John Locke begins his argument in “Of Property” with the idea that God gave the Earth and its fruits in common to men for their use. No one man has a right that excludes or limits the rest of mankind. Yet, before the gifts on nature can be useful or beneficial, there must be a particular man to appropriate them. This “appropriation” occurs when something from the state of nature is mixed with the labor of man. Locke makes clear that one’s labor, and the “works of his hands are strictly his”. The labor removes the land or object from the common state, and establishes the man as its owner. Private property acquired in this manner is not only moral but useful. Therefore, Locke’s premise in this section is quite simple: people have the right to appropriate goods by adding their labor to that good, thus making it their own.
While Locke argues that men have a right to create and enjoy their property, he also argues that there are limits to that right in the state of nature. The first limit is alluded to when he describes how property is created. He says, “Labour being the unquestionable property of the labourer, no man but he can have a right to what that is once joined to, at least where there is enough and as good left in common for others.” The implication is that one’s right to property is only clear and exclusive so long as it doesn’t jeopardize anyone else’s ability to create equivalent kinds of property for himself. Secondly, and the subject of a good deal of the chapter, Locke stresses the force of the limitation on property. Man should only obtain as much property “as [he] can make use of to any advantage of life before it spoils…Whatever is beyond this, is more than his share, and belongs to others.” The reason for this limit is that “Nothing was made by God for Man to spoil or destroy.”
Perhaps most similar to the notion of ownership put forth by Locke can be found in Andro Linklater’s presentation of Reverend John Winthrop’s sermon in “Owning the Earth”. Winthrop put foreword that private ownership of the Earth did not depend upon the law, but was created only through human toil of the land. Moreover, every man had the natural right to occupy empty land, and ultimately grew from God’s injunction in the Book of Genesis to, “Increase & multiply, replenish the Earth & subdue.” Both Locke and Winthrop’s positions stand in stark opposition to the idea of the divine right of kings, and address the then divisive question of did authority lie with the people or with the crown?
The main issue I have with John Locke’s “On Property” is that he is unclear regarding what type of labor is needed to obtain private property. Some kinds of labor are obvious, such as planting crops, but suppose I am raising sheep and need a certain amount of land to feed those sheep. May I claim as my private property all land that I deem necessary for pasturage? Or even today what if I am an environmentalist and want to preserve the environment as is? Can I fence off the area I want to protect? Such questions are difficult to deduce from Locke’s premise (at least in “On Property” alone), and would be addressed by social conventions and governmental rules. These conventions and standards may vary significantly among different cultures, traditions, and societies.
Really good summary of Locke. I’m glad you brought in Cotton too because there’s a way in which both men, who are coming from a Judeo-Christian perspective, naturalize the right to private property as not only the basis of society (positive law), but the intention of God’s creation. But, as you point out, private property is not the only way one can thrive off the land or govern a society and, indeed, even the Bible itself suggests alternatives. Good observations on the difficulty of translating Locke out of his historical context, particularly with regard to a pre-industrial age. I’d love to see how you set him up against George then!
I enjoyed reading your response. It highlighted the fundamental conflict in liberalism’s private land ownership rights, which Locke created. As you mention at the start of your response, Locke believes God gave the Earth to men to share in common. The state of nature allows for all men to use the land, as they would like and for their own prosperity. It is based on the foundational state of equality, where no one has authority over anyone else (at least among the humans Locke considers “man”), and independence, as shown through labor (Locke 3). As we exit the state of nature’s ideal and enter an individual property rights form to protect one’s ownership of their own labor and its transference into land. I think the beauty of Locke’s argument is that he turns himself on his head. Under the ideal state of nature, land is to be given to everyone in common. But when applied, land is transferred individual via labor in order to give private rights under finite land.
While Locke’s argumentation is clear, I would not consider his premise simple, as you say it is. The conflict between Locke’s individual rights and foundational equality are at odds when property is also the means for rights. As Locke writes:
“political power is the power that every man has in the state of nature and gives up into the hands of the society, and within the society to the governors whom the society has set over itself on the explicitly stated or tacitly understood condition that the power in question shall be employed for their good and for the preservation of their property. So this power… is to preserve his property by whatever means he thinks good” (Locke 56)
The formation of governments is to protect private property rights. Yet the government becomes the formation based upon labor and the property holdings. The “hands of society” denotes the idea that political power is based upon individual labor and access to governance is limited to the property holding individual. Afterall, in the Carolina constitution, which Locke wrote, only large landholders were able to vote. Thus, individual liberties do not only transfer to private property rights through labor, but private property also transfers to individual rights. I think this is highlighted in your questioning of what labor constitutes the laboring of land. As you mention with the environmentalist, who seeks to protect the natural land, it is not only a question of labor and property rights, as well as access to political power to preserve this land. Under a Lockean scheme, some forms of labor may not be recognized in the formation of property, as you say, but also these may translate to political represented bodies. To me, this appears contrary to the original state of equality, as property becomes a tool for unequal power and authority.
I think you raise a lot of good questions about contemporary application of Lockean property theory. In the 1974 book “Anarchy, State, and Utopia,” American libertarian philosopher Robert Nozick coined the term “Lockean proviso” to refer to what you call Locke’s “limitation on property.” Locke explained that man should acquire as much land “as [he] can make use of to any advantage of life before it spoils…Whatever is beyond this, is more than his share, and belongs to others.” This proviso, which I believe is certainly important, nonetheless introduces ambiguity into the text, as you pointed out, since man must “preserve his property by whatever means he thinks is good.”
I’d like to consider this proviso further, and have provided the formulation to which Nozick refers in his text: “Nor was this appropriation of any parcel of land, by improving it, any prejudice to any other man, since there was still enough and as good left, and more than the yet unprovided could use. So that, in effect, there was never the less left for others because of his enclosure for himself. For he that leaves as much as another can make use of, does as good as take nothing at all. Nobody could think himself injured by the drinking of another man, though he took a good draught, who had a whole river of the same water left him to quench his thirst. And the case of land and water, where there is enough of both, is perfectly the same.”
A Georgist reading of this passage would argue that, according to Locke’s proviso, where the acquisition of land does result in “less left for others,” that acquisition is unjust. Nozick similarly agrees that land acquisition is unjust where “the position of others no longer at able to use the thing is thereby worsened.” Although I reject Nozick’s ultimate conclusions about the Lockean proviso, I do think his identification of such a caveat in Locke’s theory would have massive implications if applied to property rights today. For example, I think the Lockean proviso points to a need for reparations in seized lands, be they indigenous peoples’ lands seized in the United States or Israeli territories seized from Palestinians. Moreover, we seldom consider the notion of “sufficiency” that Locke introduces in contemporary capitalist societies. In a city ruled by developers with a clear “more, more, more” attitude, and in an Industrial Age of extreme climate change caused by human innovation, we should perhaps consider when man, in Locke’s analogy, is indeed attempting to induce a drought by drinking the entire river. At what point do developers quench their thirst, so to speak, for the acquisition of land?
As a final aside, this consideration of the Lockean proviso’s implications somehow reminded me of Naomi Klein’s “The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism.” Klein identifies a disaster capitalism complex, in which national crises are exploited in order for outsider Western governments to seize power in those areas. It would be interesting to relate this idea to Lockean property theory, as many of these “disaster shocks” led to the destabilization of property among its possessors and tenants. If neoconservative capitalism thrives in the wake of disaster, when one can imagine a clean slate, is that because it allows for a kind of amnesia that conveniently forgets those that would be left worse-off by the seizure of their land? Is there a kind of slash-and-burn capitalism at work that fetishizes “blank slates” because they misleadingly imply that nothing existed in the area before?