The labor theory of property or labor theory of appropriation is a natural law theory that holds that property originally comes about by the exertion of labor upon natural resources. (This is not to be confused with a labor theory of value).

In his Second Treatise on Government, the philosopher John Locke asked by what right an individual can claim to own one part of the world, when, according to the Bible, God gave the world to all humanity in common. He answered that persons own themselves and therefore their own labor. When a person works, that labor enters into the object. Thus, the object becomes the property of that person.

Locke argued in support of individual property rights as "natural rights". Following the argument the fruits of one's labour are "his" because he had worked for it. Furthermore the labourer must also hold a natural property right in the resource itself because - as Locke believes - exclusive ownership was immediately necessary for production. Jean-Jacques Rousseau later criticized this second step in Discourse on Inequality, where he effectively argues that the natural right argument does not extend to resources that one did not create. Both philosophers hold that the relation between labor and ownership pertains only to property that was unowned before such labor took place.

Land in its original state would be considered unowned by anyone, but if an individual applied his labor to the land by farming it, for example, it becomes his property. Merely placing a fence around land rather than using the land enclosed would not bring property into being according to most natural law theorists. For instance, economist Murray Rothbard stated:

If Columbus lands on a new continent, is it legitimate for him to proclaim all the new continent his own, or even that sector 'as far as his eye can see'? Clearly, this would not be the case in the free society that we are postulating. Columbus or Crusoe would have to use the land, to 'cultivate' it in some way, before he could be asserted to own it.... If there is more land than can be used by a limited labor supply, then the unused land must simply remain unowned until a first user arrives on the scene. Any attempt to claim a new resource that someone does not use would have to be considered invasive of the property right of whoever the first user will turn out to be.(Man, Economy, and State).

The labor theory of property does not only apply to land itself, but to any application of labor to nature. For example, Lysander Spooner, says that an apple taken from an unowned tree would become the property of the person who plucked it, as he has labored to acquire it. He says the "only way, in which ["the wealth of nature"] can be made useful to mankind, is by their taking possession of it individually, and thus making it private property." (Law of Intellectual Property)

However, some, such as Benjamin Tucker have not seen this as creating property in all things. Tucker argued that "in the case of land, or of any other material the supply of which is so limited that all cannot hold it in unlimited quantities," these should only be considered owned while the individual is in the act of using or occupying these things.^[1]

References

^ Tucker, Benjamin, "Instead of a Book", page 61, footnote.

Labor theory of property: Information from Answers.com

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