Nonfiction · 1840
What Is Property? an Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government
P.-J. Proudhon · translated by Benjamin R. Tucker
What Is Property? poses its own famous question and answers it in the book's opening pages: "Property is theft." Pierre-Joseph Proudhon works through what he means by that across the rest of the book — not that all possession is illegitimate, but that property as a legal right to the "fruits of another's labor," backed by rent, interest and inheritance, has no basis in natural right or even in the legal traditions used to justify it, and he lays out an alternative built on possession, equality and mutual exchange instead.
Proudhon published the book in 1840, his first major work; the line about theft made him instantly notorious in France and, translated, gave the international socialist and anarchist movements one of their most quoted slogans for the century that followed, even among later theorists who rejected most of his actual argument.
Bibliomancer publishes the 1840 text exactly as Pierre-Joseph Proudhon wrote it, in Benjamin R. Tucker's English translation.
Contents
- Chapter IV — That Property Is Impossible
- Appendix to the Fifth Proposition
- Part 1
- Preface
- Chapter I — Method Pursued in This Work.—The Idea of a Revolution
- Chapter II — Property Considered as a Natural Right
- Chapter III — Labor as the Efficient Cause of the Domain of Property
- Chapter IV — That Property Is Impossible
- Appendix to the Fifth Proposition
- Chapter V — Psychological Exposition of the Idea of Justice
- Part First
- Part Second
- Footnotes
New editions
Never lose your place.
This book is free to read in full, and stays that way. Leave an address: one click confirms it and opens a free account, so your progress and bookmarks sync across every device. You'll also hear when the next restored edition enters the archive. Terminate at any time.
About this edition
The text is free of copyright. This edition was prepared from an authoritative digitisation, processed by Bibliomancer under its own review protocol; every automated correction is recorded in its transformation log. Rights assessed for CA, EU, GB.
Source mind
About the author
Adjacent records
