In face of the loss of legitimacy of the old patriarchal order, how are people to go about preserving themselves? The old class system no longer legitimate. People now individuals, separate from the community. Must make their own way in the world. How do they do this? Through private property. Locke puts forth a right to private property as foundational to the modern political community and modern existence.
Private property is necessary for survival in a society that has become individualistic, that has rejected the old idea of organic classes and society as a harmonious whole. Reflects the existential and material need to make one’s own way in the world, independently of the community. Private property as a moral institution is a modern phenomenon that reflects modern individualism. (Locke himself, of course, does not recognize its modern context, but views it as universal)
The actual argument for private property. –chap. 5.
Begin from the premise that we are separate from the community and independent of it (individual as prior to community), as Hobbes and Locke do. What do we have as a basis for survival? Our bodies, our labouring power, our energy. This is the foundation of our “property” for Locke. We “own” our bodies and our capacities—they do not belong to the community (contra the ancients). We acquire property (in land primarily—for Locke) through mixing our labour (which we own) with the external world (the land we till) and thereby extend our ownership into the land. E.g. gathering of nuts, picking of apples, planting seeds and growing them….. All based on this premise of extending our labour into things, mixing our labour with things and thereby making them our own. (can see why Locke would be important to a settler society like the United States, where the land was seen to be there for the taking).
Morality is necessary to a system based on private property because working the land or other things makes us vulnerable to invasion by others. If another can raid my land, or take my store of apples, then my right to those things becomes meaningless. Hence, as Locke saw, a system of private property depends on the capacity of individuals to recognize and respect each other’s right to property. Property presupposes morality. Very obvious if we look at our own feelings/reactions to our things and their violation—we expect this respect from others and are upset when it is not granted. Most of us are not governed by our fear of the police but by our genuine respect for the rights of others.
Locke presupposes the morality associated with modern private property as something held by every individual and as imparted to them by their reason. (see above).
1) no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions (all creatures of God)
2) every one bound to preserve himself, and not to quit his station willfully
3) “when his own preservation comes not in competition, ought he, as much as he can to preserve the rest of mankind, and may not, unless it be to do justice on an offender, take away, or impair the life, or what tends to the preservation of the life, the liberty, health, limb, or goods of another” (9). (on this last, see above). But self comes first, others later (reflects the loss of traditional community.)
This morality is basic in order to sustain the institution of private property
But in addition to the above, Locke also says that there are 3 natural limitations on the amount of property you can acquire: 1) the amount you can mix your labour with; 2) spoilage—don’t take so much that you cannot use it before it spoils; 3) must leave as much and as good behind for others. This is consistent with the moral principles outlined above. It also seems to really limit the amount of accumulation, However, as Locke explains, with the introduction of money the possibility of transcending these limitations and of accumulating in an unlimited fashion emerges. How so?
If money historically is introduced as a way of facilitating trade (as opposed to a simple barter system), then, it immediately overcomes the spoilage limitation. We can trade our excess supply of nuts or wheat or apples for gold or silver. These latter will not rot. There is nothing immoral about this. One can then accumulate more and trade it for money.
In order to accumulate more, we have to work more. Those who work more accumulate more gold and silver. They are still leaving “as much and as good” behind, because they are trading their excess on the market and contributing to the general wealth. P. 23: “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 enclosed and cultivated land are (to speak within compass) ten times more than those which are yielded by an acre of land of an equal richness lying waste in common” Goes on to suggest it’s more like 100 times more productive, and gives the example of “the wild woods and uncultivated waste of America, left to nature, without any improvement, tillage or husbandry, a thousand acres yield the needy and wretched inhabitants as many conveniences of life, as ten acres of equally fertile land do in devonshire, where they are well cultivated. “ (24) Goes on to say that with all their nature and wealth the natives of America, because they do not labour the land, are “clad worse than a day-labourer in England”. In England a much smaller parcel of land is cultivated but can clad even the poorest people better than when a large tract of land is left in “waste”.
Hence, the “industrious and the rational” should be left free to expand their holdings. Others who object and who will not work the land themselves are the “quarrelsome and contentious”.
Still, the amount of accumulation is limited by the labour limit—what oneself and one’s family can work on. But even this limit is transcended. Although Locke does not explicitly acknowledge this, he is presupposing that people will be in a position or be willing to sell their labour to others.
People start off owning only their own bodies and their own labour. Why would somebody sell their labour to another instead of simply acquiring their own land? Perhaps there isn’t enough land (as eventually there will not be). Perhaps the person prefers to work for another rather than to work for themselves. Perhaps they are a failure as a farmer and hire themselves out to be directed by another. But what is also significant here is that the very concept of selling one’s labour for a certain period of time is a new concept, (compared to feudal England where people were tied to a land and a landlord), and requires the idea of ownership of one’s body in order to be possible. Only if I own my own body and capacities can I decide to sell them to another for a wage.
