Property Is Theft!

by Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

  […]

  Every institution of property supposes either: 1) an equal distribution of land amongst the holders; or 2) an equivalent in favour of those who possess none of the soil. But this is a pure assumption: the equality of property is not at all an initial fact; it is in the ends of the institution, not in its origins. We have remarked first of all that property, because it is abusive, absolutist, and based in egoism, must inevitably tend to restrict itself, to compete with itself, and, as a consequence, to balance [itself]. Its tendency is to equality of conditions and fortunes. Exactly because it is absolute, it dismisses any idea of absorption. Let us weigh this well.

  Property is not measured by merit, as it is neither wages, nor reward, nor decoration, nor honorific title; it is not measured by the power of the individual, since labour, production, credit and exchange do not require it at all. It is a free gift, accorded to man, with a view to protecting him against the attacks of poverty and the incursions of his fellows. It is the breastplate of his personality and equality, independent of differences in talent, genius, strength, industry, etc.

  […]

  Under the communist or governmentalist regime, it is necessary for the police and authority to guarantee the weak against the strong; sadly, the police and authority, as long as they have existed, have only ever functioned for the profit of the strong, for whom they have magnified the means of usurpation. Property—absolute, uncontrollable—protects itself. It is the defensive weapon of the citizen, his shield; labour is his sword.

  Here is why it is suitable for all: the young ward as much as the mature adult, the black as the white, the straggler as the precocious, the ignorant as the learned, the artisan as the functionary, the worker as the entrepreneur, the farmer as the bourgeois and the noble. Here is why the Church prefers it to wages; and, for the same reason, why the papacy requires, in its turn, sovereignty. All the bishops, in the Middle Ages, were sovereign; all, until 1789, were proprietors; the pope alone remained as a relic.

  The equilibrium of property still requires some political and economic guarantees. Property—State, such are the two poles of society. The theory of property is the companion piece to the theory of the justification, by the sacraments, of fallen man.

  The guarantees of property against itself are:1. Mutual and free credit.

  2. Taxes

  3. Warehouses, docks, markets. […]

  4. Mutual insurance and balance of commerce.

  5. Public, universal and equal instruction.

  6. Industrial and agricultural association.

  7. Organisation of public services: canals, railroads, roads, ports, mail, telegraphs, draining, irrigation.

  The guarantees of property against the State are:1. Separation and distribution of powers.

  2. Equality before the law.

  3. Jury, judge of fact and judge of law.

  4. Liberty of the press.

  5. Public monitoring.

  6. Federal organisation.

  7. Communal and provincial organisation

  The State is composed: 1) of the federation of proprietors, grouped by districts, departments, and provinces; 2) of the industrial associations, small worker republics; 3) of public services (at cost-price); 4) of artisans and free merchants. Normally, the number of industrial workers, artisans, and merchants is determined by those of the proprietors of land. Every country must live by its own production; as a consequence, industrial production must be equal to the excess of subsistences not consumed by the proprietors.

  There are exceptions to that rule: in England, for example, industrial production exceeded that proportion, thanks to foreign exchange. It is a temporary anomaly; otherwise certain races should be doomed to an eternal subordination [subalternisation]. Moreover, there exist exceptional products in demand everywhere: those from fishing, for example, and those from mineral exploitation. Measured over the entire globe, however, the proportion is as I say: the amount of subsistences is the regulator; consequently, agriculture is the essential and predominant industry.

  In constituting property in land, the legislator wanted one thing: that the earth would not be in the hands of the State, dangerous communism or governmentalism, but in the hands of all. The tendency is, as a consequence, we are constantly told, toward the balance of property, and subsequently to that of conditions and fortunes.

  It is thus that, by the rules of industrial association, which sooner or later, with the aid of better legislation, will include large industrial bodies, each worker has his hand on a portion of capital.

  It is thus that, due to the law of the diffusion of labour, and the impact of taxes, everyone must pay his more or less equal part of the public expenses.

  It is thus that, by the true organisation of universal suffrage, every citizen has a hand in government; and thus also that, by the organisation of credit, every citizen has a hand in circulation, and finds himself at once general partner and silent partner, banker and discounter before the public.

  It is thus that, by enlistment, each citizen takes part in defence; by education, takes part in philosophy and science.

  It is thus, finally, that, by the right of free examination and of free publicity each citizen has a hand in all the ideas and all the ideals which can be produced.

  Humanity proceeds by approximations:

  1st The approximation of the equality of faculties through education, the division of labour, and the development of aptitudes;

  2nd The approximation of the equality of fortunes through industrial and commercial freedom.

  3rd The approximation of the equality of taxes;

  4th The approximation of the equality of property;

  5th The approximation of an-archy;

  6th The approximation of non-religion, or non-mysticism;

  7th Indefinite progress in the science, law, liberty, honour, justice.

