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Property is theft! 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 of Government.

While long ignored, the term has been resurrected by the anti-copyright and the copyleft believers.

Ayn Rand and her Objectivist followers often like to cite this slogan as an oxymoron, and as evidence of the contradictory nature of leftist thought, on the grounds that "theft" only has meaning when defined in terms of the taking of property, making it nonsensical to regard property itself as theft. In response, it might be argued that the Objectivist critique is a misreading of Proudhon. Proudhon used "property" in a quite specialised sense, for example distinguishing private property from private posessions. In the context of the slogan, "property" clearly refers to private property. The argument expressed is that all property (but not all posessions) should be public property, with the consequence that ownership of private property constitutes theft of public property. It should also be noted that two other slogans of Proudhon's were "property is freedom" and "property is impossible", indicating that Proudhon was perhaps deliberately emphasising certain apparent contradictions in ideas about property for rhetorical effect.

See also

• libertarian socialism
• Mikhail Bakunin
• Karl Marx
• property
• private property
• What is Property?
• tragedy of the commons

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