Private property

Private property is a legal designation for the ownership of property by non-governmental legal entities. Private property is distinguishable from public property, which is owned by a state entity; and from collective (or cooperative) property, which is owned by a group of non-governmental entities. Private property is further distinguished from personal property, which refers to property for personal use and consumption. Private property is a legal concept defined and enforced by a country's political system.

• A people averse to the institution of private property is without the first element of freedom.
  • Lord Acton, ‘Nationality’, Home and Foreign Review (July 1862), quoted in Lord Acton, The History of Freedom and Other Essays, eds. John Neville Figgis and Reginald Vere Laurence (1907), p. 297

• γεωμετρῆσαι βούλομαι τὸν ἀέρα
  ὑμῖν διελεῖν τε κατὰ γύας.
  • I intend to measure out the air for you—dividing it in surveyed lots.
  • Aristophanes, Meton in The Birds, line 995, as translated by Ian Johnston

• We live in a system described in obsolete terms. We have come to believe our own repeated declarations that our society is based on individual initiative – whereas, in fact, most of it is no more individual than an infantry division. We assume that our economic system is based on “private property.” Yet most industrial property is is no more private than a seat in a subway train, and indeed it is questionable whether much of it can be called “property” at all. We indignantly deny that we are collectivist, yet it is demonstrable that more than two-thirds of our enterprise is possible only because it is collectivist: what is really meant is that the State did not do the collectivizing.
  • Adolf A. Berle, Power Without Property (1959), p. 27; Cited in asociologist.com, 2009/12/07.

• Καὶ ποῖον, λέγει, ἀδικῶ, μὲ τὸ νὰ κρατῶ γιὰ τoν ἐαυτόν μου αὐτὰ ποῦ μου ἀνήκουν; Ποία, εἰπέ μου, εἶναι αὐτὰ ποῦ σου ἀνήκουν; Ἀπὸ ποῦ τὰ ἔλαβες, καὶ τὰ ἔφερες στὴν ζωὴν αὐτήν; Ὅπως ἀκριβῶς κάποιος ποὺ εὑρίσκει στὸ θέατρο θέση μὲ καλὴν θέαν, ἐμποδίζει ἔπειτα τοὺς εἰσερχομένους, θεωρώντας ὡς ἰδικὸ τοῦ αὐτὸ ποὺ προορίζεται γιὰ χρῆσιν κοινήν, ἔτσι εἶναι καὶ οἱ πλούσιοι. Ἀφοῦ ἐκυρίευσαν ἐκ τῶν προτέρων τα κοινὰ ἀγαθά, τ�� ἰδιοποιοῦνται ἁπλῶς ἐπειδὴ τὰ ἐπρόλαβαν. Ἐὰν ὁ καθένας ἐκρατοῦσε ἐκεῖνο ποὺ ἀρκεῖ γιὰ τὴν ἱκανοποίηση τῶν ἀναγκῶν του, καὶ ἄφηνε τὸ περίσσευμα σ’ αὐτὸν ποὺ τὸ χρειάζεται, κανεὶς δὲν θὰ ἦταν πλούσιος, ἀλλὰ καὶ κανεὶς πτωχός.
  • 'But whom do I treat unjustly,' you say, 'by keeping what is my own?' Tell me, what is your own? What did you bring into this life? From where did you receive it? It is as if someone were to take the first seat in the theater, then bar everyone else from attending, so that one person alone enjoys what is offered for the benefit of all in common — this is what the rich do. They seize common goods before others have the opportunity, then claim them as their own by right of preemption. For if we all took only what was necessary to satisfy our own needs, giving the rest to those who lack, no one would be rich, no one would be poor, and no one would be in need.
    • Basil of Caesarea, I Will Tear Down My Barns, as translated by C. P. Schroeder (2009), p. 69

• Whatever an author puts between the two covers of his book is public property; whatever of himself he does not put there is his private property, as much as if he had never written a word.
  • Mary Abigail Dodge, Country Living and Country Thinking, Preface, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

