What is Property? an Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government
1840
What is Property? an Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government
1840
In 1840, a French printer and philosopher uttered three words that would reverberate through two centuries of political thought: 'Property is theft.' This audacious declaration opened What is Property?, the foundational text of anarchist philosophy and one of the most radical challenges to economic orthodoxy ever written. Proudhon did not merely critique specific abuses of property; he interrogated the very concept itself, arguing that private ownership rests on no legitimate foundation neither labor, nor law, nor social contract can justify it. The book sparked immediate outrage, sold out its printing, and made its author infamous across Europe. It also prefigured Marx, influenced Kropotkin, and continues toprovoke readers who encounter its uncompromising logic. Proudhon dissects received definitions with surgical precision, showing how property creates inequality, corrupts justice, and enables exploitation disguised as right. This is not comfortable reading. It is a demolition of assumptions so fundamental that most people never think to question them. For anyone interested in the history of radical thought, the roots of anarchist philosophy, or the enduring question of what justice actually requires, this 1840 treatise remains essential. It demands patience, but the reward is a mind genuinely shaken.
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“Property is theft!””
— P.-J. Proudhon
“Why, how can you ask such a question? You are a republican."A republican! Yes; but that word specifies nothing. Res publica; that is, the public thing. Now, whoever is interested in public affairs -- no matter under what form of government -- may call himself a republican. Even kings are republicans."Well! You are a democrat?"No."What! "you would have a monarchy?"No." A Constitutionalist?"God forbid."Then you are an aristocrat?"Not at all!"You want a mixed form of government?"Even less."Then what are you?"I am an anarchist."Oh! I understand you; you speak satirically. This is a hit at the government."By no means. I have just given you my serious and well-considered profession of faith. Although a firm friend of order, I am (in the full force of the term) an anarchist. Listen to me.””
— P.-J. Proudhon
“An empty stomach knows no morality.””
— P.-J. Proudhon
“Nevertheless, I build no system. I ask an end to privilege, the abolition of slavery, equality of rights, and the reign of law. Justice, nothing else; that is the alpha and omega of my argument: to others I leave the business of governing the world.””
— P.-J. Proudhon
“The purchaser draws boundaries, fences himself in, and says, “This is mine; each one by himself, each one for himself.” Here, then, is a piece of land upon which, henceforth, no one has a right to step, save the proprietor and his friends; which can benefit nobody, save the proprietor and his servants. Let these sales multiply, and soon the people”
— P.-J. Proudhon
“When politics and home life have become one and the same, when economic problems have been solved in such a way that individual and collective interests are identical – all constraints having disappeared – it is evident that we will be in a state of total liberty or anarchy.””
— P.-J. Proudhon
“As man seeks justice in equality, so society seeks order in anarchy.””
— P.-J. Proudhon
“I live, like you, in a century in which reason submits only to fact and to evidence. My name, like yours, is TRUTH-SEEKER. My mission is written in these words of the law: Speak without hatred and without fear; tell that which thou knowest! The work of our race is to build the temple of science, and this science includes man and Nature. Now, truth reveals itself to all; to-day to Newton and Pascal, tomorrow to the herdsman in the valley and the journeyman in the shop. Each one contributes his stone to the edifice; and, his task accomplished, disappears. Eternity precedes us, eternity follows us: between two infinites, of what account is one poor mortal that the century should inquire about him?””
— P.-J. Proudhon
“When our ideas on any subject, material, intellectual, or social, undergo a thorough change in consequence of new observations, I call that movement of the mind revolution. If the ideas are simply extended or modified, there is only progress. Thus the system of Ptolemy was a step in astronomical progress, that of Copernicus was a revolution.””
— P.-J. Proudhon
