The term propertarianism has been used to describe various views regarding private property. Those holding positive views on property rights may be described as propertarian. Conversely, others opposed to private property may be described as non-propertarian or anti-propertarian.

Historian Marcus Cunliffe used it in 1973 lectures to apply to "characteristic values of American history" in regard to property.Hans Morgenthau used it in a more limited way to characterize the connection between property and suffrage. It appears that the term was coined (in its most recent sense, at least) by Edward Cain, in 1963:

L. Neil Smith describes propertarianism as a positive libertarian philosophy in his novels The Probability Broach (1980) and The American Zone‎ (2002).

Ronald Hamowy describes Murray Rothbard's form of libertarianism as "propertarian" because he "reduced all human rights to rights of property, beginning with the natural right of self-ownership." Rothbardian libertarian anarchism or anarcho-capitalism advocate that property only may originate by being the product of labor, and may then only legitimately change hands by trade or gift. They term this as "neo-Lockean". Other libertarians question the self-ownership view on the grounds people can't be property, even of themselves, and that by ignoring the psychological aspects of being, the viewpoint downplays the concept that "liberty defined by self-determination is the control of choice in human life and development."