The issue of private property and the rights it confers remain almost undiscussed in critiques of globalization and free market economics. Yet property lies at the heart of an economic system geared to profit maximization. The authors describe the historically specific and self-consciously explicit manner in which it emerged. They trace this history from earliest historical times and show how, in the hands of Thomas Hobbes and John Locke in particular, the notion of private property took on its absolutist nature and most extreme form--a form which neoliberal economics is now imposing on humanity worldwide through the pressures of globalization. They argue that avoiding the destruction of people's ways of living and of nature requires reshaping our notions of private property. It also examines the practical ways for social and ecumenical movements to press for alternatives.

Ulrich Duchrow is Professor of Systematic Theology at the University of Heidelberg, Germany. He is the co-founder of Kairos Europa, an ecumenical grassroots network striving for economic justice.

Franz J. Hinkelammert is a German economist who has spent much of his working life in Latin America.

Foreword * Introduction * Absolute Property Creates Poverty, Debts and Slavery: The Origin of the Property Economy in Antiquity and Biblical Alternatives * Homo Homini Lupus: The Emergence of the Capitalist Possessive Market Society in the Modern Age * The Case of John Locke: The Inversion of Human Rights in the Name of Bourgeois Property * The Total Market: How Globalised Capitalism Is Eliminating the Commitment to Sustain Life * The Fall of the Towers: The Absolute Empire--The Implementation of the Total Market * It Is Life-Enhancing Production That Must Grow, Not Capitalist Property--Latin American Approaches to a Renewed Dependency Theory * Another World Is Possible: Rebuilding the System of Ownership from Below from the Perspective of Life and the Common Good * God or Mammon? A Confessional Issue for the Churches in the Context of Social Movements