QuestionsWhat is a just society?Property through labour
What is a just society?Natural rights

Property through labour

John Locke 1632 · 1704The mind is born a blank slate; power comes from consent.
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What it claims

Labour makes one the owner of what one takes from nature, without others' consent, as long as enough is left for them and nothing spoils.

Why

Everyone owns their body, hence their labour, and by mixing labour with something taken from nature they make it their property.

In short

"Property through labour" is an argument by John Locke (Second Treatise, §27-31) on the question "What is a just society?" (answer: natural rights). Its claim: Labour makes one the owner of what one takes from nature, without others' consent, as long as enough is left for them and nothing spoils. According to AskPhilosophy's logic check (Z3 solver), the conclusion does follow from its 4 premises. AskPhilosophy presents 4 objections, 2 of them with a documented reply, and the original text behind each premise, checked word for word.

Second Treatise, §27-31
Valid

God, Locke says, gave the earth to all people in common. How then can anyone own anything privately, without asking the consent of all mankind? His answer: through labour. This idea deeply shaped liberal thought, and it remains at the heart of debates about inequality.

P1Everyone owns their own person: nobody else has a right to it.
P2So the labour of his body and the work of his hands are his.
P3Whoever takes a thing out of the state nature left it in (picking a fruit, ploughing a field) mixes his labour with it: he joins to it something that is his own.
P4Nobody but he can have a right to what his labour is joined to, at least where enough and as good is left for others, and he takes no more than he can use before it spoils.
Therefore labour makes one the owner of what one takes from nature, without others' consent, as long as enough is left for them and nothing spoils.

click a premise to reject it

If you accept every premise, logic forces you to accept the conclusion. So the debate is about the premises.
Checked by a logic solver: the premises cannot all be true while the conclusion is false.
The argument is valid as Locke writes it, with no hidden premise, and each premise is essential. The conclusion is conditional: it holds only if the two limits (enough for others, no waste) are respected. The debate is therefore about P4 (is mixing one's labour with a thing enough to make it one's own?) and about whether those limits still hold in a world where all the land is taken.
Analogy. In a shared garden, anyone may pick tomatoes. The one you picked, washed and cooked has become yours: your work is in it. But if you gather the whole patch and let it rot, you have taken the others' share.

Objections

4

Each objection is a conversation: click to see who replies and where the debate stands.

Objection anticipated by Locke attacks the conclusion

If gathering fruit is enough to own it, anyone can hoard as much as he likes.

Locke replies
Locke
No. The same law of nature that gives property also limits it: one may own what one can use before it spoils. Anything beyond that exceeds one's share and belongs to others.
Objection anticipated by Locke attacks premise 4

The earth belongs to everyone: taking part of what is common without the consent of all mankind is theft.

Locke replies
Locke
If such consent were necessary, man would have starved amid the plenty God had given him.
Rousseau 1755 · attacks premise 4

"I earned this land by my labour," says the rich man. But a multitude lacks necessities while he has a surplus. To take from the common goods more than he needs to live, he would have needed the express consent of the whole human race. (Locke himself grants, in §50, that money, which does not spoil, allowed unequal possessions by mere tacit consent.)

no reply
No reply possible: objection raised in 1755, after the author's death (1704).
Robert Nozick (the tomato juice) 1974 · attacks premise 4

If I pour a can of tomato juice into the sea, does the sea become mine, or have I simply lost my juice? Mixing what is mine with what is no one's does not say why I gain the thing rather than lose my labour. (Nozick nonetheless defends a Lockean theory of property. And Locke also gives another reason, in §40: labour creates almost all the value of things.)

no reply
summary: their text is not yet in our corpus
No reply possible: objection raised in 1974, after the author's death (1704).
What today's voices say
Defend it
Michael SandelLectures 7-8 present Locke's natural rights to life, liberty and property, and the question of tacit consent.