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Locke on Natural Law and Property Rights*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

David C. Snyder
David C. Snyder*
Affiliation:
Calvin College, Grand Rapids, MI49506, U.S.A.
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Extract

Whether John Locke's Two Treatises is a justification of revolution or a demand for revolution, it is a book about political revolution. Yet it is also a book about property. This is so not only because of the obviously central place that Locke's discussion of property holds in the Second Treatise but also because his account of when revolution is justified hinges, in three crucial respects, on his account of how private, or, exclusive, rights to property arise.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 16 , Issue 4 , December 1986 , pp. 723 - 750
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 1986

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Footnotes

*

This paper was presented at a colloquium on the historical study of John Locke, held at Rutgers University on June 13-17, 1983. I wish to thank Paul Marshall, Fred Schick, James Tully, John Yolton and the referees of The Canadian Journal of Philosophy for their helpful comments on earlier versions. I am also indebted to Martha Bolton, Doug Husak and Gordon Schochet for valuable discussions of related matters.

References

1 Where there is no Property, there is no Injustice, is a Proposition as certain as any Demonstration in Euclid: For the idea of Property, being a right to any thing; and the Idea to which the Name Injustice is given, being the Invasion or Violation of that right; it is evident, that these Ideas being thus established, and these Names annexed to them, I can as certainly know this Proposition to be true, as that a Triangle has three Angles equal to two right ones’ (An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Book IV, chapter UI, section 18). All references in this paper to Locke's Essay will be taken from the Nidditch edition (New York: Oxford University Press 1975) and will be indicated in notes by book, chapter and section.

2 Second Treatise, section 23; all references in this paper to either the First or Second Treatise will be taken from Two Treatises of Government, Peter Laslett, ed. (New York: Cambridge University Press 1960), and hereafter will be indicated in the text of the paper by either ‘I’ or ‘II,’ referring to the First or Second Treatise, respectively, and by section number. Besides the ambiguity already mentioned in Locke's use of the word ‘property’ there is another problem as well. For whether he uses it to refer to goods, or in its wider application, to ‘lives, liberties and estates,’ in both of those senses ‘property’ refers to things one owns. However, in the passage quoted in the first note, Locke defines ‘property’ as a right to anything. There it does not refer to the thing owned but to the right to own a thing, or an entitlement.

3 Probably the best account to date of Locke's theory of natural law and property is Tully, James A Discourse on Property: John Locke and His Adversaries (New York: Cambridge University Press 1980).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4 Cf. Becker, Laurence ‘The Labor Theory of Property Acquisition,’ The Journal of Philosophy 73 (1975) 653–64;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Nozick, Robert Anarchy, State, and Utopia (New York: Basic Books 1974), 174–82.Google Scholar

5 Yolton, John ‘Locke on the Law of Nature,’ The Philosophical Review 67 (1958) 479CrossRefGoogle Scholar

6 Peter Laslett makes this mistake in the ‘Introduction,’ (94-5) to his edition of the Two Treatises. There he says that ‘the Essay has no room for natural law’ and that in the Two Treatises ‘Locke uses language on the subject of natural law which seems inconsistent with his own statements about innate ideas in the Essay.’ Laslett also suggests that Locke ‘realized his dilemma, but was unable to find a solution.’ For a defense of the consistency of Locke's political and epistemological views see Drury, S.B. ‘John Locke: Natural Law and Innate Ideas,’ Dialogue 14 (1980) 531–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

7 Essays on the Law of Nature, Leyden, W. von ed. (New York: Oxford University Press 1954), 117;Google Scholar hereafter I will refer to this volume as ELN.

8 Locke, Essay, I, II, 1

9 Locke, Essay, I, II, 21

10 Locke, Essay, I, II, 5

11 Locke, ELN, 137

12 Von Leyden, ‘Introduction’ to ELN, 60-82

13 Locke, ELN, 123

14 Locke, ELN, 125

15 Locke, ELN, 111

16 Yolton, ‘Locke on the Law of Nature,’ 483

17 ‘Hence this law can be described as being the decree of the divine will discernible by the light of nature and indicating what is and what is not in conformity with rational nature, and for this very reason commanding or prohibiting’ (Locke, ELN, 111).

18 Locke, ELN, 199

19 My account of Locke's view of natural law is quite different from that of Strauss, Leo Strauss, in Natural Right and History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1953),Google Scholar argues that although Locke apparently goes along with the traditional view of natural law, he actually conceals his true Hobbesean inclinations out of caution. Now besides the fact that Strauss's reading is marred by his failure to consider the ELN, his general notion of writing under persecution is troublesome because it renders his own interpretation of any historical text virtually unfalsifiable. For he can always explain away recalcitrant passages by saying that they are inserted to conceal the author's true intentions. Moreover, this way of reading historical documents is particularly inapplicable to Locke, since its result is to reduce his view of natural law to utter mystery and nonsense. For a critique of Strauss see Yolton, ‘Locke on the Law of Nature.’

20 The duty of preservation includes both self-preservation and preservation of others (II, 6). Here Locke is simply repeating the traditional concept of preservation as basic to natural law, for not only is preservation fundamental, but at times Locke speaks of man's desire for self-preservation as if it is an expression of God's will, directing human reason (e.g., I, 86).

