Political Thinkers Essay
Question: Explain and evaluate Locke’s justification for private property.
Locke’s theory of property as found in the Second Treatise of Government was regarded as
the cornerstone of classical liberalism (Gough, 1950). His attempt to ground the right to
property in natural law was seen to be an important device for asserting the rights of
individuals against the state and for limiting the moral authority of the state in a crucial area
of human endeavor (Vaughn, 1980).
This essay is broadly divided into two parts: the former explaining the justification of private
property and the latter evaluating the same. While explaining, we will stick to the time and
situation of Locke back in the seventeenth century and while evaluating we shall apply the
same in present time and different critiques. While doing this, we shall touch upon Locke’s
theory of property, the definitions of property and labour, restrictions and criticisms on the
theory, role of government and the evaluation.
As Aaron asserts (1955: 276), Locke had accepted the traditional communism of medieval
thought―in the diluted form in which it was handed on to the seventeenth century. In the
state of nature, according to Locke, men were born free and equal (Connolly, 2004).
‘Although it is a state of liberty, it is not a state of license,’ (Locke, 1689, 2.6) because it is
ruled over by the law of nature which everyone is obliged to obey. Locke places the right to
possessions on the same level as the right to life, health, and liberty (Heywood, 1997: 26).
God had given all things ‘to mankind in common’ (Locke, 1689, 2.26) and man was to use
them for his own convenience. Yet to use, one must possess, and possess absolutely and not
communally. It was no longer held that men actually possess all things in common in a
positive way. Locke makes this argument strongly (1689: 2.34), ‘God gave the world to men
in common, but since he gave it for their benefit and the greatest conveniences of life they
were capable to draw from it, it cannot be supposed he meant it should always remain
common and uncultivated.’ Land which is common is uncultivated. A piece of land taken
and cultivated is the private property of the individual who has cultivated it (Dunn, 1982).
‘In this way, although starting with communism of a sort, Locke can none the less justify
property’ (Aaron, 1955: 277). He is content to show that the possession of private property
is fundamental in human life and belongs to man in the state of nature.
Locke begins his argument by identifying the one form of property against which no other
man could possibly have a claim in a world of political equals, the property each man that
each man possesses himself, his own person, absolutely (O’Connor, 1952: 209). Locke built
on this concept of self-ownership when he used it to explain how one derives a right to
possess objects outside of one’s self, his labour theory of property (Hartogh, 1990).
Locke used the term Labour to characterize the act by which men create property. Labour,
for Locke (1689: 2.46), includes picking up acorns from the ground, gathering apples from
wild trees, tracking deer in the forest, and catching fish in the ocean, labour ranges from
simple acts of appropriation to production involving planning and effort. Thus it is labour
which creates property and gives value to most of the things. ‘It is labour indeed that puts
the difference of value on everything… Of the products of the earth useful to the life of man
nine-tenths are the effects of labour.’ (Locke, 1689, 2.40). Locke argued that private
property was moral as unassisted nature really provides very little that is useful to mankind.
Locke here suggested a ‘labour theory of value’ as the center of a systematic defence of
property. He argues that, if one considers the value of the products of the earth, nine tenths
will be found to be attributed to labour and only the remaining fraction to nature itself
(Laslett, 1988). A man’s labour and the work of his hands are necessarily his own and so also
should be their products. Locke’s definition of property does not only include tangible goods
but also encompasses human rights such as the ‘right to life and liberty’ (Macpherson, 1962:
198). He sometimes uses ‘property’ in a wide sense so as to include life and indeed other
goods as well as material possessions (Moulds, 1964).
The right to property broadly includes (Locke, 1689, 2.32) both ‘the fruits of the earth and
the earth itself’. The earth and all inferior creatures were held in common by all men; each
man had as ‘property’ only his own person, the labour of his body, and the work of his
hands (Morris, 1931: 59). But in addition he also possesses anything ‘with which he has
mixed his labour’. As Locke puts (1689, 2.27), ‘Whatsoever, then, he removes out of the
state that nature hath provided and left it in, he hath mixed his labour with, and joined to it
something that is his own, and thereby makes it his property.’ Locke derives the right to
private property from the right of self-preservation (Mabbot, 1973: 147).
When a man by his own effort has changed a thing from the state in which nature made it,
that thing from being common becomes the property of him that mixed his labour with.
Locke makes this argument strongly (1689, 2.30), ‘Though the water running in the fountain
is every one’s, yet who can doubt but that in the pitcher is his only who drew it out.’. Locke
includes that the individual appropriating property for himself does not lessen but rather
increases ‘the common stock of mankind’, hence supporting such a system of collective
social benefit. To say that anything is a man’s property is to say that he can do what he likes
with it including making gifts of it, and, it should follow, bequeathing it to whomever he
likes at his own death (Mabbot, 1972: 147). ‘Labour being 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’ (Locke, 1689, 2.27). 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 from himself.
