What Is Property? · Chapter
§ 3: Civil Law as the Foundation and Sanction of Property explained
Proudhon argues that civil law, rather than nature or justice, created the right of property.
What happens
Proudhon argues that civil law, rather than nature or justice, created the right of property. He critiques legal scholars and legislators for transforming possession into absolute property, which he sees as a fiction that sanctions selfishness and inequality. He contends that occupation and labor only confer usufruct, not ownership, and that true justice requires equality of possession.
Themes in this chapter
Critique of Law and Government
Proudhon attacks civil law for creating property as a fiction, outside natural justice, and for sanctioning selfishness.
Possession vs. Property
The chapter distinguishes between possession (usufruct) and property (absolute ownership), arguing that law wrongly conflates them.
Inequality of Wealth
Proudhon warns that property leads to disastrous exclusions, opulence, and misery, undermining equality.
Labor and Exploitation
Labor is presented as a condition of possession, not a title to property; property exploits the laborer.
Characters to notice
- Pothier
Cited for the maxim that every right supposes a producing cause, yet property lacks such a cause.
- Toullier
Quoted to show how civil law transformed occupation into permanent property, separating property from possession.
- Pierre Joseph Proudhon
Author and central voice, critiquing civil law and property.
Key passages
“They did not foresee, these fathers of our jurisprudence, that, if the right of inheritance is anything other than Nature’s method of preserving equality of wealth, families will soon become victims of the most disastrous exclusions; and society, pierced to the heart by one of its most sacred principles, will come to its death through opulence and misery.”
The legal founders failed to see that inheritance, unless it maintains equality, will cause ruinous exclusions and destroy society through wealth and poverty.
Proudhon criticizes the unintended consequences of inheritance law.
“The law is intended to protect men’s mutual rights—that is, the rights of each against each, and each against all; and, as if a proportion could exist with less than four terms, the lawmakers always disregard the latter.”
Law should balance individual rights against collective rights, but lawmakers ignore the social dimension, creating an incomplete justice.
Proudhon highlights the imbalance in legal reasoning about property.
“Thus the law, in establishing property, has not been the expression of a psychological fact, the development of a natural law, the application of a moral principle. It has literally created a right outside of its own province.”
Property law is not based on nature or morality; it invented a right that exceeds its legitimate scope.
Proudhon condemns civil law for fabricating property rights.