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 one or more non-governmental entities. Private property is foundational to capitalism, an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and their operation for profit. As a legal concept, private property is defined and enforced by a country's political system.
History In absolute antiquity, the native Mesopotamians had no term for the concept of property. The majority of legal documents from Mesopotamia, however, are overwhelmingly concerned with the proper disposition of what modern people would call "property" and with ensuring legal, unchallengeable, and fair treatment of individuals with property claims. While there were no laws prohibiting the alienation—that is, the buying and selling—of land, written records from Mesopotamia indicate a tendency against it. Measures were taken to keep land within a family and to prevent it from being broken down into plots too small to be viable agriculturally. Written discussions of private property arguably emerged in the Western tradition at least as far back as Plato. Before the 18th century, English speakers generally used "property" to refer to land ownership. In England, "property" came to have a legal definition in the 17th century. Private property, defined as property owned by commercial entities, emerged with the great European trading companies of the 17th century. The issue of the enclosure of agricultural land in England, especially as debated in the 17th and 18th centuries, accompanied efforts in philosophy and political thought—by Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679), James Harrington (1611–1677), and John Locke (1632–1704), for example—to address the phenomenon of property ownership. In arguing against supporters of absolute monarchy, Locke conceptualized property as a natural right that God had not bestowed exclusively upon the monarchy. In his labor theory of property, Locke stated that property is a natural result of labor improving upon nature, and thus, by labor expenditure, the laborer becomes entitled to its produce. Influenced by the rise of mercantilism, Locke argued that private property was antecedent to, and thus independent of, government. Locke distinguished between "common property", by which he meant common land, and property in consumer goods and producer goods. His chief argument for property in land ownership was that it led to improved land management and cultivation compared with common land. In the 18th century, during the Industrial Revolution, the moral philosopher and economist Adam Smith (1723–1790), in contrast to Locke, distinguished between the "right to property" as an acquired right and natural rights. Smith confined natural rights to "liberty and life". Smith also drew attention to the relationship between employee and employer and identified that property and civil government were dependent upon each other, recognizing that "the state of property must always vary with the form of government". Smith further argued that civil government could not exist without property, as the government's main function was to define and safeguard property ownership. In the 19th century, German economist and philosopher Karl Marx (1818–1883) provided an influential analysis of the development and history of property formations and their relationship to the technical productive forces of a given period. Marx's conception of private property has proven influential for many subsequent economic theories and for communist, socialist, and anarchist political movements and has led to the widespread association of private property, particularly private property in the means of production, with capitalism. In the 20th century, theories of private property were further developed within the tradition of classical and economic liberalism. Libertarian economists such as Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek emphasized the role of private property as a foundational institution for economic calculation, market coordination, and individual liberty. Building on earlier natural-rights arguments, some theorists such as Murray Rothbard explained property rights as originating through first use and continuing through voluntary exchange between individuals, independent of state authority. In this view, often associated with anarcho-capitalism, property rights are seen as the basis for a system of law and social order that can emerge without centralized government, with markets and contractual arrangements providing the primary mechanisms for the allocation and transfer of resources.
Legal and real-world aspects
Private property is a legal concept defined and enforced by a country's legal and political institutions. Theories of property rights differ regarding whether such rights originate from law, custom, contract, or natural rights. The area of law that deals with the subject is called property law. Governments typically fund the courts, law enforcement agencies, and administrative institutions that enforce property law through public revenues. Defence of property is a common method of justification used by defendants who argue that they should not be held liable for any loss or injury that they have caused because they were acting to protect their property. Courts in many jurisdictions have recognized limited rights to use force in defense of property, subject to statutory and judicial restrictions. In many jurisdictions, governments impose taxes on property ownership. A property tax is an ad valorem tax on the value of a property, usually levied on real estate. The tax is levied by the governing authority of the jurisdiction in which the property is located. It may be imposed annually or at the time of a real estate transaction, such as in a real estate transfer tax. Under a property tax system, the government requires or performs an appraisal of the monetary value of each property, and the tax is assessed in proportion to that value. The four broad types of property taxes are land, improvements to land (immovable human-made objects, such as buildings), personal property (movable human-made objects), and intangible property.
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