Mathew Jelonkiewicz Answered Question #2 Locke’s Ideas on Property John Locke was considered one of the first modern liberal thinkers of our times. His ideas and theories permeate throughout many of the democratic world’s constitutions. He authored many essays during his lifetime but one of the more famous ones was the Second Treatise on Government, attributed to him only after passing. This writing is concerned with individual man coming together into a political society and outlines the type of government that is needed to help this coming together of people. The Second Treatise of Government has many key elements such as natural rights, social contract, government by consent and the right of revolution. But unquestionably all of these elements are a precursor to Locke’s Raison D’Etre of government, “The great and chief end, therefore of man’s uniting into commonwealths and putting themselves under civil government is the preservation of their property.” For Locke, natural law, or law in the state of nature, begins and ends with the natural right of property. Locke believed primitive man existed in a state of nature, which was one of peace, goodwill, and preservation. In this state, property was common in the sense that everyone had an equal right to draw subsistence from whatever was offered in nature. Man had a natural right to that with which he mixed his labour. The fundamental idea behind this theory on private property was that by expending ones internal energy (owns labour power) upon something, that item became a part of oneself, or one’s private property. This theory on property contained a second part, sometimes referred to as the spoilage proviso. The idea behind the spoilage proviso was that one was entitled to take out of the common only as much as one could make use of to ones advantage before it spoiled. Whatever is taken beyond this is considered more than ones share and belonged to others. At this point Locke’s theory on the origins of property, while still in the state of nature comes upon a key transitional point. This point is the introduction of money. The introduction of money essentially puts the spoilage proviso into non-use as now one can appropriate more land than one needs and barter or sell the rest for a profit. The invention of money also leads to making land scarce, as it gives man the moral right to enlarge their possessions and also makes it possible to “use” an unlimited amount of the produce of the land. This, as mentioned earlier, is when Locke’s fundamental idea for the necessity of government comes into the equation. Individuals now enter a social contract to protect their right to life, liberty, and property. This social contract is the entrance into political society. Locke’s theory also says that this right to property is one that has always existed, prior even to the state of nature. This is a right to which each individual brings to society in his own person. Therefore the newly created society does not create the right to property but rather now exists with the sole purpose of protecting that prior right. It is this key point on property rights that serve to explain Locke’s reasoning on why people enter into a commonwealth and the type of commonwealth people enter into. Unlike Hobbes, who believed that the commonwealth should have an unlimited scope of powers, to, among other things, protect the people from themselves, Locke believed that the commonwealth should be a very minimalist government. Locke defined political power as “The right of making laws with penalties of death, and all less penalties, for the regulating and preserving of property [in the broad sense of life, liberty, and estate] and of employing the force of the community in the execution of such laws, and in the defence of the commonwealth from foreign injury, and all this only for the public good”(Morgan,p.766). The legitimacy of government in Locke’s view was that after the entrance into the social contract the state cannot take any rights away from man but must rather serve to protect them. Political power of the state can have no right because this right is derived from the right of the individual man to protect himself and his property. Thus the executive and legislative powers used by civil government to protect property are nothing except the natural power of each man resigned into the hands of the whole. These rights are legitimate because it is a better way of protecting natural rights than the way they were protected in the state of nature, with the inconvenience of one being ones own judge, jury, and executioner and handing out punishment as one sees fit. Locke conceives of us having a property in our own person. This type of self-ownership thesis has a lot of fault to it. His idea of property being in oneself seems to be influenced by the Roman law doctrine of occupatio. The Romans also believed that all creatures on land, sea or air, if taken by anyone immediately become his. The argument here is that Locke takes this doctrine and makes it his but ceases to elaborate on who decides this or how it is regulated, if regulated at all. This idea that we have a property in ourselves brings up the question of whether we can establish this right unto