Locke's theory of appropriation

Abstract

The so-called labor theory of value was not the basis of locke’s theory of appropriation as expounded in paragraphs 26-39 of chapter five in the “two treatises of government.” The statements in paragraphs 40-43 to the effect that it is labor that puts the difference of value on everything serve to justify the contemporary distribution of property on the ground that the present value of land and commodities derived from labor; almost nothing of it came from that which was once the common property of mankind (“the almost worthless materials”). These paragraphs probably did not belong to the original text; they seem to have inserted at a later date.