The Social Contract Tradition
Oct. 7, 2008
Locke on Property Rights:
Locke uses the term ‘property’ in broader and narrower senses (often without distinguishing which
sense he is using in a given passage):
The Broad Conception of Property Rights:
My property is whatever I have both liberty rights to use and claims rights against others that
they not interfere with my use. In this sense, I have property rights in myself (my body) and
in my actions. And I can acquire property rights to ‘external objects’.
The Narrower Conception of Property Rights:
My property are those external objects with respect to which I have certain liberty rights and
claims rights.
The Origin of Property Rights:
Unlike Hobbes, Locke is trying to give an account of the origin of property rights as natural.
A theory of property rights as natural: property rights can be acquired in absence of any
convention (politically established or otherwise).
A theory of property rights as conventional: property rights can only be acquired through the
establishment of some kind of convention
Why study original acquisition if it the legitimate lines of ownership have long since been destroyed
through the rights violations?
Locke begins from a conception of God having given the earth to people ‘in common’. What does
this mean?
(1) Negative conception: Each person has a liberty right to use the resources of the earth.
But no one has a claim right to exclusive use of the resources of the earth.
(2) Positive conception: All people jointly own the earth, i.e. have a property right in the
earth. But no one has a claim right to exclusive use of the resources of the earth.
The positive conception makes better sense of why Locke is so concerned to show that original
acquisition does not require the consent of all people (since they are all joint owner, one might have
thought that it would require consent). The negative conception seems more faithful to the sharp
contrast Locke seems to want between our original relationship to the earth’s resources and the
relationship we bear to those resources once we have acquired them. Since both conceptions have
the same upshot, for our purposes it doesn’t matter which we pick.
How can we acquire property rights?
(1) By laboring on an object, one acquires property rights in it as long as (a) one leaves ‘enough
and as good’ (good = still usable) for others and (b) the object does not spoil.
(2) A property right acquired through laboring on an object can be transferred to another
person.
(3) People in need have a ‘right of charity’ to others’ surplus (what others have beyond what
they need to survive). See The First Treatise, Ch. 4, sec. 42. (So, Locke’s view is not quite as
‘libertarian’ as some have suggested.)
Why think that we can acquire property rights by laboring on an object?
Argument One: The Importance of Property for the Preservation of Humanity
(1)
(2)
(3)
(4)
God gave people the natural world in common to use to preserve themselves.
In order to preserve themselves people need to be able to exclusively use parts of the world.
Therefore, people need to have rights to exclusively use parts of the world.
Therefore, God must have intended people to have rights to exclusively use parts of the
world.
(5) If consent were required to establish rights to exclusively use parts of the world, it would be
impossible to acquire those rights.
(6) God must have intended that people acquire rights to exclusively use in some other way.
(7) Laboring on an object is picks out a unique relationship between a person and an object that
could be used to ground a right to exclusive use of that object.
(8) ?
Therefore, one can acquire a right to exclusive use of a part of the world through laboring on it.
What can we fill in for premise (8)?
How does this argument make room for the exceptions to property rights noted above?
Explaining the no-spoilage condition: Something ‘spoils’ when it cannot be used for to preserve a
person. Since our rights to exclusive use are based on our duty to preserve ourselves and others, we
have no rights to exclusive use that does not serve that purpose.
Explaining the enough-and-as-good condition: Since we have a duty to preserve others, we have a
duty to leave enough and as good for them.
Explaining the charity-exception: We have a duty to preserve others, when doing so does not
compete with our own preservation.
Argument Two: Labor Mixing
(1) People have claim rights to themselves.
(2) Therefore, people have claim rights to their labor.
(3) When people work on bits of the natural world, their labor becomes inextricably mixed with
it.
Therefore, people have rights to the objects on which they labor.
How do we explain the restrictions on acquisition on this view?
The Invention of Money
The rules for property acquisition change with the introduction of money. The use of money is a
conventional system established by tacit consent. In this system, we agree to accept certain durable
but useless things in exchange for useful things.
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The invention of money allows us to acquire more things without fear of violating the nospoilage condition because we can now store value in a medium that does not spoil.
The invention of money leads people to acquire so many goods that some become scare (e.g.
land). How can this be made consistent with the ‘enough and as good’ restriction on
acquisition?
o The enclosure of land, etc. actually increases the goods that are available because the
goods that are appropriated are transformed into much more valuable (useful) goods
– e.g. land produces crops that are more useful than the land alone. So, no one can
complain at not being able to acquire property rights in particular objects like land as
long as there are ‘enough and as good’ objects available to acquire in order to
survive.
o Our consent to the use of money obviates the need to abide by the ‘enough and as
good’ restriction – this restriction is only there if consent cannot be obtained.