"Tracing the right of property back to its source, one infallibly arrives at usurpation. However, theft is only punished because it violates the right of property; but this right is itself nothing in origin but theft".
- in 1797 in the Marquis de Sade's text L'Histoire de Juliette:
"The first man who, having enclosed a piece of ground, bethought himself of saying 'This is mine', and found people simple enough to believe him, was the real founder of civil society. From how many crimes, wars, and murders, from how many horrors and misfortunes might not any one have saved mankind, by pulling up the stakes, or filling up the ditch, and crying to his fellows: Beware of listening to this impostor; you are undone if you once forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and the earth itself to nobody."
- Jean-Jacques Rousseau
"Is the concept 'theft' at all possible unless one allows validity to the concept 'property'? How can one steal if property is not already extant? ... Accordingly property is not theft, but a theft becomes possible only through property."
- Max Stirner
Proudhon
- If I were asked to answer the following question: What is slavery? and I should answer in one word, It is murder!, my meaning would be understood at once. No extended argument would be required to show that the power to remove a man's mind, will, and personality, is the power of life and death, and that it makes a man a slave. It is murder. Why, then, to this other question: What is property? may I not likewise answer, It is robbery!, without the certainty of being misunderstood; the second proposition being no other than a transformation of the first? — Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, What Is Property? In a sequence of commentaries from What Is Property? (1840), posthumously published in the Théorie de la propriété (Theory of Property, 1863–1864), Proudhon declared in turn that "property is theft", "property is impossible", "property is despotism" and "property is freedom".
For Proudhon, the only legitimate source of property is labor. What one produces is one's property and anything beyond that is not.
Property is physically and mathematically impossible. Property is impossible, because it demands something for nothing. Property is impossible because wherever it exists production costs more than it is worth. Property is impossible, because, with a given capital, production is proportional to labor, not to property. Property is impossible, because it is homicide. Yes, I have attacked property, and shall attack it again. Property is robbery. The people finally legalized property. God forgive them, for they knew not what they did!
- What Is Property?, Proudhon
Proudhon also warned that a society with private property would lead to statist relations between people,93 arguing: The purchaser draws boundaries, fences himself in, and says, 'This is mine; each one by himself, each one for himself.' Here, then, is a piece of land upon which, henceforth, no one has right to step, save the proprietor and his friends; which can benefit nobody, save the proprietor and his servants. Let these multiply, and soon the people ... will have nowhere to rest, no place of shelter, no ground to till. They will die of hunger at the proprietor's door, on the edge of that property which was their birth-right; and the proprietor, watching them die, will exclaim, 'So perish idlers and vagrants.
Frédéric Bastiat
Frédéric Bastiat 's main treatise on property can be found in chapter 8 of his book "Economic Harmonies" (1850).44 In a radical departure from traditional property theory, he defines property, not as a physical object, but rather as a relationship between people concerning a thing. Thus, saying one owns a glass of water is merely verbal shorthand for "I may justly gift or trade this water to another person." In essence, what one owns is not the object but the object's value.
Andrew J. Galambos: a precise definition of property
Andrew J. Galambos (1924–1997) was an astrophysicist and philosopher who innovated a social structure that sought to maximize human peace and freedom. Galambos' concept of property was essential to his philosophy. He defined property as a man's life and all non-procreative derivatives of his life. (Because the English language is deficient in omitting the feminine from "man" when referring to humankind, it is implicit and obligatory that the feminine is included in the term "man.")
Galambos taught that property is essential to a non-coercive social structure. He defined freedom as follows: "Freedom is the societal condition that exists when every individual has full (100%) control over his property."46 Galambos defines property as having the following elements:
Primordial property, which is an individual's life Primary property, which includes ideas, thoughts, and actions Secondary property includes all tangible and intangible possessions that are derivatives of the individual's primary property. Property includes all non-procreative derivatives of an individual's life; this means children are not the property of their parents.47 and "primary property" (a person's own ideas).48
Galambos repeatedly emphasized that actual government exists to protect property and that the State attacks property. For example, the State requires payment for its services in the form of taxes whether or not people desire such services. Since an individual's money is his property, the confiscation of money in the form of taxes is an attack on property. Military conscription is likewise an attack on a person's primordial property.