Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk on Karl Diehl’s P. J. Proudhon (1896)

Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk’s 1896 review of the third part of Karl Diehl’s P. J. Proudhon. Seine Lehre und sein Leben, devoted to Proudhon’s life and social philosophy, welcomes the completion of a substantial scholarly undertaking. Having reviewed the preceding installments, Böhm-Bawerk presents this concluding volume as sustaining their standard. His assessment proceeds through its five chapters before endorsing the achievement of the whole.

The first three chapters trace Proudhon’s life through the February Revolution, the coup of December 1851, and his final years up to 1865. The biography’s value lies in relating outward circumstances to intellectual development: Proudhon’s writings become intelligible through their connections with personal experience and contemporary events. Böhm-Bawerk draws particular attention to the historical setting:

Vielem Interesse wird die in das zweite Kapitel eingeflochtene Charakterisierung der Februarrevolution begegnen.

English translation: Much interest will be met by the characterization of the February Revolution interwoven into the second chapter.

This emphasis makes political history integral to the account of Proudhon’s thought. The fourth chapter addresses his social philosophy, including Diehl’s contrast between Proudhon’s idealism and Marxism. Böhm-Bawerk also notes Diehl’s defense of his classification of socialist doctrines against Dietzel’s objections, without developing an independent adjudication of that controversy. The fifth chapter extends the inquiry beyond biography to the continuing influence of Proudhon’s teachings on social movements after his death.

The review’s strongest judgment concerns the cumulative significance of Diehl’s scholarship:

Alles in allem muß man sagen, daß der Verfasser durch sein gediegenes Werk, in welchem die hingebungsvolle Arbeit fast eines Jahrzehntes verkörpert ist, Proudhon ein Monument errichtet hat, das dieses bedeutenden sozialphilosophischen Denkers würdig ist.

English translation: All in all one must say that the author, through his sterling work, in which the devoted labour of almost a decade is embodied, has erected to Proudhon a monument worthy of that significant social-philosophical thinker.

The monument metaphor joins recognition of Proudhon’s intellectual importance to praise for Diehl’s nearly decade-long labor. Böhm-Bawerk’s endorsement is principally historiographical: the completed study connects a thinker’s formation, the character of his doctrines, and their subsequent historical effects. He closes by affirming the gratitude owed to Diehl by readers interested in modern social movements and wishing the work corresponding success.