Property's Theft
what's wrong with a swop
I'll liberate Proudhon
from an Anarchist Bookshop
worthy comrades you're my kind
thanks a million
do you mind
I took the book
that filled this space
but give these words to take its place
left on the shelf
it was doing no good
hoarded like some miser's wealth
& if I've rightly understood
it's not mere profit
motivates you chaps to sell
honest I'll heed the lesson well
& pass it on
when it's been read
sorry to say there's just no way
I could afford to pay today
please accept this note instead
Exchange is no Robbery
nothing's wrong with a swop
I liberated Proudhon
If I had to answer the following question:
'What is slavery?'
and if in a single word I were to reply: it is murder, my
thought would have been understood right from the start. I
would not need to speak for long, to demonstrate that the
power to deprive a man of thought, will, and personality, is
a power of life and death, and that to enslave a man is to
murder him. Why then to that other question: 'What is
property' could I not answer likewise: 'it is theft',
without the certainty of being misunderstood, though this
second proposition be but the first, transformed?
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, 'What Is Property?'
"All men are equal and free: society
by nature, and destination, is therefore autonomous and ungovernable. If the sphere of
activity of each citizen is determined by the natural division of work and by the choice
he makes of a profession, if the social functions are combined in such a way as to produce
a harmonious effect, order results from the free activity of all men; there is no
government. Whoever puts a hand on me to govern me is an usurper and a tyrant; I declare
him my enemy."
'Les Confessions d'un
Revolutionnaire', 1849
"To be GOVERNED is to be watched,
inspected, spied upon, directed, law-driven, numbered, regulated, enrolled, indoctrinated,
preached at, controlled, checked, estimated, valued, censured, commanded, by creatures who
have neither the right nor the wisdom nor the virtue to do so. To be GOVERNED is to be at
every operation, at every transaction noted, registered, counted, taxed, stamped,
measured, numbered, assessed, licensed, authorized, admonished, prevented, forbidden,
reformed, corrected, punished. It is, under pretext of public utility, and in the name of
the general interest, to be placed under contribution, drilled, fleeced, exploited,
monopolized, extorted from, squeezed, hoaxed, robbed; then at the slightest resistance,
the first word of complaint, to be repressed, fined, vilified, harrassed, hunted down,
abused, clubbed, disarmed, bound, choked, imprisoned, judged, condemned, shot, deported,
sacrificed, sold, betrayed, and to crown all, mocked, ridiculed, derided, outraged,
dishonored. That is government; that is its justice; that is its morality."
P. J. Proudhon, General Idea of the Revolution in the Nineteenth Century
C
Proudhon & his children,
painting by Gustave Courbet 1853
Click pic?