John Locke, answered from the texts and cited to the page.
The argument has two stages and a transition. In the first stage of the state of nature the earth is given to mankind in common; every individual has a right to subsistence (the fundamental Law of Nature is the preservation of mankind, and the right to subsistence follows directly); labor mixes the self into things and grounds appropriation under two natural-law limits — the spoilage limit (one may not appropriate what would perish unused, II.V.31) and the proviso that "enough and as good" be left for others (II.V.27).1234
In the second stage, men consent to a use of money (a durable, non-perishing exchange medium) which permits accumulation beyond consumption without violating the spoilage limit. The introduction of money does not lift the natural-law moral framework: the right to subsistence persists as an enforceable claim (the destitute brother has a "Right to the Surplusage" of the rich; charity is not optional benevolence but a natural-law duty); civil society's positive laws regulate property within the moral limits the natural-law framework establishes.
Tho' this can scarce happen amongst that part of Mankind, that have consented to the Use of Money. 46. The greatest part of things really useful to the Life of Man, and such as the necessity of subsisting made the first Commoners of the World look after, as it doth the Americans now, are generally things of short duration; such as, if they are not consumed by use, will decay and perish of themselves: Gold,…Two Treatises of Government, p. 237
From all which it is evident, that though the things of Nature are given in common, yet Man (by being Master of himself, and Proprietor of his own Person, and the Actions or Labour of it) had still in himself the great Foundation of Property; and that which made up the great part of what he applyed to the Support or Comfort of his being, when Invention and Arts had improved the conveniencies of Life, was…Two Treatises of Government, pp. 236–237
In the state of nature, then, the exertions of men and above all their invention of money had brought them all into relationships with each other which were not those of rational and conscious co-operation but sprang from their differing contact, almost physical contact, with the world of material things—from their property as thus defined.Two Treatises of Government, p. 87
And even amongst us the Hare that any one is Hunting, is thought his who pursues her during the Chase. For being a Beast that is Still looked upon as common, and no Man's private Possession; whoever has imploy'd so much labour about any of that kind, as to find and pursue her, has thereby removed her from the State of Nature, wherein she was common, and hath begun a Property. 31.Two Treatises of Government, p. 231
The most heavily contested chapter in Locke scholarship. Macpherson (1962) reads the consent-to-money move as removing all natural-law limits on accumulation and treats me as the foundational ideologue of capitalist appropriation. Tully (1980, 1993) reads the natural-law framework as remaining in force after the money transition; the limits become enforceable through positive law rather than through individual right of punishment, but they do not dissolve. The Carolina constitution and my involvement in the Royal African Company are the persistent moral-historical question; the natural-law theory of slavery in II.IV (slavery as a "state of war continued") cannot accommodate hereditary chattel slavery, and the contradiction is genuine.