What Is Property?
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
[1840 / Part 1 of 16]
PREFACE
The following letter served as a preface to the
first edition of this memoir: --
"To the Members of the Academy of Besançon.
"PARIS, June 30, 1840.
"When I solicited your votes, I boldly
avowed my intention to bend my efforts to the discovery of some
means of ameliorating the physical, moral, and intellectual
condition of the mere numerous and poorer classes. This idea,
foreign as it may have seemed to the object of my candidacy, you
received favorably; and, by the precious distinction with which it
has been your pleasure to honor me, you changed this formal offer
into an inviolable and sacred obligation. Thenceforth I understood
with how worthy and honorable a society I had to deal: my regard for
its enlightenment, my recognition of its benefits, my enthusiasm for
its glory, were unbounded.
"Since that time, metaphysics and moral
science have been my only studies; my perception of the fact that
these sciences, though badly defined as to their object and not
confined to their sphere, are, like the natural sciences,
susceptible of demonstration and certainty, has already rewarded my
efforts.
"But, gentlemen, of all the masters whom I
have followed, to none do I owe so much as to you. Your
co-operation, your programmes, your instructions, in agreement with
my secret wishes and most cherished hopes, have at no time failed to
enlighten me and to point out my road; this memoir on property is
the child of your thought.
"In 1839, your programme, always original
and varied in its academical expression, became more exact. The
investigations of 1838 had pointed out, as the causes or rather as
the symptoms of the social malady, the neglect of the principles of
religion and morality, the desire for wealth, the passion for
enjoyment, and political disturbances. All these data were embodied
by you in a single proposition: The utility of the celebration
of Sunday as regards hygiene, morality, and social and political
relations.
"In a Christian tongue you asked,
gentlemen, what was the true system of society. A competitor dared
to maintain, and believed that he had proved, that the institution
of a day of rest at weekly intervals is inseparably bound up with a
political system based on the equality of conditions; that without
equality this institution is an anomaly and an impossibility: that
equality alone can revive this ancient and mysterious keeping of the
seventh day. This argument did not meet with your approbation,
since, without denying the relation pointed out by the competitor,
you judged, and rightly gentlemen, that the principle of equality of
conditions not being demonstrated, the ideas of the author were
nothing more than hypotheses.
"Finally, gentlemen, this fundamental
principle of equality you presented for competition in the following
terms: The economical and moral consequences in France up to the
present time, and those which seem likely to appear in future, of
the law concerning the equal division of hereditary property between
the children.
"Instead of confining one to common places
without breadth or significance, it seems to me that your question
should be developed as follows: --
"If the law has been able to render the
right of heredity common to all the children of one father, can it
not render it equal for all his grandchildren and
great-grandchildren?
"If the law no longer heeds the age of any
member of the family, can it not, by the right of heredity, cease to
heed it in the race, in the tribe, in the nation?
"Can equality, by the right of succession,
be preserved between citizens, as well as between cousins and
brothers? In a word, can the principle of succession become a
principle of equality?
"To sum up all these ideas in one inclusive
question: What is the principle of heredity? What are the
foundations of inequality? What is property?
"Such, gentlemen, is the object of the
memoir that I offer you to day.
"I have spoken lightly of jurisprudence: I
had the right; but I should be unjust did I not distinguish between
this pretended science and the men who practise it. Devoted to
studies both laborious and severe, entitled in all respects to the
esteem of their fellow-citizens by their knowledge and eloquence our
legists deserve but one reproach, that of an excessive deference to
arbitrary laws.
"I have been pitiless in my criticism of
the economists: for them I confess that, in general, I have no
liking. The arrogance and the emptiness of their writings, their
impertinent pride and their unwarranted blunders, have disgusted me.
Whoever, knowing them, pardons them, may read them.
"I have severely blamed the learned
Christian Church: it was my duty. This blame results from the facts
which I call attention to: why has the Church decreed concerning
things which it does not understand? The Church has erred in dogma
and in morals; physics and mathematics testify against her. It may
be wrong for me to say it, but surely it is unfortunate for
Christianity that it is true. To restore religion, gentlemen, it is
necessary to condemn the Church.
"May you, gentlemen, desire equality as I
myself desire it; may you, for the eternal happiness of our country,
become its propagators and its heralds; may I be the last of your
pensioners! Of all the wishes that I can frame, that, gentlemen, is
the most worthy of you and the most honorable for me.
"I am, with the profoundest respect and the
most earnest gratitude,
"Your pensioner,
"P. J. PROUDHON."
