Individual reclamation (French: reprise individuelle)
is a form of direct action, characterized
by the individual theft of resources from
the rich by the poor.
Individual reclamation gained popular attention
in the early 20th century as a result of the
exploits of anarchists and outsiders, such
as Ravachol and Clément Duval, who believed
that such expropriations were ethical because
of the exploitation of society by capitalists
(see Anti-capitalism).
Advocacy centered on France, Belgium, Great
Britain, and Switzerland.
== Conceptual origins ==
In 1840, Pierre Joseph Proudhon, a French
anarchist, wrote What Is Property?, a question
to which he famously answered "property is
theft".
By this, Proudhon meant that legitimate private
property could result only from an individual's
labor and all other capital was, in effect,
stolen.
This economic world view converged in the
minds of radicals with the Russian theorist
Mikhail Bakunin's concept of propaganda of
the deed, the use of physical violence against
political enemies as a method of inspiring
the masses.
A marginal sector of European individualist
anarchism derived the idea of individual reclamation
as a means of breaking down what they perceived
as the robbery of the laboring class by capitalists,
politicians and the church.
The individual's expropriation was regarded
as legitimate resistance against an unfair
social order, an ethical right to even the
distribution of wealth.
== Practice ==
Well-known 19th century practitioners of individual
reclamation included Ravachol and Clément
Duval.
A later generation of European anarchists,
influenced by the anti-essentialism of Max
Stirner, would eventually abandon the ethical
framing of individual reclamation, proposing
an ideology of illegalism and openly embracing
criminality as a lifestyle.
The most famous of these practitioners included
the infamous Bonnot Gang of France.
In the 20th century, Lucio Urtubia, a Spanish
practitioner of individual reclamation, stole
millions from Citibank by forging traveler's
checks.
Between 1993 and 2007, Jaime Giménez Arbe
robbed 36 banks in Spain, stealing more than
€700,000 euros in what he described as an
effort "to liberate the Spanish people" from
the banking sector.
== See also ==
Agorism
Expropriative anarchism
Labor theory of value
Robin Hood
Yomango
== Notes