external objects. Locke believes that we can, but there is no one to regulate or make sure that we don’t put our property unto an external object at the expense and disadvantage of someone else. History clearly shows that human nature is not such as Locke believed it but rather that we are capable of evil and aggression towards each other. In this case there will certainly be a need for some type of coercive force to protect one’s property. The idea of minimal government with the purpose of only protecting property is a good one as people are not as dangerous as Hobbes believed but would still need some type of regulation and enforcement of property laws. Locke believed that humans are naturally good and peaceful because they were given a God given duty to improve the earth and themselves. This part of Locke’s thought puts holes in his own “spoilage proviso”. Locke permits the privatization of bits of the world so long as there is enough left for others and nothing is spoiled. How can we improve the earth if we are only doing enough to survive for ourselves? Locke’s own proviso is vulnerable to a regress argument as it clearly puts the duty to improve and progress to a halt. The idea of taking only enough for oneself and knowing to leave behind for others is questionable as well. Who regulates or decides on how much one takes? Is it instinctive to know how much to leave for others? It seems like Locke just picked this concept out of thin air and it does not hold any tested validity. That being the case than the next logical step would be the onset of inequality. This inequality starts from the rise of alienable private property and quickly moves to the inequality in the distribution of resources. This unequal distribution would than create a further rift of propertied and propertyless. Now a consequence of this is that the disadvantaged people must use the property that is naturally in them to labour for others. The criticism of Locke’s writings on property are that if one begins to really dissect the text there are a lot of questions brought up to the answers he gives. Although the significance and influence of John Locke’s theories on property and government can be seen ingrained into many country’s constitutions. His general ideas written more than four hundred years ago are still relevant and practised in today’s world. A clear example is the life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness written into the United States constitution that is clearly taken from Locke’s beliefs on life, liberty and estate or in other words one’s property. Bibliography Morgan,. ed. Classics of Moral and Political Theory. Second edition
John Locke believes that man has a right to private property. According to Locke, God gave man this plentiful earth, with all of its plants and animals, to work on and nourish our bodies with. God gave us this earth to “make use of it to the best advantage of life, and convenience” (135). Since our bodies are properly ours, the “labour of his [our] body” is also properly ours, so “whatsoever then he removes out of the state… thereby makes it his property” (136). Locke is very clear and concise on this premise. Locke then describes why it is just for individuals to claim parts of God’s gift to all of “man in common” (135). Locke explains that the labor involved in removing things out of its state of nature “puts a distinction between them and common” (136). Therefore, he explains, “it is the taking any part of what is common, and removing it out of the state of nature leaves it in, which begins the property” (136). In short, labor creates property. However, this same theory also limits the amount of property one can have. Since God gave us the earth to use “to the best advantage of life,” anyone who lets the land perish and rot has “offended against the common law of nature” (140). Therefore, one can only possess as much land as they can cultivate and use, without wasting anything. Locke does point out, however, that giving things away, or trading them, before they perish is permissible. However, Locke explains that the agreement to use money changes this natural limitation. Money is not like fruit, crops or cattle, because it cannot perish: “Money knows no limit” (135). Therefore, “there is no limit to the private wealth we can accumulate as long as we trade our perishable goods for that imperishable store of value, money” (135). Locke’s theory is very well thought out. However, in terms of money, he never specifies whether or not it is just to make money from money; from interest or investing. I cannot arrive at how he would react to this. On one hand, Locke may approve of this because some amount of work is still involved: investors must research their moves, as well as work to make the money in the first place. On the other hand, Locke may disdain this because making money from money seems to go away from the way God intended the gift of the earth’s resources to be.
When one tries to decide whether Locke was misguided in trying to account for all the legitimate functions of government in terms of “the preservation of property”, it is important to qualify the statement by deciding what exactly Locke meant as property in the first place.
