ABSTRACT

The worst thing that can happen to a militant thinker who takes (or believes that they have taken) a radical standpoint is to find allies belonging to the wrong camp, the enemy camp. By and large, this was the unfortunate game that fate played with Proudhon. The latter demanded free credit as the solution to the inequalities of the capitalist system. One century later Hayek was to agree by proposing free banking. Of course, these two approaches are not as close as they seem to be. They are based on a different conception of the word “free.” For Proudhon “free” meant unlimited, in terms of quantity, whereas for Hayek “free” signified the decentralized rationalization of credit issuance away from any possible government manipulation. 1