What is Property?

P >> P. J. Proudhon >> What is Property?

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36 | 37

Scanned with OmniPage Professional OCR software
donated by Caere Corporation, 1-800-535-7226.
Contact Mike Lough

WHAT IS
PROPERTY?
AN INQUIRY INTO THE PRINCIPLE OF
RIGHT AND OF GOVERNMENT
P. J. Proudhon

CONTENTS.

P. J. PROUDHON: HIS LIFE AND HIS WORKS

PREFACE

FIRST MEMOIR

CHAPTER I.

METHOD PURSUED IN THIS WORK.--THE IDEA OF A REVOLUTION

CHAPTER II.

PROPERTY CONSIDERED AS A NATURAL RIGHT.--OCCUPATION AND CIVIL LAW
AS EFFICIENT BASES OF PROPERTY.--DEFINITIONS
% 1. Property as a Natural Right.
% 2. Occupation as the Title to Property.
% 3. Civil Law as the Foundation and Sanction of Property.

CHAPTER III.

LABOR AS THE EFFICIENT CAUSE OF THE DOMAIN OF PROPERTY
% 1. The Land cannot be appropriated.
% 2. Universal Consent no Justification of Property.
% 3. Prescription gives no Title to Property.
% 4. Labor.--That Labor has no Inherent Power to appropriate
Natural Wealth.
% 5. That Labor leads to Equality of Property.
% 6. That in Society all Wages are Equal.
% 7. That Inequality of Powers is the Necessary Condition of
Equality of Fortunes.
% 8. That, from the stand-point of Justice, Labor destroys
Property.

CHAPTER IV.

THAT PROPERTY IS IMPOSSIBLE

DEMONSTRATION. AXIOM.

Property is the Right of Increase claimed by the Proprietor over
any thing which he has stamped as his own.

FIRST PROPOSITION.
Property is Impossible, because it demands Something for Nothing.

SECOND PROPOSITION.
Property is Impossible, because, wherever it exists, Production
costs more than it is worth.

THIRD PROPOSITION.
Property is Impossible, because, with a given Capital, Production
is proportional to Labor, not to Property.

FOURTH PROPOSITION.
Property is Impossible, because it is Homicide.

FIFTH PROPOSITION.
Property is Impossible, because, if it exists, Society devours itself.

Appendix to the Fifth Proposition.

SIXTH PROPOSITION.
Property is Impossible, because it is the Mother of Tyranny.

SEVENTH PROPOSITION.
Property is Impossible, because, in consuming its Receipts, it
loses them; in hoarding them, it nullifies them; and, in
using them as Capital, it turns them against Production.

EIGHTH PROPOSITION.
Property is Impossible, because its Power of Accumulation is
infinite, and is exercised only over Finite Quantities.

NINTH PROPOSITION
Property is Impossible, because it is powerless against Property.

TENTH PROPOSITION.
Property is Impossible, because it is the Negation of Equality.

CHAPTER V.
PSYCHOLOGICAL EXPOSITION OF THE IDEA OF JUSTICE AND IN JUSTICE,
AND A DETERMINATION OF THE PRINCIPLE OF GOVERNMENT AND OF RIGHT.

PART 1.

% 1. Of the Moral Sense in Man and the Animals.
% 2. Of the First and Second Degrees of Sociability.
% 3. Of the Third Degree of Sociability.

PART I 1.
% 1. Of the Causes of our Mistakes. The Origin of Property.
% 2. Characteristics of Communism and of Property.
% 3. Determination of the Third Form of Society. Conclusion.

SECOND MEMOIR
LETTER TO M. BLANQUI ON PROPERTY

P. J. PROUDHON:

HIS LIFE AND HIS WORKS.

The correspondence[1] of P. J. Proudhon, the first volumes of
which we publish to-day, has been collected since his death by
the faithful and intelligent labors of his daughter, aided by a
few friends. It was incomplete when submitted to Sainte Beuve,
but the portion with which the illustrious academician became
acquainted was sufficient to allow him to estimate it as a whole
with that soundness of judgment which characterized him as a
literary critic.

[1] In the French edition of Proudhon's works, the above sketch
of his life is prefixed to the first volume of his
correspondence, but the translator prefers to insert it here as
the best method of introducing the author to the American public.

He would, however, caution readers against accepting the
biographer's interpretation of the author's views as in any sense
authoritative; advising them, rather, to await the publication of
the remainder of Proudhon's writings, that they may form an
opinion for themselves.--Translator.

