The Principle of Federation by P.J. Proudhon.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter University of Toronto Press eBook-Package Archive 1933-1999
• TeilnehmendeR: Vernon, Richard.
• Place / Publishing House: Toronto : : University of Toronto Press, , [2019]; ©1979
• Year of Publication: 2019
• Language: English
• Series: Heritage
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (136 p.)

A widely read and influential text in its own day, P.-J. Proudhon’s Du Principe federatif is now often overlooked by students of federalism. Yet the book’s theoretical and general chapters, in the first English translation, can claim to be considered a key text for the history of federalist thinking. Standing at the point of intersection between the anarchist and federalist traditions, they make a passionate case for federalism as the political order which gives the fullest possible expression to liberty – indeed, as the only political order in which liberty can be preserved: ‘The twentieth century will open the age of federations, or else humanity will undergo another purgatory of a thousand years.’ Proudhon’s federal principle is a radically decentralist one, which contrasts sharply with modern pictures of federalism at many points, what Proudhon calls a ‘federal’ system is what many, today, would regard as the dissolution of such a system. Although it thus stands apart from the mainstream of North American views of federalism, Proudhon’s book raises questions which are posed by any federal arrangement. In connecting the federalist ideal with such distinct ends as the dispersal of power, maximum participation, and the maintenance of cultural diversity, it builds significant political tensions into the concept of federalism itself.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- CONTENTS -- Preface -- Introduction -- Notes to the introduction -- PART ONE -- 1. Political dualism - authority and liberty: opposition and interconnection of the two ideas -- 2. A priori conceptions of political order: regime of authority, regime of liberty -- 3. Forms of government -- 4. Compromise between the principles: origins of political contradictions -- 5. De facto governments: social dissolution -- 6. The political problem posed: the principle of a solution -- 7. Isolation of the idea of federation -- 8. A progressive constitution -- 9. What has delayed federation: factors hindering the idea -- 10. Political idealism: efficacy of federal guarantees -- 11. Economic sanctions: the agro-industrial federation -- PART TWO -- 1. The Jacobin tradition: federalist Gaul, monarchical France -- Translator's notes on the text