This essay focuses on property rights in land and labor, the ways in which they have been entangled since the development of early capitalism in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and the extent to which they have realized—or failed to realize—desiderata in addition to economic productivity and growth. The definition and enforcement of property rights may reflect the power relations within a society, but their realization depends on state laws and capacities. Transformations of property rights tend to follow changes in the balance of power among elites and in state capacity or occur as a response to effective resistance by those who are harmed or excluded.