Listen free for 30 days

Listen with offer

  • What Is Property?

  • An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government
  • By: Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
  • Narrated by: James Gillies
  • Length: 18 hrs and 29 mins
  • 4.0 out of 5 stars (1 rating)
Offer ends May 1st, 2024 11:59PM GMT. Terms and conditions apply.
£7.99/month after 3 months. Renews automatically.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, celeb exclusives, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
£7.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, celeb exclusives, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
What Is Property? cover art

What Is Property?

By: Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
Narrated by: James Gillies
Get this deal Try for £0.00

Pay £99p/month. After 3 months pay £7.99/month. Renews automatically. See terms for eligibility.

£7.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Buy Now for £29.99

Buy Now for £29.99

Pay using card ending in
By completing your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and authorise Audible to charge your designated card or any other card on file. Please see our Privacy Notice, Cookies Notice and Interest-based Ads Notice.

Listeners also enjoyed...

The Conquest of Bread cover art
Outlines of Pyrrhonism cover art
The Law cover art
Political Ideals cover art
Rights of Man cover art
Rediscovering Americanism cover art
Mutual Aid cover art
Enquiry Concerning Political Justice cover art
The Gospel of Wealth cover art
Reflections on Violence cover art
The Principal Speeches of Demosthenes cover art
Seventeen Contradictions and the End of Capitalism cover art
State and Revolution cover art
The Essential David Hume cover art
Epicurus of Samos: His Philosophy and Life cover art
Anarchism and Other Essays cover art

Summary

‘Property is Theft’, a phrase which has passed into common parlance, was the rallying call of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon’s political treatise What Is Property? Proudhon (1809-1865) was both admired and excoriated. A political theorist of the first order, he was vilified in his native France by the Communists and the Monarchists alike, though admired by Karl Marx as well as many in the nation’s academia and judiciary who valued the clarity of his thought and analytical method. 

He criticised both Right and Left (the very definition of French political thinking), describing them as two sides of the same coin. Their solutions to society’s ills, he said, were like Thesis and Antithesis, based on a common error and both inadequate to the task of healing society. He offered, instead, a third way, which he called his Synthesis. Regarded as the founder of modern Anarchism, his aim was not to engender chaos, as the word anarchy often connotes, but to suggest a workable, political, and economic foundation for society which would promote order and equity for all under the most unfettered conditions of individual liberty. 

Proudhon grew up in poverty, and was home schooled as a child, but received a bursary in his youth sufficient to allow him to attend the City College in his home town (though not sufficient, it seems, to buy him shoes). There, he discovered the library which introduced him to a world, classical and contemporary, previously denied him. Lacking wealth or contacts, he worked variously as a printer, a compositor and proof-reader by day and an essayist by night, learning Latin along the way to assist in his work. In 1830, a friend, a scholar, invited Proudhon to join him in Paris to pursue his philosophical writings full time. When a cholera outbreak forced his return home, Proudhon spent the next few years juggling his two careers. In 1839, he applied for a pension (bursary) at the Academy of Besançon which obliged him to write works on its behalf. 

What Is Property?, published in France in 1840, was his first. It was so controversial that little else followed. However, it established his reputation, and he was eventually able to pursue his philosophical work full time. What Is Property? (First Memoir) attempts to uncover the roots of poverty and associated social ills and examines different attitudes to poverty and wealth from the Greeks to the present day. Proudhon quickly identifies a common thread, property, which he distinguishes from possession, and argues that only a fundamental, though gradual, abandonment of property (as an asset) and all that flows from it, can rescue society from its current conflicts. The memoir seeks to illuminate the underlying causes of war, poverty, slavery, and oppression and points the way to a solution. In effect, it is a practical manual for the survival of mankind. The Second Memoir (1841), included on this recording, is Proudhon’s response to the criticisms of the First Memoir, initially uncomprehending and then self-assured by turns. What Is Property? is Proudhon’s masterwork. It divides opinion, but no one who hears it can come away with their view of their own world unchanged. 

Translation: Benjamin R. Tucker.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

Public Domain (P)2022 Ukemi Productions Ltd

What listeners say about What Is Property?

Average customer ratings
Overall
  • 4 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    0
  • 4 Stars
    1
  • 3 Stars
    0
  • 2 Stars
    0
  • 1 Stars
    0
Performance
  • 4 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    0
  • 4 Stars
    1
  • 3 Stars
    0
  • 2 Stars
    0
  • 1 Stars
    0
Story
  • 4 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    0
  • 4 Stars
    1
  • 3 Stars
    0
  • 2 Stars
    0
  • 1 Stars
    0

Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.