Jacques Pierre Brissot
A lawyer and journalist, he wrote as early as 1780 that exclusive property is a theft against nature, before becoming a leader of the Girondins.
Life
French lawyer, writer and journalist (1754-1793), born in Chartres. As early as 1780 he questioned the right of property in his Philosophical Researches. Co-founder of the Society of the Friends of the Blacks (1788), he founded Le Patriote français (1789), became a Girondin leader, and was guillotined in October 1793.
Main works
Argues that exclusive property, in the state of nature, is a theft against others.
Argues for fairer and milder criminal laws.
Positions
click a row to see the evidenceHe grounds his critique of property in natural law: what is just comes from nature, not from the laws of states.
Brissot, Recherches philosophiques sur le droit de propriété et sur le vol (1780)