Property

'Property rights' are a significant aspect of any moral and political theory and practice, but the notion of 'property' seems rarely to have been characterized with precision. One way to begin defining it is to distinguish between four different types of property: Natural, Vital, Created, and Acquired. 'Natural' property is what one is born with, namely one's own body. 'Vital' property is whatever is necessary to the maintenance of Natural property. 'Created' property is anything that one has oneself made or produced. Finally, 'Acquired' property is anything else. Now, Property, in general, is to be distinguished from Possession--the latter is something which is de facto at one's disposal, but subject to conflicting claims regarding at whose disposal it should be, while Property is the disposition of a contested item that results from the settling of conflict via some accepted procedure. Hence, Property is a possession to which one has a 'Right', namely a possession that cannot be taken away except by some accepted procedure. An 'Inalienable' right to a possession is one that cannot be taken away by any procedure. Inalienability would seem most inarguable with respect to Natural Property, and increasingly less so to Vital, Created, and Acquired. Plainly, there can possessions that are not one's property, and, there can be property that is not in one's possession. Even Natural Property might not be in one's possession, i. e. in slavery. Justice, both in theory and in practice, turns on the potential conflict between Property and Possession; one definition of Justice is 'the coincidence of Property and Possession'. Where the distinctions in types of Property is more pertinent is to judgments of injustice. The latter tend to reflect the recognition of a hierarchy of Rights, analogous to the sequence of Property kinds presented above, e. g. Natural has priority, then Vital, etc. For example, depriving someone of their Natural Property, i. e. killing them, is usually treated as the most heinous crime, and depriving a needy person of food is generally regarded as more egregious than grabbing somethin off the plate of someone who is well-fed. The classification also helps explain one of Marx' fundamental criticisms of Capitalism--the payment of wages for labor forces the laborer to accept a lower level of Property, Acquired, in exchange for Created Property, the fruits of their labor. Hence, as this scheme tends to substantiate, Capitalism is fundamentally unjust.