Abstract: | The object of this essay is to show that Marx, in his polemic Misere de la Philosophie against Proudhon's Philosophie de la Misere , in effect, shunned an academic debate with Proudhon and resorted to a denunciation of him as a petit bourgeois , in order to establish his own position at the top of the international labour movement. However, with his furious attack on Proudhon, Marx succeeded in destroying the existing links between the different socialist trends. In the light of this catastrophic split between the driving forces of radical change, at the beginning of the capitalist industrialisation, the article pleads for a tolerant culture of discussion, within which the debate on different methods and means towards an alternative society and the end of capitalism, is possible. |