In an important work, which his habitual readers certainly have
not forgotten, although death did not allow him to finish it,
Sainte Beuve thus judges the correspondence of the great
publicist:--

"The letters of Proudhon, even outside the circle of his
particular friends, will always be of value; we can always learn
something from them, and here is the proper place to determine
the general character of his correspondence.

"It has always been large, especially since he became so
celebrated; and, to tell the truth, I am persuaded that, in the
future, the correspondence of Proudhon will be his principal,
vital work, and that most of his books will be only accessory to
and corroborative of this. At any rate, his books can be well
understood only by the aid of his letters and the continual
explanations which he makes to those who consult him in their
doubt, and request him to define more clearly his position.

"There are, among celebrated people, many methods of
correspondence. There are those to whom letter-writing is a
bore, and who, assailed with questions and compliments, reply in
the greatest haste, solely that the job may be over with, and who
return politeness for politeness, mingling it with more or less
wit. This kind of correspondence, though coming from celebrated
people, is insignificant and unworthy of collection and
classification.

"After those who write letters in performance of a disagreeable
duty, and almost side by side with them in point of
insignificance, I should put those who write in a manner wholly
external, wholly superficial, devoted only to flattery, lavishing
praise like gold, without counting it; and those also who weigh
every word, who reply formally and pompously, with a view to fine
phrases and effects. They exchange words only, and choose them
solely for their brilliancy and show. You think it is you,
individually, to whom they speak; but they are addressing
themselves in your person to the four corners of Europe. Such
letters are empty, and teach as nothing but theatrical execution
and the favorite pose of their writers.

"I will not class among the latter the more prudent and sagacious
authors who, when writing to individuals, keep one eye on
posterity. We know that many who pursue this method have written
long, finished, charming, flattering, and tolerably natural
letters. Beranger furnishes us with the best example of this
class.

"Proudhon, however, is a man of entirely different nature and
habits. In writing, he thinks of nothing but his idea and the
person whom he addresses: ad rem et ad hominem. A man of
conviction and doctrine, to write does not weary him; to be
questioned does not annoy him. When approached, he cares only to
know that your motive is not one of futile curiosity, but the
love of truth; he assumes you to be serious, he replies, he
examines your objections, sometimes verbally, sometimes in
writing; for, as he remarks, `if there be some points which
correspondence can never settle, but which can be made clear by
conversation in two minutes, at other times just the opposite is
the case: an objection clearly stated in writing, a doubt well
expressed, which elicits a direct and positive reply, helps
things along more than ten hours of oral intercourse!' In
writing to you he does not hesitate to treat the subject anew; he
unfolds to you the foundation and superstructure of his thought:
rarely does he confess himself defeated--it is not his way; he
holds to his position, but admits the breaks, the variations, in
short, the EVOLUTION of his mind. The history of his mind is
in his letters; there it must be sought.

"Proudhon, whoever addresses him, is always ready; he quits the
page of the book on which he is at work to answer you with the
same pen, and that without losing patience, without getting
confused, without sparing or complaining of his ink; he is a
public man, devoted to the propagation of his idea by all
methods, and the best method, with him, is always the present
one, the latest one. His very handwriting, bold, uniform,
legible, even in the most tiresome passages, betrays no haste, no
hurry to finish. Each line is accurate: nothing is left to
chance; the punctuation, very correct and a little emphatic and
decided, indicates with precision and delicate distinction all
the links in the chain of his argument. He is devoted entirely
to you, to his business and yours, while writing to you, and
never to anything else. All the letters of his which I have seen
are serious: not one is commonplace.

