Illuminatus! Excerpt: APPENDIX ZAIN: PROPERTY AND PRIVILEGE

Property is theft 
—P. J. PROUDHON 
Property is liberty. 
—P. J. PROUDHON 
Property is impossible. 
—P. J. PROUDHON 
Consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds. 
—RALPH WALDO EMERSON 
  
Proudhon, by piling up his contradictions this way, was not merely being French; he was trying to
indicate that the abstraction "property" covers a variety of phenomena, some pernicious and some
beneficial. Let us borrow a device from the semanticists and examine his triad with subscripts
attached for maximum clarity. 

"Property1 is theft" means that property1, created by the artificial laws of feudal, capitalist, and other
authoritarian societies, is based on armed robbery. Land titles, for instance, are clear examples of property1; swords and shot were the original coins of transaction.  

"Property2 is liberty" means that property2, that which will be voluntarily honored in a voluntary (anarchist) society, is the foundation of the liberty in that society. The more people's interests are comingled and confused, as in collectivism, the more they will be stepping on each other's toes; only when the rules of the game declare clearly "This is mine and this is thine," and the game is voluntarily accepted as worthwhile by all parties to it, can true independence be achieved. 

"Property3 is impossible" means that property3 (= property1) creates so much conflict of interest that
society is in perpetual undeclared civil war and must eventually devour itself (and properties1 and
3 as well). In short, Proudhon, in his own way, foresaw the Snafu Principle. He also foresaw that communism would only perpetuate and aggravate the conflicts, and that anarchy is the only viable alternative to this chaos.  

It is not averred, of course, that property3 will come into existence only in a totally voluntary society; many forms of it already exist. The error of most alleged libertarians— especially the followers (!) of the egregious Ayn Rand— is to assume that all property1 is property2. The distinction can be made by any IQ above 70 and is absurdly simple. The test is to ask, of any title of ownership you are asked to accept or which you ask others to accept, "Would this be honored in a free society of rationalists, or does it require the armed might of a State to force people to honor it?" If it be the former, it is property? and represents liberty; if it be the latter, it is property1 and represents theft.

The Illuminatus! Trilogy is a series of three novels written by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson.