A really comprehensive commentary on Macpherson's critique of Locke

Excerpt from:  

http://thegocblog.com/2011/01/31/in-defence-of-limited-government/

Possessive Individualism

For C.B. Macpherson, Locke’s sole purpose in the Second Treatise was to provide a moral justification for unlimited wealth appropriation (1962, p198). “The great and chief end therefore, of Mens uniting into Commonwealths, and putting themselves under Government, is the Preservation of their Property” (Second Treatise -ST from now on-, §124). From this statement, Macpherson begins to construct a critique of Locke’s theory which involves the movement of property rights from the state of nature into civil society. This occurs in two steps: firstly by basing property rights on natural law, and secondly by removing the limitations of natural law from property accumulation. “The Law Man was under, was rather for appropriating. God Commanded, and his Wants forced him tolabour. That was his Property which could not be taken from him where-ever he had fixed it.” (ST, §35) Locke shows that it is natural law and God’s will which commands mankind to labour. When a person mixes his/her labour with the objects of the world (which is given as a gift by God in common to all mankind) that act of labour confers an exclusive right on the object taken out of the commons. However, Locke puts a very specific limitation on the extent of appropriation, the famous “proviso”, where he states that men can appropriate in so much that there is enough left for other men to meet their basic sustenance (ST, §36). The other limitation Locke imposes on property appropriation is what Macpherson calls the “spoilage limitation” (1962, p204), where men may appropriate as long as the objects they appropriate do not spoil, rot or perish (ST, §46). This is what Macpherson’s refers to as Locke’s first step: the grounding of property rights in natural law.

It is the second movement that Locke performs which Macpherson sees as problematic: the transcendence of the limitations set out by natural law. Macpherson presents us with the three limitations, these being the spoilage limitation, the “proviso” (as long as there is enough left for others) and the labour limitation (only by mixing one’s labour with an object can one appropriate it). It is through the removal of these limitations that Macpherson sees Locke as justifying unlimited property accumulation and where we witness a “transition from the limited right to the unlimited right” (1962, p203). According to Macpherson, it is the introduction of money in the state of nature which allows for the limitations to be transcended, when men “had agreed that a little piece of yellow Metal, which would keep without wasting or decay, should be worth a great piece of Flesh, or a whole heap of Corn.” (ST, §37) In this way, if money cannot perish because it is made out of metal, the spoilage limitation does not apply, thereby sanctioning the unlimited accumulation of money (Macpherson 1962, p208). In addition, the introduction of money implies the possibility to sell one’s labour. This means that the “proviso” does not apply: one can appropriate all he/she wants without leaving enough for others because the others can work for a wage now that money has been introduced (1962, p214).

Macpherson thus states that Locke’s state of nature is an ambiguous one. At first, it seems as if it is one which implies the respect of both the will of God and of fellow human beings. Yet, the introduction of money transforms the state of nature into a race towards unfettered property accumulation (1962, p243). Moreover, embedded within the state of nature is the alienation of one’s labour (through wage relationships) and consequently class exploitation. Macpherson asserts that Locke could not have been oblivious to the class differentiation in his society, and it is only fitting that he would reproduce them in his conceptualization of the state of nature (1962, p231). The state of nature therefore has two different sets of rights, one for the propertied and one for the property-less. Thus when men enter in civil society, the sole purpose of forming a government is to protect the property rights of the wealthy (1962, p248), which brings us back to the afore mentioned quote from which Macpherson begins his critique: “The great and chief end therefore, of Mens uniting into Commonwealths, and putting themselves under Government, is the Preservation of their Property.”

