Property
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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[1] [May 2007]
Pierre Proudhon - property is theft
In his treatise What is Property?(1849), Proudhon answers with "Property is theft!" In natural resources, he sees two conceivable types of property, de jure property and de facto property, and argues that the former is illegitimate. Proudhon's fundamental premise is that equality of condition is the essence of justice. "By this method of investigation, we soon see that every argument which has been invented in behalf of property, whatever it may be, always and of necessity leads to equality; that is, to the negation of property."[2] But unlike the statist socialists of his time, Proudhon's solution is not to give each person an equal amount of property, but to deny the validity of legal property in natural resources altogether.
