Nevertheless, property is the expression for _unlimited dominion_ over somewhat (thing, beast, man) which "I can judge and dispose of as seems good to me." According to Roman law, indeed, _jus utendi et abutendi re sua, quatenus juris ratio patitur_, an _exclusive_ and _unlimited right_; but property is conditioned by might. What I have in my power, that is my own. So long as I assert myself as holder, I am the proprietor of the thing; if it gets away from me again, no matter by what power, _e. g._ through my recognition of a title of others to the thing,--then the property is extinct. Thus property and possession coincide. It is not a right lying outside my might that legitimizes me, but solely my might: if I no longer have this, the thing vanishes away from me. When the Romans no longer had any might against the Germans, the world-empire of Rome _belonged_ to the latter, and it would sound ridiculous to insist that the Romans had nevertheless remained properly the proprietors. Whoever knows how to take and to defend the thing, to him it belongs till it is again taken from him, as liberty belongs to him who _takes_ it.--
Only might decides about property, and, as the State (no matter whether State of well-to-do citizens or of ragamuffins or of men in the absolute) is the sole mighty one, it alone is proprietor; I, the unique,[180] have nothing, and am only enfeoffed, am vassal and, as such, servitor. Under the dominion of the State there is no property of _mine_.
I want to raise the value of myself, the value of ownness, and should I cheapen property? No, as I was not respected hitherto because people, mankind, and a thousand other generalities were put higher, so property too has to this day not yet been recognized in its full value. Property too was only the property of a ghost, _e. g._ the people's property; my whole existence "belonged to the fatherland": _I_ belonged to the fatherland, the people, the State, and therefore also everything that I called _my own_. It is demanded of States that they make away with pauperism. It seems to me this is asking that the State should cut off its own head and lay it at its feet; for so long as the State is the ego the individual ego must remain a poor devil, a non-ego. The State has an interest only in being itself rich; whether Michael is rich and Peter poor is alike to it; Peter might also be rich and Michael poor. It looks on indifferently as one grows poor and the other rich, unruffled by this alternation. As _individuals_ they are really equal before its face; in this it is just: before it both of them are--nothing, as we "are altogether sinners before God"; on the other hand, it has a very great interest in this, that those individuals who make it their ego should have a part in its wealth; it makes them partakers in _its property_. Through property, with which it rewards the individuals, it tames them; but this remains _its_ property, and every one has the usufruct of it only so long as he bears in himself the ego of the State, or is a "loyal member of society"; in the opposite case the property is confiscated, or made to melt away by vexatious lawsuits. The property, then, is and remains _State property_, not property of the ego. That the State does not arbitrarily deprive the individual of what he has from the State means simply that the State does not rob itself. He who is a State-ego, _i. e._ a good citizen or subject, holds his fief undisturbed as _such an ego_, not as being an ego of his own. According to the code, property is what I call mine "by virtue of God and law." But it is mine by virtue of God and law only so long as--the State has nothing against it.