• Since the management of industry by individuals necessarily implies private property, and since competition is in reality merely the manner and form in which the control of industry by private property owners expresses itself, it follows that private property cannot be separated from competition and the individual management of industry. Private property must, therefore, be abolished and in its place must come the common utilization of all instruments of production and the distribution of all products according to common agreement – in a word, what is called the communal ownership of goods.
  • Friedrich Engels, Principles of Communism (1847)

• The abolition of private property is, doubtless, the shortest and most significant way to characterize the revolution in the whole social order which has been made necessary by the development of industry – and for this reason it is rightly advanced by communists as their main demand.
  • Friedrich Engels, Principles of Communism (1847)

• Every change in the social order, every revolution in property relations, is the necessary consequence of the creation of new forces of production which no longer fit into the old property relations. Private property has not always existed. When, towards the end of the Middle Ages, there arose a new mode of production which could not be carried on under the then existing feudal and guild forms of property, this manufacture, which had outgrown the old property relations, created a new property form, private property. And for manufacture and the earliest stage of development of big industry, private property was the only possible property form; the social order based on it was the only possible social order.
  • Friedrich Engels, Principles of Communism (1847)

• The abolition of private property has become not only possible but absolutely necessary.
  • Friedrich Engels, Principles of Communism (1847)

• Democracy would be wholly valueless to the proletariat if it were not immediately used as a means for putting through measures directed against private property and ensuring the livelihood of the proletariat.
  • Friedrich Engels, Principles of Communism (1847)

• When all capital, all production, all exchange have been brought together in the hands of the nation, private property will disappear of its own accord.
  • Friedrich Engels, Principles of Communism (1847)

• What will be the consequences of the ultimate disappearance of private property? Society will take all forces of production and means of commerce, as well as the exchange and distribution of products, out of the hands of private capitalists and will manage them in accordance with a plan based on the availability of resources and the needs of the whole society. In this way, most important of all, the evil consequences which are now associated with the conduct of big industry will be abolished. There will be no more crises; the expanded production, which for the present order of society is overproduction and hence a prevailing cause of misery, will then be insufficient and in need of being expanded much further. Instead of generating misery, overproduction will reach beyond the elementary requirements of society to assure the satisfaction of the needs of all; it will create new needs and, at the same time, the means of satisfying them. It will become the condition of, and the stimulus to, new progress, which will no longer throw the whole social order into confusion, as progress has always done in the past.
  • Friedrich Engels, Principles of Communism (1847)

• The general co-operation of all members of society for the purpose of planned exploitation of the forces of production, the expansion of production to the point where it will satisfy the needs of all, the abolition of a situation in which the needs of some are satisfied at the expense of the needs of others, the complete liquidation of classes and their conflicts, the rounded development of the capacities of all members of society through the elimination of the present division of labor, through industrial education, through engaging in varying activities, through the participation by all in the enjoyments produced by all, through the combination of city and country – these are the main consequences of the abolition of private property.
  • Friedrich Engels, Principles of Communism (1847)

• Prostitution is based on private property and falls with it.
  • Friedrich Engels, Principles of Communism (1847)

• The principal barriers to a free society are the State and the institution of private property. It is the State which causes war, police repression, and other forms of violence, and it is private property — the lack of equal distribution of major social wealth — which causes crime and deprivation.
  • Lorenzo Kom'boa Ervin, Anarchism and the Black Revolution (1993)

• Anarchists recognize the distinction between personal possessions and major Capitalistic property. Capitalistic Property is that which has as its basic characteristic and purpose the command of other people’s labor power became of its exchange value. The institution of property conditions the development of a set of social and economic relations, which has established Capitalism, and this situation allows a small minority within society to reap enormous benefits and privileges at the expense of the laboring minority. This is the classic scenario of Capital exploiting labor.
  • Lorenzo Kom'boa Ervin, Anarchism and the Black Revolution (1993)

• Private property… is a Creature of Society, and is subject to the Calls of that Society, whenever its Necessities shall require it, even to its last Farthing, its contributors therefore to the public Exigencies are not to be considered a Benefit on the Public, entitling the Contributors to the Distinctions of Honor and Power, but as the Return of an Obligation previously received, or as payment for a just Debt.
  • Benjamin Franklin, Queries and Remarks respecting Alterations in the Constitution of Pennsylvania, 1789.

