Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (1809–65) was a French journalist and political theorist who significantly influenced the development of anarchism and socialism in Europe. He is recognized for his booklet What is Property? (1840,) which pleaded that property is theft in the sense of the exploitation of one person’s labor by another.
Born in Besançon, Proudhon worked as a printer, moved to Paris in 1838, and joined the socialist movement. He issued Qu’est-ce que la propriété? (‘What is Property?’) In 1840, affirming the bold paradox’ property is theft’ because it involves exploiting others’ labor. In 1842, he was tried for his revolutionary opinions but later acquitted. In 1846 he published his most significant work, Système des contradictions économiques, ou Philosophie de la misère (1846; System of Economic Contradictions: or, The Philosophy of Poverty, 1888,) Karl Marx attacked him bitterly in a book-length response-polemic La misère de la philosophie (1847; The Poverty of Philosophy, 1910.)
During the Revolution of 1848, Proudhon was elected for the Seine department and published several newspapers advocating the most advanced theories. Sentenced to three years’ imprisonment, in March 1849, he fled to Geneva but returned to Paris in June and gave himself up. In 1852 he was released, but in 1858 was again condemned to three years’ imprisonment when his three-volume De la justice dans la Révolution et dans l’église (‘On Justice in the Revolution and the Church’) was seized. He went to Belgium and received an amnesty in 1860.
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Property is theft.
—Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
Topics: Property
The chief condition on which, life, health and vigor depend on, is action. It is by action that an organism develops its faculties, increases its energy, and attains the fulfillment of its destiny.
—Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
Topics: Action
Communism is inequality, but not as property is. Property is exploitation of the weak by the strong. Communism is exploitation of the strong by the weak.
—Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
Topics: Communism, Socialism
Laws: We know what they are, and what they are worth! They are spider webs for the rich and mighty, steel chains for the poor and weak, fishing nets in the hands of the government.
—Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
Topics: Justice
To be governed is to be watched over, inspected, spied on, directed, legislated at, regulated, docketed, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, assessed, weighed, censored, ordered about, by men who have neither the right nor the knowledge nor the virtue.
—Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
A common danger tends to concord. Communism is the exploitation of the strong by the weak. In Communism, inequality comes from placing mediocrity on a level with excellence.
—Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
Topics: Communism, Socialism
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