Saturday, November 8, 2014

Why Red Indians were Massacred by Europeans?

Locke's conception of property is derived from his 'Labour Theory of Value'. Labour Theory of Value suggests that its the effort a labour has put in the extraction or production of a particular thing which determines who is going to be the owner of it, i.e. the labour himself. 

If a particular thing lying in nature then its not owned by anyone, however if someone puts an effort to reach and acquire then he becomes the owner of that particular thing. 

If the thing is perishable then there is no point of owning it in a quantity which one cannot consume, however things like gold and silver or capital which doesn't perish with time can be owned in quantities without limits. 

In view of Lock there are three types of properties (a) Life (b) Liberty and (c) Estate. This is essentially capitalist property (C) in Lockean view, as (a), (b) & (c) needs to be utilized to generate more capitalist property (C') by putting in ones Labour; not doing so would make it non-capitalist property and would be a waste. 

Followers of Locke used this justification to infer that if the owner of the property is not willing to participate in converting C into C' then it would be legitimate to get him out of the way and take the property from him to put into the process of continuous capital accumulation. 

This means the process of continuous accumulation is an essential part of the Locke's concept of property. The Red Indians refused it, and this gave enough reason to Europeans to massacre them directly or indirectly to make a capitalistic use of the property they occupy. 

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