John Locke:
Inequality is inevitable and necessary
PHIL 1003
2008-09

John Locke
(1632-1704)

• John Locke believes that the death penalty is a good way to prevent repetition of wrongdoings.
• What is your opinion on this?

• ‘ Political power , then, I take to be a right of making laws with penalties of death, and consequently all less penalties, for the regulating and preserving of property, and of employing the force of the community, in the execution of such laws, and in the defence of the common-wealth from foreign injury; and all this only for the public good.’

• In the beginning (5.26-34):
– Enough resources for everyone—earth given to all to use in common;
– each takes only what he needs—acorns, apples, the
Indian’s deer = hunting-gathering (5.33);
– To take more than one can use is WASTE (5.31);
– We own what we appropriate through our labour
(Marx: labour theory of value);
– Man’s labour is 99% of the value of any thing.

The great transformation
• Our needs compel us to appropriate resources (5.35);
• ‘God gave the world…to the industrious and rational’ (5.34);
• The problem of commons:
– each appropriates only w/ agreement of fellow-commoners;
– Individual accumulation is restrained.

Invention of a means of exchange
• Money:
– Earth can now become individual property
(5.37);
– Waste/spoilage restriction is still satisfied;
– converts the perishable into the durable;
– appropriation ad infinitum (5.37);
– THIS IS GOOD;
– Cf. Aristotle, Plato, Augustine!

• ‘…he who appropriates land to himself by his labour, does not lessen, but increase the common stock of mankind: for the provisions serving to the support of human life, produced by one acre of inclosed and cultivated land, are…ten times more than those which are yielded by an acre of land of an equal richness lying waste in common’ (5.37).

• ‘There cannot be a clearer demonstration of any thing, than several nations of the
Americans are of this, who are rich in land, and poor in all the comforts of life…for want of improving it by labour’ (5.41).
• England is rich (5.37)!
• Why?

• Labour creates title to land
• Uncultivated land = waste; may be used by another (hence squatters’ rights)
• Money is based on consent ;
• Enables accumulation beyond subsistence level
• Property is unequally distributed:
– Earth given to industrious and rational (34)
– Value comes from labour (50)
– Labour includes that of employees: “The turfs my servant has cut” (28).

• ‘In the beginning all the world was America’ (49);
• Institution of money:
– ‘a man may fairly possess more land than he himself can use the product of’ (50);
• Compacts and agreements regulated property;
• Population increases:
– ‘…it is plain, that men have agreed to a disproportionate and unequal possession of the earth’
(emph. orig.; 50).

Locke’s view of human-nature relationship
• It’s not right to waste land b/c we are industrious and rational —God-given attributes (34);
• Land should be cultivated (40):
– Cash crops: tobacco, sugar (cultivated by slaves);
– Staple crops: wheat, barley [rice];
– “…of the products of the earth useful to the life of man nine tenths are the effects of labour”;
– “…in most of them ninety-nine hundredths are wholly to be put on the account of labour” (40).

• Labour theory of value
• Prohibition against waste/spoilage
• Property
• Cash nexus (money/means of exchange)
• Government to protect all this.
• Are you satisfied? Is this what gov’t should do?

Are they ‘waste’?

Camellia sinensis : only 1%?
Biodiversity?

• Don’t we already have everything we need?
– Land
– Property
– Crops
– Agreements
• No, b/c some will choose to put themselves in the state of war w/ others;
• Violate the law of nature—steal property and cause injury.

• ‘…the enjoyment of the property he has in this state [of nature] is very unsafe, very unsecure’;
• ‘This makes him willing to quit a condition, which, however, free, is full of fears and continual dangers’ (123);
• ‘Thus mankind…are quickly driven into society’
(127);
• ‘The great and chief end …of men’s uniting into commonwealths… is the preservation of their property’ (124).

Power of state is limited:
‘nightwatchman state’
Common good
“secure every one’s property”
(131).

• Agree w/ others ‘to join and unite into a community for their comfortable, safe, and peaceable living…in a secure enjoyment of their properties, and a greater security against any, that are not of it’ (95).
• ‘And thus every man…puts himself under an obligation…to submit to the determination of the majority…or else this original compact…would signify nothing…’ (97).

• We may not be one of those who agree to the original compact
• How do we actually consent?
• At birth we have no nationality (118);
• We tacitly consent by owning “possessions” or enjoying “any part of the dominions of any government” (119);
– I own a flat so I consent tacitly to the laws of H.K.
– I can sell my property and leave, thereby withdrawing my tacit consent;
• Is this the case in most states today?

• Doesn’t matter; it can be
– Monarchy
– Oligarchy
– Democracy
• “By common-wealth , I must be understood
...to mean not a democracy or any form of government, but any independent community …” (133).