Property is theft!
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Property is theft (French: La propriété, c'est le vol!) is a slogan coined by the French anarchist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon in his book What is Property? Or, an Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government.
By property, Proudhon referred to ownership of land and the means of production, being used to subjugate the labour of others:
- "The peasant who hires land, the manufacturer who borrows capital, the tax-payer who pays tolls, duties, patent and license fees, personal and property taxes, &c., and the deputy who votes for them, — all act neither intelligently nor freely. Their enemies are the proprietors, the capitalists, the government." [1]
He proposed that "the laborer retains, even after he has received his wages, a natural right of property in the thing which he has produced." Taking away this property of the labourer (as is normally done in an employer-employee relationship), is theft. However, "instead of inferring from this that property should be shared by all, I demand, as a measure of general security, its entire abolition."
Similar sentiments were expressed nearly two hundred years earlier by the English Diggers, who are considered proto-anarchists by many: "And that this Civil Propriety is the Curse, is manifest thus, Those that Buy and Sell Land, and are landlords, have got it either by Oppression, or Murder, or Theft" [2]
Though Proudhon had many arguments against various forms of property, he did not oppose personal property, which he sometimes referred to as "possession". While he believed that certain formulations of property rights were dangerous and even irrational, he also felt that in some cases it could act as a counter-balance to the power of the state. He says: "The absolute right of the State is in conflict with the absolute right of the property owner." [3] He used the term mutualism to describe his vision of a society where individuals and democratic workers associations could trade their produce on the market. In this system, he supposes exchange value to be determined by the amount of labor required to produce a commodity, in line with the labor theory of value.
