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What is Property? by P.-J. (Pierre-Joseph) Proudhon
page 57 of 595 (09%)
eloquent letter; but I confess that I am more inclined to realize
the prediction with which it terminates than to augment
needlessly the number of my antagonists. So much controversy
fatigues and wearies me. The intelligence expended in the
warfare of words is like that employed in battle: it is
intelligence wasted. M. Blanqui acknowledges that property is
abused in many harmful ways; I call PROPERTY the sum these
abuses exclusively. To each of us property seems a polygon whose
angles need knocking off; but, the operation performed, M.
Blanqui maintains that the figure will still be a polygon (an
hypothesis admitted in mathematics, although not proven), while I
consider that this figure will be a circle. Honest people can at
least understand one another.

For the rest, I allow that, in the present state of the question,
the mind may legitimately hesitate before deciding in favor of
the abolition of property. To gain the victory for one's cause,
it does not suffice simply to overthrow a principle generally
recognized, which has the indisputable merit of systematically
recapitulating our political theories; it is also necessary to
establish the opposite principle, and to formulate the system
which must proceed from it. Still further, it is necessary to
show the method by which the new system will satisfy all the
moral and political needs which induced the establishment of the
first. On the following conditions, then, of subsequent
evidence, depends the correctness of my preceding arguments:--

The discovery of a system of absolute equality in which all
existing institutions, save property, or the sum of the abuses of
property, not only may find a place, but may themselves serve as
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