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anarchism: a beginner’s guide
dominion which allowed individuals to own property whether or
not they occupied it and to derive rent, interest and profit from their
ownership. This form of property was ‘theft’ and it contrasted with the
second type of right, the right of ownership based on use or possession.
These two forms of property were incompatible: the existence
of one made the other ‘impossible’. For example, if landowners were
able to claim rights to collect rent from tenants, tenants had to give
up their rights to their possessions in order to meet the demands. In
Proudhon’s view, the minority wielded economic power because the
first form of property had been treated, wrongly, as an inalienable
right. The recognition of this right, enshrined in liberal constitutions,
gave an elite dominion over the land worked by the toilers.
Proudhon’s theory supported the individualist idea that
exploitation was based on monopoly rather than ownership itself
and it contrasted with the communist theory advanced by Reclus,
Kropotkin, Malatesta and others. They argued that economic
inequality was in part caused by natural inequalities of talent and, in
the other part, by the uneven quality of land and materials available
to individuals. This analysis suggested that the right to property –
even as possession – would always generate inequalities and,
therefore, the existence of class division, supporting exploitation and
government.
Both sides to this dispute agreed that economic inequality was a
form of enslavement in which the propertyless mass was forced to
work for the benefit of the owners. The choice was simple: either
work on terms set by the owners or go without wages and the means
of life. As Kropotkin noted, nobody freely consented to such an
arrangement. Inequality could only be supported by coercion and
deceit.
… how can the peasant be made to believe that the bourgeois or
manorial land belongs to the proprietor who has a legal claim, when
the peasant can tell us the history of each bit of land for ten leagues
around? … how make him believe that it is useful for the nation that
Mr. So-and-so keeps a piece of land for his park when so many
neighboring peasants would be only too glad to cultivate it?
… how make the worker in a factory, or the miner in a mine,
believe that factory and mine equitably belong to their present
masters, when worker and even miner are beginning to see clearly
through scandal, bribery, pillage of the State and the legal theft,
from which great commercial and industrial property are derived? 17