What Is Property? · Chapter
Fifth Proposition explained
Proudhon argues that property is impossible because it forces society to devour itself.
What happens
Proudhon argues that property is impossible because it forces society to devour itself. Under property, laborers must produce beyond their needs and strength, leading to monopoly, the ejection of workers, and periodic catastrophes. The right of increase prevents laborers from buying back what they produce, causing systemic poverty, idleness, and destruction.
Themes in this chapter
Labor and Exploitation
Laborers must produce beyond their strength and needs, yet cannot repurchase their own products due to property's profit.
Inequality of Wealth
Wages vary widely; the lowest classes are 'stripped naked and eaten alive' by higher ones.
Critique of Law and Government
Proudhon criticizes economists and the legal system that upholds property and usury.
Possession vs. Property
Property's 'right of increase' makes exchange impossible and consumption unequal.
Characters to notice
- Pierre Joseph Proudhon
Author and central voice; argues property leads to societal self-destruction.
- M. Blanqui
Cited as lamenting capitalists' blind ignorance; Proudhon uses him to illustrate economic misunderstanding.
- Tissot
Quoted regarding the Countess of Strafford's evictions; source for example of property's violence.
Key passages
“Society devours itself—1. By the violent and periodical sacrifice of laborers: this we have just seen, and shall see again; 2. By the stoppage of the producer's consumption caused by property.”
Property causes society to destroy itself through both the periodic elimination of workers and the prevention of producers from consuming what they make.
Core thesis of the chapter.
“The laboring people can buy neither the cloth which they weave, nor the furniture which they manufacture, nor the metal which they forge, nor the jewels which they cut, nor the prints which they engrave.”
Workers cannot afford the very goods they produce because property adds a markup beyond their wages.
Illustrates the systemic exclusion of laborers from consumption.
“If the workingman receives for his labor an average of three francs per day, his employer... must sell the day's labor of his employee, in the form of merchandise, for more than three francs. The workingman cannot, then, repurchase that which he has produced for his master.”
Because the employer sells the worker's product at a profit, the worker cannot afford to buy it back.
Mathematical demonstration of property's impossibility.