Encyclopedia > What is Property?

  Article Content

What is Property?

The 19th century French anarchist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon declared that "Property is theft", as well as "Property is Freedom" in his missive What is Property? Or, an Inquiry into the Principle of Right of Government.

Proudhon also claimed that "Property is impossible." Although he was a socialist, he rejected communitarianism and believed that individual possession -- which he distinguished from private property -- was necessary both for liberty and for an efficient economy.

Unfortunately, as Douglas Adams later pointed out in The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, adhering to this basic premise can be an excellent way to justify stealing...

"Property is theft, right? Therefore theft is property, therefore this [insert stolen item here] is mine..."

please write more on "Property is Theft" and the nature of private property

External links



All Wikipedia text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License

 
  Search Encyclopedia

Search over one million articles, find something about almost anything!
 
 
  
  Featured Article
Father Damien

... he contracted the disease, from which he died at the colony. He is the patron of lepers and outcasts, and was recently made the patron of AIDS patients. The world's ...

 
 
 
This page was created in 34.9 ms