Property

Locke's treatment of property is generally thought to be among his most important contributions in political thought, but it is also one of the aspects of his thought that has been most heavily criticized. There are important debates over what exactly Locke was trying to accomplish with his theory. One interpretation, advanced by C.B. Macpherson, sees Locke as a defender of unrestricted capitalist accumulation. On Macpherson's interpretation, Locke is thought to have set three restrictions on the accumulation of property in the state of nature: 1) one may only appropriate as much as one can use before it spoils (Two Treatises 2.31), 2) one must leave “enough and as good” for others (the sufficiency restriction) (2.27), and 3) one may (supposedly) only appropriate property through one's own labor (2.27). Macpherson claims that as the argument progresses, each of these restrictions is transcended. The spoilage restriction ceases to be a meaningful restriction with the invention of money because value can be stored in a medium that does not decay (2.46–47). The sufficiency restriction 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 (2.37). According to Macpherson's view, the “enough and as good” requirement is itself merely a derivative of a prior principle guaranteeing the opportunity to acquire, through labor, the necessities of life. The third restriction, Macpherson 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 Servant has cut” (2.28) can become my property. Locke, according to Macpherson, thus clearly recognized that labor can be alienated. As one would guess, Macpherson is critical of the “possessive individualism” that Locke's theory of property represents. He argues that its coherence depends upon the assumption of differential rationality between capitalists and wage-laborers and on the division of society into distinct classes. Because Locke was bound by these constraints, we are to understand him as including only property owners as voting members of society.
Macpherson's understanding of Locke has been criticized from several different directions. Alan Ryan argued that since property for Locke includes life and liberty as well as estate (Two Treatises 2.87), even those without land could still be members of political society. The dispute between the two would then turn on whether Locke was using property in the more expansive sense in some of the crucial passages. James Tully attacked Macpherson's interpretation by pointing out that the First Treatise specifically includes a duty of charity toward those who have no other means of subsistence (1.42). While this duty is consistent with requiring the poor to work for low wages, it does undermine the claim that those who have wealth have no social duties to others.
Tully also argued for a fundamental reinterpretation of Locke's theory. Previous accounts had focused on the claim that since persons own their own labor, when they mix their labor with that which is unowned it becomes their property. Robert Nozick criticized this argument 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? On Tully's account, focus on the mixing metaphor misses Locke's emphasis on what he calls the “workmanship model.” Locke believed that makers have property rights with respect to what they make just as God has property rights with respect to human beings because he is their maker. Human beings are created in the image of God and share with God, though to a much lesser extent, the ability to shape and mold the physical environment in accordance with a rational pattern or plan. Waldron has criticized this interpretation on the grounds that it would make the rights of human makers absolute in the same way that God's right over his creation is absolute. Sreenivasan has defended Tully's argument against Waldron's response by claiming a distinction between creating and making. Only creating generates an absolute property right, and only God can create, but making is analogous to creating and creates an analogous, though weaker, right.
Another controversial aspect of Tully's interpretation of Locke is his interpretation of the sufficiency condition and its implications. On his analysis, the sufficiency argument is crucial for Locke's argument to be plausible. Since Locke begins with the assumption that the world is owned by all, individual property is only justified if it can be shown that no one is made worse off by the appropriation. In conditions where the good taken is not scarce, where there is much water or land available, an individual's taking some portion of it does no harm to others. Where this condition is not met, those who are denied access to the good do have a legitimate objection to appropriation. According to Tully, Locke realized that as soon as land became scarce, previous rights acquired by labor no longer held since “enough and as good” was no longer available for others. Once land became scarce, property could only be legitimated by the creation of political society.
Waldron claims that, contrary to Macpherson, Tully, and others, Locke did not recognize a sufficiency condition at all. He notes that, strictly speaking, Locke makes sufficiency a sufficient rather than necessary condition when he says that labor generates a title to property “at least where there is enough, and as good left in common for others” (Two Treatises 2.27). Waldron takes Locke to be making a descriptive statement, not a normative one, about the condition that happens to have initially existed. Waldron also argues that in the text “enough and as good” is not presented as a restriction and is not grouped with other restrictions. Waldron thinks that the condition would lead Locke to the absurd conclusion that in circumstances of scarcity everyone must starve to death since no one would be able to obtain universal consent and any appropriation would make others worse off.