"But at the same time he is not at all artistic or affected; he
does not CONSTRUCT his letters, he does not revise them, he
spends no time in reading them over; we have a first draught,
excellent and clear, a jet from the fountain-head, but that is
all. The new arguments, which he discovers in support of his
ideas and which opposition suggests to him, are an agreeable
surprise, and shed a light which we should vainly search for even
in his works. His correspondence differs essentially from his
books, in that it gives you no uneasiness; it places you in the
very heart of the man, explains him to you, and leaves you with
an impression of moral esteem and almost of intellectual
security. We feel his sincerity. I know of no one to whom he
can be more fitly compared in this respect than George Sand,
whose correspondence is large, and at the same time full of
sincerity. His role and his nature correspond. If he is writing
to a young man who unbosoms himself to him in sceptical anxiety,
to a young woman who asks him to decide delicate questions of
conduct for her, his letter takes the form of a short moral
essay, of a father-confessor's advice. Has he perchance attended
the theatre (a rare thing for him) to witness one of Ponsart's
comedies, or a drama of Charles Edmond's, he feels bound to give
an account of his impressions to the friend to whom he is
indebted for this pleasure, and his letter becomes a literary and
philosophical criticism, full of sense, and like no other. His
familiarity is suited to his correspondent; he affects no
rudeness. The terms of civility or affection which he
employs towards his correspondents are sober, measured,
appropriate to each, and honest in their simplicity and
cordiality. When he speaks of morals and the family, he seems at
times like the patriarchs of the Bible. His command of language
is complete, and he never fails to avail himself of it. Now and
then a coarse word, a few personalities, too bitter and quite
unjust or injurious, will have to be suppressed in printing;
time, however, as it passes away, permits many things and renders
them inoffensive. Am I right in saying that Proudhon's
correspondence, always substantial, will one day be the most
accessible and attractive portion of his works?"

Almost the whole of Proudhon's real biography is included in his
correspondence. Up to 1837, the date of the first letter which
we have been able to collect, his life, narrated by Sainte Beuve,
from whom we make numerous extracts, may be summed up in a few
pages.

Pierre Joseph Proudhon was born on the 15th of January, 1809, in
a suburb of Besancon, called Mouillere. His father and mother
were employed in the great brewery belonging to M. Renaud. His
father, though a cousin of the jurist Proudhon, the celebrated
professor in the faculty of Dijon, was a journeyman brewer. His
mother, a genuine peasant, was a common servant. She was an
orderly person of great good sense; and, as they who knew her
say, a superior woman of HEROIC character,--to use the
expression of the venerable M. Weiss, the librarian at Besancon.
She it was especially that Proudhon resembled: she and his
grandfather Tournesi, the soldier peasant of whom his mother told
him, and whose courageous deeds he has described in his work on
"Justice." Proudhon, who always felt a great veneration for his
mother Catharine, gave her name to the elder of his daughters.
In 1814, when Besancon was blockaded, Mouillere, which stood in
front of the walls of the town, was destroyed in the defence
of the place; and Proudhon's father established a cooper's shop
in a suburb of Battant, called Vignerons. Very honest, but
simple-minded and short-sighted, this cooper, the father of five
children, of whom Pierre Joseph was the eldest, passed his life
in poverty. At eight years of age, Proudhon either made himself
useful in the house, or tended the cattle out of doors. No one
should fail to read that beautiful and precious page of his work
on "Justice," in which he describes the rural sports which he
enjoyed when a neatherd. At the age of twelve, he was a cellar-
boy in an inn. This, however, did not prevent him from studying.

His mother was greatly aided by M. Renaud, the former owner of
the brewery, who had at that time retired from business, and was
engaged in the education of his children.

Proudhon entered school as a day-scholar in the sixth class. He
was necessarily irregular in his attendance; domestic cares and
restraints sometimes kept him from his classes. He succeeded
nevertheless in his studies; he showed great perseverance. His
family were so poor that they could not afford to furnish him
with books; he was obliged to borrow them from his comrades, and
copy the text of his lessons. He has himself told us that he was
obliged to leave his wooden shoes outside the door, that he might
not disturb the classes with his noise; and that, having no hat,
he went to school bareheaded. One day, towards the close of his
studies, on returning from the distribution of the prizes, loaded
with crowns, he found nothing to eat in the house.

"In his eagerness for labor and his thirst for knowledge,
Proudhon," says Sainte Beuve, "was not content with the
instruction of his teachers. From his twelfth to his fourteenth
year, he was a constant frequenter of the town library.
One curiosity led to another, and he called for book after book,
sometimes eight or ten at one sitting. The learned librarian,
the friend and almost the brother of Charles Nodier, M. Weiss,
approached him one day, and said, smiling, `But, my little
friend, what do you wish to do with all these books?' The child
raised his head, eyed his questioner, and replied: `What's that
to you?' And the good M. Weiss remembers it to this day."

Forced to earn his living, Proudhon could not continue his
studies. He entered a printing-office in Besancon as a proof-
reader. Becoming, soon after, a compositor, he made a tour of
France in this capacity. At Toulon, where he found himself
without money and without work, he had a scene with the mayor,
which he describes in his work on "Justice."