... To gain the victory for one's cause, it does not suffice
simply to overthrow a principle generally recognized, which has the
indisputable merit of systematically recapitulating our political
theories; it is also necessary to establish the opposite principle,
and to formulate the system which must proceed from it. Still
further, it is necessary to show the method by which the new system
will satisfy all the moral and political needs which induced the
establishment of the first. On the following conditions, then, of
subsequent evidence, depends the correctness of my preceding
arguments: --
The discovery of a system of absolute equality
in which all existing institutions, save property, or the sum of the
abuses of property, not only may find a place, but may themselves
serve as instruments of equality: individual liberty, the division
of power, the public ministry, the jury system, administrative and
judicial organization, the unity and completeness of instruction,
marriage, the family, heredity in direct and collateral succession,
the right of sale and exchange, the right to make a will, and even
birthright, -- a system which, better than property, guarantees the
formation of capital and keeps up the courage of all; which, from a
superior point of view, explains, corrects, and completes the
theories of association hitherto proposed, from Plato and Pythagoras
to Babeuf, Saint Simon, and Fourier; a system, finally, which,
serving as a means of transition, is immediately applicable.
A work so vast requires, I am aware, the united
efforts of twenty Montesquieus; nevertheless, if it is not given to
a single man to finish, a single one can commence, the enterprise.
The road that he shall traverse will suffice to show the end and
assure the result.
FIRST MEMOIR
CHAPTER I.
METHOD PURSUED IN THIS WORK.
-- THE IDEA OF A REVOLUTION.
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 to show that the power to take
from a man his thought, his will, his personality, is a power of
life and death; and that to enslave a man is to kill him. 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?
I undertake to discuss the vital principle of
our government and our institutions, property: I am in my right. I
may be mistaken in the conclusion which shall result from my
investigations: I am in my right. I think best to place the last
thought of my book first: still am I in my right.
Such an author teaches that property is a civil
right, born of occupation and sanctioned by law; another maintains
that it is a natural right, originating in labor, -- and both of
these doctrines, totally opposed as they may seem, are encouraged
and applauded. I contend that neither labor, nor occupation, nor
law, can create property; that it is an effect without a cause: am I
censurable?
But murmurs arise!
Property is robbery! That is the war-cry
of '93! That is the signal of revolutions!
Reader, calm yourself: I am no agent of discord,
no firebrand of sedition. I anticipate history by a few days; I
disclose a truth whose development we may try in vain to arrest; I
write the preamble of our future constitution. This proposition
which seems to you blasphemous -- property is robbery --
would, if our prejudices allowed us to consider it, be recognized as
the lightning-rod to shield us from the coming thunderbolt; but too
many interests stand in the way! . . . Alas! philosophy will not
change the course of events: destiny will fulfill itself regardless
of prophecy. Besides, must not justice be done and our education be
finished?
Property is robbery! . . . What a
revolution in human ideas! Proprietor and robber
have been at all times expressions as contradictory as the beings
whom they designate are hostile; all languages have perpetuated this
opposition. On what authority, then, do you venture to attack
universal consent, and give the lie to the human race? Who are you,
that you should question the judgment of the nations and the ages?
Disregard then, reader, my title and my
character, and attend only to my arguments. It is in accordance with
universal consent that I undertake to correct universal error; from
the opinion of the human race I appeal to its faith.
Have the courage to follow me; and, if your will is untrammelled, if
your conscience is free, if your mind can unite two propositions and
deduce a third therefrom, my ideas will inevitably become yours. ...
Nevertheless, I build no system. I ask an end to
privilege, the abolition of slavery, equality of rights, and the
reign of law. Justice, nothing else; that is the alpha and omega of
my argument: to others I leave the business of governing the world.
One day I asked myself: Why is there so much
sorrow and misery in society? Must man always be wretched? And not
satisfied with the explanations given by the reformers, -- these
attributing the general distress to governmental cowardice and
incapacity, those to conspirators and émeutes, still
others to ignorance and general corruption, -- and weary of the
interminable quarrels of the tribune and the press, I sought to
fathom the matter myself. I have consulted the masters of science; I
have read a hundred volumes of philosophy, law, political economy,
and history: would to God that I had lived in a century in which so
much reading had been useless! ... But I must say that I recognized
at once that we had never understood the meaning of these words, so
common and yet so sacred: Justice, equity, liberty; that
concerning each of these principles our ideas have been utterly
obscure; and, in fact, that this ignorance was the sole cause, both
of the poverty that devours us, and of all the calamities that have
ever afflicted the human race.