One of the strongest defenses of Tully's position is presented by Sreenivasan. He argues that Locke's repetitious use of “enough and as good” indicates that the phrase is doing some real work in the argument. In particular, it is the only way Locke can be thought to have provided some solution to the fact that the consent of all is needed to justify appropriation in the state of nature. If others are not harmed, they have no grounds to object and can be thought to consent, whereas if they are harmed, it is implausible to think of them as consenting. Sreenivasan does depart from Tully in some important respects. He takes “enough and as good” to mean “enough and as good opportunity for securing one's preservation,” not “enough and as good of the same commodity (such as land).” This has the advantage of making Locke's account of property less radical since it does not claim that Locke thought the point of his theory was to show that all original property rights were invalid at the point where political communities were created. The disadvantage of this interpretation, as Sreenivasan admits, is that it saddles Locke with a flawed argument. Those who merely have the opportunity to labor for others at subsistence wages no longer have the liberty that individuals had before scarcity to benefit from the full surplus of value they create. Moreover poor laborers no longer enjoy equality of access to the materials from which products can be made. Sreenivasan thinks that Locke's theory is thus unable to solve the problem of how individuals can obtain individual property rights in what is initially owned by all people without consent.
Simmons presents a still different synthesis. He sides with Waldron and against Tully and Sreenivasan in rejecting the workmanship model. He claims that the references to “making” in chapter five of the Two Treatises are not making in the right sense of the word for the workmanship model to be correct. Locke thinks we have property in our own persons even though we do not make or create ourselves. Simmons claims that while Locke did believe that God had rights as creator, human beings have a different limited right as trustees, not as makers. Simmons bases this in part on his reading of two distinct arguments he takes Locke to make: the first justifies property based on God's will and basic human needs, the second based on “mixing” labor. According to the former argument, at least some property rights can be justified by showing that a scheme allowing appropriation of property without consent has beneficial consequences for the preservation of mankind. This argument is overdetermined, according to Simmons, in that it can be interpreted either theologically or as a simple rule-consequentialist argument. With respect to the latter argument, Simmons takes labor not to be a substance that is literally “mixed” but rather as a purposive activity aimed at satisfying needs and conveniences of life. Like Sreenivasan, Simmons sees this as flowing from a prior right of people to secure their subsistence, but Simmons also adds a prior right to self-government. Labor can generate claims to private property because private property makes individuals more independent and able to direct their own actions. Simmons thinks Locke's argument is ultimately flawed because he underestimated the extent to which wage labor would make the poor dependent on the rich, undermining self-government. He also joins the chorus of those who find Locke's appeal to consent to the introduction of money inadequate to justify the very unequal property holdings that now exist.
Some authors have suggested that Locke may have had an additional concern in mind in writing the chapter on property. Tully (1993) and Barbara Arneil point out that Locke was interested in and involved in the affairs of the American colonies and that Locke's theory of labor led to the convenient conclusion that the labor of Native Americans generated property rights only over the animals they caught, not the land on which they hunted which Locke regarded as vacant and available for the taking. Armitage even argues that there is evidence that Locke was actively involved in revising the Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina at the same time he was drafting the chapter on property for the Second Treatise. Mark Goldie, however, cautions that we should not miss the fact that political events in England were still Locke's primary focus in writing thethe Second Treatise.
A final question concerns the status of those property rights acquired in the state of nature after civil society has come into being. It seems clear that at the very least Locke allows taxation to take place by the consent of the majority rather than requiring unanimous consent (2.140). 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. On his interpretation, the majority may only tax at the rate needed to allow the government to successfully protect property rights. At the other extreme, Tully thinks that, by the time government is formed, land is already scarce and so the initial holdings of the state of nature are no longer valid and thus are no constraint on governmental action. Waldron's view is in between these, acknowledging that property rights are among the rights from the state of nature that continue to constrain the government, but seeing the legislature as having the power to interpret what natural law requires in this matter in a fairly substantial way.

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Property

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Property

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