The second dominant 17 th century theory of property rights was that natural land, raw material, and wildlife belonged to people— all people. So Locke had a lot of arguments against these, but his main argument was if all raw material belongs to the sovereign or all raw material belongs to the people at large, then no one will ever be able to do anything to achieve their own happiness or self-preservation, except by permission of either the sovereign or the people that large.
If we have the inalienable right to pursue our own happiness, we must be able to acquire property through our own labor. Watch Dr. You can find additional, details on Summer Seminars and previous lecture videos , graduate and faculty programs, and funding opportunities , at TheIHS. For over twenty years, James Stacey Taylor has been an active participant in the IHS scholarly community, participating in numerous programs from all angles of classical liberal thought. Now, theories like this are easily discredited if they purport to justify the actual distribution of wealth under an existing private property economy Nozick , pp.
But there is a more modest position which desert theorists can adopt: namely, that private property alone offers a system in which idleness is not rewarded at the expense of industry, a system in which those who take on the burdens of prudence and productivity can expect to reap some reward for their virtue which distinguishes them from those who did not make any such effort Munzer , pp. Many of the alleged market-advantages accrue only if private property is distributed in certain ways.
Monopolistic control of the main factors of production by a few individuals or corporations can play havoc with market efficiency; and it can also lead to such great concentrations of private power as to offset any argument for property based on freedom, dissent or democracy.
Distributive equity may be crucial also for non-consequentialist arguments. The idea that property-owning promotes virtue is, as we have seen, as old as Aristotle; and even today it is used by civic republicans as an argument against economic collectivism. In a communist or collectivist society, citizens may behave either as passive beneficiaries of the state or irresponsible participants in a tragedy of the commons. If a generation or two grow up with that character then the integrity of the whole society is in danger.
These arguments are interesting, but it is worth noting how sensitive they are to the distribution of property Waldron , pp. We must also consider justificatory arguments that connect property with liberty. Societies with private property are often described as free societies. Part of what this means is surely that owners are free to use their property as they please; they are not bound by social or political decisions.
And correlatively, the role of government in economic decision-making is minimized. But that cannot be all that is meant, for it would be equally apposite to describe private property as a system of unfreedom , since it necessarily involves the social exclusion of people from resources that others own. All property systems distribute freedoms and unfreedoms; no system of property can be described without qualification as a system of liberty.
Someone may respond that the liberty to use what belongs to another is license not liberty, and so its exclusion should not really count against a private property system in the libertarian calculus.
But the price of this maneuver is very high: not only does it commit the libertarian to a moralized conception of freedom of the sort that he usually shies away from as in case of positive liberty , but it also means that liberty, so defined, can no longer be invoked to support property except in a question-begging way Cohen Two other things might be implied by the libertarian characterization. The first is a point about independence: a person who owns a significant amount of private property—a home, say, and a source of income—has less to fear from the opinion and coercion of others than the citizen of a society in which some other form of property predominates.
But like the virtue argument, this version of the libertarian case is also sensitive to distribution: for those who own nothing in a private property economy would seem to be as unfree—by this argument—as anyone would be in a socialist society. That last point may be too quick, however, for there are other indirect ways in which private property contributes to freedom Purdy Milton Friedman argues that political liberty is enhanced in a society where the means of intellectual and political production printing presses, photocopying machines, computers are controlled by a number of private individuals, firms, and corporations—even if that number is not very large.
In a capitalist society, a dissident has the choice of dealing with several people other than state officials if he wants to get his message across, and many of them are prepared to make their media available simply on the basis of money, without regard to the message.
In a socialist society, by contrast, those who are politically active either have to persuade state agencies to disseminate their views, or risk underground publication. More generally, Friedman argues, a private property society offers those who own nothing a greater variety of ways in which they earn a living—a larger menu of masters, if you like—than they would be offered in a socialist society.
In these ways, private property for some may make a positive contribution to freedom—or at least an enhancement of choice—for everyone. Finally, in this review of direct normative arguments about property, we should consider the moral importance property might have in respect of what it is, rather than what it does or brings about.
Property rights in and of themselves give people a certain status and recognition in society: a property owner is respected in his or her control of a resource Dorfman This is surely important; it was, as we saw, one of the themes of the approach taken in Hegel and in Kant see Byrd and Hruschka But it can have critical implications for property too, for if property is unevenly distributed, if inequality is radical and some are more or less comprehensively bereft of property rights, then acute issues have to be faced about the uneven distribution of the bases of respect.
We cannot take seriously the good that property rights do in regard to moral recognition without also considering the inherent harm of absence of such recognition in the case of those who own nothing. Aristotle, General Topics: political theory consequentialism constitutionalism contractarianism economics [normative] and economic justice equality exploitation Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hobbes, Thomas: moral and political philosophy Hume, David: moral philosophy justice: distributive legal rights liberalism libertarianism Locke, John: political philosophy Marx, Karl Mill, John Stuart: moral and political philosophy personal identity: and ethics Plato: ethics and politics in The Republic redistribution republicanism.
