Welcome to the Essential Ideas of John Locke. One of Locke's most important and enduring insights related to property. Locke argued that every person was born with certain basic natural rights, and that these natural rights enabled individuals to acquire further rights, including property rights.
Locke argued that, first and foremost, every person has a property right over themselves. In other words, each person has a right of self-ownership, meaning others, such as a king, do not have control over the individual person. This view stood in stark contrast to the view that the king or queen owned everything, including the people, or that the rights of individuals were determined by the will of the sovereign.
Locke argued that such sovereign authority over the individual was contrary to the law of nature. The bundle of rights that Locke envisioned every person possessing also included the right to one's labor. This means that individuals have a right to the fruits of their physical labor, as well as their ingenuity, creativity, and innovation. Locke also explained how we can come to have property rights in land or other natural resources, rights not based in political decree or favoritism. The key for Locke was what he called labor mixing, which occurs when a person uses their physical labor, ideas, imagination and creativity to transform previously unused physical material.
For example, Joe and Sarah arrive in the New World and find an unclaimed area of land. They begin a process of transforming the land to build a farm. According to Locke, this labor is how Joe and Sarah acquire rights over the land.
Property rights over the products produced on the farm is an important addition because it means that Joe and Sarah have the right to decide how best to use their crop. They can consume it. or trade it with people for other goods and services they might need. These insights about the importance of property rights in ensuring a free and prosperous society are as applicable now as they were when John Locke was writing them originally.
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