Private property

Private property, not to be confused with individual property or personal property, describes a labor relationship to the means of production. As a concept, private ownership of property can exist only in the specific context of a political system which defines how it exists and how it can be used.

Under capitalism, a right to private property is not based on one's own labor (as in one form of individual property) but appropriation of the products of the labor of others. Marxism seeks to abolish the private property of the bourgeoisie; however, it does not need to abolish the property of small peasants and artisans because the bourgeoisie is already expropriating them and turning them into proletarians. Most people in capitalist countries have no private property due to this process.

History

Bourgeois private property developed at the end of feudalism when feudal and guild labor reached their limits. A new class of industrialists developed and gradually expropriated peasants, guild members, and manufacturing workers, turning them into propertyless proletarians. The first private property was sheep-farming land in England. During that time the personal property of English serfs was mass privatized by an alliance of lords and capitalists. The serfs who had their property appropriated became the first proletarians.

At the end of capitalism, the proletariat overthrows the bourgeoisie and abolishes private property as the productive forces grow.