Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

Overview

Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (January 15, 1809 – January 19, 1865) was a French printer, journalist, and self-taught political theorist, born in Besançon. His first major work, Qu'est-ce que la propriété? (What Is Property?, 1840), opened with the declaration "Property is theft!" — an attack on property income (rent, interest, profit) derived from ownership rather than labor.[1] Proudhon distinguished this exploitative "property" from mere "possession" — the right to use and hold what one occupies and works — which he regarded as legitimate and essential to liberty; he is widely credited as the first person to call himself an anarchist, and became a leading theorist of mutualism.[1]

Proudhon's slogan places him at one pole of the property-rights argument that runs from John Locke's natural-rights defense of private ownership at one extreme to full common ownership at the other. Georgism is often read as occupying a middle position on land specifically: it rejects Proudhon's blanket condemnation of property as such, but agrees that unearned income from exclusive control of a fixed natural resource is illegitimate and should be publicly reclaimed — a narrower, land-specific version of his complaint against unproductive property income.[2] Ryan-Collins, Lloyd, and Macfarlane discuss Proudhon alongside Locke, Paine, Marx, and Mill as one of the pre-Georgist voices in the long European debate over the moral status of land ownership.[2]

See Also

• John Locke — the natural-rights defense of property Proudhon's slogan directly opposes
• Thomas Paine — another critic of exclusive land ownership, but from a compensation-based rather than abolitionist position
• Land Monopoly — the Georgist framing of the narrower, land-specific version of Proudhon's complaint
• Single Tax — the Georgist reform Proudhon's full critique of property is sometimes contrasted against

Sources

1. "Pierre-Joseph Proudhon," Wikipedia — used for the biography (birth/death, What Is Property?, the "property is theft" slogan, the property/possession distinction, and his status as the first self-declared anarchist; basic facts, verified this session).
2. Josh Ryan-Collins, Toby Lloyd & Laurie Macfarlane, Rethinking the Economics of Land and Housing, Zed Books, 2017, Ch. 2 §2.5, Ch. 3 §3.2 — used for Proudhon's place among the historical property-rights theorists the book surveys alongside Locke, Paine, Marx, and Mill, and for the discovery locator. Wiki summary