Self Preservation

According to Leo Strauss (1953), Locke did not make natural law dependent on the will of God. Locke’s humans, when obeying natural law, are not acting in consonance with the precepts set out by divine will but in truth are following their inherent drive towards self preservation. For Strauss, there is no way that Locke’s definition of human reason could ever allow men to know the true will of God. Thus, the guiding principles of human reason were principles simply the aversion to pain and the propensity towards happiness. “The law of nature is nothing other than the sum of the dictates of reason in regard to men’s “mutual security” or to the “peace and safety” of mankind.” (Strauss 1953, p228)

Similarly to Macpherson, Strauss goes on to demonstrate that Locke‘s theory allows for the transcendence of the limits of natural law. Regarding the “proviso”, Strauss asserts the drive towards self preservation simply cannot allow leaving enough for others as this could potentially jeopardize one’s life (1953, p237). He then goes on to show that with the introduction of moneyed relationships Locke performs the “emancipation of acquisitiveness” which effectively liberates man firstly from the limitations of natural law and secondly from any kind of social responsibility (1953, p249) “Man is effectively liberated from the bounds of nature and there within the individual is emancipated from those social bonds which antedate all consent of compact, by the emancipation of his productive acquisitiveness, which is necessarily, if accidentally, beneficent and hence susceptible of becoming the strongest social bond” (1953, p249). Strauss concludes that man enters in civil society not only to protect his life, liberty and estates (this corresponds to the principle of self preservation) but actually to enlarge his possessions (this corresponding to the pursuit of happiness) (1953, p245).

Contextualising Locke

Macpherson and Strauss present us with a Hobbesian Locke (if indeed his natural law is guided by the principle of self preservation) whose aim in the Second Treatise is to articulate a theory of moral justification for unlimited capitalist accumulation and the legitimization of class exploitation. Such a harsh explanation of Locke was met with much resistance by professors John Dunn (1969, 1984), James Tully (1980, 1993) and Peter Laslett (1988). The argument against the theory of possessive individualism hinges on the contextualisation of both Locke as a man and of his work. Dunn (1969, 1984) suggests that it is impossible to recover the meaning of the Second Treatise without looking at three important factors: the Exclusion Bill crisis, Filmer’s Patriarcha, and the theological vocabulary of natural law. For all three mentioned scholars, there can be no assumption of Locke’s intent without recognizing the political and religious backdrop in which he was writing. For James Tully (and indeed for Cambridge scholars such as Austin and Skinner attempting to recuperate the illocutionary force of an author’s writings): “Understanding, as opposed to explanation, turns on recovering the meaning the author intended to convey by reading the text in light of the available conventions and assumptions, and so of coming to understand it in these terms” (Tully 1993, p99).

The Exclusion Bill Crisis and Sir Robert Filmer

As it became apparent in the late 1670s that King Charles II would be succeeded by his brother James Duke of York, it was feared that the new King, a Catholic, would re-institute pontifical authority and force Catholicism on the English people. The Earl of Shaftesbury (Locke’s employer) led the Whig Party in drafting the Exclusion Bill, a piece of legislation aimed at excluding James II from becoming king (Dunn, 1969 p44). The stage was thus set for the advent of an absolute monarch without concern for religious toleration or parliamentary legitimacy. It is within this context and within this historical moment that Locke was writing the Second Treatise (Laslett 1988, p54) thereby articulating a theory of limited government and the right to revolution with the specific purpose of delegitimizing absolute monarchy. The Exclusion Bill crisis is the first fact that we must recognize for our understanding of the Second Treatise.

Within this political crisis, Locke faced a formidable adversary, Sir Robert Filmer, the author of Patriarcha, a book arguing in favour of the divine right of kings and in direct support of James II. If Locke was going to publish any theory of limited government aimed at curbing arbitrary absolute power he would first have to disprove Filmer’s thesis (Tully 1980, p95). However, proving Filmer wrong was no easy feat. Patriarcha’s basic assumption stated that God gave the world specifically to Adam who would rightfully own it and who would have dominion over it and his own posterity. Seeing that monarchs rule in the stead of God on earth, Adamic rule transferred solely to kings. Filmer’s thesis accounted ultimately to a scriptural justification of the divine right of kings (Dunn 1980, p35). Moreover, it gave a clear and simple justification of the theory of property: the world and all the things in it, including people, belong to the monarch, and the regulation of property can only derive from the king’s positive laws (Tully 1980, p96). Other natural right theorists such as Grotius, had found it difficult to reconcile common property with private property. Filmer did not, as absolute authority over all property simply pertained to the king as sanctioned by God Almighty (Dunn 1969, p65; Tully 1993 p110).

