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What Is Property? · Chapters

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Chapter companions for What Is Property? by Pierre-Joseph Proudhon.

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  1. Chapter 1

    P. J. Proudhon

    This chapter provides a biographical and intellectual overview of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, tracing his development from early influences like Adam Smith through his major works including 'What is Property?', 'System of Economical Contradictions', and 'War and Peace'. It details his legal troubles, his engagement with Hegelian ideas via Charles Grün, his theories on antinomy, federalism, and equilibrium, and his later political writings on Italian unity and taxation. The chapter concludes with his death in 1865 and the posthumous publication of his works.

  2. Chapter 2

    What Is Property?

    Proudhon introduces his central inquiry into the nature and legitimacy of property, arguing that property is fundamentally unjust and incompatible with true equality and justice. He critiques existing legal and philosophical justifications for property, laying the groundwork for his anarchist critique.

  3. Chapter 3

    First Memoir

    The First Memoir opens with an epigraph from the Law of the Twelve Tables, setting a tone of eternal opposition against the enemy. The chapter likely begins Proudhon's inquiry into the nature and legitimacy of property, framing it as a fundamental social and legal question.

  4. Chapter 4

    I

    Proudhon introduces his central thesis that property is robbery, framing it as a revolutionary truth that will reshape society. He outlines his method: to examine property through the lens of justice, showing that arguments for property inevitably lead to equality and thus negate property itself. He distinguishes between legitimate possession and unjust property, and previews his investigation into occupation, labor, and the impossibility of property as an institution.

  5. Chapter 5

    II

    Proudhon examines property as a natural right, contrasting Roman and French legal definitions that grant absolute domain. He distinguishes property (a legal right) from possession (a matter of fact), introducing the concepts of jus in re and jus ad rem, and frames his memoir as an action petitoire against property itself, demanding its abolition rather than redistribution.

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  1. Chapter 6§ 1: Property as a Natural Right
  2. Chapter 7§ 2: Occupation, as the Title to Property
  3. Chapter 8§ 3: Civil Law as the Foundation and Sanction of Property
  4. Chapter 9III
  5. Chapter 10§ 1: The Land Cannot Be Appropriated
  6. Chapter 11§ 2: Universal Consent No Justification of Property
  7. Chapter 12§ 3: Prescription Gives No Title to Property
  8. Chapter 13§ 4: Labor
  9. Chapter 14§ 5: That Labor Leads to Equality of Property
  10. Chapter 15§ 6: That in Society All Wages Are Equal
  11. Chapter 16§ 7: That Inequality of Powers Is the Necessary Condition of Equality of Fortunes
  12. Chapter 17§ 8: That, from the Standpoint of Justice, Labor Destroys Property
  13. Chapter 18IV
  14. Chapter 19Demonstration
  15. Chapter 20First Proposition
  16. Chapter 21Second Proposition
  17. Chapter 22Third Proposition
  18. Chapter 23Fourth Proposition
  19. Chapter 24Fifth Proposition
  20. Chapter 25Sixth Proposition
  21. Chapter 26Seventh Proposition
  22. Chapter 27Eighth Proposition
  23. Chapter 28Ninth Proposition
  24. Chapter 29Tenth Proposition
  25. Chapter 30V
  26. Chapter 31§ 1 Of the Moral Sense in Man and the Animals
  27. Chapter 32§ 2
  28. Chapter 33§ 3
  29. Chapter 34§ 1
  30. Chapter 35§ 2 Characteristics of Communism and of Property
  31. Chapter 36Determination of the Third Form of Society. Conclusion.
  32. Chapter 37Second Memoir: A Letter to M. Blanqui
  33. Chapter 38Endnotes