t always succeed. Of
course it does not mean very much when he cleverly riddles the old
argument for property drawn from divine right or the right of nature;
for in any case he was only attacking dead theories. In the attack on
really living arguments, as in the case of his theory of labour, he
does not succeed.

Property cannot be explained by labour because

(1) The land cannot be appropriated,

(2) Labour leads to equality, and in the sight of justice labour, on
the contrary, abolishes property.

The proposition that property, _i. e._, the right to the substance of
the thing appropriated, cannot be created by labour, because the land
cannot be appropriated, is at least a _petitio principii_ or
tautology. But, leaving that, let us suppose that the land really
cannot be appropriated; yet there is always some kind of property
which has nothing to do with the land. It will not do always to speak
of landed property only, as Proudhon invariably does. Movable property
(in weapons, utensils, ornaments, animals, etc.) precedes immovable
property, owing to its origin, which was only created in imitation of
the other much later, and is entirely property due to work; thus not
only property, but not even the origin of the idea of property in
men, can be explained from the point of view of social history
otherwise than by work.

If it is right, as one of our most acute thinkers says, to declare
that mankind has placed his tools between himself and the animal
world, then another proposition follows directly from this, namely,
that man has placed property between himself and animals. It is true
that the animal develops as far as the family, for if this also is
founded merely upon thought, it cannot be a conscious one. Property
presupposes a definite mental equipment, which even in the case of
primitive men must be important, implying subjectively an already
clear consciousness of self; objectively a certain capacity for
measuring even the remoter consequences of an action; for the desire
for special possession could only exist with reference to a pronounced
consciousness of the self, and to the recognised purpose and further
utility of an object. Neither of these mental presuppositions are
anywhere fulfilled in the animal world. It need hardly be mentioned
that labour in the technical sense has developed naturally and
gradually from physiological labour and the bodily functions; that is,
that even between the natural implemen