Quiz: What Is Property?

10 questions drawn at random. Score 80% for a silver medal.

1. 1. How does Proudhon describe the labourer’s relation to society at the end of the chapter?

   As a debtor who of necessity dies insolvent As a creditor whom society never repays As a partner entitled to an equal share of the profits As a tenant who slowly buys his share of the soil
2. 2. According to Proudhon, what remains unpaid when a capitalist has paid every worker his daily wage?

   The rent of the land on which they worked, owed to its proprietor The interest on the capital he advanced The collective force produced by their combined labour The cost of the tools they wore out
3. 3. What did the Academy resolve on 24 August 1840 about the book?

   To ask Blanqui to write a refutation To disavow and condemn it, and have the dedication omitted from any second edition To send it to the courts for prosecution To award it a prize and print it at the Academy’s expense for distribution to its members
4. 4. How does Proudhon treat the forty thousand francs spent on the physician’s education in Say’s example?

   As a debt the physician owes to those who paid it, not as capital he owns As a sum the state should repay to the physician’s parents out of public taxes As a gift from nature that adds nothing to his fortune As capital entitling the physician to a permanent income from his patients
5. 5. Which definition of property, from the constitution of 1793, does Proudhon call “grossly mistaken”?

   A sacred and inviolable right The right to use and abuse The right of the first occupant The right to enjoy the fruit of one’s labour
6. 6. Why, according to Proudhon, are water, air and light common things?

   Because they are inexhaustible Because they are indispensable to life Because no one has ever been able to fence them Because the Civil Code declares them common
7. 7. Whose fable of the lion’s share does Proudhon say sums up “all the forms of property” in four lines?

   Phaedrus Aesop Avianus Horace
8. 8. With which other question and answer does Proudhon compare “What is property? It is robbery”?

   What is justice? A daughter of heaven. What is the third estate? Everything. What is slavery? It is murder. What is the king? The servant of the people.
9. 9. What custom of the printing-offices does Proudhon hold up as a model of distributive justice?

   Every printer is paid the same daily wage whatever his output In slack times compositors and pressmen share out the available work Foremen are elected by the compositors each year Profits are divided equally between master and journeymen
10. 10. Which pamphlet does Proudhon describe as a “sudden revelation” to the French people before the Revolution?

    Babeuf’s manifesto of the Conspiracy of the Equals Rousseau’s Social Contract Sieyès’s pamphlet on the third estate Montesquieu’s treatise The Spirit of the Laws