The purpose of this essay is to examine Locke's and Marx's similar views on the labor theory of value and their divergent positions on the nature of private property. For Marx, labor power is the "mental and physical capabilities existing in a human being." (Marx 336) Locke envisions labor as part of a human being's "own person" to be used as his or her "property." (Locke 18-19) These are closely related assumptions about the nature of labor power--in essence both agree that humans innately own their labor power and this ownership is transferred to its object. It is in the result of labor, what becomes transformed through labor to become private property, that Marx and Locke will ultimately part ways.
Locke argues that labor is process through which humans create property out of that "which God gave to mankind in common." (Locke 18) That which was given in common is extracted through labor as a result of human reason. Reason, argues Locke, is God's gift to humankind so that people can make the best use of the goods, in common, of the earth. (Locke 18) Thus the reason that humans possess is a guide to the use of the planet's resources, such as, water, fruits, vegetables and animal products. Importantly, declares Locke, these resources "belong to mankind in common; and no body has originally a private dominion, exclusive of the rest of mankind, in any of them, as they are thus in their natural state." (Locke 19) But, Locke continues, there is built into the earth's resources "a means appropriate" to the exclusivity of the user. This exclusivity clause hints at how Locke may come to differ from Marx on the issue of private property and the labor that goes into making it.
For Locke, labor, like the resources of the earth, is the property of the user. The labor of the body and the work of the hands are the sole property of their owner. Labor mixed with the resources of the earth equals property. Humans take what is their ow...