Locke states that “every Man has a property in his own Persons”, this is a difficult notion to grasp given our own modern definition of property. Our “persons” are certainly not a property in the sense of being something we could see to someone else, and the right to trade away or alienate something is certainly a major part of the modern meaning of the notion of property. However, the word ‘property’ in the seventeenth century was often used more widely to denote any rights of a fundamental kind, and fundamental rights were often claimed to be inalienable. For Locke therefore, human beings are primarily centres of rights and duties (rather than, as with Hobbes, centres of appetites). The right and duty or ‘property’ of humanity requires, first and foremost, our survival. However, Locke is also at pains to state that once “our own Preservation comes not into competition, ought he, as much as he can, to preserve the rest of Mankind.” The extent to which I may exercise my political liberty to ensure my own survival therefore, is constrained to the ability to which you may exercise yours. Locke proposes that one must derive our political power as this is the “state of perfect freedom to order their actions and dispose of their possessions and persons as they think fit within the bounds of the law of nature.”
There is no doubt, that the society that transpires out of a Lockean government offers individuals some of the qualities that one would expect to find in a modern liberal democracy that are missing in a seventeenth century government. However, the overwhelming sense that one gets from reading Locke is that he moulded his political doctrine simply to give individuals private property rights that protect it from royal appropriation and to allow the individual to withdraw his/her consent to be subject under a government at anytime. So, while the concept of men uniting into Commonwealths and putting themselves under Government for “the preservation of their property”, eloquently justifies these aforementioned rights, Locke seems to have trouble in trying to account for all the functions of government in terms of “the preservation of property”
The government that comes out of the Lockean society is small, non interventionist and exists for the solitary purpose as a body chosen as the people to settle disputes over an individuals property. However, this is all that the Lockean government is allowed to do, which means that Locke has to attempt to justify for all other legitimate functions of government in terms of the “preservation of property” which Locke has difficulty in doing.
For example, taxation by a government is not technically allowed unless it obtains consent from every individual that it intends to impose taxation on. Since property is a natural (ie. a pre-political) right, established in accordance with the law of nature, and because the preservation of it is the main reason for entering civil society, it follows that it cannot be a legitimate act of government to appropriate, through taxation, the possessions of its subjects without their consent. This seems to require the individual express consent of each property owner, since it differs from the transfer of the rights of judging and punishing in a most important sense. In the case of arbitrating in property disputes, what is transferred are the enforcements of a pre-existing natural right, in the case of taxation what is transferred is the right to abrogate a right. Since the general abrogation of a right of nature would be tyranny, this can only be avoided where each alienation of that right, i.e. each act of taxation, is specifically consented to. In the issue of taxation, Locke slips, without justification, from insisting on the individual’s consent to taxation which is consistent to everything thus said to assuming that there exists somewhere some form of institution expression for such a consent which it does not.
The legislative body which is entrusted with the people to making laws must pass nothing contrary to the law of nature even though people might consent to such enactments or it will cease to be legitimate. Locke therefore faces the problem of trying to justify action such as taxation that a government carries out in a way that is consistent with his very foundation for the purposes instituting a government without running contrary to it.
Locke runs into many of these problems when he tries to justify the characteristics that the existing economy has. The problem lies in the fact that all individuals in Locke’s doctrine are equal and “there cannot be supposed any such subordination among us”. Although equality in the political arena can be intellectually justified quite well by the Lockean doctrine, Locke has to find a way in order to justify the widespread discrepancies in the economic wellbeing of individuals that he finds in the economy. Indeed, this is the problem that political thinkers have today. They have no problem championing the equality of political rights among individuals, but seem to have more of a problem in championing economical and social rights. Evidence of this can be seen in the necessity by the UN to create two human right covenants; The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, and The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
The reason that Locke and people down the ages have problems in using the same foundations to justify both economic and political equality is that they are fundamentally two different types of equality. This is best explained by Thomas Sowell, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution in the United States. Sowell uses the Michael Jordan analogy to explain the two different types of equality; “In some cosmic sense, it is indeed unfair that Michael Jordan had such huge talents for playing basketball, while yours truly had none. But should the rules have been changed to bring the basket down to four feet for me—or raise it 10 feet higher for Michael Jordan?” By one measure, the one on one match with Michael Jordan was completely fair, we both played on the same court, used the same ball and had to abide by the same rules. But as Sowell puts it “in some cosmic sense” it is anything but fair, Michael Jordan was born with an immense talent for basketball and is also 5 feet taller than I am.
