In the context of a country racked by war, regicide, and rebellion, this view may seem rather bloodless: unlimited inequality in property naturalized by virtue of God's lack of foresight on the issue of spoilage. But it does allow Locke to explain as inevitable, and therefore good, the creation of markets in land, labor, and capital, which happened to be the very political project that people of his class were engaged in at that moment. His next step was to protect these new institutions of the market from this emergent capitalism's nemesis: the state.

Mark Blyth, Austerity, loc. 281