It is easy to bring to the reading of Locke a predisposition to view property in a certain way, and to seem to find support for that view in the text (as the libertarian theorist Robert Nozick, for example, convinced himself that he was carrying out Locke's program). Given this tendency to project our assumptions onto Locke, and the richness the text exhibits when we're fishing for clues for any particular view, we must take on the difficult task, in all intellectual honesty, of trying to see where Locke's own most fundamental commitments lie.
The chapter on "Paternal Power" is very revealing in this regard, I think. It purports to distinguish the power of fathers over their children from that of rulers over their subjects, and does so clearly, but it also charts in some detail the reasons for and limitations of the ownership of children by their parents. Here property is only a little bit about rights, but a great deal about responsibilities and the limitations of power.
Another indication that Locke's account of property is as much about obligations as it is about acquisitiveness appears early in the First Treatise. I will share the passage with you in class on Monday, when we can also enumerate the various constraints Locke places on ownership, and discuss whether and to what extent the invention of money undermines them.
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