Droit à l’existence et appropriation. Introduction à La justice agraire de Thomas Paine

Abstract

In 1797 Paine published Agrarian Justice, a text in which he defined the conditions of what he called a “state of civilization”, that is, a republic: this requires that the natural right to the existence of the weakest is guaranteed. In this text, Paine criticizes the process of land appropriation that has dispossessed a part of human kind from what was originally a common property. As a compensation and a mean to eradicate poverty, he suggests establishing a universal and unconditional allocation.

Keywords

• property
• right to existence
• social justice
• republic
• French Revolution