  It is proof that fate does not govern society; that geometry and arithmetic proportions do not regulate its movements, as in mineralogy or chemistry; that there is a life, a soul, a liberty which escapes from the precise, fixed measures governing matter. Materialism, in that which touches society, is absurd.

  Thus, on this great question, our critique remains at base the same, and our conclusions are always the same: we want equality, more and more fully approximated, of conditions and fortunes, as we want, more and more, the equalisation of responsibilities. We reject, along with governmentalism, communism in all its forms; we want the definition of official functions and individual functions; of public services and of free services. There is only one thing new for us in our thesis: it is that that same property, the contradictory and abusive principle of which has raised our disapproval, we today accept entirely, along with its equally contradictory qualification: Dominium est jus utendi et abutendi re suâ, quatenus juris ratio patitur.699 We have understood finally that the opposition of two absolutes—one of which, alone, would be unpardonably reprehensive, and both of which, together, would be rejected, if they worked separately—is the very cornerstone of social economy and public right: but it falls to us to govern it and to make it act according to the laws of logic.

  What would the apologists for property do? The economists of the school of Say and Malthus?

  For them, property was a sacrament which remained alone and by itself, prior and superior to the reason of the State, independent of the State, which they would humble beyond all measure.

  They would desire then property independent of law, as they want competition independent of law; freedom of import and export independent of law; industrial sponsorship, the Stock Exchange, the Bank, wage-labour, tenant farming, independent of law.—That is, in their theories of property, of competition, of concurrence, and of credit, not content to declare an unlimited liberty, a limitless initiative, which we also desire, they disregard the interests of the collectivity, which are the law; not understanding that political economy is composed of two fundamental parts: the description of economic forces an
d phenomena apart from law, and their regularisation by law.

  Who would dare to say that the equilibration of property, as I understand it, is its very destruction? What! Will it no longer be property, since the farmer will share in the rent and the surplus value; because the rights of the third who have built or planted will be established and recognised; because property in the soil will no longer necessarily mean property in that which is above or beneath it; because the lesser, in case of bankruptcy, will come with the other creditors to a division of the assets, without privilege; because between legitimate holders there will be equality, not hierarchy; because instead of seeing in property only enjoyment and rent, the holder will find in it the guarantee of his independence and dignity; because instead of being a ridiculous character, a M. Prudhomme or M. Jourdain700, the proprietor will be a dignified citizen, conscious of his duties as well as his rights, the sentry of liberty against despotism and usurpation?

  I have developed the considerations which make property intelligible, rational, legitimate, and without which it remains usurping and odious.

  And yet, even in these conditions, it presents something egoistic which is always unpleasant to me. My reason—being egalitarian, anti-governmental, and the enemy of ferocity and the abuse of force—can accept, the dependence on property as a shield, a place of safety for the weak: my heart will never be in it. For myself, I do not need that concession, either to earn my bread, or to fulfil my civic duties, or for my happiness. I do not need to encounter it in others to aid them in their weakness and respect their rights. I feel enough energy of conscience, enough intellectual force, to sustain all of my relations in a dignified manner; and if the majority of my fellow citizens resembled me, what would we have to do with that institution? Where would be the risk of tyranny, or the risk of ruin from competition and free exchange? Where would be the peril to the child, the orphan and the worker? Where would be the need for pride, ambition, and avarice, which can satisfy itself only by immense appropriation?

  A small, rented house, a garden to use, largely suffices for me: my profession not being the cultivation of the soil, the vine, or the meadow, I have no need to make a park, or a vast inheritance. And when I would be a ploughman or winemaker, Slavic possession will suffice for me: the share falling due to each head of household in each commune. I cannot abide the insolence of the man who, his feet on ground he holds only by a free cession, forbids you passage, prevents you from picking a blueberry in his field or from passing along the path.

  When I see all these fences around Paris, which block the view of the country and the enjoyment of the soil by the poor pedestrian, I feel a violent irritation. I ask myself whether the property which surrounds in this way each house is not instead expropriation, expulsion from the land. Private Property! I sometimes meet that phrase written in large letters at the entrance of an open passage, like a sentinel forbidding me to pass. I swear that my dignity as a man bristles with disgust. Oh! In this I remain of the religion of Christ, which recommends detachment, preaches modesty, simplicity of spirit and poverty of heart. Away with the old patrician, merciless and greedy; away with the insolent baron, the avaricious bourgeois, and the hardened peasant, durus arator. That world is odious to me. I cannot love it nor look at it. If I ever find myself a proprietor, may God and men, the poor especially, forgive me for it!

  APPENDIX: THE PARIS COMMUNE

  Translation by Mitch Abidor (“Declaration to the French People” and

  “International Workers’ Association: Federal Council of Parisian Sections”)

  and Paul Sharkey (“On the Organisation of the Commune,”

  “Paris Today Is Free…” and “On the Production of Goods During the

  Commune”).

