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“People acquire a right to property by giving it value - which Locke makes very clear means exchange value. This had vast implications not only for the domestic practice of enclosure but also for the dispossession of indigenous peoples in colonial territories - and on that score, Locke was quite explicit. [...] The measure of labour is not effort but profitability. We can, then, easily deduce that the Indian has failed to establish his right to the land, which becomes fair game to more 'industrious' and 'rational' colonists. Unimproved land is waste, and a man who appropriates it to himself in order to improve it has, by increasing its value, given something to humanity, not taken it away.” — Ellen Meiksins Wood
People acquire a right to property by giving it value - which Locke makes very clear means exchange value. This had vast implications not only for the domestic practice of enclosure but also for the dispossession of indigenous peoples in colonial territories - and on that score, Locke was quite explicit. [...] The measure of labour is not effort but profitability. We can, then, easily deduce that the Indian has failed to establish his right to the land, which becomes fair game to more 'industrious' and 'rational' colonists. Unimproved land is waste, and a man who appropriates it to himself in order to improve it has, by increasing its value, given something to humanity, not taken it away.