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About this quote

What does it mean?
Anyone who profits from others' labor without contributing themselves is accused of theft or parasitism.
In plain terms
Making money without working on others is stealing.
What can you take from it?
Unearned income is ethically suspect.

Where it applies

  • economic critique
  • ethical debate
  • class analysis

Putting it to work

  • critique unearned wealth
  • value labor

Questions to consider

  • Is all profit theft?
  • How do we define labor?

Another view

Ownership can provide capital for others to work.

More from P. J. Proudhon

  1. AXIOM. - Property is the Right of Increase claimed by the Proprietor over any thing which he has stamped as his own.

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  2. Communism is inequality, but not as property is. Property is the exploitation of the weak by the strong. Communism is the exploitation of the strong by the wea…

    Permalink to quote #13
  3. The elements of justice are identical with those of algebra.

    Permalink to quote #10

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