What Is Property?
An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government
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Narrated by:
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James Gillies
About this listen
‘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.
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The Founders' Key
- The Divine and Natural Connection Between the Declaration and the Constitution and What We Risk by Losing It
- By: Dr. Larry Arnn
- Narrated by: Van Tracy
- Length: 7 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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Dr. Arnn, president of Hillsdale College, reveals this integral unity of the Declaration and the Constitution. Together, they form the pillars upon which the liberties and rights of the American people stand. United, they have guided history's first self-governing nation, forming our government under certain universal and eternal principles. Unfortunately, the effort to redefine government to reflect "the changing and growing social order" has gone very far toward success.
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Linking Declaration and Constitution.
- By Ed Bethune on 04-26-24
By: Dr. Larry Arnn
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Rights of Man
- By: Thomas Paine
- Narrated by: Arthur Morey
- Length: 9 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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Rights of Man presents an impassioned defense of the Enlightenment principles of freedom and equality that Thomas Paine believed would soon sweep the world. He boldly claimed, "From a small spark, kindled in America, a flame has arisen, not to be extinguished. Without consuming...it winds its progress from nation to nation."
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By his voice alone he helped transform the West
- By Darwin8u on 12-23-12
By: Thomas Paine
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The Age of Reason
- By: Thomas Paine
- Narrated by: Robin Field
- Length: 8 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Thomas Paine's The Age of Reason; Being an Investigation of True and Fabulous Theology, published in three parts from 1794, was a best seller in America, where it caused a short-lived deistic revival. Promoting a creator-God while advocating reason in the place of revelation, Paine’s controversial pamphlet caused his native British audience, fearing the results of the French Revolution, to receive it with more hostility than their American counterparts.
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Amazed by the energy, originality & bravery
- By Darwin8u on 10-06-12
By: Thomas Paine
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The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution
- By: Bernard Bailyn
- Narrated by: Tom Perkins
- Length: 14 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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To the original text of what has become a classic of American historical literature, Bernard Bailyn adds a substantial essay, "Fulfillment", as a postscript. Here he discusses the intense nationwide debate on the ratification of the Constitution, stressing the continuities between that struggle over the foundations of the national government and the original principles of the Revolution.
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Bernard Bailyn is a genius!
- By John M. Crean on 04-21-19
By: Bernard Bailyn
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Politics
- By: Aristotle
- Narrated by: Matthew Josdal
- Length: 8 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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Aristotle's Politics is a work of political philosophy. The end of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics declared that the inquiry into ethics necessarily follows into politics, and the two works are frequently considered to be parts of a larger treatise, or perhaps connected lectures, dealing with the philosophy of human affairs. Aristotle is generally regarded as one of the most influential ancient thinkers in a number of philosophical fields, including political theory.
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Aristotle Lives Again!
- By Jeff on 02-25-15
By: Aristotle
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America's Revolutionary Mind
- A Moral History of the American Revolution and the Declaration That Defined It
- By: C. Bradley Thompson
- Narrated by: Tom Parks
- Length: 18 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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The purpose of this book is twofold: first, to elucidate the logic, principles, and significance of the Declaration of Independence as the embodiment of the American mind; and, second, to shed light on what John Adams once called the "real American Revolution"; that is, the moral revolution that occurred in the minds of the people in the 15 years before 1776.
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Excellent study of Revolutionary Thinking
- By Amazon Customer on 03-24-21
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On Revolution
- By: Hannah Arendt
- Narrated by: Tavia Gilbert
- Length: 10 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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Hannah Arendt's penetrating observations on the modern world, based on a profound knowledge of the past, have been fundamental to our understanding of our political landscape. On Revolution is her classic exploration of a phenomenon that has reshaped the globe. From the 18th-century rebellions in America and France to the explosive changes of the 20th century, Arendt traces the changing face of revolution and its relationship to war while underscoring the crucial role such events will play in the future.
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Insightful Analysis of Differing Revolutions
- By Roger on 01-10-18
By: Hannah Arendt
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The Creation of the American Republic, 1776-1787
- By: Gordon S. Wood
- Narrated by: Joel Richards
- Length: 24 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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This classic work explains the evolution of American political thought from the Declaration of Independence to the ratification of the Constitution. In so doing, it greatly illuminates the origins of the present American political system.
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This Audible book is NOT for a popular audience!
- By BigWally on 11-22-18
By: Gordon S. Wood
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Capitalism
- The Unknown Ideal
- By: Ayn Rand
- Narrated by: Anna Fields
- Length: 14 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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The foundations of capitalism are being battered by a flood of altruism, which is the cause of the modern world's collapse. This was the view of Ayn Rand, a view so radically opposed to prevailing attitudes that it constituted a major philosophic revolution. In this series of essays, she presented her stand on the persecution of big business, the causes of war, the default of conservatism, and the evils of altruism.
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Ashame this is not taught in our
- By Karen on 08-18-07
By: Ayn Rand
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The Story of Philosophy
- The Lives and Opinions of the Greater Philosophers
- By: Will Durant
- Narrated by: Grover Gardner
- Length: 19 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Durant lucidly describes the philosophical systems of such world-famous “monarchs of the mind” as Plato, Aristotle, Francis Bacon, Spinoza, Kant, Voltaire, and Nietzsche. Along with their ideas, he offers their flesh-and-blood biographies, placing their thoughts within their own time and place and elucidating their influence on our modern intellectual heritage. This book is packed with wisdom and wit.
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Fantastic and insightful book
- By ESK on 01-25-13
By: Will Durant
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The Enlightenment
- And Why It Still Matters
- By: Anthony Pagden
- Narrated by: Robert Blumenfeld
- Length: 16 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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One of our most renowned and brilliant historians takes a fresh look at the revolutionary intellectual movement that laid the foundation for the modern world. Liberty and equality. Human rights. Freedom of thought and expression. Belief in reason and progress. The value of scientific inquiry. These are just some of the ideas that were conceived and developed during the Enlightenment, and which changed forever the intellectual landscape of the Western world.
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A thorough political tract rather than history
- By Jacobus on 03-08-14
By: Anthony Pagden
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The Radicalism of the American Revolution
- By: Gordon S. Wood
- Narrated by: Paul Boehmer
- Length: 19 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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Grand in scope, rigorous in its arguments, and elegantly synthesizing 30 years of scholarship, Gordon S. Wood's Pulitzer Prize–winning book analyzes the social, political, and economic consequences of 1776. In The Radicalism of the American Revolution, Wood depicts not just a break with England, but the rejection of an entire way of life: of a society with feudal dependencies, a politics of patronage, and a world view in which people were divided between the nobility and "the Herd."
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Changed the Way I Think
- By Cynthia on 01-04-14
By: Gordon S. Wood
What listeners say about What Is Property?
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Amazon Customer
- 11-21-22
Great!
Proudhons ideas and methods are interesting but it feels like the last half of the book is just him shit talking his contemporaries.
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