Sainte Beuve says that, after his tour of France, his service
book being filled with good certificates, Proudhon was promoted
to the position of foreman. But he does not tell us, for the
reason that he had no knowledge of a letter written by Fallot, of
which we never heard until six months since, that the printer at
that time contemplated quitting his trade in order to become a
teacher.

Towards 1829, Fallot, who was a little older than Proudhon, and
who, after having obtained the Suard pension in 1832, died in his
twenty-ninth year, while filling the position of assistant
librarian at the Institute, was charged, Protestant though he
was, with the revisal of a "Life of the Saints," which was
published at Besancon. The book was in Latin, and Fallot added
some notes which also were in Latin.

"But," says Sainte Beuve, "it happened that some errors escaped
his attention, which Proudhon, then proof-reader in the printing
office, did not fail to point out to him. Surprised at finding
so good a Latin scholar in a workshop, he desired to make his
acquaintance; and soon there sprung up between them a most
earnest and intimate friendship: a friendship of the intellect
and of the heart."

Addressed to a printer between twenty-two and twenty- three years
of age, and predicting in formal terms his future fame, Fallot's
letter seems to us so interesting that we do not hesitate to
reproduce it entire.

"PARIS, December 5, 1831.

"MY DEAR PROUDHON,--YOU have a right to be surprised at, and even
dissatisfied with, my long delay in replying to your kind letter;
I will tell you the cause of it. It became necessary to forward
an account of your ideas to M. J. de Gray; to hear his
objections, to reply to them, and to await his definitive
response, which reached me but a short time ago; for M. J. is a
sort of financial king, who takes no pains to be punctual in
dealing with poor devils like ourselves. I, too, am careless in
matters of business; I sometimes push my negligence even to
disorder, and the metaphysical musings which continually occupy
my mind, added to the amusements of Paris, render me the most
incapable man in the world for conducting a negotiation with
despatch.

"I have M. Jobard's decision; here it is: In his judgment, you
are too learned and clever for his children; he fears that you
could not accommodate your mind and character to the childish
notions common to their age and station. In short, he is what
the world calls a good father; that is, he wants to spoil his
children, and, in order to do this easily, he thinks fit to
retain his present instructor, who is not very learned, but who
takes part in their games and joyous sports with wonderful
facility, who points out the letters of the alphabet to the
little girl, who takes the little boys to mass, and who, no less
obliging than the worthy Abbe P. of our acquaintance, would
readily dance for Madame's amusement. Such a profession would
not suit you, you who have a free, proud, and manly soul: you are
refused; let us dismiss the matter from our minds. Perhaps
another time my solicitude will be less unfortunate. I can only
ask your pardon for having thought of thus disposing of you
almost without consulting you. I find my excuse in the motives
which guided me; I had in view your well-being and advancement in
the ways of this world.

"I see in your letter, my comrade, through its brilliant
witticisms and beneath the frank and artless gayety with which
you have sprinkled it, a tinge of sadness and despondency which
pains me. You are unhappy, my friend: your present situation
does not suit you; you cannot remain in it, it was not made for
you, it is beneath you; you ought, by all means, to leave it,
before its injurious influence begins to affect your faculties,
and before you become settled, as they say, in the ways of your
profession, were it possible that such a thing could ever
happen, which I flatly deny. You are unhappy; you have not yet
entered upon the path which Nature has marked out for you. But,
faint-hearted soul, is that a cause for despondency? Ought you
to feel discouraged? Struggle, morbleu, struggle persistently,
and you will triumph. J. J. Rousseau groped about for forty
years before his genius was revealed to him. You are not J. J
Rousseau; but listen: I know not whether I should have divined
the author of "Emile" when he was twenty years of age, supposing
that I had been his contemporary, and had enjoyed the honor of
his acquaintance. But I have known you, I have loved you, I have
divined your future, if I may venture to say so; for the first
time in my life, I am going to risk a prophecy. Keep this
letter, read it again fifteen or twenty years hence, perhaps
twenty-five, and if at that time the prediction which I am about
to make has not been fulfilled, burn it as a piece of folly out
of charity and respect for my memory. This is my prediction: you
will be, Proudhon, in spite of yourself, inevitably, by the fact
of your destiny, a writer, an author; you will be a philosopher;
you will be one of the lights of the century, and your name will
occupy a place in the annals of the nineteenth century, like
those of Gassendi, Descartes, Malebranche, and Bacon in the
seventeenth, and those of Diderot, Montesquieu, Helvetius.
Locke, Hume, and Holbach in the eighteenth. Such will be your
lot! Do now what you will, set type in a printing-office, bring
up children, bury yourself in deep seclusion, seek obscure and
lonely villages, it is all one to me; you cannot escape your
destiny; you cannot divest yourself of your noblest feature, that
active, strong, and inquiring mind, with which you are endowed;
your place in the world has been appointed, and it cannot remain
empty. Go where you please, I expect you in Paris, talking
philosophy and the doctrines of Plato; you will have to come,
whether you want to or not. I, who say this to you, must feel
very sure of it in order to be willing to put it upon paper,
since, without reward for my prophetic skill,--to which, I assure
you, I make not the slightest claim,--I run the risk of passing
for a hare-brained fellow, in case I prove to be mistaken: he
plays a bold game who risks his good sense upon his cards, in
return for the very trifling and insignificant merit of having
divined a young man's future.

