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:
- No scanning noise detected (automatic measure over the whole text, not checked by hand)
- 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. Digital reproduction: 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. Digital reproduction, 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. Digital reproduction, SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/proudhon/what-is-property-an-inquiry-into-the-principle-of-right-and-of-government.
Reference to the edition that SigPhi reproduces: SigPhi is its digital reproduction, not its publisher. The edition's year is not in the metadata (hence "n.d."), and the translator appears only when recorded.
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.
There are those to whom letter-writing is a bore, and who, assailed with questions and compliments, reply in the greatest haste, solely that the job may be over with, and who return politeness for politeness, mingling it with more or less wit. This kind of correspondence, though coming from celebrated people, is insignificant and unworthy of collection and classification. "After those who write letters in performance of a disagreeable duty, and almost side by side with them in point of insignificance, I should put those who write in a manner wholly external, wholly superficial, devoted only to flattery, lavishing praise like gold, without counting it; and those also who weigh every word, who reply formally and pompously, with a view to fine phrases and effects. They exchange words only, and choose them solely for their brilliancy and show. You think it is you, individually, to whom they speak; but they are addressing themselves in your person to the four corners of Europe. Such letters are empty, and teach as nothing but theatrical execution and the favorite pose of their writers. "I will not class among the latter the more prudent and sagacious authors who, when writing to individuals, keep one eye on posterity. We know that many who pursue this method have written long, finished, charming, flattering, and tolerably natural letters. Beranger furnishes us with the best example of this class. "Proudhon, however, is a man of entirely different nature and habits. In writing, he thinks of nothing but his idea and the person whom he addresses: ad rem et ad hominem. A man of conviction and doctrine, to write does not weary him; to be questioned does not annoy him.…