• We see in private property and in economy based upon and fostering private property, the one way to make government a durable ally of the whole man, rather than his determined enemy. We see in the sanctity of private property the only durable foundation for constitutional government in a free society. And beyond that, we see, in cherished diversity of ways, diversity of thoughts, of motives and accomplishments. We don’t seek to lead anyone’s life for him. We only seek to secure his rights, guarantee him opportunity to strive, with government performing only those needed and constitutionally sanctioned tasks which cannot otherwise be performed.
  • Barry Goldwater, "A Time for Choosing" (1964)

• Socialism, unlike Marxism, does not repudiate private property.
  • Adolf Hitler, Interview with George Sylvester Viereck, 1923

• We National Socialists see in private property a higher level of human economic development that according to the differences in performance controls the management of what has been accomplished enabling and guaranteeing the advantage of a higher standard of living for everyone. Bolshevism destroys not only private property but also private initiative and the readiness to shoulder responsibility. It has not been able to save millions of human beings from starvation in Russia, the greatest Agrarian State in the world
  • Adolf Hitler, speech 21 May 1935

• I absolutely insist on protecting private property. It is natural and salutary that the individual should be inspired by the wish to devote a part of the income from his work to building up and expanding a family estate. Suppose the estate consists of a factory. I regard it as axiomatic, in the ordinary way, that this factory will be better run by one of the members of the family that it would be by a State functionary—providing, of course, that the family remains healthy. In this sense, we must encourage private initiative.
  • Attributed to an Adolf Hitler's private statement made on March 24, 1942. Die Bormann Vermerke: Transcripts of Hitler's conversations (5 July 1941 - 30 November 1944), made under the supervision of Martin Bormann, published in the UK as Hitler's Table Talks (1953) It. The reliability of the translation is disputed.

• [I]f private property goes, then in my view there is no safeguard whatsoever.
  • Alan Charles Kors, "Socialism's Legacy" (2011), The John W. Pope Lecture Series, The Clemson Institute for the Study of Capitalism

• The Lord spoke to Moses on Mount Sinai, saying, ... "The land shall not be sold in perpetuity, for the land is mine. For you are strangers and sojourners with me."
  • Leviticus 25:23 ESV

• Nobody is at liberty to attack several property and to say at the same time that he values civilisation. The history of the two cannot be disentangled. Civilisation is nothing more than a name for the old order of the Aryan world, dissolved but perpetually re-constituting itself under a vast variety of solvent influences, of which infinitely the most powerful have been those which have, slowly, and in some parts of the world much less perfectly than others, substituted several property for collective ownership.
  • Henry Maine, Village-Communities in the East and West (1876 ed.), p. 230

• Private property appears very definitely on primitive levels... The roots of property as a legal principle which determines the physical relationship between man and his environmental setting, natural or artificial, are the very prerequisite of any ordered action in the cultural sense.
  • Bronisław Malinowski, Freedom and Civilization (1947), pp. 132-133

• You are horrified at our intending to do away with private property. But in your existing society private property is already done away with for nine-tenths of the population; its existence for the few is solely due to its non-existence in the hands of those nine-tenths.
  • Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto (1848).

• But to make the comparison applicable, we must compare Communism at its best, with the regime of individual property, not as it is, but as it might be made. ... The laws of property have never yet conformed to the principles on which the justification of private property rests.
  • John Stuart Mill, Principles of Political Economy (1848), p. 14.

• Lacking much historical information and assuming (1) that victims of injustice generally do worse than they otherwise would and (2) that those from the least well-off group in the society have the highest probabilities of being the (descendants of) victims of the most serious injustice who are owed compensation by those who benefited from the injustices, ... then a rough rule of thumb for rectifying injustices might seem to be the following: organize society so as to maximize the position of whatever group ends up least well-off in the society.
  • Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia (1974), pp. 231-232

• It is the value of the improvements only, and not the earth itself, that is individual property. ... Every proprietor owes to the community a ground rent for the land which he holds.
  • Thomas Paine, Agrarian Justice (1795), in Complete Works, vol. 2, p. 403