I resolved then to test my arguments; and in
entering upon this new labor I sought an answer to the following
questions: Is it possible that humanity can have been so long and so
universally mistaken in the application of moral principles? How and
why could it be mistaken? How can its error, being universal, be
capable of correction?
These questions, on the solution of which
depended the certainty of my conclusions, offered no lengthy
resistance to analysis. It will be seen, in chapter V. of this work,
that in morals, as in all other branches of knowledge, the gravest
errors are the dogmas of science; that, even in works of justice, to
be mistaken is a privilege which ennobles man; and that whatever
philosophical merit may attach to me is infinitely small. To name a
thing is easy: the difficulty is to discern it before its
appearance. In giving expression to the last stage of an idea, -- an
idea which permeates all minds, which to-morrow will be proclaimed
by another if I fail to announce it to-day, -- I can claim no merit
save that of priority of utterance. Do we eulogize the man who first
perceives the dawn?
Yes: all men believe and repeat that equality of
conditions is identical with equality of rights; that property
and robbery are synonymous terms; that every social
advantage accorded, or rather usurped, in the name of superior
talent or service, is iniquity and extortion. All men in their
hearts, I say, bear witness to these truths; they need only to be
made to understand it.
Before entering directly upon the question
before me, I must say a word of the road that I shall traverse. When
Pascal approached a geometrical problem, he invented a method of
solution; to solve a problem in philosophy a method is equally
necessary. Well, by how much do the problems of which philosophy
treats surpass in the gravity of their results those discussed by
geometry! How much more imperatively, then, do they demand for their
solution a profound and rigorous analysis!
I confess that I disbelieve in the innateness,
not only of ideas, but also of forms or laws
of our understanding; and I hold the metaphysics of Reid and Kant to
be still farther removed from the truth than that of Aristotle. ...
But it is a psychological fact none the less
true, and one to which the philosophers have paid too little
attention, that habit, like a second nature, has the power of fixing
in the mind new categorical forms derived from the appearances which
impress us, and by them usually stripped of objective reality, but
whose influence over our judgments is no less predetermining than
that of the original categories. Hence we reason by the eternal
and absolute laws of our mind, and at the same time by the
secondary rules, ordinarily faulty, which are suggested to us by
imperfect observation. This is the most fecund source of false
prejudices, and the permanent and often invincible cause of a
multitude of errors. The bias resulting from these prejudices is so
strong that often, even when we are fighting against a principle
which our mind thinks false, which is repugnant to our reason, and
which our conscience disapproves, we defend it without knowing it,
we reason in accordance with it, and we obey it while attacking it.
Enclosed within a circle, our mind revolves about itself, until a
new observation, creating within us new ideas, brings to view an
external principle which delivers us from the phantom by which our
imagination is possessed.
If we pass now from physical nature to the moral
world, we still find ourselves subject to the same deceptions of
appearance, to the same influences of spontaneity and habit. But the
distinguishing feature of this second division of our knowledge is,
on the one hand, the good or the evil which we derive from our
opinions; and, on the other, the obstinacy with which we defend the
prejudice which is tormenting and killing us.
Whatever theory we embrace in regard to the
shape of the earth and the cause of its weight, the physics of the
globe does not suffer; and, as for us, our social economy can derive
therefrom neither profit nor damage. But it is in us and through us
that the laws of our moral nature work; now, these laws cannot be
executed without our deliberate aid, and, consequently, unless we
know them. If, then, our science of moral laws is false, it is
evident that, while desiring our own good, we are accomplishing our
own evil; if it is only incomplete, it may suffice for a time for
our social progress, but in the long run it will lead us into a
wrong road, and will finally precipitate us into an abyss of
calamities.
Then it is that we need to exercise our highest
judgments; and, be it said to our glory, they are never found
wanting: but then also commences a furious struggle between old
prejudices and new ideas. Days of conflagration and anguish! We are
told of the time when, with the same beliefs, with the same
institutions, all the world seemed happy: why complain of these
beliefs; why banish these institutions? We are slow to admit that
that happy age served the precise purpose of developing the
principle of evil which lay dormant in society; we accuse men and
gods, the powers of earth and the forces of Nature. Instead of
seeking the cause of the evil in his mind and heart, man blames his
masters, his rivals, his neighbors, and himself; nations arm
themselves, and slay and exterminate each other, until equilibrium
is restored by the vast depopulation, and peace again arises from
the ashes of the combatants. So loath is humanity to touch the
customs of its ancestors, and to change the laws framed by the
founders of communities, and confirmed by the faithful observance of
the ages.
