Property Is Theft!
Page 119
655 A dispenser of justice or righter of wrongs. Historically, a justicier was an instrument of the judicial powers. They had the power to judge all affairs, civil or penal, and could administer capital punishment. (Editor)
656 The expression Proudhon uses here, “fait de guerre,” does not mean the incident that starts a war (an acte de guerre) so much as a glorious military exploit. (Translator)
657 Not in the sense of a modern customer, but in the sense of the patron/client relationship in Roman law. (Translator)
658 Again, in the Roman sense of a body of clients legally and economically bound to a patron. (Translator)
659 Response to an article in Siecle, March 14th, 1864, by four workers.
660 As in “mutual,” “mutuality” and so forth. (Translator)
661 A Greek phrase: roughly, “The law is lord.” Possibly a slight misquotation of Herodotus’ Histories 7.104.4, describing the Lacedaemonians: “They are free, yet not wholly free: law [nomos] is their master [despotēs], whom they fear much more than your men fear you.” (Editor)
662 In pre-Revolutionary France, the “benefice” was a kind of pay assigned to priests for ecclesiastical duties, and traites were customs duties and taxes collected from the public on behalf of the royal Treasury by persons designated as traitants, who received a share of the income. (Editor)
663 Sadly, Proudhon makes the all too common mistake of equating England with Britain and vice versa here. (Editor)
664 A shook (merrain) is a bundle of wood to be used for a purpose other than firewood. (Translator)
665 The loi Le Chapelier, enacted in 1791, banning the old workers’ guilds or “corporations” (see the Glossary entry for “corporations”) as a threat to the integrity of the State, was repealed in 1864, but trade unions in the full sense were only legalized by the loi Waldeck-Rousseau of 1884. (Editor)
666 The Maximum Price Laws of 1793. (Translator)
667 A reference to the revolt by workers in Lyon On February 14, 1834 which saw them occupying the heights of Lyon. As in a revolt three years previously, they proclaimed “Vivre libre en travaillant ou mourir en combattant!” (“Live free working or die fighting!”). Both revolts were repressed. (Editor)
668 Probably L’Histoire du travail et des travailleurs (1845). (Editor)
669 faire danser l’anse du panier: to skim off the top when shopping for one’s master. (Translator)
670 A reference to one of Aesop’s fables: “because my name is lion.” (Translator)
671 Garibaldi was shot in the foot during his 1862 expedition against Rome. (Translator)
672 A famous French surgeon. (Translator)
673 Cinchona, a plant derivative also known as Peruvian Bark or Jesuit’s Bark, is the source of quinine, the vital ingredient in medicine used to treat malaria. (Editor)
674 The bacchanalia were wild and mystic festivals of the Roman god Bacchus. It has since come to describe any form of drunken revelry. (Editor)
675 The octroi (from the Old French word octroyer meaning to grant, to authorise) was a local tax collected on various articles brought into a district for consumption. (Editor)
676 Sociétaires, members of a co-operative society or a mutual insurance company, as opposed to shareholders. (Editor)
677 A succursaliste à gage: literally a branch manager, someone hired to manage a part of a company they do not own or control. (Editor)
678 Offering of the first fruits. (Editor)
679 The Moravian Church is a Protestant church which began in late 14th century Bohemia (the modern Czech Republic). Its official name is “Unity of the Brethren” and it places a high premium on Christian unity, personal piety, missions and music. During its 18th revival, its supporters created settlements which emphasised a form of communal living in which personal property was still held but simplicity of lifestyle and generosity with wealth were considered important spiritual attributes. (Editor)
680 The honourable citizens who in recent times have taken under their patronage the development of workers’ societies, representatives of the People, journalists, bankers, lawyers, men of letters, industrialists, etc. recognise, I hope, that in preferring the term MUTUALITY, Mutualism, etc. as a general formula of the economic Revolution, over that of association, I am hardly acting out of a vain motive for personal glory, but on the contrary in the interest of scientific exactitude. First, the word association is too specific and too vague; it lacks precision; it appeals less to intelligence than to sentiment; it does not have the character of universality required in similar circumstances. Notwithstanding, as one of the writers of The Association has said, that there now exists among workers three types of societies, between which one must find the link, societies of production, consumer societies, and credit societies; there are also others, of aid, insurance, education, of reading, of temperance, of singing, etc. Add to this the societies defined by the Code: Civil and commercial societies, universal societies of goods and profits, or communities; general partnerships, limited partnerships, and joint-stock companies. All of these hardly resemble each other, and the first thing which has to be done by a writer who would like to write a treatise on association is to find a principle by means of which he can bring together into a single formula these innumerable associations, a principle which consequently will be superior to that of association itself.
But this is not all: it is obvious that three quarters, if not four fifths of a nation like ours, proprietors, farmers, small industrialists, men of letters, artists, public functionaries, etc. can never be considered as being in [a] company; however, unless we declare them outside of reform, outside of revolution, it is necessary to admit that the word company, association, does not fulfil the goal of science; it is necessary to find another that, with simplicity and nerve, attains the universality of a principle. Finally, we have observed that in the new Democracy the political principle must be identical with and adequate to the economic principle; now, this principle has for a long time been named and defined; this is the federative principle, synonymous with mutuality or reciprocal security, which has nothing in common with the principle of association.
681 See What is Property?, Letter to M. Blanqui; Warning to Proprietors, Paris, 1840, 1841 and 1842, and Economic Contradictions, volume II.
