peace upon earth. Knowledge and genius they do
not lack; the foundation is now laid for them. [34]

I have accomplished my task; property is conquered, never again to
arise. Wherever this work is read and discussed, there will be deposited
the germ of death to property; there, sooner or later, privilege and
servitude will disappear, and the despotism of will will give place to
the reign of reason. What sophisms, indeed, what prejudices
(however obstinate) can stand before the simplicity of the following
propositions:--

I. Individual POSSESSION [35] is the condition of social life; five
thousand years of property demonstrate it. PROPERTY is the suicide of
society. Possession is a right; property is against right. Suppress
property while maintaining possession, and, by this simple modification
of the principle, you will revolutionize law, government, economy, and
institutions; you will drive evil from the face of the earth.

II. All having an equal right of occupancy, possession varies with the
number of possessors; property cannot establish itself.

III. The effect of labor being the same for all, property is lost in the
common prosperity.

IV. All human labor being the result of collective force, all property
becomes, in consequence, collective and unitary. To speak more exactly,
labor destroys property.

V. Every capacity for labor being, like every instrument of labor, an
accumulated capital, and a collective property, inequality of wages
and fortunes (on the ground of inequality of capacities) is, therefore,
injustice and robbery.

VI. The necessary conditions of commerce are the liberty of the
contracting parties and the equivalence of the products exchanged.
Now, value being expressed by the amount of time and outlay which each
product costs, and liberty being inviolable, the wages of laborers (like
their rights and duties) should be equal.

VII. Products are bought only by products. Now, the condition of all
exchange being equivalence of products, profit is impossible and unjust.
Observe this elementary principle of economy, and pauperism, luxury,
oppression, vice, crime, and hunger will disappear from our midst.

VIII. Men are associated by the physical and mathematical law of
production, before they are voluntarily associated by choice. Therefore,
equality of conditions is demanded by justice; that is, by strict social
law: esteem, friendship, gratitude, admiration, all fall within the
domain of E