Both Catholic charity and secular state policies toward the poor are internally contradictory responses to pauperism: the former institutionalizes and encourages mendicity, while the latter simultaneously violates property rights through taxation and commits 'civil death and murder' through banishment and imprisonment.

By Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, from What Is Property?

Key Arguments

  • He states that 'Catholicism founds hospitals and convents, and commands charity; that is, she encourages mendicity. That is the extent of her insight as voiced by her priests,' accusing the Church of perpetuating begging under a moral guise.
  • He describes the 'secular power of Christian nations' as alternately ordering 'taxes on the rich' and 'banishment and imprisonment for the poor,' identifying the first as 'violation of the right of property' and the second as 'civil death and murder.'
  • By juxtaposing these approaches, he suggests that both religious and secular authorities mismanage pauperism: one normalizes it as a permanent object of charity, the other resorts to repression that only deepens injustice and violence.
  • These contradictions further demonstrate, in his view, that as long as property is preserved, institutional responses oscillate between hypocrisy and brutality without touching the root cause.

Source Quotes

From these facts, which I might multiply still farther, two things are to be inferred⁠—the one, that pauperism is independent of population; the other, that all attempts hitherto made at its extermination have proved abortive. Catholicism founds hospitals and convents, and commands charity; that is, she encourages mendicity. That is the extent of her insight as voiced by her priests. The secular power of Christian nations now orders taxes on the rich, now banishment and imprisonment for the poor; that is, on the one hand, violation of the right of property, and, on the other, civil death and murder.
That is the extent of her insight as voiced by her priests. The secular power of Christian nations now orders taxes on the rich, now banishment and imprisonment for the poor; that is, on the one hand, violation of the right of property, and, on the other, civil death and murder. The modern economists⁠—thinking that pauperism is caused by the excess of population, exclusively⁠—have devoted themselves to devising checks.

Key Concepts

  • Catholicism founds hospitals and convents, and commands charity; that is, she encourages mendicity. That is the extent of her insight as voiced by her priests.
  • The secular power of Christian nations now orders taxes on the rich, now banishment and imprisonment for the poor; that is, on the one hand, violation of the right of property, and, on the other, civil death and murder.

Context

Immediately after the historical survey of pauper policies, Proudhon briefly evaluates religious and secular strategies, arguing that both are structurally flawed responses generated by a proprietary society.