"It suffices to open, almost at random, a book of philosophy, politics, or history to see how deeply rooted in our country is this idea, born of classical studies and the mother of Socialism, that humanity is an inert matter receiving from power life, organization, morality, and wealth; — or worse, that humanity itself tends towards its degradation and is only stopped on this slope by the mysterious hand of the Legislator." (The Law).

Freedom! That is, in the end, the harmonious principle. Oppression! That is the dissonant principle; the struggle of these two powers fills the annals of mankind. (Economic Harmonies, conclusion of the original edition).

To produce, one must direct all one's faculties towards the domination of nature; for it is nature that must be fought, tamed, and enslaved. That is why iron converted into a plough is the emblem of production. To plunder, one must direct all one's faculties towards the domination of men; for it is they who must be fought, killed, or enslaved. That is why iron converted into a sword is the emblem of plunder. (Economic Harmonies, War).

External plunder is called war, conquests, and colonies. Internal plunder is often referred to as taxes, positions, and monopolies. (Cobden and the League, Introduction).

The true and equitable law of men is: Freely debated exchange of service for service. Plunder consists of banning, by force or deceit, the freedom of debate to receive a service without providing one in return. Plunder by force is exercised as follows: One waits for a man to produce something, then snatches it from him, weapon in hand. The Decalogue formally condemns it: Thou shalt not steal. When it happens from individual to individual, it is called theft and leads to prison; when it's from nation to nation, it is called conquest and leads to glory.

Force applied to plunder is the basis of human annals. To trace its history would be to reproduce almost entirely the history of all peoples: Assyrians, Babylonians, Medes, Persians, Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, Goths, Franks, Huns, Turks, Arabs, Mongols, Tartars, not to mention the Spaniards in America, the English in India, the French in Africa, the Russians in Asia, etc. (Economic Sophisms, Conclusion of the first volume). Plunder, in its most brutal form, armed with torch and sword, fills the annals of human history. What are the names that summarize history? Cyrus, Sesostris, Alexander, Scipio, Caesar, Attila, Tamerlan, Muhammad, Pizarro, William the Conqueror; this is naive plunder through conquests. To it belong the laurels, monuments, statues, and triumphal arches. (Economic Harmonies, conclusion of the original edition). The history of the world is the history of how one group of people plundered others, often systematically, through war, slavery, and theocracy. Nowadays, it is the monopoly, that is, economic privileges distributed by the State to its clients.

An important task for political economy is to write the history of Plunder. It is a long history in which, from the beginning, appear conquests, migrations of peoples, invasions, and all the disastrous excesses of force in conflict with justice. From all this, there are still living traces today, and it is a great difficulty for the solution of questions posed in our century. We will not arrive at this solution until we have clearly established what injustice is and how it has entrenched itself in our customs and laws. (P. Paillottet, Nine Days Near a Dying Man)