, exploited: his permanent condition is one of obedience".

This ethical socialism has been described as part of the liberal socialist tradition which is for egalitarianism and free markets, with Proudhon, among other anarchists, taking "a commitment to narrow down the sphere of activity of the state".

Descriptions of the problem, explanations of its causes and proposed solutions such as abolition of private property and support of either cooperatives, collective property, common property, public property or social property varied among socialist philosophies.