Lavoro e appropriazione in John Locke

Abstract

The theory of labour that the British philosopher John Locke (1632-1704) put forward in the second of the Two Treatises of Government is grounded in the idea that property is legitimated by labour. Although every person belongs to God, Locke says, they possess the fruits of their labour, because if they mix their labour with some resource that was commonly and freely available, or expend their labour generally, then they extend some part of themselves to the final product and therefore it should be theirs. Like freedom and life, individual property is a natural right, to Locke; however, appropriation may be subject to certain restrictions in order to ensure that it does not entrench upon the rights of other people. The limits that Locke imposes on the acquisition of property have been largely debated, because they seem to legitimate capital accumulation. Moreover, his theory of labour seems to lead to the convenient conclusion that the labor of Native Americans generated property rights only over the animals they caught, not over the land on which they hunted, which Locke regarded as vacant and therefore available for the taking.