Misplaced Pages

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Coren (talk | contribs) at 14:51, 27 July 2008 (Protected Property is theft!: Edit war in progress; a week should allow things to settle down (expires 14:51, 3 August 2008 (UTC))). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

v t e Anarchism
Concepts	Anarchy Anarchist Black Cross Anarchist criminology Anationalism Anti-authoritarianism Anti-capitalism Anti-militarism Affinity group Autonomous social center Black bloc Classless society Class struggle Consensus decision-making Conscientious objector Critique of work Decentralization Deep ecology Direct action Free love Freethought Horizontalidad Individualism Law Mutual aid Participatory politics Permanent autonomous zone Prefigurative politics Proletarian internationalism Propaganda of the deed Refusal of work Revolution Rewilding Sabotage Security culture Self-ownership Social ecology Sociocracy Somatherapy Spontaneous order Squatting Temporary autonomous zone Union of egoists Voluntary association Workers' council
Issues	Animal rights Capitalism Education Love and sex Nationalism Religion Violence
Schools of thought	Classical Individualist Egoist Illegalist Naturist Philosophical Mutualist Social Collectivist Communist Magonist Post-classical Feminist Green Primitivist Social ecology Independence Insurrectionary Pacifist Religious Christian Buddhist Jewish Without adjectives Contemporary Black Free-market Postcolonial Post-anarchist Post-left Queer
Types of federation	Affinity group Anarcho-syndicalism Platformism Synthesis anarchism Union of egoists
Economics	Communization Cooperative Cost the limit of price Decentralized planned economy Free association General strike Gift economy Give-away shop Labour voucher Market socialism Mutual bank Mutual credit Social ownership Wage slavery Workers' self-management
Culture	A las Barricadas Anarchist bookfair Anarcho-punk Arts DIY ethic Escuela Moderna Films Freeganism Infoshop Independent Media Center The Internationale Jewish anarchism Lifestylism May Day "No gods, no masters" Popular education "Property is theft!" Radical cheerleading Radical environmentalism Self-managed social center Symbolism
History	French Revolution Revolutions of 1848 Spanish Regional Federation of the IWA Paris Commune Hague Congress Cantonal rebellion Haymarket affair International Conference of Rome Trial of the Thirty International Conference of Rome Ferrer movement Strandzha Commune Congress of Amsterdam Tragic Week High Treason Incident Manifesto of the Sixteen German Revolution of 1918–1919 Bavarian Soviet Republic 1919 United States bombings Biennio Rosso Kronstadt rebellion Makhnovshchina Amakasu Incident Alt Llobregat insurrection Anarchist insurrection of January 1933 Anarchist insurrection of December 1933 Spanish Revolution of 1936 Barcelona May Days Red inverted triangle Labadie Collection Provo May 1968 Kate Sharpley Library Carnival Against Capital 1999 Seattle WTO protests Really Really Free Market Occupy movement
People	Alston Armand Ba Bakunin Berkman Bonanno Bookchin Bourdin Chomsky Cleyre Day Durruti Ellul Ervin Faure Fauset MacDonald Ferrer Feyerabend Giovanni Godwin Goldman González Prada Graeber Guillaume He-Yin Kanno Kōtoku Kropotkin Landauer Liu Magón Makhno Maksimov Malatesta Mett Michel Most Parsons Pi i Margall Pouget Proudhon Raichō Reclus Rocker Santillán Spooner Stirner Thoreau Tolstoy Tucker Volin Ward Warren Yarchuk Zerzan
Lists	Anarcho-punk bands Books Fictional characters Films Jewish anarchists Musicians Periodicals
By region	Africa Albania Algeria Andorra Argentina Armenia Australia Austria Azerbaijan Bangladesh Belarus Belgium Bolivia Bosnia and Herzegovina Brazil Bulgaria Canada Chile China Colombia Costa Rica Croatia Cuba Cyprus Czech Republic Denmark Dominican Republic East Timor Ecuador Egypt El Salvador Estonia Finland France French Guiana Georgia Germany Greece Guatemala Hong Kong Hungary Iceland India Indonesia Iran Ireland Israel Italy Japan Korea Latvia Malaysia Mexico Monaco Mongolia Morocco Netherlands New Zealand Nicaragua Nigeria Norway Panama Paraguay Peru Philippines Poland Portugal Puerto Rico Romania Russia Serbia Singapore South Africa Spain Sweden Switzerland Syria Taiwan Tunisia Turkey Ukraine United Kingdom United States Uruguay Venezuela Vietnam
Related topics	Anti-corporatism Anti-consumerism Anti-fascism Anti-globalization Anti-statism Anti-war movement Autarchism Autonomism Communism Definition of anarchism and libertarianism Dual Power Labour movement Left communism Left-libertarianism Libertarianism Libertarian socialism Marxism Relationship between Friedrich Nietzsche and Max Stirner Situationist International Socialism Spontaneous order
Anarchism portal Category Outline

Property is theft! (French: La propriété, c'est le vol!) is a slogan coined by French anarchist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon in his 1840 book What is Property? Or, an Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government.

If I were asked to answer the following question: What is slavery? and I should answer in one word, It is murder!, my meaning would be understood at once. No extended argument would be required . . . Why, then, to this other question: What is property? may I not likewise answer, It is robbery!, without the certainty of being misunderstood; the second proposition being no other than a transformation of the first?

— What is Property? , in Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

By "property," Proudhon referred to the Roman law concept of the sovereign right of property — the right of the proprietor to do with his property as he pleases, "to use and abuse," so long as in the end he submits to state-sanctioned title, and he contrasted the supposed right of property with the rights (which he considered valid) of liberty, equality, and security.

Similar phrases

Brissot de Warville had previously written, in his Philosophical Researches on the Right of Property (Recherches philosophiques sur le droit de propriété et le vol), "Exclusive property is a robbery in nature." Karl Marx would later write in a 1865 letter to a contemporary that Proudhon had taken the slogan from Warville, although this is contested by subsequent scholarship.

Similar phrases also appear in the works of Saint Ambrose, who taught that superfluum quod tenes tu furaris (the superfluous property which you hold you have stolen), and Ralph Waldo Emerson, who wrote: "In the last analysis all property is theft."

Footnotes

I. This translation by Benjamin Tucker renders "c'est le vol" as "it is robbery," although the slogan is typically rendered in English as "property is theft."

References

1. ^ William Shepard Walsh, Handy-book of Literary Curiosities, p. 923
2. Karl Marx, "Letter to J. B. Schweizer", from Marx Engels Selected Works, Volume 2, first published in Der Social-Demokrat, Nos. 16, 17 and 18, February 1, 3 and 5, 1865
3. Robert L. Hoffman, Revolutionary Justice: The Social and Political Theory of P.J. Proudhon, (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1972), pp. 46-48.

• Political slogans
• Anarchist theory