https://doi.org/10.56079/20222/1

Property is the foremost category that lies beneath the economic system and determines its historical type. At certain stages of societal development, the differentiation of property into private and public property has played a crucial role in the formation of civil society.

Property is a complex category that contains three components: possession, disposal, and use. Possession means the appropriation of material property in the absence of a real right to it. This is de facto, but not de jure property. In the case of possession, the property is not subject to sale, although it is possible to transfer it by inheritance, which creates a precondition for the transformation of possession into a property.

The historical process is precisely concerning the dialectic of individual and collective property and indicates that they preceded the establishment of private and public property.

Private property can be considered as a special type of own property that takes a specific form under the conditions of the capitalist system. It arises as a result of alienation from the means of production of the direct producer. Inequality already has a social character within the society and it is conditioned not only by natural privileges or power but also, first of all, by property differentiation.

In different periods, the right of possession was used instead of property. Property is the right of an owner formally recognized by the state to dispose of it in any form, including the right to sell. This definition is given in ancient Roman law. Property is fully represented with its total content when the combination of all these three components is identified.

Based on the analysis, we can conclude that property and its main form - private property, in the process of historical development was constantly experiencing changes, which will be especially important in the information society based on the knowledge economy. Private property will be modified in several directions:

• Transformation of own property into private property
• Overcoming "alienation" between property and the direct producer
• The disappearance of private property in such a way that it no longer defines the social status of a person, which it has traditionally done throughout history.

The metamorphosis of private property into achieving a higher degree of social justice is undoubtedly progressive. However, the question arises - what can be said about property equality in this case?

The unprecedented growth of the role of individual capabilities of people in the knowledge economy significantly determines the difference between obtaining an education and access to information. As a famous sociologist and futurologist f. Fukuyama observes: “In a post-industrial society, we are dealing with a new type of class inequality caused by differences in education levels (Fukuyama F., 1992 p. 116). Here we are in fact dealing with a phenomenon that the German educators called the "natural aristocracy."

The process of modification of the capitalist system will differentiate direct producers, when the accumulation of material wealth will be replaced by the accumulation of knowledge, on the one hand - the incomes of knowledge workers will increase significantly, and on the other hand - industrial labor will be marginalized. This type of labor will be for people who will find it very difficult, or impossible to adapt to the new technological and organizational-economic system.

Modern media and communications connect people around the world, "but today, as never before, they show profound differences between people." (Coyle D., 2001, p. 167). This phenomenon is known in the scientific literature as "digital inequality".

In addition, in the post-industrial society, especially at such a high level as the "information network society" (Castels M. 1996, p.162). Inequality is not related to the phenomenon of private property. It is not a product of the direct producer alienation from both the conditions and the results of production. In this sense, inequality cannot be equated with injustice, at least in the old, traditional sense of the latter.

Keywords: Property, private, personal, corporate (group), public property, knowledge  economy, information society,post-industrial society. 

JEL Codes: D83, K11, P14