That was not, of course, quite the distinction the critics of property rights were attempting to make. They referred to property rights as if they were rights belonging to property. Those who challenged this concept maintained, to the contrary, that property rights were really rights of human beings to property. However, further study and reflection have led me to a somewhat different conclusion. They are much more fundamental than that.
Property rights are basic to all rights.
This relationship first occurred to me while studying the loss of rights in totalitarian countries. My general conclusion was that the loss of property rights either preceded or accompanied the loss of other rights. This was so in Hitler's Germany. It was so in Lenin's and Stalin's Russia. It has also been the case in other totalitarian countries.