Pierre-Joseph Proudhon Quotes on Justice
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, the first thinker to call himself an anarchist, made justice the foundation of his entire social philosophy, and the quotes gathered here, drawn largely from What Is Property?, set out his position. Justice, for Proudhon, is prior to and independent of the law, for the law is only the declaration and application of what is just, and he claimed for it an almost mathematical exactness, holding that the elements of justice are identical with those of algebra. His celebrated charge that property is theft is a verdict delivered in the name of justice against arrangements he held to be unjust at their root. Proudhon tied justice to equality and to a self-ordering society, arguing that as man seeks justice in equality, so society seeks order in anarchy. Justice, he wrote, was the alpha and omega of his argument.
Quotes
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“Property is theft.”
Property is robbery! That is the war-cry of '93! That is the signal of revolutions ! Reader, calm yourself: I am no agent of discord, no firebrand of sedition . I anticipate history by a few days; I disclose a truth whose development we may try in vain to arrest; I write the preamble of our future constitution . This proposition which seems to you blasphemous — property is robbery — would, if our -
Attributed to Pierre-Joseph Proudhon:
“What is government? It is the perpetual state of war between the strong and the weak.”
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“Justice is not the work of the law: on the contrary, the law is only the declaration and application of what is just in all circumstances where men have relations with one another.”
What is Property?(1840) | Chapter One -
“Sociability is the attraction felt by sentient beings for each other; justice is the same attraction, accompanied by reflection and knowledge.”
What is Property?(1840) | Ch.V -
“AXIOM. — Property is the Right of Increase claimed by the Proprietor over any thing which he has stamped as his own.”
What is Property?(1840) | Ch. IV -
“I build no system . I ask an end to privilege , the abolition of slavery , equality of rights , and the reign of law . Justice , nothing else; that is the alpha and omega of my argument: to others I leave the business of governing the world.”
What is Property?(1840) | Ch. I: "Method Pursued in this Work. The Idea of a Revolution" -
“The elements of justice are identical with those of algebra.”
What is Property?(1840) | Ch. IV -
“As man seeks justice in equality , so society seeks order in anarchy .”
What is Property?(1840) | Ch. V, Part 2; this might be the ultimate inspiration of the later slogan coined in 1848 by Anselme Bellegarrigue (and often attributed to Proudhon): " Anarchy is order, government is civil war. " -
“Justice is the product of nature and labour”
What is Property?(1840) | Ch. V