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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.

Taken at face value, "Property is theft!" appears to be an oxymoron, because theft, by definition, means depriving someone of his property. However, what Proudhon meant with the slogan was that (private) property is illegitimate - that there is no moral justification for the existence of private property, and that private property therefore represents a sort of "theft" from the common property of all mankind.

The argument goes as follows: Humans do not create matter out of nothing. They only use their labor power or their intellect to turn raw materials into useful objects. Thus, private property over any object is based upon private property over the raw materials that were used in making that object. Raw materials are extracted from the Earth, from land. Thus, the existence of any private property requires private property over land. But private property over land is unjustified: no human being made the land, so why should anyone own it? Even following the homestead principle - the idea that a piece of unclaimed land should become the property of the first man who settles on it and works that land - the fact remains that virtually every piece of land on Earth was stolen many times since the arrival of the very first humans on it. Thus, private property over land - and, by extension, all private property - is based on theft.

See also

• Libertarian socialism
• Communism
• Mikhail Bakunin
• Karl Marx
• Property
• Private property
• What is Property?

• Political slogans