John Locke On Capitalism

With the advent of capitalism, various philosophers have emphasized on property, land, and space within their political theories. The new social relation presented individuals as free and unhinged from land which then led to a fundamental shift in the organization of people, labour, and resources in the western world. One ideological philosopher that examines the notion of private property is Georg Hegel who perceives property as the root of capitalism. For Hegel, property structures capitalism and can be acquired in three interdependent ways. First, property can be appropriated through physical seizure, second, through the use of the object which often requires the alienation of labour. Finally, property can be acquired through “will alone” which is tenuous since it requires one of the other two methods. Since Hegel abstracts from the particulars, he theorizes the value of property by arguing it must be generalized and placed into broad categories. However, he acknowledges that the price of a property does not commensurate its necessity for individuals.
Additionally, enlightenment thinker John Locke provided a new theorization of land, property, and space by rooting it to the reasonable human. For Locke, people are free and equal as well as reasonable therefore he …show more content…
Both Locke and Hegel’s methods of property acquisition legitimize colonialism and the domination of indigenous states. By naturalizing property acquisition, the accumulation of property and land is deemed reasonable within capitalist relations. However, Marx’s theorization of property encourages the possibility of altering social relations into a system which does not require constant exploitation. Finally, Razack’s conceptualization of spaces and method of unmapping repudiates the idea of a white settler innocence as well as the oppression of