Since Locke is presupposing (and providing a theoretical justification for) wage labour, it turns out that even the labour limit is not a real limit on what people can accumulate. For if I buy your labour for a wage, then also I own the *product* of your labour. What you mix your labour with, becomes not yours but mine. (e.g. write a report for your boss, sell clothes in a store….you get your wage, not the profit that results, because the owner owns your time and your work in exchange for the wage). Since I own your time and your labour power, everything you produce in that time with that power, becomes mine.
What in fact happens, according to Locke, after the introduction of money, and with the presupposition that people can sell their labour, is that the natural differences between people in terms of their levels of drive, industry and efficiency, become very explicit. Once the spoilage limitation is overcome, those who really are good at producing wealth, at extracting wealth from the land, at working hard, at organizing others to work hard and efficiently, will increase their property dramatically. Others, who are less hardworking, less efficient, have less drive, will not accumulate. There is nothing wrong with this inequality. Indeed, those who get more property are in fact benefiting the community more because they are producing more general wealth. And the idea is that eventually this wealth will trickle down and benefit all members of the society.
How does it benefit the neighbour who is not so industrious or rational? At first, it might not seem to. He might have trouble producing at the same rate as his richer neighbour, and his richer neighbour may be able to undersell him at the marketplace. Hence he can’t sell his own produce and meet his needs. However, the rich producer can offer to buy the neighbour’s land. Then the rich man can put that land under production more effectively and efficiently. Instead of merely using his sons and daughters to work the land, he can hire local vagrants and pay them a small wage to work the land also. This is more efficient than having more and more babies. Indeed, he might even hire the original neighbour as a labourer. This is good for everybody, in Locke’s scheme, because the large landholder is more rational, more efficient in his use of the land. He is providing not only for his own family, but all of the workers on his farm. He is successfully extracting more and more produce from the land, and feeding more and more people. It is much better if the efficient people farm the land than the inefficient people. Indeed, he might be able to buy or to invent new farm implements that do some of the labour and then produce even more efficiently. Now the other farmers will indeed have difficulty competing with his prices at market, unless they also behave in the same fashion—hire labourers, improve their technology, work harder, focus singlemindedly on efficiency.
Under such a system of expansion of landholdings, even in a new country, the land will eventually run out. Then there will be no possibility for a new person to begin their own farms. How will they survive? They will sell their labour and work on the farms. Presumably, those who are really rational and industrious and efficient will rise in the ranks and become managers, perhaps even accumulate enough money to start their own operations.
The division which emerges out of the original state of equality, then, is a division not so much between the rich and the poor (although it is that as well), but between “the rational and industrious” on the one hand, and the “quarrelsome and contentious” on the other, according to Locke. A class society emerges out of the drive to preserve oneself by means of private property. It rewards those who work hard and are productive. Property becomes concentrated in their hands. Others become workers, who survive through wage labour, and these indeed are the mass of the population.
But, according to Locke, it also benefits even the least able members of society, as his statement about the day labourer in England suggests. The day labourer of course worked 10-12 hours a day, lived in a hovel, was probably ridden with disease. But still, he says, this day labourer has more wealth than the native of north America lives in a tent and wears skins and eats pemmican, bannock, and roots. Hence he is better off than the Native. Hence such a system shows itself to be clearly superior to any other type of system.
The basic standard for judgement about a system of private property being the best and the most just, lies not merely in the appetitive self that Locke takes up, following Hobbes. For nowadays, most of us would, even from the perspective of our appetitive selves, choose the life of the native over that of the day labourer. What is clear is that peculiar type of morality at play here. To accumulate more and more, not only for the sake of oneself but also for the community, is not a natural drive but a moral drive. One must believe it is one’s duty to do so. In order to do so, one must deny oneself the pleasure of being. One must live an ascetic existence. (ex. of corporate exec.). One must be dedicated to hard work. One must be intent on extracting as much as possible from the natural environment in order to materially benefit human existence. One must believe that to leave the land lying “waste” is a great sin against humanity. One must constantly be intent on being efficient and productive.
Thus the morality that underpins the system of private property turns out to entail a very particular way of being in the world. The very commitment to efficiency and expansion of wealth and self-preservation as the ultimate end, as well as other values bound up with Locke’s system such as the individual’s independence from the larger community, are not universal, as Locke supposed, but highly particular. HENCE they are bound to generate OTHERS who do not fit in with this system.