• In Western Europe since Roman times, private property was considered sacrosanct. The principle enunciated by the Roman Stoic philosopher Seneca that kings rule by the will of the people became fundamental to Western civilization, together with private property, which was the main source of productive wealth.
  • Richard Pipes, Property and Freedom: The Inseparable Connection, speech at an “Evenings at FEE” event, October 2004. [1]

• We need to keep a very keen eye on our own government. It's getting too rich and redistributing wealth is a sure way of robbing us of our private property rights and other rights along with them.
  • Richard Pipes, Property and Freedom: The Inseparable Connection, speech at an “Evenings at FEE” event, October 2004. [2]

• Tenure of property is more of a duty than an actual right of possession. Property in the widest sense is a right that can belong only to society, which in turn receives it as a trust from Allah who is the only true owner of anything. ...
  There can be no real place for personal possession unless it carries with it the rights of disposal and use. The condition on which this right must stand is that of wisdom in the disposal; if the disposal of property is foolish, then the ruler or society may withdraw this right of disposal. ...
  The right of disposal depends on being mature and being able to fulfill one's duties; when the possessor does not meet these requirements, then the natural fruits of ownership come to an end.

• Sayyid Qutb, Social Justice in Islam (1953), pp. 132-133

• We have not the slightest sympathy with that socialistic idea which would try to put laziness, thriftlessness and inefficiency on a par with industry, thrift and efficiency; which would strive to break up not merely private property, but what is far more important, the home, the chief prop upon which our whole civilization stands. Such a theory, if ever adopted, would mean the ruin of the entire country — a ruin which would bear heaviest upon the weakest, upon those least able to shift for themselves.
  • Theodore Roosevelt, Seventh Annual Message (1907)

• Theft is only punished because it violates the right of property; but this right is itself nothing in origin but theft.
  • Donatien Alphonse François de Sade, Juliette (1797), p. 118
• In my brochure "Rebuilding Russia," written in 1990, when the Soviet Union was still standing, I wrote that private ownership of land is essential. It is obvious why. Self-interest. A person takes an interest in his work when he has his own stake. The situation now with private ownership of land is so complex that my answer would take up several pages. You cannot imagine what is going on over there right now! What is being prepared is simply a fire sale. Nothing of Russia will remain. Not even land. Nothing! There will be no farmers--only wage laborers. And crooks, who will own the land.
  • Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Interview With Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn on the New Russia and Ukraine (May 1994), by Paul Klebnikov, in the (9 May 1994), issue of Forbes magazine

• If a Tory does not believe that private property is one of the main bulwarks of individual freedom, then he had better become a socialist and have done with it.
  • Margaret Thatcher, Article for Daily Telegraph ("My Kind of Tory Party") (30 January, 1975).

• Societies with private property are often described as free societies. Part of what this means is surely that owners are free to use their property as they please; they are not bound by social or political decisions. ... But ... it would be equally apposite to describe private property as a system of unfreedom, since it necessarily involves the social exclusion of people from resources that others own. All property systems distribute freedoms and unfreedoms; no system of property can be described without qualification as a system of liberty. Someone may respond that the liberty to use what belongs to another is license not liberty, and so its exclusion should not really count against a private property system in the libertarian calculus. But the price of this maneuver is very high: not only does it commit the libertarian to a moralized conception of freedom of the sort that he usually shies away from (as in case of positive liberty), but it also means that liberty, so defined, can no longer be invoked to support property except in a question-begging way.
  • Jeremy Waldron, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy article “Property and Ownership”.

• Private property … has led Individualism entirely astray. It has made gain not growth its aim. So that man thought that the important thing was to have, and did not know that the important thing is to be. The true perfection of man lies, not in what man has, but in what man is.
  • Oscar Wilde, The Soul of Man Under Socialism, ¶ 15.

• In the early days, the common purse at Jerusalem was not the outworking of the deliberation about whether it is good for disciples to have possessions of their own, and certainly it involved no speculation as to whether it is wholesome for society to be governed by a regime of private property. Sharing together was much more immediate and unpremeditated; they shared their wealth because they ate together and because food for the morrow is about all the wealth a common person can ever hope to possess in any simple society.
  • John Howard Yoder, Revolutionary Christianity: The 1966 South American Lectures, p. 25

Capital Enclosure Ideology Intellectual property Law

Ownership Property Real estate Right to property