PROUDHON (Pierre-Joseph). What is property? Or Recherches su - Lot 309

PROUDHON (Pierre-Joseph). What is property? Or Recherches sur le principe du droit et du gouvernement. Premier mémoire. Paris, J.-F. Brocard [Imprimerie de César Bajat], 1840. - Letter to M. Blanqui [...] on property. Deuxième mémoire. Paris, Librairie de Prévot, 1841. Together 2 works in one volume in-12, black half-basin with small corners, red edges (Binding of the period). - Avertissement aux propriétaires, ou Lettres à M. Considérant [...] sur une défense de la propriété. Paris, Librairie de Prévot; Besançon, Chez l'Auteur, 1841. In-12, paperback, printed yellow paper cover. First-edition collection of Proudhon's (1809-1865) 3 memoirs on the question of property (Coquelin & Guillaumin, II, p. 479). The first edition of the first memoir is extremely rare. Printed in a small number of copies for members of the Académie de Besançon, this is one of the most influential books of the 19th century; the scandal it caused was due in part to the author's sulphurous reply: Property is theft. For Karl Marx, the work was a scientific manifesto of the French proletariat. [Proudhon] never condemned property per se, as Rousseau might have done. He only condemned it as an object of speculation, in the age of the most savage capitalism. He saw legitimate property as the guarantee of individual freedom (En français dans le texte, n°260). The first two memoirs are bound in one volume, while the third is in paperback. Split at the spine of the bound volume, with traces of glue consolidation; hole in the first endpaper and light foxing.