The labor theory of property or labor theory of appropriation or labor theory of ownership is a natural law theory that holds that property originally comes about by the exertion of labor upon natural resources. It is also called the principle of first appropriation or the homestead principle.
In his Second Treatise on Government, the philosopher John Locke asked by what right an individual can claim to own one part of the world, when, according to the Bible, God gave the world to all humanity in common. He answered that persons own themselves and therefore their own labor. When a person works, that labor enters into the object. Thus, the object becomes the property of that person.
Read more about Labor Theory Of Property: Exclusive Ownership and Creation, Enclosure Vs Mixing Labor, Acquisition Vs Mixing Labor
Famous quotes containing the words labor, theory and/or property:
“When my hoe tinkled against the stones, that music echoed to the woods and the sky, and was an accompaniment to my labor which yielded an instant and immeasurable crop. It was no longer beans that I hoed, nor I that hoed beans; and I remembered with as much pity as pride, if I remembered at all, my acquaintances who had gone to the city to attend the oratorios.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
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smiling carves dreams, bright cells
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—Robinson Jeffers (1887–1962)
“There is something that Governments care for far more than human life, and that is the security of property, and so it is through property that we shall strike the enemy.... Be militant each in your own way.... I incite this meeting to rebellion.”
—Emmeline Pankhurst (1858–1928)