Does Adding Labour Make Something Mine?

In section 27 of the Second Treatise of Government, Locke argues that each person has a right over their own body and labour. When someone adds that labour to something previously held in common, they may thereby acquire property. Yet this is not an unrestricted licence for whoever arrives first. Locke also requires that “enough, and as good” be left for others.

Imagine a vacant plot used by a community. Someone digs, plants and tends a vegetable bed. That labour supports a claim to the harvest and to the improvement they have made, but it does not automatically turn the whole plot into their permanent private property. Other people’s established use, the community’s rules and the losses caused by exclusion still matter.

Historically, Locke was explaining how private possession might first arise from common resources. Contemporary debate asks how much labour counts, how far the resulting claim extends and who was entitled to use the resource in the first place. Geoffrey’s judgement is that labour is an important reason for property rights, but not a machine that creates ownership by itself. Ownership is not a physical mixture of work and matter. It is a social relationship whose boundaries must be publicly recognisable, institutionally acknowledged and open to challenge by others.

https://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/v1ch16s3.html
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/locke-political/