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Book Synopsis

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

The Principle of Federation by P.J. Proudhon

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    A Paperback by Richard Vernon, R. Vernon

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      Publisher: University of Toronto Press
      Publication Date: 12/15/1979 12:00:00 AM
      ISBN13: 9780802063656, 978-0802063656
      ISBN10: 0802063659
      Also in:
      Comparative politics Democracy

      Description

      Book Synopsis

      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

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