ed
to the whole complex of institutions and arrangements in which and
by which people live together in society. It is the embodiment of the
opinions, ideas, and habits of life inherited by each generation from
its forbears. It is, indeed, a people's whole state of civilization
with its political, economic, intellectual, scientific, religious, and
esthetic aspects.

The most important economic aspect of the existing system is, broadly
speaking, the institution of private property. So closely connected
with this that they are hardly more than different phases of the same
thing, are the use of money (the monetary economy), the wage system,
and competition as a mode of distribution. "The institution of private
property" is the general expression for the way in which men in the
modern state make use of their own energies and of material wealth
within the nation. Nearly all the total of the things mentioned in the
table in Chapter 2, section 4, are owned by private citizens.[1] We
live in a regime of private property, and all our economic problems
are affected by that fact. The determination of the exact boundaries
of private property makes up a large part of the politico-economic
problems which the people in each generation have to solve. A large
share, possibly, in a certain sense, every one of the economic
problems that are discussed involve change, limitation, definition,
or, more radically, abolition of present laws of property. Broadly
understood, as above, therefore, determination of the nature of
private property is _the essential_ economic problem.

Sec. 2. #Nature of property#. Property means ownership, and "ownership"
is the abstract noun expressing the quality of possessing a
thing. Correspondingly, "owner" is the Anglo-Saxon equivalent of
"proprietor." Property thus, fundamentally, means not an object held,
or possessed, but the right in or belonging to a person to control
something that he owns. Ownership is a legal right to control under
certain conditions.[2] Physical, possession of an object is not
necessarily ownership.

There are different kinds of ownership. It may be private, as that
of individuals, families, partnerships, or corporations; or it may be
public, as that of nations, states, counties, cities and towns, owning
such things as public buildings, parks, highways, the Adirondack
forest-reserve, or the Erie Canal. These two kinds are equally
effective as against the claims of outsiders, but the