Perfunctory war on 'property' owners unconvincing

[Photo: Courtesy]

In his book, Pierre Proudhon, a self-proclaimed anarchist, posed: “If I were asked to answer the following question: What is slavery, and I should answer in one word, it is murder, my meaning would be understood at once. No extended argument would be required to show that the power to remove a man’s mind, will, and personality, is the power of life and death, and that it makes a man a slave. It is murder. Why, then, to this other question: What is property, may I not likewise answer; it is robbery, without the certainty of being misunderstood?”

While in that context Proudhon’s ‘property’ referred to land ownership, the dictionary definition of property assumes a wider scope. So, while each one of us boasts at least some ‘property’ - a  bicycle, a second-hand Japanese car, a dilapidated building or an acre or two of land, real property purchasable by the power of billions of shillings that routinely take a walk from Government institutions lies with the ‘robbers’ in Proudhon’s context.