Locke starts in the chapter concerning property by stating that, whether by natural reason or the word of God, the world is given to the people in common to use for their benefit. “God, who had given the world to men in common had also given them reason to make use of it to the best advantage of life and convenience." He then asks an important question: if the world and all the goods on the earth is the common property of mankind, how does one individual acquire individual property? How does one determine what one own and what he or she has the right to? And how much does one have the right to? In this paper I would like to explain Locke’s argument concerning where property comes from and what gives individual right to keep and maintain that property. Property is a product of labor because it is the effort of acquiring and maintaining that one use that makes it his or hers.
Everything produced by nature is as stated every man’s common property and no one originally have a private ownership to what natures produce. For personal ownership and individual property to exist, there must be a reason or appropriate, and it must provide some sort of benefit to that person that appoint it his or hers. Locke presents the idea that property of a person is his own body and this person is the only one who has the rights to that body. “Every man has a property in his own person. This no body has any right to but himself." Moreover he explains that because we are owners of our own body, the labor we perform with our own body is also ours. If we then apply this labor when we acquire something produced by the nature, the labor will make this ours and therefore our individual property. “Whatsoever then he removes out of the state of nature had provided, and left it in, he had mixed his labor with, and joined to it something that is his own.” He also explains that when a person have used his labor and claimed ownership over the object this “...