While no one would argue against the fact that individuals in a State should have equal voting rights or should not be subject to different criteria when it comes to arrest and interrogation simply due to their financial or social standing, people find it harder to justify economic equality, or being born with the same resources as everyone else. The ramifications of the first type of equality simply require that the same political rights are given to all the members of the society, the second type of equality however, would entail the taking of resources from families that are financially well off and distributing it to other families to ensure that every member of the society starts out with the wealth as everyone else. This brings us down the road of communism, which is a road that Locke is careful not to go down.
Strictly speaking, the Lockean doctrine at it’s most fundamental level would only allow an individual to gather natural resources for their own survival with the proviso that “there must be enough, and as good left common for others.” In order to justify the existing structure of the economy where many individuals clearly hold more than is needed to simply ensure their own survival.
In order to justify the economy surviving in the current state in a manner that is consistent with the natural law, Locke devises a series of workarounds that centre around the fact that such an economy is more efficient that a hunter gatherer economy and is better able to sustain mankind’s existence and thus is not inconsistent with natural law. However, in order for efficiency to be completely consistent with Locke’s definition of private rights to property it is important that there is some kind of income redistribution mechanism in place. The obvious candidate to carry out such a policy would inevitably the government, and although the government could carry out such a policy, the problems that was outlined earlier relating to taxation make the carrying out of such a policy impracticable due to the express consent required from each individual that the government wishes to appropriate property from. Furthermore, Locke does not seem to address this problem fully, simply assuming that “every one who enjoys his share of Protection, should pay out of his Estate his proportion of for the maintenance of it.”
Locke perhaps was misguided if he was trying to explain all the legitimate forms of government in terms of the “preservation of property”, but one keeps feeling when reading the Two Treatise of Government that he was simply trying to construct a doctrine that would protect the individuals right to property without royal appropriation and allow an individual to withdraw his consent to government at anytime. By constituting a government in terms of its role in “the preservation of property”, Locke fulfills these aims eloquently. However, as with any doctrines there are problems. Firstly, there are the problems of attempting to fit the existing economical system around his political doctrine as outlined above, and in this Locke relies on his assumption that man is fundamentally a good and benevolent person which is contrary to the Hobbesian view of human nature. The role that a government can play in the international arena is also undermined by the Lockean government, since the very essence of Lockean government is founded on consent, and foreign countries have not expressly consented to a foreign Lockean government and thus any attempts to intervene on another country’s behalf however well intentioned will constitute a illegitimate act.
The purpose to studying political theory is not to attempt to understand political thinkers in terms of what period they were writing in and to understand the state of society during the thinkers lifetime, that is the job of history. The job of political theory is to read these texts and see if any of these ideas can be applied to the world as it is today. In many senses the Lockean doctrine, however insufficient it may be in attempting to explain all the roles of government suffers the same problems that we are grappling with today, the marrying of a free wheeling laissez faire capitalist society with a sense of social responsibility, and the tentative balance that exists between the right for people to make their own mistakes and the right of the government to intervene for the greater good of society as a whole, if this is indeed the case and Locke was misguided in attempting to explain a government in terms of “the preservation of property”, we have not yet found a better method of justifying the legitimate functions of a government three hundred years on.
Perhaps one of, if not the, most historically influential political thinkers of the western world was John Locke. John Locke, the man who initiated what is now known as British Empiricism, is also considered highly influential in establishing grounds, theoretically at least, for the constitution of the United States of America. The basis for understanding Locke is that he sees all people as having natural God given rights. As God’s creations, this denotes a certain equality, at least in an abstract sense. This religious back drop acts as a the foundation for all of Locke’s theories, including his theories of individuality, private property, and the state. The reader will be shown how and why people have a natural right to property and the impact this has on the sovereign, as well as the extent of this impact.
