What is Property?

is necessary to show how this new system will satisfy all the moral and political needs that led to the establishment of the first. Here then are the conditions of further evidence to which I myself subordinate the certainty of my previous demonstrations:

— To find a system of absolute equality, in which all current institutions, minus property or the sum of the abuses of property, not only can find a place, but are themselves means of equality: individual liberty, division of powers, public ministry, jury, administrative and judicial organization, unity and integrity in education, marriage, family, inheritance in direct and collateral lines, right of sale and exchange, right of testation, and even the right of primogeniture; — a system which, better than property, ensures the formation of capital and maintains the ardor of all; which, from a superior perspective, explains, corrects, and completes the theories of association proposed until this day, from Plato and Pythagoras to Babeuf, Saint-Simon, and Fourier; — a system finally which, serving itself as a means of transition, is immediately applicable.

Such a vast work would require, I know, the combined efforts of twenty Montesquieus: however, if it is not given to one man to carry it to completion, one can at least begin the enterprise. The path he will have traveled will suffice to discover the goal, and ensure the result.