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John Locke on property and price. Of Property, 1 Chapter V of Lockes - - PDF document
John Locke on property and price. Of Property, 1 Chapter V of Lockes - - PDF document
John Locke on property and price. Of Property, 1 Chapter V of Lockes Second Treatise of Government , has prompted much analysis and debate by political philosophers, particularly among the Cambridge school of intellectual historians such
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Locke continues, ‘That by this Grant God gave him not Private Dominion over the Inferior Creatures, but right in common with all Mankind; so neither was he Monarch, upon the account of the Property here [Gen. I. 28] given him.’ (ibid., p157) This original state Locke referred to as the State of Nature which, while it predates civil society, ‘…has a Law of Nature to govern it…’ and under that law all the world was the common property of all men for the purpose of their preservation, for this common property right consisted in‘… a Right to make use of a part of the Earth for the support of themselves and Families …’ (ibid., p166). Having, however, thus refuted Filmer’s primary substantiation of royal rule by divine right Locke was left with the problem of how to explain the empirical fact of private property. When Locke composed the bulk of his Two Treatises in the years 1679-834, with some final additions made just before publication in 1689 (Locke, 1988, p65), he had at his disposal an alternative theory of private property provided by the natural law tradition as developed by scholars such as Grotius and Pufendorf, and originating in the Code of Justinian. At his death Locke possessed in his library the Corpus Juris Civilis, two copies of the Institutes of Justinian (Harrison and Laslett, 1971, p164) and two commentaries on civil law (ibid., pp 132 & 145); of course, these he may have acquired at any time, being a serious scholar of Latin (Clay, 1990, p74). Whilst still at Oxford, however, and typical of his class, he had been contemplating entering the profession of law, it would seem reasonable to assume, therefore, that he had studied that subject to some extent as an undergraduate: in Oxford the teaching of civil law, as opposed to the common law of the Inns of Court, persisted through to the nineteenth century (Stein, 1999, p124). The Corpus and Institutes were basic texts in the civil law tradition so it is likely that he had read them by about 1680.
4 Laslett has concluded that Locke had not worked out his theory of property as expressed in Chapter V until
this period, (Laslett, 1988, p34)
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According to this tradition, proprietary right could be established over anything not yet claimed, by the first to do so; i.e. the doctrine of res nullius: ‘Wild beasts, birds, fish, and all animals, which live either in the sea, the air, or on the earth, so soon as they are taken by any
- ne, immediately become by the law of nations the property of the captor; for natural reason
gives to the first occupant that which had no previous owner.’ (Justinian, 1869, LIB. II TIT. I., D. xli. l. l. 12., p172). Locke argued that in the beginning nothing had been appropriated by any individual, for all was held in common by all of mankind from the hand of God. Yet it was necessary that individuals should be able to appropriate that which was needed for their sustenance: ‘God, who hath given the World to Men in common, hath also given them reason to make use of it to the best advantage of Life, and convenience. The Earth, and all that is therein, is given to Men for the Support and Comfort of their being. … yet being given for the use of Men, there must of necessity be a means to appropriate them some way or other before they can be of any use, or at all beneficial to any particular Man.’ (Locke, 1988, pp286-7): Without appropriation individuals would perish, which was contrary to the survival imperative of natural law. In Justinian and the natural law tradition this appropriation was achieved by the consent of all. This, however, Locke could not accept, for the emphasizing of the impracticality of this had been employed by Filmer in his criticism of this natural law explanation of proprietary right (ibid., p286n). With this Locke agreed: ‘If such a consent as that was necessary, Man had starved, notwithstanding the Plenty God had given him.’ (ibid., p288). Such a perverse contradiction could not be accepted as God’s will. Besides, he was especially concerned to explain the origin of private property in the first days, in the state of 4
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nature before civil society when any such consent had, in justice, to be obtained from all severally. Locke’s solution was to delimit a common thing as the private property of an individual by the act of their adding labour to it. ‘Though the Earth, and all inferior Creatures be common to all Men, yet every Man has a Property in his own Person. This no Body has any Right to but himself. The Labour of his Body, and the Work of his Hands, we may say, are properly his. Whatsoever then he moves out of the State that Nature hath provided and left it in, he hath mixed his Labour with, and joyned to it something that is his own, and thereby makes it his Property. In being by him removed from the common state Nature placed it in, it hath by his labour something annexed to it, that excludes the common right of other
- Men. For this Labour being the unquestionable Property of the Labourer, no
