Perhaps the following quotation will put this discussion in its  
historical context with respect to property in land. It is taken from  
(Nock, Albert J. Our Enemy The State.1935. The Caxton Printers,  
Caldwell, Idaho, Fourth Printing, 1959. see Chapter 4, pp. 104-110)  
  
"There are two methods, or means, and only two, whereby man's needs and  
desires can be satisfied. One is the production and exchange of wealth;  
this is the economic means. The other is the uncompensated appropriation  
of wealth produced by others; this is the political means."  
"After conquest and confiscation have been effected, and the State set  
up, its first concern is with the land. The State assumes the right of  
eminent domain over its territorial basis, whereby every landholder  
becomes in theory a tenant of the State. In its capacity as ultimate  
landlord, the State distributes the land among its beneficiaries on its  
own terms. A point to be observed in passing is that by the State system  
of land tenure each original transaction confers two distinct  
monopolies, entirely different in their nature, inasmuch as one confers  
the right to labour-made property, and the other concerns the right to  
purely law-made property. The one is a monopoly of the use-value of  
land; and the other, a monopoly of the economic rent* of land. The first  
gives the right to keep other persons from using the land in question,  
or trespassing on it, and the right to exclusive possession of values  
accruing from the application of labor to it; values, that is, which are  
produced by the exercise of the economic means upon the particular  
property in question. Monopoly of economic rent, on the other hand gives  
the exclusive right to values accruing from the desire of other persons  
to possess that property; values which take their rise irrespective of  
any exercise of the economic means on the part of the holder."  
  
*Economic rent (or ground rent) is one of the most important concepts in  
political economy. But its genesis and implications for every society  
are virtually ignored or obfuscated by contemporary economic pundits  
  
  
Roy Davidson