21 Lyons, David ‘The Correlativity of Rights and Duties,’ Nous 4 (1970) 45–55CrossRefGoogle Scholar

22 The literature on Locke's doctrine of rights is surprisingly thin, but for other discussions of aspects of his theory see Tully, 62-3; Copleston, Frederick A History of Philosophy, volume 5, part 1, (New York: Image Books 1964), 139;Google Scholar Simmons, A. John ‘Inalienable Rights and Locke's “Treatises”,’ Philosophy & Public Affairs 12 (1983) 175–204;Google Scholar Marshall, Paul ‘John Locke: Between God and Mammon,’ Canadian Journal of Political Science 12 (1979) 73–96;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Jenkins, J.J. ‘Locke and Natural Rights,’ Philosophy 42 (1967) 149–54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

23 Tully does not think, however, that exclusive property rights are the same as private property because he accepts Macpherson's definition of private property in which it is both alienable and held independently of the owner's performance of any social function, while for Locke an exclusive right to property meets neither of these conditions, according to Tully, p. 99. But the distinction is not relevant for Locke. If one has exclusive rights to a thing then one can legitimately exclude others from its use. And the concept of private property need mean nothing more than this. Moreover, for Locke clearly property rights, even in land, are alienable, and although such rights usually do serve a social function, they need not. They would exist even if their only function was to preserve the individual who possesses them. From the fact that according to Locke the function of property rights is to preserve persons, Tully makes the unwarranted inference that the function of any particular property right is to preserve mankind as a whole. However, although property rights do serve to preserve the race, they are justified merely because they preserve the individual. Thus serving a social function is not necessary to Locke's notion of exclusive property rights. Note, too, that Locke does use the term ‘private Possessions’ (II, 35).

24 For a discussion of the relationship between Locke, Grotius and Pufendorf, see Tully, 68-94. See also Olivecrona, Karl ‘Appropriation in the State of Nature: Locke on the Origin of Property,’ Journal of the History of Ideas 35 (1974) 211–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

25 Becker, ‘The Labor Theory of Property Acquisition,’ 653Google Scholar

26 Cf. Tully, 95-130 and Ryan, Alan ‘Locke and the Dictatorship of the Bourgoisie,’ Political Studies 13 (1965) 225.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

27 Nozick, 174-5; Mautner, Thomas (‘Locke on Original Appropriation,’ American Philosophical Quarterly 19 [1982] 259–70)Google Scholar gives similar objections which are also generated, I believe, by failing to pay sufficient attention to the complexity of Locke's complete justification of property rights.

28 Tully's claim that for Locke a laborer creates a new object out of material provided by God, rather than simply modifying an already existing object by adding value and improvements to it is, it seems to me, both unwarranted and an unnecessary device for answering Nozick. Moreover, this interpretation may not even satisfy Nozick's objection. For why should the mere fact that I create something serve as my entitlement to that thing?

29 Macpherson, C. B. The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism: Hobbes to Locke (New York: Oxford University Press 1962), 233;Google Scholar Macpherson's claim, however, that Locke limits rationality to the property-owning class is not supported by the text. Appropriation is only one way of expressing one's rationality. Locke never suggests that land owners alone are rational.

30 Waldron, J.J. (‘Enough and as Good Left for Others,’ Philosophical Quarterly 29 (1979), 319–28)CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Mautner (260) claim that Locke's ‘enough and as good’ provision is not a moral limit to original appropriation but is simply a fact about appropriation in the early ages of man, there being plenty to go around. I think Locke's view is perhaps best characterized as a contrary to fact hypothetical condition: if there is not enough and as good left for others (which there was in the state of nature), then appropriation is unjustified.

31 The Educational Writings of John Locke, Axtell, James L. ed. (New York: Cambridge University Press 1968),Google Scholar paragraph 110, p. 213.

32 Macpherson, 204-11. Locke says, ‘That the same rule of Propriety, (viz.) that every Man should have as much as he could make use of, would hold still in the World, without straitning any body, since there is land enough in the World to suffice double the Inhabitants had not the Invention of Money, and the tacit Agreement of Men to put a value on it, introduced (by consent) larger Possessions, and a Right to them’ (II, 36). Tully claims that Locke's intention here is not to justify unlimited acquisition but to replace these limits with ‘other conventional rules, based on consent’ (153), and he is surely right to think that removing the original limits causes an intolerable situation that can be alleviated only by creating government and positive law. However, until that civil law is enacted - until the state is formed - money does, for Locke, transcend the original limits to appropriation and, in the interim, justify unlimited acquisition.

33 But it is not necessarily the case that the existence of money causes inequality of possessions. Locke merely says that in agreeing to use money men agree to unequal possessions. Unequal possessions could exist before money is introduced as a result of unequal capacity for usage or unequal industriousness.

34 Macpherson, 212. As Tully (149) shows, however, the passage to which Macpherson appeals to support this evaluation does not support it. But others do.

35 Macpherson, 238-47

36 Locke also describes the state of nature in warlike terms in sections 124, 125, 131 and 137.

37 Macpherson, 241

38 Macpherson, 242

39 Macpherson, 242

40 Cf. Tully, 152-4.

41 I find it remarkable that Dunn, John (The Political Thought of John Locke [New York: Cambridge University Press 1969], 118)CrossRefGoogle Scholar realizes that for Locke property serves both of these purposes, yet he fails to notice, or at least does not mention, the conceptual incoherence involved. In successive sentences Dunn asserts that money ‘leads to economic progress and betters the conditions of all members of the population,’ and that it also causes ‘differentiation in wealth [which] leads to greater social conflict and to a decline in the moral quality of social life under stress of increasing motives for envy.’ However, Dunn passes over this uneasy juxtaposition in silence.