Key Arguments

• He introduces these theses as simple propositions that will defeat prejudice: 'What sophisms, indeed, what prejudices (however obstinate) can stand before the simplicity of the following propositions:'
• Proposition I distinguishes possession from property and calls property 'the suicide of society': 'Individual possession is the condition of social life; five thousand years of property demonstrate it. Property is the suicide of society. Possession is a right; property is against right. Suppress property while maintaining possession, and, by this simple modification of the principle, you will revolutionize law, government, economy, and institutions; you will drive evil from the face of the earth.'
• Proposition II ties occupancy to number of possessors and denies stable property: 'All having an equal right of occupancy, possession varies with the number of possessors; property cannot establish itself.'
• Propositions III and IV make labor and collective force incompatible with private property: 'The effect of labor being the same for all, property is lost in the common prosperity. All human labor being the result of collective force, all property becomes, in consequence, collective and unitary. To speak more exactly, labor destroys property.'
• Proposition V treats labor capacity as collective capital, making unequal wages based on capacity unjust: 'Every capacity for labor being, like every instrument of labor, an accumulated capital, and a collective property, inequality of wages and fortunes (on the ground of inequality of capacities) is, therefore, injustice and robbery.'
• Proposition VI defines just commerce by liberty and equivalence, inferring equal wages: 'The necessary conditions of commerce are the liberty of the contracting parties and the equivalence of the products exchanged. Now, value being expressed by the amount of time and outlay which each product costs, and liberty being inviolable, the wages of laborers (like their rights and duties) should be equal.'
• Proposition VII asserts that profit contradicts true exchange and that abolishing profit would eradicate social ills: 'Products are bought only by products. Now, the condition of all exchange being equivalence of products, profit is impossible and unjust. Observe this elementary principle of economy, and pauperism, luxury, oppression, vice, crime, and hunger will disappear from our midst.'
• Proposition VIII grounds association and equality in the objective laws of production, relegating esteem and related sentiments to proportional, non‑material law: 'Men are associated by the physical and mathematical law of production, before they are voluntarily associated by choice. Therefore, equality of conditions is demanded by justice; that is, by strict social law: esteem, friendship, gratitude, admiration, all fall within the domain of equitable or proportional law only.'
• Proposition IX defines free association/liberty as the only just social form: 'Free association, liberty⁠—whose sole function is to maintain equality in the means of production and equivalence in exchanges⁠—is the only possible, the only just, the only true form of society.'
• Proposition X defines politics accordingly and reaffirms the anarchy‑order synthesis: 'Politics is the science of liberty. The government of man by man (under whatever name it be disguised) is oppression. Society finds its highest perfection in the union of order with anarchy.'

Source Quotes

Individual possession39 is the condition of social life; five thousand years of property demonstrate it. Property is the suicide of society. Possession is a right; property is against right. Suppress property while maintaining possession, and, by this simple modification of the principle, you will revolutionize law, government, economy, and institutions; you will drive evil from the face of the earth.

II. All having an equal right of occupancy, possession varies with the number of possessors; property cannot establish itself. III.

IV. All human labor being the result of collective force, all property becomes, in consequence, collective and unitary. To speak more exactly, labor destroys property. V.

V. Every capacity for labor being, like every instrument of labor, an accumulated capital, and a collective property, inequality of wages and fortunes (on the ground of inequality of capacities) is, therefore, injustice and robbery. VI.

Products are bought only by products. Now, the condition of all exchange being equivalence of products, profit is impossible and unjust. Observe this elementary principle of economy, and pauperism, luxury, oppression, vice, crime, and hunger will disappear from our midst.

IX. Free association, liberty⁠—whose sole function is to maintain equality in the means of production and equivalence in exchanges⁠—is the only possible, the only just, the only true form of society. X.

X. Politics is the science of liberty. The government of man by man (under whatever name it be disguised) is oppression.

The government of man by man (under whatever name it be disguised) is oppression. Society finds its highest perfection in the union of order with anarchy. The old civilization has run its race; a new sun is rising, and will soon renew the face of the earth.

Key Concepts

• Property is the suicide of society. Possession is a right; property is against right.
• All having an equal right of occupancy, possession varies with the number of possessors; property cannot establish itself.
• All human labor being the result of collective force, all property becomes, in consequence, collective and unitary. To speak more exactly, labor destroys property.
• inequality of wages and fortunes (on the ground of inequality of capacities) is, therefore, injustice and robbery.
• profit is impossible and unjust.
• Free association, liberty⁠—whose sole function is to maintain equality in the means of production and equivalence in exchanges⁠—is the only possible, the only just, the only true form of society.
• Politics is the science of liberty.
• Society finds its highest perfection in the union of order with anarchy.

Context

Part II, closing section of the treatise, where Proudhon claims to have 'accomplished my task' and condenses his entire argument against property and for liberty/anarchy into ten axiomatic propositions.