Description
Property is Theft a phrase which has passed into common parlance was the rallying call of PierreJoseph Proudhons political treatise What Is Property Proudhon 18091865 was both admired and excoriated A political theorist of the first order he was vilified in his native France by the Communists and the Monarchists alike though admired by Karl Marx as well as many in the nations academia and judiciary who valued the clarity of his thought and analytical method
He criticised both Right and Left the very definition of French political thinking describing them as two sides of the same coin Their solutions to societys ills he said were like Thesis and Antithesis based on a common error and both inadequate to the task of healing society He offered instead a third way which he called his Synthesis Regarded as the founder of modern Anarchism his aim was not to engender chaos as the word anarchy often connotes but to suggest a workable political and economic foundation for society which would promote order and equity for all under the most unfettered conditions of individual liberty
Proudhon grew up in poverty and was home schooled as a child but received a bursary in his youth sufficient to allow him to attend the City College in his home town though not sufficient it seems to buy him shoes There he discovered the library which introduced him to a world classical and contemporary previously denied him Lacking wealth or contacts he worked variously as a printer a compositor and proofreader by day and an essayist by night learning Latin along the way to assist in his work In 1830 a friend a scholar invited Proudhon to join him in Paris to pursue his philosophical writings full time When a cholera outbreak forced his return home Proudhon spent the next few years juggling his two careers In 1839 he applied for a pension bursary at the Academy of Besanon which obliged him to write works on its behalf
What Is Property published in France in 1840 was his first It was so controversial that little else followed However it established his reputation and he was eventually able to pursue his philosophical work full time What Is Property First Memoir attempts to uncover the roots of poverty and associated social ills and examines different attitudes to poverty and wealth from the Greeks to the present day Proudhon quickly identifies a common thread property which he distinguishes from possession and argues that only a fundamental though gradual abandonment of property as an asset and all that flows from it can rescue society from its current conflicts The memoir seeks to illuminate the underlying causes of war poverty slavery and oppression and points the way to a solution In effect it is a practical manual for the survival of mankind The Second Memoir 1841 included on this recording is Proudhons response to the criticisms of the First Memoir initially uncomprehending and then selfassured by turns What Is Property is Proudhons masterwork It divides opinion but no one who hears it can come away with their view of their own world unchanged
Translation Benjamin R Tucker
Reviews
There are no reviews yet.