Locke justified private land ownership by divinely commanded labor and dominion.

Evidence

By the seventeenth century, John Locke (1632–1704), in his theory of property rights could challenge the idea that communal ownership of all parts of the earth was given forever by the laws of nature and scripture. The acquisition of land, worked by an individual’s own labor, became that person’s individual property. “As much land as a man tills, plants, improves, cultivates, and can use the product of, so much is his property. He by his labor does, as it were, enclose it from the common.” By mixing human labor with the acorns, apples, beasts, and earth that “Nature, the common mother of all,” had given, people removed these “spontaneous products” from the common and made them and the land their own property. In creating the world, God had commanded “man … to subdue the earth,” and in so doing, he “gave authority … to appropriate” private possessions. “And hence subduing or cultivating the earth and having dominion, we see, are joined together. The one gave title to the other.” — Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature, 360

Categorization

• QUESTION: Locke still calls nature the ‘common mother of all’ — tracing how the residual organic-nurturing economy coexists with his appropriation doctrine would be worth chasing.
• XREF: Directly underwrites the settler-colonial land-privatization thread in the reader’s eco-justice course; Locke’s labor-mixing language recurs in later enclosure and US homestead justification. — connects to: Locke grounded legitimate rule in individual property rights, separating state from market — Mark Blyth, Austerity: The History of a Dangerous…, 278; Locke justified colonial expropriation via labor theory, not natural racial inferiority — David Theo Goldberg, The Racial State, 28; Manifest destiny framed continental conquest as divinely sanctioned. (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• Locke justified colonial expropriation via labor theory, not natural racial inferiority #corroborates (0.90) — David Theo Goldberg, The Racial State, 28
• Locke’s labour-mixing argument licenses annexation by assuming nature has no own value #expands (0.90) — Val Plumwood, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature, 420
• Locke grounded legitimate rule in individual property rights, separating state from market #expands (0.85) — Mark Blyth, Austerity, 278
• Imperial conquest is redeemed through an idea that justifies taking land from others #corroborates (0.85) — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 504
• Manifest destiny framed continental conquest as divinely sanctioned. #complicates (0.80)
• Colonial rulers sincerely believed God and self-interest were compatible #qualifies (0.75) — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2, 585