22 - Theft

Summary

Thefts without violence should be punished with fines. Whoever seeks to enrich himself at the expense of others ought to be deprived of his own wealth. But, since this is generally the crime of poverty and desperation, the crime of that unhappy section of men to whom the perhaps ‘terrible’ and ‘unnecessary’ right to property has allowed nothing but a bare existence, {and since fines only increase the number of criminals above the original number of crimes, and take bread from the innocent when taking it from the villains,} the most fitting punishment shall be the only sort of slavery which can be called just, namely the temporary enslavement of the labour and person of the criminal to society, so that he may redress his unjust despotism against the social contract by a period of complete personal subjection.

But when violence is added to theft, then the punishment ought to be likewise a mixture of corporal punishment and penal servitude. Other writers before me have shown the disarray which arises from failing to distinguish between the punishments for violent thefts and those by stealth, by trying to set up an absurd equation between a large sum of money and the life of a man; but it is never redundant to repeat what has almost never been put into practice. Once set in motion, political machines continue the longest in one direction and are the slowest to adjust to a new one.