Seeing the misery of my age, I said to myself:
Among the principles that support society, there is one which it
does not understand, which its ignorance has vitiated, and which
causes all the evil that exists. This principle is the most ancient
of all; for it is a characteristic of revolutions to tear down the
most modern principles, and to respect those of long-standing. Now
the evil by which we suffer is anterior to all revolutions. This
principle, impaired by our ignorance, is honored and cherished; for
if it were not cherished it would harm nobody, it would be without
influence.
But this principle, right in its purpose, but
misunderstood: this principle, as old as humanity, what is it? Can
it be religion?
All men believe in God: this dogma belongs at
once to their conscience and their mind. To humanity God is a fact
as primitive, an idea as inevitable, a principle as necessary as are
the categorical ideas of cause, substance, time, and space to our
understanding. God is proven to us by the conscience prior to any
inference of the mind; just as the sun is proven to us by the
testimony of the senses prior to all the arguments of physics. We
discover phenomena and laws by observation and experience; only this
deeper sense reveals to us existence. Humanity believes that God is;
but, in believing in God, what does it believe? In a word, what is
God?
... Such was the origin of the corruption of morals by religion,
and the source of pious feuds and holy wars. Thank Heaven! we have
learned to allow every one his own beliefs; we seek for moral laws
outside the pale of religion. Instead of legislating as to the
nature and attributes of God, the dogmas of theology, and the
destiny of our souls, we wisely wait for science to tell us what to
reject and what to accept. God, soul, religion, -- eternal objects
of our unwearied thought and our most fatal aberrations, terrible
problems whose solution, for ever attempted, for ever remains
unaccomplished, -- concerning all these questions we may still be
mistaken, but at least our error is harmless. With liberty in
religion, and the separation of the spiritual from the temporal
power, the influence of religious ideas upon the progress of society
is purely negative; no law, no political or civil institution being
founded on religion. Neglect of duties imposed by religion may
increase the general corruption, but it is not the primary cause; it
is only an auxiliary or result. It is universally admitted, and
especially in the matter which now engages our attention, that the
cause of the inequality of conditions among men -- of pauperism, of
universal misery, and of governmental embarrassments -- can no
longer be traced to religion: we must go farther back, and dig still
deeper.
But what is there in man older and deeper than
the religious sentiment?
There is man himself; that is, volition and
conscience, free-will and law, eternally antagonistic. Man is at war
with himself: why?
"The consequences of Adam's transgression
are inherited by the race; the first is ignorance." Truly, the
race, like the individual, is born ignorant; but, in regard to a
multitude of questions, even in the moral and political spheres,
this ignorance of the race has been dispelled: who says that it will
not depart altogether? Mankind makes continual progress toward
truth, and light ever triumphs over darkness. Our disease is not,
then, absolutely incurable, and the theory of the theologians is
worse than inadequate; it is ridiculous, since it is reducible to
this tautology: "Man errs, because he errs." While the
true statement is this: "Man errs, because he learns."
Now, if man arrives at a knowledge of all that he needs to know, it
is reasonable to believe that, ceasing to err, he will cease to
suffer.
But if we question the doctors as to this law,
said to be engraved upon the heart of man, we shall immediately see
that they dispute about a matter of which they know nothing; that,
concerning the most important questions, there are almost as many
opinions as authors; that we find no two agreeing as to the best
form of government, the principle of authority, and the nature of
right; that all sail hap-hazard upon a shoreless and bottomless sea,
abandoned to the guidance of their private opinions which they
modestly take to be right reason. And, in view of this medley of
contradictory opinions, we say: "The object of our
investigations is the law, the determination of the social
principle. Now, the politicians, that is, the social scientists, do
not understand each other; then the error lies in themselves; and,
as every error has a reality for its object, we must look in their
books to find the truth which they have unconsciously deposited
there."
Now, of what do the lawyers and the publicists
treat? Of justice, equity, liberty, natural law, civil laws,
&c. But what is justice? What is its principle, its character,
its formula? To this question our doctors evidently have no reply;
for otherwise their science, starting with a principle clear and
well defined, would quit the region of probabilities, and all
disputes would end.
What is justice? The theologians answer: "All
justice comes from God." That is true; but we know no more than
before.
