Today in Labor History June 30, 1840: Publication of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon's “What Is Property?” Proudhon is considered by many to be history's first anarchist and founder of the philosophy of Anarchism. In the book, he makes the following argument for why Property is Theft: “If I were asked… What is slavery? … I should answer… It is murder! … 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?” However, he was not the first to say this. Marquis de Sade, in his 1797 novel, “Juliette,” says, "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."