The Theory of Limited Government

Locke’s aim in the First Treatise therefore accounts to a scriptural rejection of Filmer’s assumption that God gave the world particularly to Adam and more generally to males (Locke summarises this succinctly in the very beginning of theSecond Treatise: “It is impossible that the Rulers now on Earth, should make any benefit, or derive any the least shadow of Authority from that, which is held to be the Fountain of all Power, Adam’s Private Dominion and Paternal Jurisdiction”). According to Jeremy Waldron (2002) the First Treatise is Locke’s attempt to demonstrate that God gave the world to all in common as a gift and that all men are created equal. Waldron suggests that Locke’s work is essentially a “defence of the proposition that humans are, basically, one another’s equals” (2002, p15). Thus he was not solely fighting Filmer on scriptural basis, but had consciously understood that a theory of equality necessarily required a theological basis.

However, if the world was given to men in common, and if men are all equal, how could private property be possible? It is here that Chapter V On Propertybecomes pivotal. With the theory of property Locke is able to move men from “that State of perfect Equality” (ST, §7) where “God gave the World to Adam and his Posterity in common” (ST, §25), through one in which the individual has the right of self ownership over himself and his property, and ultimately into civil society where he is finally able to propose a doctrine of limited government. “It is through the theory of property that men can proceed from the abstract world of liberty and equality based on their relationship with God and natural law, to the concrete world of political liberty guaranteed by political arrangements” (Laslett 1988, p103). In Locke’s political theory, individual political freedom cannot be justified without the prior institution of private property rights. Moreover, Locke’s general use of the term property seems to encapsulate this point: “Lives, Liberties and Estates, which I call by the general name, Property” (ST, §123). Locke could not separate political freedom from economic freedom as he used the concept of Property to define them both; and he needed this concept ultimately to ground his theory of limited government, natural rights and majority rule in individual freedom rather than in absolute despotic rule (Dunn 1969, p67). In the light of the Exclusion Bill crisis, Locke’s ultimate goal was to propose a theory of limited government and the right to revolution, not, as Professor Macpherson has it, to provide a moral justification for class exploitation.

More commentary reading on Locke and property

from:  http://philosophyfaculty.ucsd.edu/faculty/rarneson/Courses/166lockeonpropertynotes