The philosophers ought to be better informed:
they have argued so much about justice and injustice! Unhappily, an
examination proves that their knowledge amounts to nothing, and that
with them -- as with the savages whose every prayer to the sun is
simply O! O! -- it is a cry of admiration, love, and
enthusiasm; ...
All the most reasonable teachings of human
wisdom concerning justice are summed up in that famous adage: Do
unto others that which you would that others should do unto you; Do
not unto others that which you would not that others should do unto
you. But this rule of moral practice is unscientific: what have
I a right to wish that others should do or not do to me? It is of no
use to tell me that my duty is equal to my right, unless I am told
at the same time what my right is.
Let us try to arrive at something more precise
and positive.
Justice is the central star which governs
societies, the pole around which the political world revolves, the
principle and the regulator of all transactions. Nothing takes place
between men save in the name of right; nothing without the
invocation of justice. Justice is not the work of the law: on the
contrary, the law is only a declaration and application of justice
in all circumstances where men are liable to come in contact. If,
then, the idea that we form of justice and right were ill-defined,
if it were imperfect or even false, it is clear that all our
legislative applications would be wrong, our institutions vicious,
our politics erroneous: consequently there would be disorder and
social chaos.
This hypothesis of the perversion of justice in
our minds, and, as a necessary result, in our acts, becomes a
demonstrated fact when it is shown that the opinions of men have not
borne a constant relation to the notion of justice and its
applications; that at different periods they have undergone
modifications: in a word, that there has been progress in ideas.
Now, that is what history proves by the most overwhelming testimony.
Religion, laws, marriage, were the privileges of
freemen, and, in the beginning, of nobles only. ...
The monsters which the successors of the
apostles were bent on destroying, frightened for a moment,
reappeared gradually, thanks to the crazy fanaticism, and sometimes
the deliberate connivance, of priests and theologians. The history
of the enfranchisement of the French communes offers constantly the
spectacle of the ideas of justice and liberty spreading among the
people, in spite of the combined efforts of kings, nobles, and
clergy. In the year 1789 of the Christian era, the French nation,
divided by caste, poor and oppressed, struggled in the triple net of
royal absolutism, the tyranny of nobles and parliaments, and
priestly intolerance. There was the right of the king and the right
of the priest, the right of the patrician and the right of the
plebeian; there were the privileges of birth, province, communes,
corporations, and trades; and, at the bottom of all, violence,
immorality, and misery. For some time they talked of reformation;
those who apparently desired it most favoring it only for their own
profit, and the people who were to be the gainers expecting little
and saying nothing. For a long time these poor people, either from
distrust, incredulity, or despair, hesitated to ask for their
rights: it is said that the habit of serving had taken the courage
away from those old communes, which in the middle ages were so bold.
When our ideas on any subject, material,
intellectual, or social, undergo a thorough change in consequence of
new observations, I call that movement of the mind revolution.
If the ideas are simply extended or modified, there is only progress.
Thus the system of Ptolemy was a step in astronomical progress, that
of Copernicus was a revolution. So, in 1789, there was struggle and
progress; revolution there was none. An examination of the reforms
which were attempted proves this.
The nation, so long a victim of monarchical
selfishness.
... But what was monarchy? The sovereignty of one man. What is
democracy? The sovereignty of the nation, or, rather, of the
national majority. But it is, in both cases, the sovereignty of man
instead of the sovereignty of the law, the sovereignty of the will
instead of the sovereignty of the reason; in one word, the passions
instead of justice. Undoubtedly, when a nation passes from the
monarchical to the democratic state, there is progress, because in
multiplying the sovereigns we increase the opportunities of the
reason to substitute itself for the will; but in reality there is no
revolution in the government, since the principle remains the same.
Now, we have the proof to-day that, with the most perfect democracy,
we cannot be free.
Nor is that all. The nation-king cannot exercise
its sovereignty itself; it is obliged to delegate it to agents: this
is constantly reiterated by those who seek to win its favor. Be
these agents five, ten, one hundred, or a thousand, of what
consequence is the number; and what matters the name? It is always
the government of man, the rule of will and caprice. I ask what this
pretended revolution has revolutionized?
We know, too, how this sovereignty was
exercised; first by the Convention, then by the Directory,
afterwards confiscated by the Consul. As for the Emperor, the strong
man so much adored and mourned by the nation, he never wanted to be
dependent on it; but, as if intending to set its sovereignty at
defiance, he dared to demand its suffrage: that is, its abdication,
the abdication of this inalienable sovereignty; and he obtained it.
