Owning oneself

If the earth is given in common to all, how can a thing become mine without each person's consent? Locke's answer starts from a title prior to any compact: every man owns his own person, and therefore the labour of his body. By mixing that labour with something held in common, I join to it something already mine and rightfully withdraw it, owing no one's agreement. Property is thus a natural right grounded in labour, prior to the state, which places Locke toward the libertarian end of the axis. Yet the famous Lockean proviso, that "enough, and as good" be left for others, inscribes from the outset a moral limit on appropriation.

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 ... he hath mixed his labour with, and thereby makes it his property.Two Treatises of Government, II, ch. 5, §27

Two Treatises of Government, II, ch. 5 ("Of Property", labour and the Lockean proviso)

The state of nature is no licence: it is governed by a law of nature that reason discovers. Since all men are the workmanship of one Maker, sent into the world by his order and about his business, none has the right to destroy another or to put him under his absolute power. From this original equality Locke derives, not a mere duty not to harm, but correlative subjective rights, to life, liberty and estate, that each bears prior to any government. Power is therefore legitimate only to secure them; to violate them makes it tyrannical. These "unalienable rights" would pass almost word for word into the American Declaration of Independence.

Second Treatise of Government, II-V