Our critical investigation of Locke's theory of property has uncovered the failure of his theory to justify its conclusions. Although his attempt to reach those conclusions had to rely on the full equivalence of labor within the subject and labor within the object, the very undertaking of the attempt showed that any such equivalence was strictly disallowed. Severed by a process of “joining,” which Locke's articulation of his theory inevitably highlighted, the active labor proceeding from the subject and the expended labor bestowed upon the object could never be reduced to each other. The Second Treatise's argument, which had to collapse those modes of labor into a single phenomenon, tried to establish their identity by appealing to a premise that underscored their distinctness (i.e. a premise about the joining of active labor to raw materials).

Nonetheless, even if Locke's endeavor to justify his theory of ownership has foundered, his champions may seek to salvage his theory with some different routes of justification. We now shall explore the cardinal routes of justification that indeed have been broached. As will become apparent, none of those routes can fare any better than the justification that was marshaled by Locke himself. After having confuted the attempts to redeem Locke's theory, we shall probe the worrisome implications of the theory's undoing.

Ownership shall make you free?

One common tack for justifying anew the conclusions of the labor theory of property is to maintain that the theory's distributive guidelines had to be followed as the essential means of doing justice to the self-ownership of each human being in the state of nature.