Siegmund Feilbogen: P. J. Proudhon, seine Lehre und sein Leben (1895)

Siegmund Feilbogen’s review assesses the first two parts of Karl Diehl’s monograph on Proudhon, published in 1888 and 1890. Its central judgment is that Diehl provides a reliable, critically organized guide to a vast and shifting body of economic thought. Against an earlier suggestion that Proudhon had lost contemporary significance, Feilbogen points to the renewed prominence of anarchism. This makes a faithful, manageable presentation of Proudhon timely, particularly because his works, correspondence, and literary remains occupy fifty-one volumes even without numerous newspaper articles.

The difficulty is conceptual as well as bibliographical: Proudhon’s continuing dialectical development prevents readers from treating an early declaration as his settled position. Feilbogen illustrates this through Diehl’s account of the later qualification of Proudhon’s famous condemnation of property:

Um nur das interessanteste und in weiteren Kreisen viel zu wenig bekannte Beispiel eines solchen Meinungswandels zu erwähnen, möchte ich nach Diehl (I, S. 91) darauf verweisen, dass Proudhon's berühmtester Ausspruch: „La propriété c'est le vol“ zweifellos nicht sein letztes Wort in der Frage nach der Berechtigung des Privateigenthums geblieben ist.

English translation: To mention only the most interesting example of such a change of opinion, and one far too little known in wider circles, I should like to point out, following Diehl (I, p. 91), that Proudhon's most famous dictum, "La propriété c'est le vol," undoubtedly did not remain his last word on the question of the justification of private property.

The subsequent excerpts distinguish Proudhon’s rational acceptance of private property as a possible foundation of social order from his persistent emotional resistance to ownership. Feilbogen uses this tension to complicate the familiar slogan and then recalls Marx’s denunciation of Proudhon as petty-bourgeois. Intellectual development and conflict among socialists thus become essential to understanding his position.

The review next describes Diehl’s method across property, value, money, credit, capital, interest, and proposed social reforms, including the exchange bank and people’s bank:

Auf das Referat folgt regelmässig die Kritik und oft die Vergleichung von Proudhon's Ansichten mit denen der früheren und späteren Socialisten.

English translation: The exposition is regularly followed by criticism and often by a comparison of Proudhon's views with those of the earlier and the later socialists.

For Feilbogen, this combination of exposition, criticism, and comparison gives the monograph its scholarly value. He particularly emphasizes its extended treatment of Proudhon’s relations with earlier, contemporary, and later socialism, including reciprocal criticisms. The question whether Proudhon himself counts as a socialist clarifies the boundaries of that category. Diehl locates his significance in the attempt to reconcile individual freedom with modern social demands—an undertaking Diehl regards as hopeless.

Feilbogen’s closing assessment distinguishes systematic reference from introductory accessibility. Diehl offers dependable orientation on individual economic problems and guidance toward primary sources; Putlitz supplies a more rounded introductory life, though its superficial details require correction through Diehl and Mülberger. Biography and non-economic ideas remain reserved for Diehl’s projected concluding volume. The review therefore praises the completed economic analysis while anticipating a fuller account of Proudhon’s life and intellectual range.