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Some have ventured that Proudhon’s anarchism supposedly never specified “private courts” and “private police”. While he certainly didn’t appear to go into the detail that Molinari and Rothbard did on such matters, it seems clear that he in fact did so specify.

In General Idea of the Revolution in the Nineteenth Century, Proudhon entitled a section Absorption of Government by the Economic Organism. What does the economic organism mean, if not “the market”, considering that Proudhon’s socialism was emphatically market friendly?

The first sub-section of that larger section, in turn, is entitled Society without Authority and provides crucial context for the rest of the section. Why? Market anarchist theorists who have called for “private police” mean not merely a monopoly-capitalist government “privatization” scheme in the sense that a municipal government might “privatize” garbage collection these days by handing out a city-wide monopoly contract to a particular business. The word “private” in the usage of such theorists carries with it the very specific understanding that completely free competition is allowed, that no violent state interference to enforce “state monopoly capitalist” privilege ought to be allowed and that no authority can legitimately restrain competition in the provision of services.

The third sub-section is entitled Justice. This sub-section is mostly taken up with calling for the abolition of government courts and judges.

CONTRACTUAL LAW AND THE ABOLITION OF COURTS & JUDGES

Proudhon makes it clear in his call for such abolition that State courts and judges are illegitimate precisely because the so-called “Social Contract” is a fraud and no actual contractual agreement has been signed by those brought before such courts to give them any such authority. Such is the essence of his case against that aspect of the State.

What agreement have you made with these men, that you arrogate the right to hold them accountable for their misdeeds by chains, by violence, by public stigma? What promises have you made them of which you can avail yourself? What conditions have they accepted which they have violated? What limit placed upon the overflow of their passions, and recognized by them, have they overpassed? What have you done for them that they should do anything for you; what do they owe you? I am looking for the free and voluntary contract which binds them; and I see only the blade of justice, the sword of power, suspended over their heads. I ask for the written, reciprocal obligation, signed by their hand, which proclaims their default; and I find only threatening and one-sided prohibitions of a self-styled legislator, who needs the aid of the executioner to have any authority.

This seems a very firm indication that Proudhon considered authentically voluntary contracts the essence of legitimate “law” — a key point of market anarchist thought. As if to underscore the point, his very next sentence is:

Where there has been no contract there can be neither crime nor misdemeanor before a court.

Such was his hostility to government monopoly courts that he wrote:

The complete, immediate, abolition of courts and tribunals, without any substitution or transition, is one of the prime necessities of the Revolution.

RESTITUTION AND DISPUTE RESOLUTION THE SOLE LEGITIMATE JUDICIAL FUNCTIONS

However, Proudhon was not dismissive of the judicial function per se in terms of arbitration leading towards restitution for assaults upon life and legitimate property.

I understand that these men who are at war with their fellows should be summoned and compelled to repair the damage they have caused, to bear the cost of the injury which they have occasioned; and, up to a certain point, to pay a fine in addition, for the reproach and insecurity of which they are one of the causes, with mor or less premeditation. I understand, I say, this application of the laws of war between enemies. War also may have, let us not say its justice, that would be to profane the word, but its rules.

But restitution and dispute resolution were the only legitimate functions of authentic justice, not punishment — just as modern market anarchist theorists contend. For example:

But that beyond this[restitution, as outlined in the preceding paragraph — Brad], these same people should be shut up, under the pretext of reforming them, in one of those dens of violence, stigmatized, put in irons, tortured in body and soul, guillotined, or, what is even worse, placed, at the expiration of their term, under the surveillance of the police, whose inevitable revelations will pursue them wherever they may have taken refuge; once again I deny, in the most absolute manner, that anything in society or in conscience or in reason can authorize such tyranny.

And previously in the same vein:

But that it should judge, and after judging should punish, this is what I deny, that is what I refuse to grant to any authority.

VOLUNTARY ARBITRATION RATHER THAN AUTHORITARIAN COURTS AND JUDGES

So can we get more concrete about what Proudhon saw as carrying out the legitimate judicial functions in a stateless society? Sure:

Then justice, springing from liberty, will no longer be vengeance; it will be reparation[restitution — Brad]. As there will be no more opposition between social law and the will of the individual, litigation will be cut off, there will be nothing for it but acknowledgement.

Moreover the machinery of lawsuits then will reduce itself to a simple meeting of witnesses; no intermediary between the plaintiff and defendant, between the claimant and the debtor, will be needed except the friends whom they have asked to arbitrate.

There you have it — mutually agreeable arbitrators, voluntarily selected by both parties to a dispute. Rothbard’s explicit demonstration of how the profit motive operating in commercial arbitrators would lead to them guarding carefully their reputation for fairness, integrity and seeking just decisions (far more so than statist monopoly judges) is but a trifling elaboration upon Proudhon.

PRIVATE “POLICE”

In the next sub-section, entitled “Administration, Police“, Proudhon spends most of his time calling for the abolition of political administration of affairs and government police. Just as above with courts he spent most of his time arguing against government courts and only briefly outlined private “courts” (i.e. mutually agreeable arbitrators with no particular authority other than what has been explicitly granted them by the individuals that voluntarily use them) in passing, so to he’s keeping his eye on the ball — demolishing any rationale for government police without being as explicit as he perhaps ought to have been on non-authoritarian alternatives.

Again, the title of the overall section is “Absorption of Government by the Economic Organism” and this provides context. The first sub-section provides explicit context for the whole section by explaining that we are doing away with authority and attendant injustice, rather than doing away with the provision of actually legitimate services. Such services are to be provided economically rather than politically. All of the following sub-sections after that first one attack state provision of a particular type of service and briefly outline how they could otherwise be provided. Structurally speaking, we might as well be reading Rothbard. Proudhon just didn’t go into the detail Rothbard did. He didn’t make the case for workability of such a system in as airtight a manner as Rothbard did.

So did Proudhon call for non-governmental (i.e. private) police? Sure, but like modern day market anarchists he stressed that they would have no special authority.

The secret of this equalizing of the citizen and the State, as well as of the believer and the priest, the plaintiff and the judge, lies in the economic equation which we have hereinbefore made, by the abolition of capitalist interest between the worker and the employer, the farmer and the proprietor. Do away with this last remnant of the ancient slavery by the reciprocity of obligations, and both citizens and communities will have no need of the intervention of the State to carry on their business, take care of their property, build their ports, bridges, quays, canals, roads, establish markets, transact their litigation, instruct, direct, control, censor their agents, perform any acts of supervision or police, any more than they will need its aid in offering their adoration to the Most High, or in judging their criminals and putting it out of their power to do injury, supposing that the removal of motive does not bring the cessation of crime.

It seems quite clear that Proudhon favored economic (i.e. market) means of providing legitimate police services in defense of life and property, rather than by means of coercive government (i.e. authority). As Rothbard made clear, private “police” in a stateless society would be little more than what we call “security guards” today (although perhaps a bit more cognizant of the common law tradition of citizens arrest) and would explicitly lack coercive authority.

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