682 A disease affecting many animals at the same time; an epidemic amongst animals. (Editor)
683 See Theory of Property, chapter IX. (Editor)
684 If the confederated states are equals, one to another, one single assembly suffices; if they are of unequal significance, balance can be restored by establishing two Houses or Councils for the purposes of federal representation; one the members of which have been appointed, in equal numbers, by the states, regardless of their population size and area; the other where the deputies are appointed by the states themselves in accordance with their significance (cf. the Swiss federal constitution, wherein the duality of Parliament means something quite different than it does in the constitutions of France and England.)
685 A little known but highly interesting fact will make this truth plain. In certain places in the Doubs department, in the Montbéliard arrondissement where the population is one half Catholic and one half Protestant, it is not unusual for the same building to be used, turn and turn about, at different times, for both faiths and this without the slightest annoyance on either side. Obviously these folk have had to come to some arrangement: for the purposes of their respective worship, they have had to agree on mutual tolerance; and mutuality rules out all thought of conflict. In these villages it is unheard of for anyone to switch from one religion to the other; and it is equally unheard of for any believer to have carried out any act of aggression, any act of zealotry. For some yeas now, the Archbishop of Besançon has been planting disunity and building separate churches for his flock. A genuine friend of peace and humanity might simply have suggested making the house of God larger and more ornate; he would have realised that this chapel-church was the fines
t monument erected by the hands of men to Christian charity. Which is not how the archbishop sees it. As long as it is up to him, he will pit religion against religion, church against church, graveyard against graveyard. And come the last judgement, Christ will merely have to pass sentence and the sifting of the faithful from the unbelievers will be accomplished.
686 See Théorie sur l’Impôt by P-J Proudhon, Paris, Dentu, 1861.
687 See Manuel du spéculateur à la Bourse, introduction, by the above named, Paris 1857.
688 The Capetian dynasty refers to the line of French kings tracing itself to Hugh Capet (ca. 939–996). (Editor)
689 Armand Jean du Plessis de Richelieu, Cardinal-Duc de Richelieu, (1585–1642) was a French clergyman, noble, and statesman. He became Secretary of State in 1616, becoming a cardinal in 1622 and King Louis XIII’s chief minister in 1624. He aimed to consolidate royal power and crush domestic factions. By restraining the power of the nobility, he transformed France into a centralised state. (Editor)
690 Crédit Foncier de France is a national mortgage bank. It was formed by Napoléon III in an attempt to modernise the medieval French banking system and expand French investment outside Europe. It had a monopoly on mortgages and initially made loans to communes. (Editor)
691 Édouard René Lefèbvre de Laboulaye (1811–1883) was a French jurist, poet, and author. He is best known for suggesting the giving of the Statue of Liberty to the USA (and its lesser known twins in France) as a representation of liberty, a symbol for ideas suppressed by Napoléon III. (Editor)
692 Amphigourie, a piece of nonsensical writing in verse or, less commonly, prose. (Editor)
693 “a state within a state.” (Editor)
694 Autochthony (autochthonie) the state of being aboriginal or native to a particular area. (Editor)
695 A mural crown (couroune murale) is one whose florets had the shape of a crenellated wall and was given to who first entered a besieged city. It is used in heraldry to denote a crown modelled after the walls of a castle. (Editor)
696 In Roman law, an emphyteusis was a long-term or perpetual lease that carried the obligation to improve the property, while usufruct, from the Latin phrase usus et fructus (“use and enjoyment”), refers to a right to use the non-consumable property of another (e.g., to farm another’s land, keeping the harvest but retaining no title to the land); an allodium, in medieval law, was land owned as a freehold, independently of any obligation to serve a lord—i.e., an exception to the feudal system of land tenure. (Editor)
697 Jacques-Pierre Brissot (1754–1893), also known as de Warville, a leader of the Girondist faction during the French Revolution. (Editor)
698 In Roman law, usucapion is a mode of ownership established by continuous occupation or possession. (Editor)
699 “Ownership is the right to use and abuse of one’s own thing, as far as compatible with the logic of the law.” (Editor)
700 Monsieur Prudhomme, created by Henry Monnier, was a caricature of the 19th century bourgeois. Plump, foolish, conformist and sententious, he was called by Honoré de Balzac “l’illustre type des bourgeois de Paris” (the very image of the Parisian bourgeoisie). Monsieur Jourdain is the main character of Moliere’s comedy Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme (The Bourgeois Gentleman), which satirises attempts at social climbing and the bourgeois personality. The idiotic Jourdain is a rich merchant who wants to buy his way into the aristocracy. (Editor)
701 This was proposed by a member of the International and Commune but never formally agreed or implemented; nonetheless, it gives an indication of what was aimed for. (Editor)
Property Is Theft!
A Pierre-Joseph Proudhon Anthology
Edited and Introduced by Iain McKay
Introduction and Appendix © 2011 Iain McKay
This edition © 2011 AK Press (Edinburgh, Oakland, Baltimore)
eISBN : 978-1-849-35055-6
Library of Congress Control Number: 2010925767
AK Press
674-A 23rd Street
Oakland, CA 94612
USA
www.akpress.org
akpress@akpress.org
AK Press UK
PO Box 12766
Edinburgh EH8 9YE
Scotland
www.akuk.com
ak@akdin.demon.co.uk
The above addresses would be delighted to provide you with the latest AK Press
distribution catalog, which features several thousand books, pamphlets, zines,
audio and video recordings, and gear, all published or distributed by AK Press.
Alternately, visit our websites to browse the catalog and find out
the latest news from the world of anarchist publishing:
www.akpress.org | www.akuk.com
revolutionbythebook.akpress.org
Translations © by the named translators.
All rights reserved, unless otherwise specified.