  “The Parisian gentlemen had their heads full of the emptiest Proudhonist phrases. They babble about science and know nothing… Proudhon did enormous mischief… he himself is only a petty-bourgeois utopian… the workers, particularly those of Paris, who as workers in luxury trades are strongly attached, without knowing it, to the old rubbish. Ignorant, vain, presumptuous, talkative, blusteringly arrogant, they were on the point of spoiling everything… I shall… rap them on the knuckles…”

  —Karl Marx, 9th October 1866

  “The direct antithesis to the Empire was the Commune… the commune was to be the political form of even the smallest country hamlet… each delegate to be at any time revocable and bound by the mandat impératif (formal instructions) of his constituents… The very existence of the Commune involved, as a matter of course, local municipal liberty… the political form at last discovered under which to work out the economical emancipation of labour… the Commune intended to abolish that class property which makes the labour of the many the wealth of the few… It wanted to make individual property a truth by transforming the means of production, land, capital, now chiefly the means of enslaving and exploiting labour, into mere instruments of free and associated labour… Working men’s Paris, with its Commune, will be for ever celebrated as the glorious harbinger of a new society…”

  —Karl Marx, 30th March1871

  INTERNATIONAL WORKERS’ ASSOCIATION

  FEDERAL COUNCIL OF PARISIAN SECTIONS

  WORKERS:

  A LONG TRAIN of reverses, a catastrophe that would necessarily seem to bring about the complete ruin of our country; such is the balance sheet of the situation created for France by the governments that have dominated it.

  Have we lost the qualities needed to raise us up from this degradation? Have we degenerated to the point that we resignedly submit to the hypocritical despotism of those who delivered us to the foreigner and that we only have no energy except that needed to render our ruin irremediable through civil war?

  Recent events have demonstrated the might of the people of Paris; we are convinced that a fraternal accord will soon demonstrate their wisdom.

  The principle of authority is powerless to re-establish order in the streets, to put the shop floors back to work, and this powerlessness is its negation.

  The lack of solidarity has created general ruin and engendered social war. It is from freedom, equality and solidarity that we must ask for the assurance of order on new foundations and for the recognition of labour, which is its primordial condition.

  WORKERS:

  The Communal Revolution affirms its principles and casts aside all future causes of conflict. Can you hesitate to give it your definitive sanction?

  The independence of the Commune is the guarantee of the contract whose clauses, freely debated, will bring an end to class antagonism and will assure social equality.

  We have demanded the emancipation of the workers, and the Communal delegation is the guarantee of this, for it shall furnish each citizen with the means of defending his rights and effectively controlling the acts of its representatives charged with the managing of its interests and determining the progressive applications of social reforms.

  The autonomy of each commune removes any oppressive character from its demands and affirms the republic in its highest expression.

  WORKERS:

  We have fought and we have learned to suffer for our egalitarian principles; we cannot retreat now that we can assist in laying the first stone of the social edifice.

  What have we asked for?

  The organisation of credit, exchange, and association in order to assure the worker the full value of his labour;

  Free, secular, and integral education;

  The right to meet and to form associations; the absolute freedom of the press and of the citizen;

  The municipal organisation of police services, armed forces, hygiene, statistics, etc.;

  We were the dupes of those who governed us; we allowed ourselves to be caught up in their game while they alternately caressed us and repressed the factions whose antagonisms assured their existence.

  Today the people of Paris sees things clearly and refuses the role of a child guided by a preceptor, and at the municipal elec
tions—the product of a movement of which it is itself the author—it will remember that the principle that presides over the organisation of a group or an association is the same as that which should govern all of society, and just as it rejects any administrator or president imposed by an external power, it will also reject any mayor or prefect imposed by a government foreign to its aspirations.

  It will affirm its superior right to a vote of the Assembly to remain master of its city and to constitute as it sees fit its municipal representation, without imposing it on others.

  We are convinced that on Sunday March 26 the people of Paris will vote for the Commune.

  —The Delegates present at the session of the night of March 23rd, 1871

  Federal Council of Parisian Sections of the International Association

  ON THE ORGANISATION OF THE COMMUNE

  Manifesto of the “Committee of the 20 Arrondissements”

  The commune is the basic building block of every political state.

  It should be autonomous, that is to say, self-governing and self-administering […] The autonomy of the commune guarantees the citizen’s freedom, the city’s order and, through the effect of reciprocity, boosts the strength, markets and resources of every single one of the federated communes by making them the beneficiaries of the efforts of them all.

  Implicit in this are the widest freedom of speech, of the written word, of assembly and association; respect for the individual and his thoughts free from trespass by the sovereignty of universal suffrage as he remains at all times his own master, free to invoke and relentlessly demonstrate the accountability of underpinning the principle of election of all officials and magistrates who are thus subject at all times to recall under the imperative mandate, which is to say, that the powers and mission of the mandatory is specific and limited […]