Man but he can have a right to what that is once joyned to, at least where there is enough, and as good left in common for others.’ (ibid., pp287-8) Under natural law every man has property in his own person and by extension in the effects
- f his person. Thus whenever a man acts so as to change something in nature and thus affects
it, the object of his work ceases to be of the common and becomes his property for it has been inextricably imbued with that which is necessarily his: his labour. But why should having their labour so combined within a thing result in their obtaining proprietary rights over it? Locke gives no reason other to than to say that this right is “unquestionable”. In the same section of The Institutes as the doctrine of res nullius is introduced, however, [specifically D. xli. 1. 7.6.] it is stated as a principle of (natural) law: 5
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‘… If the thing made can be reduced to its former rude materials, then the
- wner of the materials is also considered the owner of the thing made; but,
if the thing cannot be so reduced, then he who made it is the owner of it. … But, if a man has made anything partly with his own materials and partly with the materials of another … then in such cases, he who made the thing is undoubtedly the proprietor; since he not only gave his labour, but furnished also a part of materials.’ (Justinian, pp179-80) As Roger Simonds has observed (Simonds, 1997, p428), here, in the law relating to the “ownership of mixtures”, Locke has a sound basis for accepting that a thing in nature inextricably mixed with labour is the property of the labourer. The, connection of “labour” to this process is also explicitly made here. It would, prima facie, seem to be a small step from these propositions to that in which Locke regards the embodiment of labour as denoting proprietary right. Of course, this argument remains circumstantial5, yet the coincidence is noteworthy. Note, also, that this proprietary right in labour is qualified by the condition that there must remain available to all other men more of the thing in question of equal quality to meet their needs, otherwise their over-riding right of self-preservation would be violated. Locke’s analysis in his “Of Property” contains a clear normative element, as perhaps one should expect given that that analysis is founded upon Christian axioms and was written by a man educated in a tradition not so far removed from the proscriptive doctrines of the scholastics6.
5 Like his contemporaries, as Laslett has remarked, Locke was not conscientious about citing his sources
(Locke, 1965, p147). Moreover, it is unlikely that he would have acknowledged any debt to Roman law given its close identification with the Roman Church and his political and religious aversion to the latter, as noted by Simonds, (Simonds, p428).
6 John Passmore has observed: Locke’s ‘…thinking is more than a little scholastic.’ (Passmore, p545)
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This normative qualification, however, he extended to his contemporary economy: as he remarked in 1695 in an essay in his Commonplace Book entitled “Venditio”, ‘For though all the selling merchands gain arises only from the advantage he makes of the Byers want, whether it be a want of necessity or phansy that’s all one, yet he must not make use of his necessity to his destruction, and enrich him self soe as to make another perish. He is soe far from being permitted to gain to that degree, that he is bound to be at some losse and impart of his owne to save another from perishing.’ (Locke, 1991 c, p499). In Locke’s view the market in general is subject to the law of nature’s imperative to human survival, it is not confined to the “state of nature”. As noted, a corollary of this proscription is that neither may anyone cause anything to spoil, for to do so would be at odds with the beneficence of God and deprive others of sustenance. ‘But if they perished, in his Possession, without their due use; if the Fruits rotted, or the Venison putrified, before he could spend it, he offended against the common Law of Nature, and was liable to be punished; he invaded his Neighbour’s share, for he had no Right, farther than his Use called for any of them, and they might serve to afford him Conveniences of Life. The same measures governed the Possession of Land too …’ (Locke, 1988, pp294-5) 7
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The normative condition of appropriation is that, that which is appropriated must be used or, if not, not only lost but warrant censure. Throughout the Two Treatises, it should be noted, Locke referred to the provision of “conveniences” together with the “necessities of life, for his was not yet a Malthusian world, rather one blessed with God’s bounty. Though Europe might be well peopled the Americas remained in a state of nature for mankind not unlike that portrayed in Genesis. ‘And the same measure [i.e. appropriation] may be allowed still, without prejudice to any Body, as full as the World seems. For supposing a Man, or Family, in the state they were, at first peopling of the World by the Children
- f Adam, or Noah; let him plant in some in-land, vacant places of America,