The right of property is a right assigned by Nature; it requires no government to establish it,
nor can any government take it away (Morris, 1931: 59). But reason assigns a natural limit
to the application of this principle, and Locke includes three restrictions to his theory.
Macpherson argues (1962: 203), as the argument progresses, each of these restrictions is
transcended. The first restriction Locke imposes is when he says a man may appropriate as
much as he can use, (1689, 2.31), ‘One may only possess as much as any one can make use
of, to any advantage of life, before it spoils it.’. As much as anyone can make use of to
advantage of life or comfort before it spoils, so much he may by his labour fix his property
in. Beyond this he may not go; nothing was made by God for man to spoil or destroy
(Morris, 1931: 60). It ceases to be meaningful with the intervention of money because value
can be stored in a medium that does not decay (Macpherson, 1962). The Second restriction
according to Locke states, one may only take from the common stock when ‘there is enough
and as good left in common for others.’ (1689, 2.33). Laslett comments (1988), but the
surplus limitation can be evaded by the use of money. If surplus products which would spoil
if hoarded are exchanged for money, which cannot spoil if hoarded, then there need be no
limit to the process of acquisition. It according to Macpherson (1962) is transcended
because the creation of private property so increases productivity that even those who no
longer have the opportunity to acquire land will have more opportunity to acquire what is
necessary for life. The third restriction, Macpherson (1962) argues, was not one Locke
actually held at all. Though Locke appears to suggest that one can only have property in
what one has personally labored on when he makes labor the source of property rights,
Locke clearly recognized that even in the state of nature, ‘the turfs my servants has cut’
(1689, 2.28) can become my property. Locke, according to Macpherson (1962), thus clearly
recognized that labour can be alienated. He portrays Locke as a defender of unrestricted
capitalist accumulation. James Tully (1980) attacked Macpherson’s interpretation by
pointing out that Locke (Locke, 1689, 1.42) in his other writings includes a duty of charity
towards those who have no other means of subsistence. Nozick (1991) criticized the labour
theory with his famous example of mixing tomato juice one rightfully owns with the sea,
when we mix what we own with what we do not, why should we think we gain property
instead of losing it? Nozick takes Locke to be a libertarian, with the government having no
right to take property to use for the common good without the consent of the property
owner.
Overcoming the spoilage limitation, will have consequences in form of property disputes
and increasing concern for personal safety, men will find it greatly to their advantage to
come together to form a contract to enter into civil society and establish a government
(Tuckness, 2005). Thus, Locke’s justification of property eventually necessitates the
formation of a social contract or government (1689, 2.38). Locke, here describes that men
form governments to protect their property which according to him includes life, liberty and
estate (Laslett, 1988). By agreeing to give up his right to be judges in his own case, each man
gains the benefits of increased order and security. Hence the ownership of private property
is one of the major causes of the existence of the state (Waldron, 1990). The government is
expected to rule in the public good, and not for its own good; should the government fail to
meet its obligations the citizens have the right to change the government (Locke, 1689,
2.38). Locke’s idea of government can be interpreted as supporting limited governance,
where the government is set up to simply ensure a state of minimal order to allow men to
pursue their private accumulation of property untroubled by such social problems as basic
inequality and injustice (Tully, 1980: 150).
Locke was led to oversimplify the problem (Morris, 1931: 60). He thought that the
distribution of property and wealth was easily and perfectly controlled by nature herself,
and that in this sphere the exercise of human ingenuity and organization was not required.
In this he was the true forerunner of the laissez-faire economists and politicians. It is clear
that Locke did not consider the possibility of a state of affairs like the present in which there
is little or no product of nature which is not, under the sanction of the established order, the
property of some one, so that a man may easily die of starvation before he can reach any
unappropriated material which he can by labour make his own (Davis, 2014).
As Morris comments (1931: 60), Locke’s principle has played the part of a fruitful seed from
which have grown many different solutions of the problem, none of these solutions can be
reasonably attributed to Locke himself. His theory of the origin of the right to property ‘has
all but completely established the fundamental principle which lies at the bottom of the
science of Wealth’ (Fraser, 1959: 102). As Morris comments (1931: 59), although threequarters of a century elapsed before the importance of his doctrine came to be fully
recognized, its influence can readily be traced in the classical economists, and since the
writings of Karl Marx it has assumed first-rate importance as the main principle lying at the
root of Socialistic theory.
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