Similar Phrases
See also: Anarchist terminologyJacques Pierre Brissot had previously written, in his Philosophical Inquiries on the Right of Property (Recherches philosophiques sur le droit de propriété et le vol), "Exclusive property is a robbery in nature." Marx would later write in a 1865 letter to a contemporary that Proudhon had taken the slogan from Warville, although this is contested by subsequent scholarship.
The phrase also appears in 1797 in the Marquis de Sade's text L'Histoire de Juliette: "Tracing the right of property back to its source, one infallibly arrives at usurpation. However, theft is only punished because it violates the right of property; but this right is itself nothing in origin but theft."
Similar phrases also appear in the works of Saint Ambrose, who taught that superfluum quod tenes tu furaris (the superfluous property which you hold you have stolen) and Basil of Caesarea. (Ascetics, 34,1-2)
Jean-Jacques Rousseau made the same general point when he wrote: "The first man who, having enclosed a piece of ground, bethought himself of saying 'This is mine,' and found people simple enough to believe him, was the real founder of civil society. From how many crimes, wars, and murders, from how many horrors and misfortunes might not any one have saved mankind, by pulling up the stakes, or filling up the ditch, and crying to his fellows: Beware of listening to this impostor; you are undone if you once forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and the earth itself to nobody."
Read more about this topic: Property Is Theft!
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