Communism is inequality, but not as property is. Property is exploitation of the weak by the strong. Communism is exploitation of the strong by the weak.
Pierre-Joseph ProudhonRead
Laws: We know what they are, and what they are worth! They are spider webs for the rich and mighty, steel chains for the poor and weak, fishing nets in the hands of government.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote highlights the disparity in how laws are applied to different social classes, favoring the rich while oppressing the poor.
In this powerful observation by Proudhon, he critiques the justice system and legal framework, suggesting that laws serve as tools of oppression for the less fortunate and as protection for the wealthy. He metaphorically describes laws as 'spider webs' that ensnare the rich and powerful, while they act like 'steel chains' restraining the poor and weak, emphasizing the inequity inherent in societal structures.
Themes
LawsInequalityJusticeOppressionSocial Justice
In practice
Example use cases
In a debate on social justice, one might use this quote to illustrate how laws can perpetuate inequality.
More from Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
All quotes →I build no system. I ask an end to privilege, the abolition of slavery, equality of rights, and the reign of law. Justice, nothing else; that is the alpha and omega of my argument: to others I leave the business of governing the world.
Pierre-Joseph ProudhonRead
All men in their hearts, I say, bear witness to these truths; they need only to be made to understand it.
Pierre-Joseph ProudhonRead
A common danger tends to concord. Communism is the exploitation of the strong by the weak. In Communism, inequality comes from placing mediocrity on a level with excellence.
Pierre-Joseph ProudhonRead
To name a thing is easy: the difficulty is to discern it before its appearance.
Pierre-Joseph ProudhonRead
As man seeks justice in equality, so society seeks order in anarchy.
Pierre-Joseph ProudhonRead
Similar quotes
I have treated many hundreds of patients. Among those in the second half of life - that is to say, over 35 - there has not been one whose problem in the last resort was not that of finding a religious outlook on life.
Carl JungRead
Instead of gambling on the eternal impossibility of the revolution and on the fascist return of a war-machine in general, why not think that a new type of revolution is in the course of becoming possible, and that all kinds of mutating, living machines conduct wars, are combined and trace out a plane of consistance which undermines the plane of organization of the World and the States?
Gilles DeleuzeRead
A state is better governed which has few laws, and those laws strictly observed.
Rene DescartesRead
For mine own part, it was Greek to me.
William ShakespeareRead
I don't believe in the concept of hell, but if I did I would think of it as filled with people who were cruel to animals.
Gary LarsonRead
It might reasonably be maintained that the true object of all human life is play. Earth is a task garden; heaven is a playground. To be at last in such secure innocence that one can juggle with the universe and the stars, to be so good that one can treat everything as a joke - that may be, perhaps, the real end and final holiday of human souls.
Gilbert K. ChestertonRead