LOCKE ON PROPERTY CHAPTER 5, SECOND TREATISE ON GOVERNMENT Notes for Philosophy 166
Locke wants to argue that individuals can acquire full property rights over moveable and nonmoveable parts of the earth in a state of nature, absent government. Our natural rights include the right legitimately to acquire property, and any government must respect natural rights including rights to property. Property rights are rights in things. Full ownership of something includes the right to use it as one wishes (so long as one does not thereby harm others in ways that violate their rights), to exclude others from its use, to allow another person to use it on any mutually agreed terms, to waive or renounce one’s rights in the thing, and to transfer this entire package of rights to another person. Against Robert Filmer, who held that God gave the earth to Adam and that Adam passed dominion over the earth to a succession of absolute monarchs down to the Stuart Kings and other kings of other lands, Locke wants to urge that God gave the earth to men in common in such a way that individuals can acquire private ownership of parcels of it. That God gave the earth to men in common means for Locke that initially land is unowned and no one has any more rights to any bit of it than anyone else. What follows from the premise of initial common ownership? Locke proceeds on the assumption that the rules must make sense—God would not have established rules for us that require us to starve in the midst of plenty. So one can use unowned land without getting the permission of all other people. Initially then we have free use—anyone may use any bit of the earth, and no one has any more rights to any bit of the earth greater than anyone else. LABOR-MIXING. One strand of thought in chapter 5 starts with the idea that we acquire private ownership of unowned land by laboring on it or as Locke says mixing our labor with bit. Locke seemws to be reasoning as follows: 1. If one mixes what one owns with something that is unowned, one thereby comes to own the unowned thing. 2. Each person owns her own labor. 3. If one mixes one’s labor with unowned land, one thereby comes to own the land. There may be something to this idea, but as stated it seems vulnerable to objections. Objection: It is not true in general that mixing what one owns with what one does not own expands one’s ownership. Premise 1 looks to be false. Objection: What determines the extent of what one comes to own via labor-mixing? If I labor on a tree in North America, when it is entirely unowned, do I come to own the bark my fingers touch, the tree, the land under the tree, the surrounding land, or all of North America? If you answer, it depends on what we intend, then someone with grand intentions will come to own a huge property with a little labor. LIBERTY. There is another strand in Locke’s thinking here that is implicit if not completely explicit. We start with the general statement of one’s natural rights: A. Each person has the natural right to do whatever she chooses (to live as she chooses) with whatever she legitimately owns so long as she does not harm other people (in ways that violate their rights). Each person also has the corresponding natural right not to be harmed by anyone else (in any way that violates her rights). B. Each person is the full owner of herself. Call B the self-ownership principle. Locke cannot mean that we have full self-ownership, because he does not believe the individual has the right to sell herself into slavery. But we can transfer to 2 others part of our self-ownership. We do this, for example, when we agree to marriage contracts or wage-labor contracts. Under free use, and given self-ownership, Locke thinks each person may use the earth in ways that confer ownership of bits of it. For example, one can come to own the acorns and fruit that one gathers from unowned land, and when one begins to hunt a rabbit, one acquires ownership rights to that rabbit (others may not interfere with one’s hunt). We are reasoning here from the premise that God has designed rules for us, the natural laws, in order to best preserve and enhance human life. Locke offers, as a further interpretive gloss that explains the meaning of the “right to do what one chooses so long as one does not violate the rights of others” in A, that at least under conditions of nonscarcity, one who appropriates a particular parcel of unowned land as her private property thereby comes to have ownership rights over it. This means that from now on others are no longer free to use the land as they were before. Are they not then harmed by the private appropriation? No, says Locke. Each is free to appropriate land in just the same way and gain an equivalent benefit. C. Each person has equal opportunity to appropriate land and gain roughly the same benefit from it by the expenditure of comparable laboring efforts. Condition C, equal opportunity to appropriate, obtains when land is nonscarce in the sense that the total amount of claims to appropriate land that anyone might care to make (that satisfy the No-Waste rule) is in the aggregate less than the available land. Locke seems to have something like condition C in mind in paragraph 33, where he states “he that leaves as much as another can make use of, does as good as take nothing at all.” Locke gives the example of taking a drink of water from a steadily flowing river. One’s drink does not prevent anyone else from drinking as much as he likes, for there is plenty of water flowing. In paragraph 36 Locke observes “it was impossible for any man, this way, to intrench upon the right of another, or acquire himself a property to the prejudice of his neighbour, who would still have room for as good, and as large a possession (after the other had taken out his) as before it was appropriated.” Locke also stipulates in paragraph 31 that the right to appropriate and use the things of the earth does not include a right to “spoil or destroy” or let things go to waste. Locke does not elaborate, but we might wonder: if there is nonscarcity, and condition C holds, why should not my liberty to live as I choose include a liberty to appropriate land and leave it in its natural state? Maybe I just like to watch leaves and fruit rot and fall. One might also wonder what limits the stringency of the No-Waste rule. Locke seems to have in mind that if hunter-gatherers claim a vast expanse of land as theirs to roam in, this counts as waste, relative to the claim of one who wants to farm the land and make it more productive. But suppose you appropriate the land and farm it, and then another person comes along, who has better techniques, and can farm it better. At the limit, Locke’s No waste rule would be transformed into a rule to this effect: “Land belongs to whoever can use it most productively.” Locke does not push the No Waste idea to its