Introduction

This chapter begins with Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, the first avowed anarchist who confronted the modern nation-state, the emergence of economic industrialization, and bourgeois political economy. There were 'constantly recurring economic crises' during the nineteenth century, including 'sustained harvest failures between 1827 and 1832'. The history of the economic ideas of the communitarian anarchists of the nineteenth century has never before been interpreted and written as a distinct tradition of economic thought. A historically relevant, positive, and concise definition of 'anarchism' was produced by the American communitarian anarchist, Emma Goldman, in 1911. There are very few histories of economic thought which engage with anarchism or anarchist economic thought, excepting a relatively frequent but dismissive reference to part of the economic thinking of Proudhon. Despite value judgments, Charles Gide and Charles Charles Rist did engage with anarchist doctrines sufficiently seriously to discuss the influence of 'anarchy' on 'the working classes in general'.