ABSTRACT
The right of ownership, dominium, is a person's all-embracing legal power over a tangible object. It is a right, that is a power conferred upon a subject by the law. Ownership is equally universal with regard to the subject. Everybody has an equal capacity for ownership, and he may own property of every description. This chapter starts with the historical beginnings of the institution, with the period of simple commodity production, the initial stage of bourgeois society. Karl Marx's monumental achievement begins where he demonstrates the necessity of the transition from simple commodity production to capitalist production, and subjects the latter to analysis. This analysis is also invaluable for legal history. It revealed to him the truth that the transformation of its social functions will in the end result in a transformation of the norm itself, that the evolution of the law is determined by economic relations.
