What is Property? An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government
- Language:
- English
- Status:
- Complete work
- Authorship:
- Written by the author
- Condition of the text:
- Clean text
- Extent:
- ~180,000 words · 844 passages
Cite this work
- APAProudhon. (n.d.). What is Property? An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government. SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/proudhon/what-is-property-an-inquiry-into-the-principle-of-right-and-of-government
- MLAProudhon. "What is Property? An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government." SigPhi, https://sigphiai.com/en/works/proudhon/what-is-property-an-inquiry-into-the-principle-of-right-and-of-government.
- ChicagoProudhon. What is Property? An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government. SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/proudhon/what-is-property-an-inquiry-into-the-principle-of-right-and-of-government.
What it is about
The book that opens with the question of its title and answers it with the sentence everyone has quoted ever since: property is theft.
Context and history
Published in 1840. The sentence calls for a qualification the book makes and which is almost never added to it: Proudhon does not attack possession — a person's right to use what he works — but property understood as the right to draw an income from a thing without working it: rent and interest. It is also the first book in which someone calls himself an anarchist and claims the word. Marx praised it when it appeared and attacked it hard seven years later, in another book that is also in this catalogue.
Editorial context, not a citable source: unlike the passages of the work itself, these statements cannot be checked against the corpus.
PROPERTY CONSIDERED AS A NATURAL RIGHT.--OCCUPATION AND CIVIL LAW AS EFFICIENT BASES OF PROPERTY.--DEFINITIONS % 1. Property as a Natural Right. % 2. Occupation as the Title to Property. % 3. Civil Law as the Foundation and Sanction of Property. CHAPTER III. LABOR AS THE EFFICIENT CAUSE OF THE DOMAIN OF PROPERTY % 1. The Land cannot be appropriated. % 2. Universal Consent no Justification of Property. % 3. Prescription gives no Title to Property. % 4. Labor.--That Labor has no Inherent Power to appropriate Natural Wealth. % 5. That Labor leads to Equality of Property. % 6. That in Society all Wages are Equal. % 7. That Inequality of Powers is the Necessary Condition of Equality of Fortunes. % 8. That, from the stand-point of Justice, Labor destroys Property. CHAPTER IV. THAT PROPERTY IS IMPOSSIBLE DEMONSTRATION. AXIOM. Property is the Right of Increase claimed by the Proprietor over any thing which he has stamped as his own. FIRST PROPOSITION. Property is Impossible, because it demands Something for Nothing. SECOND PROPOSITION. Property is Impossible, because, wherever it exists, Production costs more than it is worth. THIRD PROPOSITION. Property is Impossible, because, with a given Capital, Production is proportional to Labor, not to Property. FOURTH PROPOSITION. Property is Impossible, because it is Homicide. FIFTH PROPOSITION. Property is Impossible, because, if it exists, Society devours itself. Appendix to the Fifth Proposition. SIXTH PROPOSITION. Property is Impossible, because it is the Mother of Tyranny. SEVENTH PROPOSITION. P