Locke was a micro based ideologist. He believed that humans were autonomous individuals who, although lived in a social setting, could not be articulated as a herd or social animal. Locke believed person to stand for,
“... a thinking, intelligent being, that has reason and reflection, and can consider itself as itself, the same thinking thing in different times and places, which it only does by that consciousness which is inseparable from thinking.” This ability to reflect, think, and reason intelligibly is one of the many gifts from God and is that gift which separates us from the realm of the beast. The ability to reason and reflect, although universal, acts as an explanation for individuality. All reason and reflection is based on personal experience and reference. Personal experience must be completely individual as no one can experience anything quite the same as another.
This leads to determining why Locke theorized that all humans, speaking patriarchially with respect to the time “why all men,” have a natural right to property. Every man is a creation of God’s, and as such is endowed with certain individual abilities and characteristics as gifts from God. Not being able to know God’s exact wishes for man, Locke believed that all men have an obligation to develop and caress these gifts. In essence, each man was in charge of his own body and what was done with his body. Of course, for Locke, each man would do the reasonable thing and develop his natural skills and potentials to the best of his abilities, in the service of God.
The belief in God given abilities and the obligations that follow are not totally deterministic. Man, endowed with reason, could choose not to develop these abilities. Having the ability to choose the development of his potential, each man is responsible for that potential and consequently is responsible for his own body. The development, or lack therein, is a consequence of individual motivation and is manifested through labor.
In keeping with the theory of one’s body is one’s own, a man’s property can be explained in terms of the quantifying forces of his labors. Physical labor or exercisation of his mind, to produce fruits for this person’s labor, is then his own property. Locke believed that one did not need the consent of a sovereign, as far as property was concerned, because it is the melding of labor and nature that makes anything owned. Yolton articulates this when he states, “(b)y mixing my work, my energy with some object, (nature), I particulise that object, it’s commonness becomes particular” Locke believed that as long as there was plenty for others, consent was pointless, irrelevant and would merely be an overzealous exercision of power. Pointless because as long as there was more for others in the common store, one was not infringing on another’s natural rights. Irrelevant because property production or the use of labor was completely individualistic and one should not be able to control another’s labor as it is an infringement on their natural rights.
There are however limits, as far as property and labor are concerned. One limit is that of non destruction. God did not create anything for man to destroy. The amount produced by any man should be kept in check by his level of destruction. For example, there is a big difference between the cutting of one or a few trees and the harvesting of an entire forest. Yolton explicates this by stating that, “... specific rights comes in conjunction with this restriction. Since ‘Nothing was made by God for Man to spoil or destroy,’ the property making function of man’s activities ought to be curbed at the point of spoilage. If my acquisition spoils, I offend against the law of nature, since I have, in the beginning, ‘no Right, further than’ my use. What is useful and is used has value and the person who uses them a right to them. The same rules are cited for land as for the produce of land.”
The making of currency as an unspoilable property and medium for exchange seems to have by-passed this limit all together. Inequality becomes rampant and as such an authority is needed to protect a man’s property and the social peace. With the advent of money as unspoilable property, certain inequalities amoungst men would develop. Those with less start to feel cheated and used. This is very dangerous for those with more, because with these inequalities, comes the danger of theft, or injury to property or body. It is for this reason that people enter into a social contract and appoint a soveriegn. The sovereign has the ability to protect those whose property is in danger, and will do so through the passing and enforcing of laws. In this way not only is a man’s property protected, but a state of peace is maintained as well.
Locke not only believed in one individual’s right to property, but every individual’s right to property. Since every person is a creation of God’s, and it must be God’s wish that we serve him through the abilities that he’s given us, to interfere with a man and his labor, or the consequence of his labor, that is, his property, would be to interfere with God’s wishes. It is here that we begin to see the limits of men as well as the limits of the soveriegn. After all, how anyone interfere with the wishes of God?
Locke believed that the power for social control must come from the sovereign. This sovereign is responsible to the will of the people, but has a protective authority, governing both over land and people. Locke believed that if a body of people, that is a community of people, chose to live and interrelate amongst each other, they must choose to live by a greater force, that is they must enter into a social contract. This force was the power of the majority manifested through the creation of a sovereign. Problems can arise, when individuals cannot agree. For this reason there must be a ruler and government to decide disagreements, make and enforce laws, and govern man.