limit in this way, but what constrains its extension? Locke holds that AT LEAST when condition C obtains and the No-Waste rule is observed by private appropriators, then one has a right to appropriate unowned land as one’s private property and this appropriation establishes genuine full property rights held by the appropriator over that particular parcel of land. In this setting, anyone who insists on continuing freely to use the particular land that you have appropriated and improved by your labour is desirous of “the benefit of another’s pains, which he had no right to” (para 34). It’s not that we can derive the 3 right to private ownership from A and B under conditions of nonscarcity, but that if we start with A and B, and try to interpret what A should imply for use and ownership rights in the state of nature, the best interpretation is the one Locke gives. Notice that from premises about self-ownership alone, even full self-ownership, nothing follows about justified ownership of parts of the earth. Consistently with saying each person is the full rightful owner of herself you can add, and the earth belongs to all in common, or the earth belongs only to Adam’s child Abel (not Cain) and his descendants. Hence there is logical space for a left-Lockean position that combines full robust self-ownership with egalitarian claims about justified ownership of the earth. However, even robust individual self-ownership, absent any premises about permission to use or own parts of the earth, does not entitle a person to live as she chooses in any ordinary sense. If I fully own myself, but am not entitled to stand on any land, or breathe any air, my self-ownership counts for little. Locke himself combines a fairly strong but not full self-ownership claim with claims that guarantee self-owners rights to use parts of the earth and acquire ownership of parts of the earth. Under conditions of nonscarcity, it is quite plausible to think that if I own myself, I ought to be able to appropriate as much land as I like and gain whatever I can gain by laboring on that land (or by exerting my entrepreneurial talent and hiring others to work the land I own). If my labor is mine, and land is nonscarce, how could others have a rightful claim to some of the produce of my labor on this nonscarce land? By applying similar labor to a similar parcel of land, anyone could achieve the same gain I am getting. However, an egalitarian of a certain sort might hold that Unable might lack the ability to labor on land productively in the way Able does, so either Able should give some of her produce to Unable, or ownership rules should be adjusted so that Unable gets far more land than Able (so she has the opportunity to gain just as much from the land she owns given her talents at laboring as Able has the opportunity to gain from the land he is allowed to own in combination with his talents at laboring). Locke of course is not an egalitarian of this sort. (However, someone might appeal to Locke’s tendency to ruleutilitarianism. The moral rules we should obey are the ones God affirms, and God specifies rules that work to maximize human flourishing. Given diminishing marginal utility of material goods, across persons, then the use a wealthy person makes of her 100th bushel of corn is likely to do less for her than the gain for herself a poor person would be likely to get from a first bushel of corn. So there is a general case for transfer, which is limited by the utility gain from giving persons secure ownership rights. The ideal moral rules for property that God affirms for us will balance these two concerns, so reflect the utility of requiring some transfers from wealthy to poor persons.) What determines the extent of one’s ownership claim in a particular case? Locke does not say. He clearly means that one must signal to others that one means to acquire a given parcel of land, say by marking the boundaries in some way. Laboring on unowned land might carry out this signalling—if a parcel of forest is cleared and the ground prepared for farming, it is clear to anyone that someone means to appropriate the cleared land. What I do not signal to others as mine cannot be mine. LABOR-MIXING AS VIRTUOUS. Another strand in Locke’s argument, separate from the liberty strand, stresses that laboring on unowned earth and rendering it productive is virtuous activity, and doing this renders one deserving of reward. Property ownership might be regarded as the appropriate reward. See para. 34: “God gave the earth to men in common, but . . .,He gave it to the use of the industrious and rational (and labour was to be his his title to it;), not to the fancy or covetousness of the quarrelsome and contentious.” PRIVATE APPROPRIATION AND SCARCITY. What happens when land is no longer scarce and all valuable land is owned? It then is no longer the case that condition C, the equal opportunity to 4 appropriate condition, obtains. People are born who are nonowners and have no opportunity to appropriate land as their own as others did. Locke wants to hold that private ownership can continue to be justified in this case. Locke suggests two ideas here. (1) Inequality of possessions consistent with the satisfaction of the No Waste rule comes about only because people consent to the use of money. Money’s value is conventional, it is only valuable because people agree to take it as valuable. The use of money predictably gives rise to unequal possessions. So each person, agreeing the use of money, tacitly consents to unequal possessions. (2) Since labour creates by far most of what people value in things—Locke says labour crates 999/1000 of all value—a system of private ownership even with scarcity is far more productive than a system of free use. All who live under private ownership are made betetr off by the existence of this system, even though some fare better than others. Locke observes that the poorest day laborer in England, living under a private ownership system, is better off than a chieftain, the best off person, in a North American tribe that lives under something closer to a free use system and that does not countenance private ownership, and this even though North America is far richer in natural resources than England. Locke might then hold that an individual act of private appropriation, or a system of private ownership, is morally OK just in case the act (or the system) leaves no everyone including nonappropriators better off than they would have been under continuance of free use. Since free use does not give anyone much incentive to labor productively (where one sows, anyone may reap), the free use baseline will be rather low, so a private ownership system will perhaps easily satisfy this requirement. Question: Does either line of thought or the combination of the two suffice to justify private ownership in the way that Locke intends?

