Une nouvelle voie pour le matérialisme politique. Remarques sur l’anthropologie négative de Marx et l’anthropologie positive de Proudhon

This article aims to show that in the socialist tradition, alongside Marx, there is a position as materialist – or perhaps more so – that it would be valuable to combine with his powerful critique of capitalism. This perspective is that of Proudhon. According to the author, there are possibilities of emancipation through work that are not exclusively conditioned by the “Great Day”, typical of Marxist rhetoric, and which emerge here and now thanks to this perspective. Of course Prouhon’s work is philosophically and economically less powerful than that of Marx. However, his work is interesting in that he enables us to see in the “working” man something other than a stubborn animal, de-subjectivized by capitalism and existing only as a means of production. This is why, if indeed this is anthropology, it may be called positive anthropology. By continuously and almost exclusively favoring the notion of alienation, Marx runs the risk of allowing a purely negative anthropology to emerge in his work. This even today feeds the critical theory of certain authors who see in the modern man an alienated and brainless consumer who must be stripped of his illusions.