ABSTRACT
In order to understand Pierre-Joseph Proudhon's economic ideas with any degree of historical insight, it is necessary to know the beliefs which underpinned them and the context in which they developed. This chapter discusses caricatures of Proudhon affords an opportunity to not only provide social context for the emergence and development of his ideas but also to identify the sources of many of his underpinning beliefs. The matter of Proudhon's being 'self-taught,' which has received a great deal of uncritical repetition, is inaccurate historically. Proudhon came from a poor family in Besancon in the Franche-Comte region and he was not able to attend formal schooling until the age of twelve. There are persistent and deep-rooted caricatures of Proudhon as a 'self-educated,' petit bourgeois French 'socialist' of the early to mid-nineteenth century whose writings and indeed whose life was full of contradictions.
