Pierre Joseph Proudhon

Pierre Joseph Proudhon (1809-1865) was a French Socialist, born at Besançon, the son of a cooper. He worked in a printing establishment, spent his spare hours in study, specially of the social problem, and in 1840 published a work entitled "What is Property?" and in which he boldly enunciated the startling proposition, "Property is theft". For the publication of this thesis he was at first unmolested, and only with its application was he called to account, and for which at last, in 1849, he was committed to prison, where, however, he kept himself busy with his pen, and whence he from time to time emitted socialistic publications till his release in 1852, after which he was in 1858 compelled to flee the country, to return again under an act of amnesty in 1860 and die. He was not only the assailant of property, but of government itself, and preached anarchy as the goal of all social progress and not the starting-point, as so many unfortunately fancy. However, by anarchy, it would seem, he meant the right of government spiritually free, and, in the Christian sense of that expression, to exemption from all external control (see I Tim. i. 9).

Wisdom & Quotes

• The law does not generate justice. The law is nothing but a declaration and application of what is just.

- De la justice dans la revolution

• I will have no laws. I will acknowledge none. I protest against every law which an authority calling itself necessary imposes upon my free will.

- Idee generale de la revolution

• La propriete c'est le vol.

Property is theft.
- Qu'est-ce que la Propriete?

Abraham Lincoln