+## from _On Proudhon_{as=cite}[^DSD161718]
+
+{as=figure}
+::::::::::::::::::::::::::
+> But in spite of all his apparent iconoclasm one already finds in
+> Qu’est-ce que la propriété’? the contradiction that Proudhon is
+> criticising society, on the one hand, from the standpoint and with
+> the eyes of a French small-holding peasant (later petit bourgeois)
+> and, on the other, that he measures it with the standards he
+> inherited from the socialists.
+>
+> The deficiency of the book is indicated by its very title.
+> The question is so badly formulated that it cannot be answered
+> correctly.
+> Ancient “property relations” were superseded by feudal property
+> relations and these by “bourgeois” property relations.
+> Thus history itself had expressed its criticism upon past property
+> relations.
+> What Proudhon was actually dealing with was modern bourgeois
+> property as it exists today.
+> The question of what this is could have only been answered by a
+> critical analysis of “political economy,” embracing the totality of
+> these property relations, considering not their legal aspect as
+> relations of volition but their real form, that is, as relations of
+> production.
+> But as Proudhon entangled the whole of these economic relations in
+> the general legal concept of “property,” “la propriété,” he could
+> not get beyond the answer which, in a similar work published before
+> 1789, Brissot had already given in the same words: “La propriété
+> c’est le vol.”
+>
+> The upshot is at best that the bourgeois legal conceptions of
+> “theft” apply equally well to the “honest” gains of the bourgeois
+> himself.
+> On the other hand, since “theft” as a forcible violation of
+> property presupposes the existence of property, Proudhon entangled
+> himself in all sorts of fantasies, obscure even to himself, about
+> true bourgeois property.
+{as=figcaption}
+:::::::::::::::
+“What is property?” is a bad question;
+Proudhon’s answer, “Property is theft!”, presupposes property.
+:::::::::::::::
+::::::::::::::::::::::::::
+
+When writing _Oppenheimer_{as="cite"}, Christopher Nolan apparently
+ believed that two people who have both ostensibly read the entirety
+ of _Capital_{as="cite"} would both attribute “Property is theft!” to
+ Marx.
+[][@:Aescling]{.sig}
+