s economic system is
exchange. But Proudhon transposed into this purely empiric idea a
moral element, by presupposing equality and justice as necessary to
exchange. Economic freedom, he reasons, is free exchange; but an
exchange can only be called free which presupposes the equality of
values, or, in other words, equality and justice. This again
presupposes a just balance and constitution of values--a mutual
balance of all economic and social forces. What, then, is economic
freedom? It is equality and justice. And what is the opposite--the
hindrance of these principles? It is inequality, injustice, slavery,
which means property. This is the reason why Proudhon's doctrine of
property stands at the centre of his system, which it by no means
exhausts; it is the reason why he always proceeded from this point,
and always returned to it again. Here we have clearly the reason for
all his numberless and endless mistakes in the province of economics,
the weak point of this otherwise great and noble mind. As we already
have remarked about the _Contradictions_, Proudhon did not attack
property in itself; he tried to ennoble it and bring it into harmony
with the claims of justice and equality by taking away from it what
to-day is a _jus utendi et abutendi_, that is, its rights over the
substance of a thing, and the right of devolving it for ever. The
ominous statement "Property is Theft" was directed only against this.
This kind of property (_propriete_, _dominium_) was to be replaced by
individual possession (_possession individuelle_): as to which one
must take care to understand the distinction between "property" and
"possession" in the legal sense.

Proudhon sought in his first and larger work, which is mainly of a
critical nature, to put forward the negative proof that property is
impossible, by inverting all the proofs hitherto brought forward in
its favour, so that instead of justifying the possession of property
they seemed rather to make for freedom. It is, however, quite wrong to
regard this dialectic jugglery as the essence of Proudhon's system. A
proof, such as that here proposed by Proudhon, is not only quite
inadmissible as logic, but it cannot even be said that Proudhon
himself (usually so accurate in this respect) turned out here a really
good piece of work. On the one hand he attacks the defenders of
property, who, after all, are not very difficult to controvert; while,
at the same time, his attempt itself does no