What Is Property?

What Is Property? (1840) by Pierre-Joseph Proudhon is a foundational anarchist text that famously declares "Property is theft." Proudhon argues that private ownership of productive property-especially land and capital-allows owners to exploit workers by taking value they did not create. He distinguishes this from possession, which he accepts: the right to use what one personally occupies or works with.The book critiques legal and economic justifications for property, claiming they produce inequality, domination, and social injustice. Proudhon advocates a society based on mutualism, where individuals and cooperatives exchange labor and goods fairly without exploitation, and where authority imposed by property and the state is replaced by voluntary cooperation.