If one of the functions of economic policy is to identify needs and define their hierarchy, the other function is to determine how to meet them. Thus, the boundary separating political economy from economic policy is blurred : we are in fact touching the field of politics, all in all.

The usual criteria for classifying economic systems distinguish between liberalism and statism ; and therefore between private property and state property, knowing that there are intermediate variants between these two extreme models.

Let us now consider how a libertarian economy would be situated in a table where the determination of needs would be indicated. In the mythical liberal regime of political economics textbooks, needs are, we are told, defined by the market, a virtual place where consumers and entrepreneurs confront each other. In theory, therefore, we are dealing with a system where the determination of needs is totally decentralized. At the other end of the table, we have the state system where the determination of needs is totally centralized since it is done by the State. In this picture, where would “the libertarian economy be ? Nowhere, since Proudhon does not consider state property more than private property, and he only recognizes the existence of a limited market. Moreover, state property is not the abolition of property, it is only the extreme concentration of property.

However, there is perhaps a method which would allow us to situate Proudhon’s economic thought in an approximate way within a classification system : that provided by Louis Duquesne de la Vinelle, author of Une théorie des systèmes économiques (A Theory of Economic Systems), published in 1969. It would be illusory to ummarize in a few lines the work of M. de la Vinelle, dense and stimulating. Of course, he is not a Proudhonian ; his intention was not to include Proudhon in his reflections and he had no idea of the use that could be made of his works. “Mr Duquesne attempts to reveal, through all their differences, the unity of observable economic systems, and for this he defines what he calls “differentiation criteria”. He intends to define...