Key Arguments

• He compares proprietors under interrogation to a criminal evading justice, emphasizing their rhetorical shifts and evasions: "Reader, were you ever present at the examination of a criminal? Have you watched his tricks, his turns, his evasions, his distinctions, his equivocations?… So acts the proprietor when called upon to defend his right."
• He describes the proprietor’s first line of defense as a barrage of traditional titles—occupation, possession, custom, consent—before retreating to labor: "he arms himself with chicanery, he surrounds himself with formidable artillery⁠—crossing his fire, opposing one by one and all together occupation, possession, limitation, covenants, immemorial custom, and universal consent. Conquered on this ground, the proprietor, like a wounded boar, turns on his pursuers. 'I have done more than occupy,' he cries… 'I have labored, produced, improved, transformed, created.'"
• Proudhon highlights the inconsistency: if labor is the true defense, why invoke original occupancy at all, suggesting an attempt to deceive: "You have labored, proprietor! why then do you speak of original occupancy? What, were you not sure of your right, or did you hope to deceive men, and make justice an illusion?"
• He distinguishes between labor as duty and appropriation of common things, arguing that labor cannot ground exclusive domain over common resources: "You have labored! but what is there in common between the labor which duty compels you to perform, and the appropriation of things in which there is a common interest?"
• He further notes that land, like air and light, cannot be lost by prescription, so labor upon it cannot extinguish others’ claims: "Do you not know that domain over the soil, like that over air and light, cannot be lost by prescription?"
• He exposes exploitation by asking why those who labored for the proprietor lost what he gained: "You have labored! have you never made others labor? Why, then, have they lost in laboring for you what you have gained in not laboring for them?"

Source Quotes

Beaten, all his assertions overthrown, pursued like a fallow deer by the inexorable judge, tracked from hypothesis to hypothesis⁠—he makes a statement, he corrects it, retracts it, contradicts it, he exhausts all the tricks of dialectics, more subtle, more ingenious a thousand times than he who invented the seventy-two forms of the syllogism. So acts the proprietor when called upon to defend his right. At first he refuses to reply, he exclaims, he threatens, he defies; then, forced to accept the discussion, he arms himself with chicanery, he surrounds himself with formidable artillery⁠—crossing his fire, opposing one by one and all together occupation, possession, limitation, covenants, immemorial custom, and universal consent.

So acts the proprietor when called upon to defend his right. At first he refuses to reply, he exclaims, he threatens, he defies; then, forced to accept the discussion, he arms himself with chicanery, he surrounds himself with formidable artillery⁠—crossing his fire, opposing one by one and all together occupation, possession, limitation, covenants, immemorial custom, and universal consent. Conquered on this ground, the proprietor, like a wounded boar, turns on his pursuers.

At first he refuses to reply, he exclaims, he threatens, he defies; then, forced to accept the discussion, he arms himself with chicanery, he surrounds himself with formidable artillery⁠—crossing his fire, opposing one by one and all together occupation, possession, limitation, covenants, immemorial custom, and universal consent. Conquered on this ground, the proprietor, like a wounded boar, turns on his pursuers. “I have done more than occupy,” he cries with terrible emotion; “I have labored, produced, improved, transformed, created. This house, these fields, these trees are the work of my hands; I changed these brambles into a vineyard, and this bush into a fig-tree; and today I reap the harvest of my labors.

No one shared with me the trouble and expense; no one shall share with me the benefits.” You have labored, proprietor! why then do you speak of original occupancy? What, were you not sure of your right, or did you hope to deceive men, and make justice an illusion? Make haste, then, to acquaint us with your mode of defence, for the judgment will be final; and you know it to be a question of restitution.

Make haste, then, to acquaint us with your mode of defence, for the judgment will be final; and you know it to be a question of restitution. You have labored! but what is there in common between the labor which duty compels you to perform, and the appropriation of things in which there is a common interest? Do you not know that domain over the soil, like that over air and light, cannot be lost by prescription?

Do you not know that domain over the soil, like that over air and light, cannot be lost by prescription? You have labored! have you never made others labor? Why, then, have they lost in laboring for you what you have gained in not laboring for them? You have labored! very well; but let us see the results of your labor.

Key Concepts

• So acts the proprietor when called upon to defend his right.
• he arms himself with chicanery, he surrounds himself with formidable artillery⁠—crossing his fire, opposing one by one and all together occupation, possession, limitation, covenants, immemorial custom, and universal consent.
• Conquered on this ground, the proprietor, like a wounded boar, turns on his pursuers. “I have done more than occupy,” he cries with terrible emotion; “I have labored, produced, improved, transformed, created.
• You have labored, proprietor! why then do you speak of original occupancy? What, were you not sure of your right, or did you hope to deceive men, and make justice an illusion?
• what is there in common between the labor which duty compels you to perform, and the appropriation of things in which there is a common interest?
• have you never made others labor? Why, then, have they lost in laboring for you what you have gained in not laboring for them?

Context

Middle of the passage, where Proudhon dramatizes the proprietor’s changing defenses under critique and uses this to argue that labor, properly understood, cannot legitimize exclusive appropriation or exploitation.