Locke: on Property

“Though the earth, and all inferior creatures, be common to all men, yet every man has a property in his own person: this no body has any right to but himself. The labour of his body, and the work of his hands, we may say, are properly his. Whatsoever then he removes out of the state that nature hath provided, and left it in, he hath mixed his labour with, and joined to it something that is his own, and thereby makes it his property.” (section 27)

John Locke, A second Treatise on Government. Hackett Publishing Company, Indianapolis and Cambridge 1980. (Gutenberg txt). Image: dreamstime.com

Property, to Locke, is as important as self-preservation. In fact, his concept of self-preservation is derived from the right to self-ownership: after all "every man has a property in his own person". Self-ownership includes the right to life, health and freedom because these sustain it, but also the right to whatever is a product of one's hands, and one's labour. Property is assembled by mixing that labour with a natural resource i.e. the labour of picking an apple makes that apple the property of the picker. But why is property so important to Locke, when in Hobbes is was wholly neglected? 

Locke, unlike Hobbes, was looking for ways to strengthen the individual’s position in relation to his lord and to his fellow man. He did so by granting him a right of property. If citizens can be landowners, they can contribute financially, which makes them a powerful demographic; private property is more lucrative than shared property, to both society and individual. Whereas in a shared operation people might shirk work, private landowners will not. They will exploit their resources to the utmost degree, after all, the benefits are theirs and do not need to be divided over a large group of people. These benefits  become especially worthwhile with the invention of money, which allows them to be hoarded. Additionally, having property means one has the ability to step out of a social contract. Imagine a person born under a polity which eventually he disagrees with, but, by which he has acquired a lot of property. All that is necessary for him to break with the contract is to give up said property and move out. The benefit for those under a Lockeian contract (as opposed to a Hobbesian) is that one need not be in mortal danger to break with it. The conditions are far more lenient.