What is Property? An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government

by P.-J. Proudhon

3. Whenever a spectator comes in or goes out, the places of all contract or enlarge correspondingly: for, says Reid, "THE RIGHT OF PROPERTY IS NOT INNATE, BUT ACQUIRED;" consequently, it is not absolute; consequently, the occupancy on which it is based, being a conditional fact, cannot endow this right with a stability which it does not possess itself. This seems to have been the thought of the Edinburgh professor when he added:—

"A right to life implies a right to the necessary means of life; and that justice, which forbids the taking away the life of an innocent man, forbids no less the taking from him the necessary means of life. He has the same right to defend the one as the other. To hinder another man's innocent labor, or to deprive him of the fruit of it, is an injustice of the same kind, and has the same effect as to put him in fetters or in prison, and is equally a just object of resentment."

Thus the chief of the Scotch school, without considering at all the inequality of skill or labor, posits a priori the equality of the means of labor, abandoning thereafter to each laborer the care of his own person, after the eternal axiom: WHOSO DOES WELL, SHALL FARE WELL.

The philosopher Reid is lacking, not in knowledge of the principle, but in courage to pursue it to its ultimate. If the right of life is equal, the right of labor is equal, and so is the right of occupancy. Would it not be criminal, were some islanders to repulse, in the name of property, the unfortunate victims of a shipwreck struggling to reach the shore? The very idea of such cruelty sickens the imagination. The proprietor, like Robinson Crusoe on his island, wards off with pike and musket the proletaire washed overboard by the wave of civilization, and seeking to gain a foothold upon the rocks of property. "Give me work!" cries he with all his might to the proprietor: "don't drive me away, I will work for you at any price." "I do not need your services," replies the proprietor, showing the end of his pike or the barrel of his gun. "Lower my rent at least." "I need my income to live upon." "How can I pay you, when I can get no work?" "That is your business." Then the unfortunate proletaire abandons himself to the waves; or, if he attempts to land upon the shore of property, the proprietor takes aim, and kills him.

We have just listened to a spiritualist; we will now question a materialist, then an eclectic: and having completed the circle of philosophy, we will turn next to law.

According to Destutt de Tracy, property is a necessity of our nature. That this necessity involves unpleasant consequences, it would be folly to deny. But these consequences are necessary evils which do not invalidate the principle; so that it is as unreasonable to rebel against property on account of the abuses which it generates, as to complain of life because it is sure to end in death. This brutal and pitiless philosophy promises at least frank and close reasoning. Let us see if it keeps its promise.

"We talk very gravely about the conditions of property,... as if it was our province to decide what constitutes property.... It would seem, to hear certain philosophers and legislators, that at a certain moment, spontaneously and without cause, people began to use the words THINE and MINE; and that they might have, or ought to have, dispensed with them. But THINE and MINE were never invented."

A philosopher yourself, you are too realistic. THINE and MINE do not necessarily refer to self, as they do when I say your philosophy, and my equality; for your philosophy is you philosophizing, and my equality is I professing equality. THINE and MINE oftener indicate a relation,—YOUR country, YOUR parish, YOUR tailor, YOUR milkmaid; MY chamber, MY seat at the theatre, MY company and MY battalion in the National Guard. In the former sense, we may sometimes say MY labor, MY skill, MY virtue; never MY grandeur nor MY majesty: in the latter sense only, MY field, MY house, MY vineyard, MY capital,—precisely as the banker's clerk says MY cash-box. In short, THINE and MINE are signs and expressions of personal, but equal, rights; applied to things outside of us, they indicate possession, function, use, not property.

It does not seem possible, but, nevertheless, I shall prove, by quotations, that the whole theory of our author is based upon this paltry equivocation.

"Prior to all covenants, men are, not exactly, as Hobbes says, in a state of HOSTILITY, but of ESTRANGEMENT. In this state, justice and injustice are unknown; the rights of one bear no relation to the rights of another. All have as many rights as needs, and all feel it their duty to satisfy those needs by any means at their command."