How Does John Locke Justify Private Ownership Of Property

Unlike Hobbes, Bentham and Mill, John Locke emphasizes the protection of property rights when mapping out an ideal structure of the government. He offers straightforward explanations of the reasons why and the methods how a person may get access to the natural good and turn it into individual property. While I agree that Locke’s careful argument towards establishing private property rights is subtle, concise and humble, I disapprove his assertions that property consists of man’s life as well as his possessions, and that the right to property is a form of “natural” right of humans.
To justify the private ownership of property, Locke firstly states that man is given a specific thing as personal property and that is his “own person” which “no

body has right to but himself” (Locke, Sec.27). Thus, each person owns his or her body including all the labor performed with the body, “[s]o that God, by commanding to subdue, gave authority so far to appropriate: and the condition of human life, which requires labour and materials to work on, necessarily introduces private possessions” (Locke, Sec.35). If an individual adds his or her labor to a foreign object, the object will become the person’s property. Locke uses the example of apple in the Second Treatise: an apple becomes property of an individual when he or she picks it, an action represents the presence of labor. Locke then extends his justification to set a limit for property acquisition: a person may only appropriate goods that are reasonably sufficient to the person’s normal consumption. This progressive logic from the definition of the body as a form of property to the conclusion that labor produces private property is neat and precise.
It seems logical to claim that our body is ours, and no one owns me but me. However, I am uncertain whether I do think of our bodies as properties. If bodies were properties, then Locke would say that property is so important that even the right to life is important because our lives are properties of ourselves. In this case, life loses its intrinsic value and proactiveness. As the same time, Locke brings about the notion of god, and god, too, may give humans lives and bodies that no other person has the right to control. Locke develops his judgment humans’ relationship with themselves as if it is a legal arrangement without individual’s rationality and emotion.
By employing labor, humans made once-common goods to private ones, prohibiting other people’s utilization. The good is taken out of nature and ceases to be freeland. There exists a contradiction: while Locke insists that the right to property is the natural right, it becomes as such an exclusion of the nature. Therefore, Locke’s argument about the private ownership may better depict human behaviors in a civilized society instead of a pre-historic community. This situation contrasts with Locke’s idea that the right to property appears in the state of nature and is not a product of the later-evolved social contract. Locke’s paradoxical standpoint undermines his persuasiveness that private property right is granted by the nature.
Although Locke articulates the relationship between human labor and private property in a skillful way, he constructed his conclusion upon problematic premises and ambivalent underlying presumptions. Both the statement that human body is a type of innate property and the possibility that the “natural” right to property is effectively artificial rebut Locke’s own theory of the naturalness and spontaneity of individual’s property rights. Ultimately, his self-contradictory theoretical basis shakes the foundation of his subsequent discussions of a government