Summary of Locke's theory on property

excerpt from:  http://www.gradesaver.com/second-treatise-of-government/study-guide/summary-chapter-v-of-property

Second Treatise of Government Summary and Analysis of Chapter V: Of Property

Summary

Locke begins his discussion of property by alluding to Filmer’s theory of patriarchalism, which suggested that only an absolute monarch descended from Adam would have any right to property because God gave Adam dominion over all the land. Locke disagrees and writes that he will spend the rest of this chapter demonstrating how God provided for mankind in common to have property, even if they do not form a compact.

The fruits of the Earth, including animals, land, and vegetation, are to be enjoyed by all men because, as Locke points out in Chapter II, no one man is born with dominion over another. Of course, there must be some way to appropriate these necessities of life to men in order for them to be as beneficial as possible and to avoid conflict.

The first topic Locke addresses is that of man’s own person, or, the labor of his body. This belongs exclusively to him and he may reap the work of his hands. When he removes something from nature through his hard work, it is no longer the common property of all mankind but belongs to himself exclusively. If a man picks up acorns under a tree, they belong to him at the moment of their gathering (as opposed to when he ate them, digested them, cooked them, etc.) because this labor of gathering is what legitimates their possession. The gatherer of acorns does not need to receive the permission of all other men before he takes something from the common into his own possession because this would be completely unrealistic- men would starve trying to make sure every other man approved of his actions. Locke uses other examples to reinforce this point- an Indian who kills a deer is entitled to that deer, a man who catches a fish is entitled to that fish, and a hunter who chases and captures a hare is entitled to that hare. It is the labor that legitimates the possession, even when the property, be it an animal or land, was held by the commons.

Locke then addresses the question of to how much property men are entitled, and examines the supposition that they will overreach themselves in taking God’s bounty. He points out that the Bible says God gave man the Earth to enjoy, and that when man first walked upon it he was so scarce and nature so vast, that there was never any problem with rapaciousness or conflict. The issue now is not food or animal but land. Any piece of land that a man labors upon is his. Scripture validates this because God commanded man to labor as part of his punishment for sin. Initially this was not problematic because there was plenty of land for everyone. God gave the land to the industrious and diligent, not to the “quarrelsome and contentious.” Anyone who desired another’s land was no doubt seeking to benefit from another’s hard work.

In a land like England where there is a government in place, the compact necessitates the approval of one’s fellow man before appropriating and enclosing land. The land does not belong to all mankind but to an individual parish or county. When God commanded man to subdue and cultivate, He also introduced the concept of dominion. Human beings were commanded to labor; this is the condition of life. This labor thus gives men private possessions.

This measure of labor meant that men could only cultivate as much land as was physically possible and his enjoyment derived from this cultivation. He did not need to take an immoderate amount of land or encroach upon that of his neighbor. Locke wrote that this was actually still the case at the time of the writing of the Second Treatise, as there were still vast unclaimed areas of land in America and even Spain where a man could claim, plow, cultivate, and utilize the fruits of the soil without incurring the displeasure of others.

Unfortunately, the invention of money made this impossible. Once men assigned value to some agreed-upon method of currency, larger possessions became de rigueur. Claiming that a piece of gold had intrinsic value and could buy food or people or land meant that men desired more. This is unfortunate, Locke writes, because when a man labors on the land it yields something beneficial to mankind. When many acres are enclosed but lie wild and uncultivated simply because they are held by a man’s title to the land, this is extremely wasteful. If a man gathers too much fruit and it rots, this is not only wasteful but a violation of the common law of nature because that rotted fruit did not provide sustenance to anyone. Locke writes that since Adam and his heirs did not have exclusive dominion over the earth, many men could have distinct titles to it through their labor.

