[T]he misguided people are rushing into a horrible and absurd struggle, in which victory would be more fatal than defeat; since, according to this supposition, the result would be the realisation of universal evils, the destruction of every means of emancipation, the consummation of its own misery.
Frédéric Bastiat, “Capital and Interest” in Essays on Political Economy (New York:
G. P. Putnams & Sons, 1874). Bastiat is referring to the anti-capitalist ideas of “MM. Proudhon and Thoré” who, he argued, were “deceiving themselves” as well as the people.
Pierre Joseph Proudhon was the first person on record to call himself an “anarchist” and regard it as a good thing, and the first to call the owner of property a “capitalist.” He is known for a number of works promoting “mutualism,” including Systems of Economical Contradictions, or; The Philosophy of Misery, which was translated into English by Benjamin R. Tucker. Étienne-Joseph-Théophile Thoré (better known as Théophile Thoré-Bürger) was a journalist and art critic now known mostly as the re-discroverer of the paintings of Vermeer. Among his writings was La Recherche de la liberté of 1845.