"When I say that I expect you in Paris, I use only a proverbial
phrase which you must not allow to mislead you as to my projects
and plans. To reside in Paris is disagreeable to me, very much
so; and when this fine-art fever which possesses me has left me,
I shall abandon the place without regret to seek a more peaceful
residence in a provincial town, provided always the town shall
afford me the means of living, bread, a bed, books, rest,
and solitude. How I miss, my good Proudhon, that dark, obscure,
smoky chamber in which I dwelt in Besancon, and where we spent so
many pleasant hours in the discussion of philosophy! Do you
remember it? But that is now far away. Will that happy time
ever return? Shall we one day meet again? Here my life is
restless, uncertain, precarious, and, what is worse, indolent,
illiterate, and vagrant. I do no work, I live in idleness, I
ramble about; I do not read, I no longer study; my books are
forsaken; now and then I glance over a few metaphysical works,
and after a days walk through dirty, filthy, crowded streets. I
lie down with empty head and tired body, to repeat the
performance on the following day. What is the object of these
walks, you will ask. I make visits, my friend; I hold interviews
with stupid people. Then a fit of curiosity seizes me, the least
inquisitive of beings: there are museums, libraries, assemblies,
churches, palaces, gardens, and theatres to visit. I am fond of
pictures, fond of music, fond of sculpture; all these are
beautiful and good, but they cannot appease hunger, nor take the
place of my pleasant readings of Bailly, Hume, and Tennemann,
which I used to enjoy by my fireside when I was able to read.

"But enough of complaints. Do not allow this letter to affect
you too much, and do not think that I give way to dejection or
despondency; no, I am a fatalist, and I believe in my star. I do
not know yet what my calling is, nor for what branch of polite
literature I am best fitted; I do not even know whether I am, or
ever shall be, fitted for any: but what matters it? I suffer, I
labor, I dream, I enjoy, I think; and, in a word, when my last
hour strikes, I shall have lived.

"Proudhon, I love you, I esteem you; and, believe me, these are
not mere phrases. What interest could I have in flattering and
praising a poor printer? Are you rich, that you may pay for
courtiers? Have you a sumptuous table, a dashing wife, and gold
to scatter, in order to attract them to your suite? Have you the
glory, honors, credit, which would render your acquaintance
pleasing to their vanity and pride? No; you are poor, obscure,
abandoned; but, poor, obscure, and abandoned, you have a friend,
and a friend who knows all the obligations which that word
imposes upon honorable people, when they venture to assume it.
That friend is myself: put me to the test.
"GUSTAVE FALLOT."

It appears from this letter that if, at this period, Proudhon had
already exhibited to the eyes of a clairvoyant friend his genius
for research and investigation, it was in the direction of
philosophical, rather than of economical and social, questions.

Having become foreman in the house of Gauthier & Co., who carried
on a large printing establishment at Besancon, he corrected the
proofs of ecclesiastical writers, the Fathers of the Church. As
they were printing a Bible, a Vulgate, he was led to compare the
Latin with the original Hebrew.

"In this way," says Sainte Beuve, "he learned Hebrew by himself,
and, as everything was connected in his mind, he was led to the
study of comparative philology. As the house of Gauthier
published many works on Church history and theology, he came also
to acquire, through this desire of his to investigate everything,
an extensive knowledge of theology, which afterwards caused
misinformed persons to think that he had been in an
ecclesiastical seminary."

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36 | 37