Locke continues his discussion of how only labor provides value, asserting that nine-tenths of the products of the earth that men find useful come from labor and are not entirely natural. The Americans have a multitude of uncultivated land but merely eke out an existence because land is not improved by labor. Bread, wine, and cloth serve the same purposes as acorns, water, and leaves/skins, but are vastly superior. The things that men enjoy and that improve their lives derive from labor. The labor put into a loaf of bread, for example, includes that of the ploughman, reaper, thresher, oxen-breakers, baker, and more.

History reveals that men were initially content to use of nature only what they needed. As communities began to organize into states and kingdoms and create laws, they began regulating the land and negotiating the boundaries of their land with other communities. There were still open tracts of land where communities had not formed, but this was impossible in communities that adopted the idea of money (e.g., gold, silver, and diamonds). While men knew it was unwise to hoard things like fruit and nuts, which would rot and expire, it was definitely possible to hoard money because it would not spoil. In the beginning of the world when the land was vast and commerce was impossible, there was no system of money. Men’s voluntary consent to this system began the inequality of private possessions and the right of the government to regulate the right of property. Locke concludes by summarizing the state of property before money and government- only labor created value, men did not take more than they needed, and conflict and controversy over land did not exist.

Analysis

“Of Property” is one of the most significant and controversial chapters in the Second Treatise. It contains the same theme of personal liberty found throughout the Second Treatise. Here Locke makes clear that a man’s individual labor is his own and the laws of nature dictate that he reap the rewards of his hard work. If he picks an apple or kills a hare for sustenance, no one else can claim that it does not belong to him. With this autonomy must come an understanding of the law of nature, which sets forth that a man should not take more than is necessary. It is wasteful to gather more apples than one can eat, or to enclose acres of land that lie uncultivated. This is the only way conflict will be avoided in a state of nature, and it requires reason on the part of mankind.

The scholar Robert Novick found Locke’s idea of taking what one owns- his labor- and mixing it with something he does not own problematic. He used the example of mixing tomato juice that he owned with the ocean- does he now own the ocean? Or did he simply lose his tomato juice? Why would Locke assume that mixing what one owns with what owns result in his gaining of what he did not own? This a provocative question, and scholars such as James Tully have critiqued Novick’s assertion in turn. Tully said that men, because they were created in the image of God who creates and shapes the natural environment, have the same sort of power to a lesser degree.

One further note on the idea of labor, as put forth by scholar David Russell: labor can be defined as an activity with the goal to turn some material that could meet our needs into something that actually does. This definition reinforces the idea that men are working to preserve themselves and then to help preserve others in society. In Chapter III, Locke wrote that the fundamental law of nature was “men being to be preserved as much as possible.” He was there addressing the state of war, but it is not far from the ideas set forth in this chapter. When one man takes more than he needs and it goes to waste, he is violating another man’s need to preserve himself.

Locke contrasts the state of affairs before and after the evolution of money. Before an agreed-upon currency, such as gold and silver, is implemented, man’s equality of birth is mirrored in the equality of property. In a state of nature, men did not fall prey to excess because they were only entitled to what their labor yielded. Hoarding was unwise because the fruits of the earth rotted. There was no need to own vast tracts of land, as in 17th century America, because they were essentially useless when labor could not produce anything from them. Money, however, placed value in a piece of gold or silver that did not rot. Men could amass larger and larger tracts of land because they possessed a currency that did not expire. The existence of money, the increase in men and the decrease in available resources, and the proliferation of conflict over such resources necessitate the creation of a civil government.

Finally, scholars argue over whether or not Locke was a proto-capitalist who was supportive of the amassing of unlimited property; C.B. Macpherson asserts that yes, Locke was a proto-capitalist, while Tully claims that Locke viewed the money system and its concomitant difference in equality of property as problematic and dangerous. The term “capitalism” did not exist at the time of Locke’s writing and publication of the Second Treatise, but the argument has come to be an important one in the literature surrounding Locke and his work. The fact that Locke continues to be debated in earnest reveals just how significant he was and is to political and economic thought.

Summary of MacPherson's criticism of Locke

Excerpt from:  http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/locke-political/

"3. 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."