Jan 27, 2025
Étienne Cabet
The fathers of Marxist communism were Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. The father of anarcho-communism was Peter Kropotkin. However, they were not the first to adopt the designation communism.
Rather, the distinction of coining the term communism (i.e. communisme) belongs to Étienne Cabet. His utopian socialist Icarian movement, though he obviously did not use that unfortunate qualifier, began in France before Marx’s Communist Manifesto.
The term anarchism originated with Pierre-Joseph Proudhon. Significantly, he negatively critiqued both communism and capitalism. To Proudhon, he was an anarchist plain and simple. He was also Marx’s intellectual sparring partner.
I would like to see those letters. Oh, yeah, they are all online. 😁