‘What Is Property?’, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (1840) – ‘A Book in Five Minutes’, no.25
Channel: ramblinactivist
Date: 2023-02-16

Ramblinactivist’s Videos, 2023/6, 16th February 2023.

A short essay on Proudhon, Property, and the Political Panic over ‘The Great Resignation’ – and how his classic text prefigures the contemporary debate over work and well-being.

There’s no way a five minute review can do this complex book justice, so I will extract just one thread from its pages to examine, ‘What Is Property?’; and why that ancient question has become more important than ever.

A society which deliberately grants certain people proprietary rights, and coerces those who cannot access them to work, is based upon a fundamental injustice: It forces the mass of society into exploitation in order to survive. Over 180 years later, the recent political panic over ‘The Great Resignation’ shows how this classic text prefigures the contemporary debate over work and well-being.

For the referenced text and an audio podcast of this post, goto:
http://www.fraw.org.uk/blog/reviews/025/index.shtml

You can find more of these reviews in ‘A Book in Five Minutes’ here:
http://www.fraw.org.uk/blog/reviews/index.shtml

Finally, it would really help to promote this work if you could follow, subscribe, or like my social media presence – which can be accessed from the link above. In today’s digital analytics popularity contest, all that button-pressing means something in this messed-up world; and if we’re going to challenge that, then we have to do our bit to whack the algorithms, supporting the kind of content we want to see by clicking on it.

Chapters:
00:00 Opening titles.
00:28 Book review.
06:35 After-thoughts.
12:29 Closing credits.

#proudhon #anarchism #greatresignation #politicalscience #economics #exploitation