ABSTRACT
In the modern liberal tradition, the foundation of the economy and the purpose of the state begin from a single irreducible principle: the principle of property. The “natural right” of property is intimately connected to a particular notion of “person” as political and social subject. In the work of such political philosophers as Locke and Hegel “property-in-person” is the first modality of the subject. Property right is a natural right because it is an extension into the world of the propertied essence of the subject. The modern idea of property and the modern idea of the subject are indissociable.