The enforcement of rules is not as absolute as it may sound. Even with the existence of a limited monarchy, man retains his individual and God given rights. As such, the sovereign, had no right to aquire or take away the property of another. If he did so he would be going against, God, the people, and all that is natural. The extent of the services of the existing sovereign is to govern over, protect, and enforce the laws of the people. Locke believed that the role of the sovereign and his authority is in serving the people and that there must not be parental, that is absolute authority. Yolton explains this like so, “If royal authority is derived from parental authority ... there would be as many kings as fathers... from parental power it necessarily follows either that that all fathers have royal authority - in which case a contradiction arises - no one has royal authority.” In this way Locke is seen as a man who wants to limit the power of the sovereign over the individual. Locke believed that the sovereign, created out of the need for the protection of individual rights, that is, out of the need for protection of the privacy of property, could not manifest itself publicly through excessive social control. Perhaps Locke’s idea is better explained this way. “From privacy of possession, publicity of sovereignty does not follow...‘no Man could ever have a just Power over the life of another, by Right of property in Land or possessions’” This, of course, would include the man of sovereignty and the men of government. Property sets the limit of sovereignty, in that no man has just power over another or another’s property. This right comes directly from God, because it is a God given right that a man should gain property through labor. This also sets the tone of the role of government, that of servitude instead of command.
Locke believed that civil society existed to free individuals from the insecurity of the state of nature. He thought that men united voluntarily in a concerted effort of preserving and protecting life, liberty, and estate. Here again we see the importance of property. Government within limits can work beneficially for all of man kind. This means that a sovereign would be necessary for the preservation of lives, the promotion of freedom, and the protection of estate. Locke is quite adamant about the preservation of individual freedom which Aaron describes as “need(ing) to be jealously preserved.”
This right to the property produced through labor is an inalienable right that each and every individual has. Even the soveriegn has no right to interfere with or take away a man’s property. This is the true limit of any man or governing body.
Locke favored a limited monarchy. This is an elected legislative assembly and a monarch that have the power to direct the commonwealth to preserve the community and it’s members and their rights. Locke believed that people were the absolute sovereign, and that if the appointed sovereign abused his authority the people would have the right to dissolve the government. This right of the people reinforces the limitations of the sovereign, while enforcing the accountability of the sovereign. It is in this sense that the community or the aggregation of individuality, retains power over the sovereign and in essence limits it’s power. This is the extent of the limitation of authority of the sovereign. The sovereign is a servant of the people, that has limited power only as long as the majority allows it to have power. It was Locke’s intent that the state was made for the individual and that the sovereign be used as a protective instrument for the good of the individual.
Locke’s ideas of property are based on God given rights. Each person has been given a body, with certain abilities and potentials, to use by God. The use of this body is called labor and its product is called property. Since everyone has a body and a level of potential everyone is capable of producing property. The purpose of the sovereign is to protect the individuals right to property and their property. The sovereign is limited in it’s power and authority and does not have the right to take or interfere with any man’s property, since to do so would be an interference with the right’s of man as given by God. It was Locke’s hope that with such an ideology behind a people and their government that they might attain and retain Locke’s version of the good life, that is life, liberty, and most importantly estate.
Bibliography:
Aaron, Richard, John Locke, Oxford University Press, Toronto, 1963.
Bowie, James, Twenty Questions: An Introduction to Philosophy, MacMillan Publishing, New York, 1964.
Locke, John, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Oxford University Press, London, 1975.
Magill, Frank, Masterpieces of World Philosophy, Harper and Row, New York, 1961.
O’Connor, D.J., John Locke, Pelican Books, London, 1952.
Squadrito, Kathleen, Locke’s Theory of Sensitive Knowledge, University Press of America, Washington, 1978.
Yolton, J.W., Locke and the Compass of Human Understanding, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1970.