we shall find that the Possessions he could make himself upon the measures we have given, would not be very large, nor, even to this day prejudice the rest of Mankind ...’ (Locke, 1988, p293) Nevertheless, this normative requirement would seem, in principle, to severely circumscribe the possibility of the accumulation of wealth. In the state of nature, while all had equal right to acquire what was in the common they had not that right, of course, to what had already been appropriated: the former they could acquire freely, but if they wanted the latter that could only do so with the consent of its owner.7 Should the owner of the desired thing so consent, then he could either give the thing gratis or require something in exchange, and commerce would follow. Once property was established
7 By definition: ‘… property … The nature whereof is, that without a Man’s own consent it cannot be taken
from him.’ (Locke, 1988, p395)
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so market exchange, or “vent” as Locke termed it (Hyde Kelly, 1991, p80), followed;
- therwise, all else was available freely from the common. Initially, various proprietors would
exchange their things for those possessed by others which they preferred, to mutual advantaged: barter would ensue. Giving something to another, Locke asserted, was using it and therefore not subject to the prohibition on waste. ‘If he gave away a part to any body else, so that it perished not uselessly in his Possession, these he also made use of. And if he also bartered away Plumbs that would have rotted in a Week, for Nuts that would last good for his eating a whole Year, he did no injury; he wasted not the common Stock; destroyed no part of the portion of Goods that belong to others, so long as nothing perished uselesly in his hands.’ (Locke, 1988, p300) The requirements for basic subsistence in the state of nature are generally perishable commodities so, in Locke’s view, there is then an inevitable close limit to such property. But if one transferred one’s surplus property to others either gratis or in exchange for some other commodity, possibly of greater durability, then one does not violate this imperative against
- waste. Further, wealth can be justly accumulated, for one’s possessions could be exchanged
for things that, by their nature, did not spoil or deteriorate. ‘Again, if he would give his Nuts for a piece of Metal, pleased with its colour; or exchange his Sheep for Shells, or Wool for a sparkling Pebble or a Diamond, and keep those by him all his Life, he invaded not the Right of
- thers, he might heap up as much of these durable things as he pleased; the
exceeding of the bounds of his just Property not lying in the largeness of his Possession, but the perishing of any thing uselessly in it.’ (loc. cit.) 9
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Money evolves and through it the accumulation of wealth will have shaken off its God given, normative constraints. ‘And thus came in the use of Money, some lasting thing that Men might keep without spoiling, and that by mutual consent Men would take in exchange for the truly useful, but perishable Supports of Life.’ (ibid., pp300-1) But peoples’ abilities differ and so such accumulation inevitably gives rise to an unequal distribution of wealth: ‘And as different degrees of Industry were apt to give Men Possessions in different Proportions, so this Invention of Money gave them the opportunity to continue and enlarge them.’ (ibid., p301) Thus, the mercantile state follows in due course. So, also, the wealth of Locke’s associates, the Whig grandees, is elegantly justified, thus covering any opening for an ad hominem attack
- n the Two Treatises and its defence of the right of a people (i.e. the propertied men of the
Country) to displace a monarch. Note also that money is accepted by “mutual consent”, it presupposes the existence of civil society; i.e. the state of nature no longer exists. This explication he repeats in his Considerations: ‘For Mankind, having consented to put an imaginary Value upon Gold and Silver, by reason of their Durableness, Scarcity, and not being very liable to be Counterfeited, have made them, by general consent, the common Pledges, whereby Men are assured, in Exchange for them, to receive equally valuable things, to those they parted with …’ (Locke, 10
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1991 a, p233) Further, Locke maintains that society has consented to this unequal distribution
- f wealth within the normative limits set by God and natural law:
‘… that Men have agreed to disproportionate and unequal Possession of the Earth, they having by a tacit and voluntary consent found out a way, how a man may fairly possess more land than he himself can use the product of, by receiving in exchange for the over plus, Gold and Silver, which may be hoarded up without injury to any one, these metals not spoileing or decaying in the hands of the possessor.’ (Locke, 1988, p302) That the introduction of money presupposes the existence of a civil society in Locke’s
- pinion is clear: ‘Thus in the beginning all the World was America, and more so than that is
now: for no such thing as Money was any where known.’ (ibid., p301). This identity of America, principally North America, with a contemporary instance of the “state of nature” is characteristic of Chapter V of the Second Treatise; indeed it occurs eleven times in its few pages, the only other exemplars being Biblical. It was important for Locke to establish that the American aboriginals existed in a “state of nature” for otherwise the argument of the Two Treatises could have been readily employed to attack the claim of European settlers in the Americas and not least the considerable claims of the Lords Proprietors of Carolina and their Secretary. Moreover, in the chapter ‘Of Conquest’ in the Second Treatise Locke took pains to deny any proprietary right from conquest (ibid., p385). It seems to have been a common view of his contemporaries that the defenders of the doctrine of rule by divine right found a supporting argument in the rights of a conqueror, though as Laslett has pointed out, this was only in fact true of Grotius (ibid., p385n). Locke was explicit in denying such rights over the conquered’s 11
