What Is Property? · Concept
Labor and Exploitation
Explores how labor is the source of all value, yet property enables the exploitation of workers by allowing proprietors to claim the fruits of others' labor without contributing equally.
Explores how labor is the source of all value, yet property enables the exploitation of workers by allowing proprietors to claim the fruits of others' labor without contributing equally.
The chapter discusses Proudhon's view that labor leads to equality, not property, and his analysis of economic categories like competition and monopoly.
Labor is presented as a condition of possession, not a title to property; property exploits the laborer.
Proudhon argues that labor cannot justify property without leading to exploitation and the need for restitution.
Proudhon argues that labor does not create property in the means of production, only in products, and that the laborer's reward is the product, not the land itself.
Characters
Chapters
- P. J. Proudhon
- § 3: Civil Law as the Foundation and Sanction of Property
- III
- § 4: Labor
- § 5: That Labor Leads to Equality of Property
- § 6: That in Society All Wages Are Equal
- § 7: That Inequality of Powers Is the Necessary Condition of Equality of Fortunes
- § 8: That, from the Standpoint of Justice, Labor Destroys Property