PROPERTY

Property is any physical or intangible entity that is owned by a person or jointly by a group of people or a legal entity like a corporation. Depending on the nature of the property, an owner of property has the right to consume, sell, rent, mortgage, transfer, exchange or destroy it, or to exclude others from doing these things. The Restatement (First) of Property defines Property as anything, tangible or intangible whereby a legal relationship between persons and the State enforces a possessory interest or legal title in that thing. This [4] mediating relationship between individual, property and state is called as property regimes. Important widely recognized types of property include real property (the combination of land and any improvements to or on the land), personal property(physical possessions belonging to a person), private property (property owned by legal persons, business entities or Individuals ), public property (state owned or publicly owned and available possessions) and intellectual property (exclusive rights over artistic [5] creations, inventions, etc.), although the latter is not always as widely recognized or enforced. A title, or a right of ownership, establishes the relation between the property and other persons, assuring the owner the right to dispose of the property as the owner sees fit.

Property is usually thought of as being defined and protected by the local sovereignty. Note though that ownership does not necessarily equate with sovereignty. If ownership gave supreme authority, it would be sovereignty, not ownership. Some philosophers assert that property rights arise from social convention, while others find justifications for them in morality or in natural law. Property, in the first instance, is a thing-in-itself. When a person finds a thing and takes that thing into that person's possession and control, then that thing becomes a thing-for-you for that person. Once the person has that thing in that person's possession, that thing becomes that person's property by reason of discovery and conquest, and that person has the individual right to defend that property (property interest) against all others by reason of self-help. Typically, persons join together to form a political state which may develop a formal legal system which enforces and protects property rights so that the individual can go to court to get protection and enforcement of that person's property rights, rather than having to use self-help. It is possible that when a person has constructive possession of personal property, but another person has actual possession, then the person having constructive possession has bare legal title, while the other person has actual possession. Generally, the ground and any buildings which are permanently attached are considered real property, while movable goods and intangibles such as a copyright are considered personal property. Also, property cannot be considered a reified concept, because in the first instance, property is very concrete as a physical thing-in-itself. Various scholarly disciplines (such as law, economics, anthropology or sociology) may treat the concept more systematically, but definitions vary, most particularly when involving contracts. Positive law defines such rights, and the judiciary can adjudicate and enforce property rights. According to Adam Smith, the expectation of profit from "improving one's stock of capital" rests on private property rights. Capitalism has as a central assumption that property rights encourage their holders to develop the property, generate wealth, and efficiently allocate resources based on the operation of

markets. From this has evolved the modern conception of property as a right enforced by positive law, in the expectation that this will produce more wealth and better standards of living. However, Smith also expressed a very critical view on the effects of property laws on inequality: "Wherever there is great property, there is great inequality Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defence of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all." (Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations) In his text The Common Law, Oliver Wendell Holmes describes property as having two fundamental aspects. The first, possession, can be defined as control over a resource based on the practical inability of another to contradict the ends of the possessor. The second, title, is the expectation that others will recognize rights to control resource, even when it is not in possession. He elaborates the differences between these two concepts, and proposes a history of how they came to be attached to persons, as opposed to families or to entities such as the church. Classical liberals subscribe to the labor theory of property. They hold that individuals each own their own life, and it follows that one must own the products of that life, and that those products can be traded in free exchange with others. "Every man has a property in his own person. This nobody has a right to, but himself." (John Locke, Second Treatise on Civil Government) "The reason why men enter into society is the preservation of their property." (John Locke, Second Treatise on Civil Government) "Life, liberty, and property do not exist because men have made laws. On the contrary, it was the fact that life, liberty, and property existed beforehand that caused men to make laws in the first place." (Frdric Bastiat, The Law) Socialism's fundamental principles center on a critique of this concept, stating (among other things) that the cost of defending property exceeds the returns from private-property ownership, and that, even when property rights encourage their holders to develop their property or generate wealth, they do so only for their own benefit, which may not coincide with benefit to other people or to society at large. Libertarian socialism generally accepts property rights, but with a short abandonment period. In other words, a person must make (more-or-less) continuous use of the item or else lose ownership rights. This is usually referred to as "possession property" or "usufruct". Thus, in this usufruct system, absentee ownership is illegitimate and workers own the machines or other equipment that they work with. Communism argues that only collective ownership of the means of production through a polity (though not necessarily a state) will assure the minimization of unequal or unjust outcomes and the maximization of benefits, and

that therefore humans should abolish private ownership of capital (as opposed to property). Both communism and some kinds of socialism have also upheld the notion that private ownership of capital is inherently illegitimate. This argument centers mainly on the idea that private ownership of capital always benefits one class over another, giving rise to domination through the use of this privately owned capital. Communists do not oppose personal property that is "hard-won, self-acquired, self-earned" (as the Communist Manifesto puts it) by members of the proletariat. Both socialism and communism distinguish carefully between private ownership of capital (land, factories, resources, etc...) and private property (homes, material objects, and so forth).