ABSTRACT
Beginning with the ancient philosophers of Greece and continuing through the revival of that ancient scholarship by the medieval Scholastics, the moral basis of private property in natural law found its way into modern thought. This chapter focuses on physical property rights, but intellectual property rights have become increasingly important over time. There are four categories of intellectual property: copyright, patent, trade secrets, and trademark. Plato examined the link between the property rules in a society and the broader issue of justice and social stability. In his view, private property represented a clear threat to social cohesion, so he wanted to prohibit it for the ruling political and military leadership of his ideal state. For Karl Marx and his followers, property rights were primarily social relationships that allowed one class to exploit another. The Marxist solution was not to abolish property altogether but to abolish the institution of private property, and transfer property from the capitalists to the workers.
