What Is Property?
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
[1840 / Part 3 of 16]
Part 3 / Chapter 2 (continued)
Under whatever form of government we live, it can always be said
that le mort saisit le vif; that is, that inheritance and
succession will last for ever, whoever may be the recognized heir.
But the St. Simonians wish the heir to be designated by the
magistrate; others wish him to be chosen by the deceased, or assumed
by the law to be so chosen: the essential point is that Nature's
wish be satisfied, so far as the law of equality allows. To-day the
real controller of inheritance is chance or caprice; now, in matters
of legislation, chance and caprice cannot be accepted as guides. It
is for the purpose of avoiding the manifold disturbances which
follow in the wake of chance that Nature, after having created us
equal, suggests to us the principle of heredity; which serves as a
voice by which society asks us to choose, from among all our
brothers, him whom we judge best fitted to complete our unfinished
work. The consequences are plain enough, and this is not the time to
criticise the whole Code.
The authority of the human race is of no effect as evidence in
favor of the right of property, because this right, resting of
necessity upon equality, contradicts its principle; the decision of
the religions which have sanctioned it is of no effect, because in
all ages the priest has submitted to the prince, and the gods have
always spoken as the politicians desired; the social advantages,
attributed to property, cannot Zeus klésios. be cited
in its behalf, because they all spring from the principle of
equality of possession.
To sum up and conclude: --
Not only does occupation lead to equality, it prevents
property. For, since every man, from the fact of his existence, has
the right of occupation, and, in order to live, must have material
for cultivation on which he may labor; and since, on the other hand,
the number of occupants varies continually with the births and
deaths, -- it follows that the quantity of material which each
laborer may claim varies with the number of occupants; consequently,
that occupation is always subordinate to population. Finally, that,
inasmuch as possession, in right, can never remain fixed, it is
impossible, in fact, that it can ever become property.
Every occupant is, then, necessarily a possessor or usufructuary,
-- a function which excludes proprietorship. Now, this is the right
of the usufructuary: he is responsible for the thing entrusted to
him; he must use it in conformity with general utility, with a view
to its preservation and development; he has no power to transform
it, to diminish it, or to change its nature; he cannot so divide the
usufruct that another shall perform the labor while he receives the
product. In a word, the usufructuary is under the supervision of
society, submitted to the condition of labor and the law of
equality.
Thus is annihilated the Roman definition of property -- the
right of use and abuse -- an immorality born of violence, the
Giraud, "Investigations into the Right of Property among the
Romans." most monstrous pretension that the civil laws ever
sanctioned. Man receives his usufruct from the hands of society,
which alone is the permanent possessor. The individual passes away,
society is deathless.
All have an equal right of occupancy.
The amount occupied being measured, not by the will, but by
the variable conditions of space and number, property cannot exist.
This no code has ever expressed; this no constitution can admit!
These are axioms which the civil law and the law of nations deny! .
. . . .
But I hear the exclamations of the partisans of another system: "Labor,
labor! that is the basis of property!"
