Pierre-Joseph Proudhon · Politics

Federalism: Liberty Balanced Against Authority

The mature Proudhon’s political theory - a decentralised federation of self-governing communes and regions, bound by contract, that balances the principle of liberty against the principle of authority and stands as the deliberate enemy of the centralised nation-state.

What you'll be able to recall

You learned that in The Principle of Federation (1863) Proudhon argued for a bottom-up federation of communes and regions bound by contract, balancing liberty against authority, keeping power local and revocable, and opposing the centralised nation-state - and that political federalism must be paired with economic mut…

Leads to Alexis de Tocqueville.

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