I provide myself with an imaginary “private” library, a “private” picture gallery, “private” apartments, clothes; acquire my “own” money in order to purchase with it every thing I want, and the matter stands thus,—that I, being busy about this imaginary property, which is not, and cannot be my property, however I may call it, and which is no object for activity, leave quite out of sight that which is my true property, upon which I may really labour, and which really may serve me, and which always remains in my power.
Words have always a definite meaning until we purposely give them a false signification.
What does property mean?
Property means that which is given to me alone, which belongs to me alone, exclusively; that with which I may always do everything I like, which nobody can take away from me, which remains mine to the end of my life, and which I ought to use in order to increase and to improve it. For every man such property is only himself.
It is in this very sense that imaginary property is understood, that very property for sake of which (making it impossible for this imaginary property to become a real one) all the sufferings of this world exist,—wars, executions, judgments, prisons, luxury, depravity, murders, and the ruin of mankind.
What, then, will result from the circumstance that ten men plough, hew wood, make boots, not from necessity, but in acknowledgment that man needs work, and that the more he works, the better it will be for him?
This will come out of it: that ten men, or even one single man, by thought and in deed, will show men that this fearful evil from which they are suffering, is not the law of their destiny, nor the will of God, nor any historical necessity, but is a superstition not at all strong or overpowering, but weak and null, which one need only leave off believing in, as in idols, in order to get rid of, and to destroy it even as a frail cobweb is swept away.
Men who begin to work in order to fulfil the pleasant law of their lives, who work for the fulfilment of the law of labour, will free themselves from this superstition of property which is so full of misery, and then all these worldly establishments which exist in order to protect this imaginary property outside of one's own body, will become not only unnecessary for them, but burdensome; and it will become clear to all that these institutions are not necessary, but pernicious, imaginary, and false conditions of life.
For a man who considers labour not a curse, but a joy, property outside his own body—that is, the right or possibility of utilizing other men's labour—will be not only useless, but an impediment. If I am fond of cooking my dinner, and accustomed to do it, then the fact that another man will do it for me, will deprive me of my usual business, and will not satisfy me so well as I have satisfied myself; and further, the acquirement of imaginary property will not be necessary for such a man: a man who considers labour to be his very life, fills up all his life with it, and therefore requires less and less the labour of others,—in other words, as property to fill up his unoccupied time, and to embellish his life.
If the life of a man is occupied by labour, he does not require many rooms, much furniture, various fine clothes: he does not require so much expensive food, or locomotion, or amusements. Especially a man who considers labour to be the business and the joy of his life, will not seek to ease his own labour by utilizing that of others.