Note 375 — Chapter V

I refuted this silly sophism before Nietzsche propounded it in the passages above quoted from Zur Genealogie der Moral, p. 66, and Jenseits von Gut und Böse, p. 228. See Die conventionellen Lügen der Kulturmenschheit, 14 Aufl., pp. 211, 212: ‘This expression [of Proudhon’s, that property is theft] can be regarded as true only from the sophistical standpoint that everything existing exists for itself, and from the fact of its existence derives its right to belong to itself. According to this view, forsooth, a man steals the blade of grass he plucks, the air he breathes, the fish he catches; but, then, the martin, too, is stealing when it swallows a fly, and the grub when it eats its way into the root of a tree; then Nature is altogether peopled by arch-thieves, and, in general, everything steals that lives, i.e., absorbs from without materials not belonging to it, and organically elaborates them, and a block of platinum, which does not even pilfer from the air a little oxygen with which to oxidize itself, would be the sole example of honesty on our globe. No; property resulting from earning, that is, from the exchange of a determined amount of labour for a corresponding amount of goods, is not theft.’ If, throughout this passage, ‘theft’ be substituted for the word ‘exploitation,’ used by Nietzsche, his sophism is answered.