Books like Qu'est-ce que la propriété? by P.-J. Proudhon

Pierre‑Joseph Proudhon, a French political philosopher and autodidact, published his 1840 treatise « Qu’est‑ce que la propriété ? » in which he famously declares that ‘property is robbery.’ The book criticises the established capitalist order and the legal right to possession, leading to his prosecution and the revocation of his scholarship by the Academy of Besançon. Proudhon distinguishes the legitimate right of possession—ownership of the products of one’s own labor and the necessary means of production—from the illegitimate right of property, an absolute privilege granted by civil law to ‘use and abuse.’ He argues that property amounts to homicide, tyranny, and an impossible social institution. As a solution he advances a mutualist, anarchist economic model in which a socialist society is organised by free‑market exchanges based on the labour cost of goods and services.

First publish date: 1840