IT was the 19th century anarchist philosopher Pierre-Joseph Proudhon who declared: “Property is theft.” Quite a lot of people know that. What many don’t know is that he also said: “Property is impossible.” And: “Property is despotism.” And: “Property is freedom.”

Clearly, he had a considerable property slogan portfolio. It’s also arguable that, if he was going to be a philosopher, it might have been an idea to make up his mind what he thought about things – and stick to it.

All the same, his best known catchphrase, “property is theft”, still resounds today, implying as it does that the whole system is baloney. Properly updated and clarified for the 21st century, we might say: “Mortgages are theft. Getting on the property ladder is impossible. Property is a dream.”

It certainly seems an impossible dream for young persons seeking to own their own home. According to a report by website s1homes, flats in Scotland routinely sell for £27,000 more than the stated price.

It’s this sort of thing that annoys people. If I go into a shop to buy a banana, the shopkeeper doesn’t say it’s “offers over 30p” then sells it to someone offering 38p. In my recent experience, admittedly while inebriated, he says: “We don’t have any bananas. This is a shoe shop.”

But, in a fruit shop or most other areas of commerce, a price is stated and that is up what you stump. Property is such a con. It’s never what it seems. I’ll be quite candid with you here and confess that, in the past, I’ve covered up defects with items of furniture or kept potential purchasers away from a shoddy area of the garden with signs saying: “Keep out! Danger of deadly gas and unexploded bombs.”

Before viewing a house, most folk now search online, and there’s nothing more dispiriting. Nothing kills hope more regularly. Nothing leads you so many times up the garden path only to mug you as you’re about to turn the handle of the front door.

You can’t trust anything anybody says about property, nor yet the cunning photographs that disguise the fact that your putative neighbours would be an abattoir on one side and a quarry on the other. The property market is a forum for human behaviour at its most base and, as such, is a central pillar of capitalist society.

You don’t get anywhere without money in capitalist society and it’s thought that, in the next decade, property buyers will need a deposit of £60,000 to get their wellies on the first rung of the ladder.

Where does anyone get that sort of dosh? From their parents if they’re wealthy enough, I guess, which is a fat lot of use for the poor. Another report this week suggested that typical first-time buyers earn £33,873 a year, which is £10,000 more than the average salary.

Even for folk who can afford it, the budget they start out with is never enough and, as desperation sets in, they start increasing the amount they’re willing to spend, mainly because the modest abode of their dreams is always another 10 or 20 grand away. Not only that but you have to compromise and compromise until your cottage by the sea becomes a flat above the chippie.

The implication of the report about salaries also suggested that folk would have to wait till they’re 30 until they could afford a property. But who on earth wants a mortgage before they’re 30? That shouldn’t even be legal.

I didn’t get my first mortgage until I was well into my forties and look at me now (camera pans to shivering wreck huddled on floor clutching payment demand from bank). I’ll be 72 before my mortgage is paid off, at which time, doubtless, I will open a bottle of champagne and die of a heart attack.

To have just one day free of a mortgage: that’s my dream. So why these young capitalist poltroons are so desperate to have one is beyond me. They’ve probably got a pension an’ all.

That said, the great thing about capitalism is that you can make a bit of money at it. The only time in my life that I’ve made any money, outwith work and the begging, has been when I moved house. But then of course I just had to sink it into the next property.

And then, if I do live beyond 72, it’ll all be used to pay nursing home staff to brush my teeth and sit me in front of Countdown on the telly. What a life, honestly.

If Proudhon had lived till he was 208, he’d probably dip his quill online today and write: “Property is pants.” And, at last, he’d have got his slogan right.