The case of the Natives is an obvious one. It is clear that the Natives themselves have not accepted the kind of justification above as the basis for European title to the lands. But one can also look at the example of Black Africans. Locke’s argument for slavery in chapter four cannot be separated from his own economic involvement in the African slave trade (Macpherson p.x). In this argument he suggests that the only time anyone can be rightfully enslaved is if they have engaged in an “unjust war”, where they have violated the laws of the state of nature, invaded the life/property of another, and have come to be subdued by the aggrieved party. In such a case, the original aggressor has given up their original right to life and freedom, and can rightfully be put to death. If the defending party chooses to keep them alive and have them work as slaves, there is nothing unjust. “he, to whom he has forfeited it [his life], may (when he has him in his power) delay to take it, and make use of him to his own service, and he does him no injury by it….” (17). One can infer from this that he justified the African slave trade with reference to the idea of the Africans as aggressors, who had thereby given up their natural rights. It seems likely that Locke was simply incapable of recognizing cultural differences, particularly those that pertained to different ideas about property, and could only cast these differences as an irrational deviation from the laws of nature. That an expansionist economic system, a moral devoutness and a cultural blindness became bound up with European colonialism is not surprising. Thirdly, one can look to the example of the working class, who became explicitly excluded from equal participation in the Lockian system, who were not democratically represented, and who undoubtedly had a different understanding of how to preserve themselves and what values promoted this, than did the Lockeian property owning individual. (Macpherson’s book elaborates on the first two aspects of this in particular).
The problem of the generation of “others” in such an expanding system, others who are bound to resist the logic of this expansionism, can also be inferred by the very need for government in Locke’s system. If most people are peaceful and law-abiding, it is not clear why there is even a need for government. But Locke points out various defects in the state of nature—the need for an independent judge and promulgated standing laws, because of men’s partiality to their own case, as well as a need for a police force to execute the law (para. 124-127). But it also seems that as history developed, there was more and more tendency towards conflict (para. 123). Locke speaks in particular of “the corruption and vitiousness of degenerate men” (para.128). It is not so much the division of humans into good and bad that causes the need for govt., as Locke suggests, but the very particularity of the system that generates its own others. It ends up being a system that must be enforced, because it cannot generate the consent of those who do not fit within it, or benefit from it.
Above and beyond this problem of otherness bound up with the development of a system based on the unlimited accumulation of private property, is a further contradiction. And this is that, once a class division opens up between workers and owners, the very premise of equality with which the system began, is undermined. At the very beginning in a settler society, where there is plenty of land available, it might be possible to argue that anyone who has the drive and energy and capacity can make a go of it. But once the land is taken up and there is none left, or once we are talking about an industrialized society where the basis of the economy is no longer primarily agricultural, then formal “equality of opportunity” does not any longer ensure a real equality, or ensure that merit and drive will win out. Where one is born—what class, what community—in a condition of socio-economic inequality clearly also will determine how one ends up. This is not recognized or accounted for in Locke’s system. Rather, it is assumed that, if people are not formally discriminated against on the basis of race or sex or ethnicity, that merit will reveal itself, the “best” in the sense of the most hardworking and efficient, will be the most successful. Other cultural and economic factors that determine how one does, are not considered.
Another way of saying this isto say that there is no compassion in Locke’s system. The losers are seen to be the losers through their own fault. The winners are the winners because they are believed to be the best, not because of any inherited advantages they might have. This thinking is at the basis of the great American dream—that the cream will rise to the top if we get rid of the old snobbish European class system. If people are allowed to compete with one another on the basis of their choices, their drive, their ability, their hard work, then the market will select those are best. Of course without some method of equalizing out the new class differences, this is not true.
In spite of these two primary contradictions with the system, it is this system and this morality, along with the enormous degree of exploitation of people and the environment that it has justified, that is responsible for much of the wealth and technological achievement of western societies. And historically, the other great competitor for modernization (communism) has been discredited.
Furthermore, the individualism that underpins this system is integral to the subjectivity of modern people’s. The idea of individual independence, choice and self-expression are central to the modern value system. Private property remains a central way of conceptualizing how we are to express our freedom and independence. Clearly private property does not find its ultimate rationale in the idea of self-preservation, as Locke thought, for plenty of peoples have survived historically quite well without the institution of private property. However, it is central to the self-expression and independence of the modern self.
In an adulterated form, e.g., as laissez-faire capitalism, without consciousness of its own cultural particularities and without any compassion for the ills generated by such a system left unfettered (new inequality, widepread poverty, huge division between rich and poor), it is indeed unsustainable. But historically it has shown itself to be capable of moderation. To comprehend this, however, we must appeal to other principles outside the Lockeian system of thought, and we can find this in Rousseau.
