From the great principle of service as the equivalent of service is derived his axiom that property is the right of aubaine.
The aubain was a stranger not naturalized; and the right of aubaine was the right in virtue of which the sovereign, from the earliest monarchy, claimed the goods of such a stranger who had died in his territory.'
With regard to the transition he advocated the progressive abolition of the right of aubaine, by reducing interest, rent, &c. For the goal he professed only to give the general principles; he had no ready-made scheme, no utopia.
Proudhon's theory of property as the right of aubaine is substantially the same as the theory of capital held by Marx and most of the later socialists.