Proudhon and the Critique of Property

Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (1809–1865), a self-educated printer and typesetter from Besançon, published Qu'est-ce que la propriété? (What Is Property?) in 1840, opening with the question posed in its title and answering it with the phrase that would define his legacy: "La propriété, c'est le vol" — "Property is theft." Proudhon was the first major political thinker to publicly and proudly call himself an "anarchist," embracing a word that had previously functioned only as an insult meaning chaos or lawlessness. His target, however, was narrower than the slogan suggests: Proudhon carefully distinguished "property" (propriété), understood as a legal right of absolute dominion allowing an owner to extract unearned income — rent, interest, profit — from an asset without laboring on it, from "possession," the legitimate right to use and control resources tied directly to one's own labor and need, which he explicitly defended and never sought to abolish.