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private property or over the members of his family (ibid., p390). In addition, as Tully has
- bserved, ‘The constant danger that provoked Locke’s attack on conquest theories was the
widespread fear, from the early 1670s on to the end of the Nine Years War, of a French invasion.’ (Tully, 1993, p34). Having destroyed the justification for appropriation of territory by conquest, if the colonisation of North America was to be legitimate, an alternative was required. Provided that North America was, however, in a state of nature such that the territory there was held in common by all of mankind, then it could be justly appropriated merely by the application of labour to it. There, while the Indian establishes his proprietorship over the game he hunts and catches, as Justinian had asserted, the land remains unimproved by labour and therefore still common: ‘The Fruit, or Venison, which nourishes the wild Indian, who knows no Inclosure, and is still a Tenant in common, must be his, i.e. a part of him, that another can no longer have any right to it, before it can do him any good for the support of his Life.’ (ibid., p287). Of course, what constituted “improvement” by Locke’s lights was what was done to improve land in contemporary European agricultural practice (Tully, 1993, p129).8 Europeans, including Locke and his associates, were thus justified in appropriating the land on which the American Indians dwelt. For Locke, a committed Christian and subscriber to the doctrine of natural law, such a consideration was not trivial, let alone from the perspective of his pecuniary interests. To understand why Locke made the propositions he did in Chapter V of his Two Treatises it is necessary to have in view all the various ideas, purposes and prejudices that he was subject to at the time of his writing it. The common thread tying it all together, was his religion. This is clear from a reading of his works and is perhaps evident in the preceding. Throughout his
8 Locke’s views on property in the North American context are discussed extensively by Tully (Tully, 1993,
- chpt. 5)
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life, while his religious belief did evolved, not least in the face of and without compromise toward fierce assault by the establishment, it remained steadfast. So it is, that in the context of Locke’s Chapter V of his Two Treatises, Quine’s observation that: ‘Truth cannot on the whole be viewed as a trait, even a passing trait, of a sentence merely; it is a passing trait of a sentence for a man.’ (Quine, 1960, p191) is quite apposite. 13
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References Arneil, Barbara. 1994. Trade, Plantations, and Property: John Locke and the Economic Defence of Colonialism. Journal of the History of Ideas, 55:591-609 Clay, Diskin. 1990. Translator’s Introduction, John Locke, Questions Concerning the Law of
- Nature. Robert Horwitz, Jenny Strauss Clay & Diskin Clay eds & trans. Ithaca: Cornell
University Press. Dunn, John. 1969. The Political Thought of John Locke. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Finocchiaro, Maurice A. 2005. Arguments about Arguments. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Harrison, John and Laslett, Peter. 1971. The Library of John Locke, 2nd edn. Oxford: The Clarendon Press. Hyde Kelly, Patrick (ed). 1991. Locke on Money, 2 Vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
- Justinian. 1869. The Institutes, T. Collett Sanders trans. 4th ed. London: Longmans, Green
and Co. Locke, John.1990. Questions Concerning the Law of Nature, Robert Horwitz, Jenny Strauss Clay & Diskin Clay eds & trans. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Locke, John.1997. The Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina, John Locke: Political Essays, Mark Goldie ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 14
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Locke, John. 1964. An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, John W. Yolton ed., 2
- Vols. London: Dent.
Locke, John. 1988. Two Treatises of Government, Peter Laslett ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Locke, John. 1965. Two Treatises of Government, A Critical edition with an Introduction and Apparatus Criticus. Peter Laslett ed. New York: Mentor Books. Locke, John. 1991 a. Some Considerations of the Consequences of the Lowering Of Interest, And Raising the Value of Money. Locke on Money, Vol. I, Patrick Hyde Kelly ed. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Locke, John. 1991 b. Further Considerations Concerning Raising The Value Of Money. Locke on Money, Vol. II, Patrick Hyde Kelly ed. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Locke, John. 1991 c. Venditio – 1695, Locke on Money, Vol. II, Patrick Hyde Kelly ed. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Quine, W. V. O. 1960. Word and Object. Cambridge Mass.:MIT Press. Simonds, Roger T. 1997. John Locke's Use of Classical Legal Theory. International Journal
- f the Classical Tradition. 3:424-432
Stein, Peter. 1999. Roman Law in European History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 15
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