ABSTRACT
In every social system, property stands at the center of the relationship between the individual and the state. Not just the political quality of the regime, but the institutions of its economy and the customs of its people are largely determined by whom the state recognizes as having the authority to control the disposition of objects and ideas, and in whose interests that authority is exercised. This is most obvious in totalitarian systems, where all rights to property lie ultimately in the state, and individuals exert only the control over things that the state, in pursuit of its own interests, chooses to allow them. But it is equally true of market orders based on private property and the individuality of interests. If, as James Madison (1788, p. 356) put it, men were angels, they would see that respecting the property of others is both a guarantee of peace and a means to the advancement of their own purposes, and act accordingly without external compulsion. But real men and women need the power of a state to protect their property and the market that surrounds it, to ensure that they do what they must to preserve the regime of freedom itself.