But what is sovereignty? It is, they say, the
power to make laws.Another absurdity, a relic of despotism.
The nation had long seen kings issuing their commands in this form:
for such is our pleasure; it wished to taste in its turn the
pleasure of making laws. For fifty years it has brought them forth
by myriads; always, be it understood, through the agency of
representatives. The play is far from ended.
The definition of sovereignty was derived from
the definition of the law. The law, they said, is the expression
of the will of the sovereign: then, under a monarchy, the law is
the expression of the will of the king; in a republic, the law is
the expression of the will of the people. Aside from the difference
in the number of wills, the two systems are exactly identical: both
share the same error, namely, that the law is the expression of a
will; it ought to be the expression of a fact. Moreover they
followed good leaders: they took the citizen of Geneva for their
prophet, and the contrat social for their Koran.
Bias and prejudice are apparent in all the
phrases of the new legislators. The nation had suffered from a
multitude of exclusions and privileges; its representatives issued
the following declaration: All men are equal by nature and
before the law; an ambiguous and redundant declaration. Men
are equal by nature: does that mean that they are equal in size,
beauty, talents, and virtue? No; they meant, then, political and
civil equality. Then it would have been sufficient to have said:
All men are equal before the law. "Sovereignty,"
according to Toullier, "is human omnipotence." A
materialistic definition: if sovereignty is any thing, it is a right
not a force or a faculty. And what is human omnipotence?
The people finally legalized property. God
forgive them, for they knew not what they did! For fifty years they
have suffered for their miserable folly. But how came the people,
whose voice, they tell us, is the voice of God, and whose conscience
is infallible, -- how came the people to err? How happens it that,
when seeking liberty and equality, they fell back into privilege and
slavery? Always through copying the ancient régime.
Formerly, the nobility and the clergy
contributed towards the expenses of the State only by voluntary aid
and gratuitous gift; their property could not be seized even for
debt, -- while the plebeian, overwhelmed by taxes and statute-labor,
was continually tormented, now by the king's tax-gatherers, now by
those of the nobles and clergy. He whose possessions were subject to
mortmain could neither bequeath nor inherit property; he was treated
like the animals, whose services and offspring belong to their
master by right of accession. The people wanted the conditions of
ownership to be alike for all; they thought that every one
should enjoy and freely dispose of his possessions his income
and the fruit of his labor and industry. The people did not invent
property; but as they had not the same privileges in regard to it,
which the nobles and clergy possessed, they decreed that the right
should be exercised by all under the same conditions. The more
obnoxious forms of property -- statute-labor, mortmain, maîtrise,
and exclusion from public office -- have disappeared; the conditions
of its enjoyment have been modified: the principle still remains the
same. There has been progress in the regulation of the right; there
has been no revolution.
These, then, are the three fundamental
principles of modern society, established one after another by the
movements of 1789 and 1830: 1. Sovereignty of the human will;
in short, despotism. 2. Inequality of wealth and rank.
3. Property -- above JUSTICE, always invoked as the guardian
angel of sovereigns, nobles, and proprietors; JUSTICE, the general,
primitive, categorical law of all society.
Is the authority of man over man just?
Everybody answers, "No; the authority of
man is only the authority of the law, which ought to be justice and
truth." The private will counts for nothing in government,
which consists, first, in discovering truth and justice in order to
make the law; and, second, in superintending the execution of this
law. I do not now inquire whether our constitutional form of
government satisfies these conditions; ...
Is political and civil inequality just?
Some say yes; others no. To the first I would
reply that, when the people abolished all privileges of birth and
caste, they did it, in all probability, because it was for their
advantage; why then do they favor the privileges of fortune more
than those of rank and race? Because, say they, political inequality
is a result of property; and without property society is impossible:
thus the question just raised becomes a question of property. To the
second I content myself with this remark: If you wish to enjoy
political equality, abolish property; otherwise, why do you
complain?
Is property just?
Everybody answers without hesitation, "Yes,
property is just." I say everybody, for up to the present time
no one who thoroughly understood the meaning of his words has
answered no. For it is no easy thing to reply understandingly to
such a question; only time and experience can furnish an answer.
Now, this answer is given; it is for us to understand it. I
undertake to prove it.
The first of these chapters will prove that the
right of occupation obstructs property; the second that the
right of labor destroys it.
II. Property, then, being of necessity
conceived as existing only in connection with equality, it remains
to find out why, in spite of this necessity of logic, equality does
not exist. ...
