Jean Jaurès

“ And we Socialists, when we undertake to break up or gradually absorb capitalist property, will often find that we can direct the social movement toward the collectivist form by simply developing certain practices of bourgeois society, interpreting generously certain articles of its code, and hastening the forward march of our legislation in the paths along which it has already begun to move. But those who constitute themselves the guardians of private property not only deny the society of the future; they misunderstand the society of the present. ”

“ If their social formula, "maintenance of private property," has become void and meaningless, this result has not been brought about by the example of the past only, or even by the irresistible tendency of new forces to break the capitalistic mould. In bourgeois society itself, in the bourgeois code, [1] private property appears in such an incomplete form, is so hampered, restricted, and broken up, that even now and from the point of view of the bourgeoisie itself, one must grant that it is either childishness or an anachronism to speak about "the maintenance of private property." ”

“ In place, then, of the relatively simple and brutal capitalistic form of property, will be substituted an infinitely complex form, where the social right of the nation will serve as guaranty, by the intermediary of many local or professional groups, to the essential rights of every human being, the free play of all activities. Every capitalistic element will have disappeared; no man will be able to make use of another man to create dividends for himself, or profit, or an income, or rent. ”

“ Just as in ancient times private property admitted slavery and as in the Middle Ages it was compatible with serfdom, so to-day it allows the wages system. I am far from wishing to divert myself with the melancholy reactionary paradox of those Socialists who say that the slave and the serf were happier than the wage earner. The moral and material position of the modern workman is as a whole superior to that of the slave or the serf. ”

“ In the societies that preceded ours private property embodied itself in forms of oppression which have been definitely abolished once for all. Slavery was one of the forms of private property. In Athens and Rome there were public slaves, slaves of the city or the state; but most of the slaves were simply a part of the patrimony of the citizens. The property in slaves was part of private property. ”

“ For the first time since the beginning of history, man claims his rights as a man, all his rights. The workman, the proletarian, the man who owns nothing, is affirming his own individuality. He claims everything that belongs properly to a man, the right to life, the right to work, the right to the complex development of his faculties, to the continuous exercise of his free-will and of his reason. ”

“ What force can the scholastic and childish formula of the Radicals have when confronted with the sovereign findings of history and this living evolution of the conception of property? Just as it has been modified in the past the conception of property will be modified again; and it is certain that it is now going to evolve in the direction of greater complication, of richer complexity. A new force has to be reckoned with, a force which is going to complicate and transform all social relations, the whole property system. This new force is the human individual. ”

“ Well, society cannot guarantee him the right to work or the right to life, it cannot promote him from the condition of a passive wage earner to that of a free co-operator, without itself entering into the domain of property. Social property has to be created to guarantee private property in its real sense, that is, the property that the human individual has and ought to have in his own person. ”

“ Human personality, which may be said to have been often non-existent in the slave and which was more evident in the serf, complicated the property relation; it introduced varied and uncertain elements into the conception of private property. And in this case, complexity certainly marks a step in advance. On the other hand, at the end of the eighteenth century, when the moment came for the middle classes and the peasants to give the death-blow to the feudal system, the Revolution tended to simplify and not to complicate property relations. ”

“ That which reigns to-day under the name of private property is really class property, and those who wish for the establishment of democracy in the economic as well as the political world should give their best effort to the abolition and not to the maintenance of this class property. ”

“ The bourgeois and the peasant were more distinctly, more absolutely owners, than they were under the feudal régime; and at that time, during the transition from feudalism to capitalism, the apparent simplification of property was a sign of human progress, just as, twelve centuries before, the complication of property had been a sign of human progress. ”

“ For from age to age private property not only changes its meaning but also varies immensely in the matter of greater or less complexity. Sometimes it is applied to social relations that are extremely complex ”

“ Under the double action of democratic life which has wakened or strengthened in him the pride of a man, and of modern industry which has given to united labour a consciousness of its power, the workman is becoming a person, and insists upon being treated as such, everywhere and always. ”

“ They hope to hold a large part of the proletariat in check by a few reforming laws expressing a sentiment of social solidarity, and by their policy of defending private property to rouse the conservative forces, the petty bourgeoisie, the middle-classes, and the small peasant-proprietors, to oppose Socialism. ”

“ The peasant who inherits his rights of tenure may be in a certain sense considered as a proprietor; if the rights of the lord were removed, the land he cultivates would belong to him without restriction. ”