perty in
all its completeness."

What good does it do to magnify an expression, and play with
equivocations, as if we expected to change the reality thereby? THEY
CREATE PROPERTY IN ALL ITS COMPLETENESS. You mean that they create a
productive capacity which formerly did not exist; but this capacity
cannot be created without material to support it. The substance of the
soil remains the same; only its qualities and modifications are changed.
Man has created every thing--every thing save the material itself. Now,
I maintain that this material he can only possess and use, on condition
of permanent labor,--granting, for the time being, his right of property
in things which he has produced.

This, then, is the first point settled: property in product, if we grant
so much, does not carry with it property in the means of production;
that seems to me to need no further demonstration. There is no
difference between the soldier who possesses his arms, the mason
who possesses the materials committed to his care, the fisherman who
possesses the water, the hunter who possesses the fields and forests,
and the cultivator who possesses the lands: all, if you say so, are
proprietors of their products--not one is proprietor of the means of
production. The right to product is exclusive--jus in re; the right to
means is common--jus ad rem.

% 5.--That Labor leads to Equality of Property.

Admit, however, that labor gives a right of property in material.

Why is not this principle universal? Why is the benefit of this
pretended law confined to a few and denied to the mass of laborers?
A philosopher, arguing that all animals sprang up formerly out of the
earth warmed by the rays of the sun, almost like mushrooms, on being
asked why the earth no longer yielded crops of that nature, replied:
"Because it is old, and has lost its fertility." Has labor, once so
fecund, likewise become sterile? Why does the tenant no longer acquire
through his labor the land which was formerly acquired by the labor of
the proprietor?

"Because," they say, "it is already appropriated." That is no answer. A
farm yields fifty bushels per hectare; the skill and labor of the tenant
double this product: the increase is created by the tenant. Suppose the
owner, in a spirit of moderation rarely met with, does not go to the
extent of absorbing this product by raising the rent, but allows the
cultivator to enjoy the results of his labor; even then justice is not