Issues of Analysis and Definition 2. Historical Overview 3. Is Property a Philosophical Issue? Genealogies of Property 5. Issues of Analysis and Definition More than most policy areas dealt with by political philosophers, the discussion of property is beset with definitional difficulties.
This no Body has any Right to but himself. The Labour of his Body, and the Work of his Hands, we may say, are properly his. Whatsoever then he removes out of the State that Nature hath provided, and left it in, he hath mixed his Labour with, and joyned to it something that is his own, and thereby makes it his Property.
It being by him removed from the common state Nature placed it in, it hath by this labour something annexed to it, that excludes the common right of other Men. Locke [], II, para. He insisted however, that private property be given a fair hearing as well: If…the choice were to be made between Communism…and the present state of society with all its sufferings and injustices,…all the difficulties, great or small, of Communism would be but as dust in the balance.
But to make the comparison applicable, we must compare Communism at its best, with the regime of individual property, not as it is, but as it might be made…The laws of property have never yet conformed to the principles on which the justification of private property rests.
Mill [], pp. This relation is not natural, but moral, and founded on justice. Tis very preposterous, therefore, to imagine, that we can have any idea of property, without fully comprehending the nature of justice, and shewing its origin in the artifice and contrivance of man. The origin of justice explains that of property. The same artifice gives rise to both. Genealogies of Property In our philosophical tradition, arguments about the justification of property have often been presented as genealogies: as stories about the way in which private property might have emerged in a world that was hitherto unacquainted with the institution.
I observe, that it will be for my interest to leave another in the possession of his goods, provided he will act in the same manner with regard to me. He is sensible of a like interest in the regulation of his conduct. Justification: Liberty and Consequences The justificatory issue might therefore be confronted directly, without invoking any sort of history or genealogical narrative.
Sigmund ed. Norton, Aristotle, The Politics [c. Benn, S. Ogden ed. Brubaker, Stanley C. Buchanan, James M. Cohen, G. Craig, E. Green, T. Grey, T. Pennock and J. Chapman eds. Harris, J. Hart, H. Hayek, F. Hegel, G. Knox trans. Honore, A. Guest ed. Horne, Thomas A. Selby—Bigge and P. Nidditch eds. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lewis, David K. Munzer, Stephen R. Penner, J. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Plato, Republic [c. The Labour of his Body, and the Work of his Hands, we may say are properly his.
Whatsoever then he removes out of the State that Nature hath provided, and left it in, he hath mixed his Labour with, and joined to it something that is his own, and thereby makes it his Property. It being by him removed from the common state nature placed it, it hath by his labour something annexed to it, that excludes the common right of other Men. For this Labour being the unquestionable Property of the Labourer, no Man but he can have a right to what that is once joined to, at least where there is enough, and as good left in common for others.
He that is nourished by the Acorns he pickt up under an Oak, or the Apples he gathered from the Trees in the Wood, has certainly appropriated them to himself. No Body can deny but the nourishment is his. I ask then, When did they begin to be his? When he digested? Or when he eat? Or when he boiled? Seliger affirms that both the economic and political spheres depend upon consent and agreements among adults. However, he further argues that of the two spheres of agreement, the political sets limits for the economic and so is above the economic in importance.
While Locke seems to emphasize the right to property above all other rights, his emphasis was symbolic. Just as his use of the broad definition of property is symbolic of the rights to life, liberty, and estate. Rather than having any special status, then, the enjoyment of property is subjected to political decisions just as any right is regulated by the political process. Seliger supports his contention by showing that Locke always describes freedom as bounded by law, either natural law in the state of nature, or conventional law within civil society.
Law is necessary to "maximize" freedom, that is, to protect individuals from the arbitrariness of their fellow man. Law, according to Seliger's Locke, is a formalization of the public will, which itself is a resolution of the conflict among private wills. Within the legal code, one major tenet is that "people should have property" and should not have it subjected to the will of the government.
To Seliger, Locke's major concern was to protect property from arbitrary political ruling, not simply to protect property per se. Seliger goes on, however, to claim further that Locke describes a moral supremacy of the political sphere, and it is here that his interpretation is open to serious challenge. Seliger supports his view by once again going back to property in the state of nature. Here, he claims, Locke believes that the economic contract, the agreement to use money allows men to satisfy irrational desires and distorts intrinsic value of things while the political contract serves to overcome and regulate the anti-social results of these basically irrational pursuits.
At first glance, Seliger's statements seem to make sense. Locke does use the language of irrational desires and distortion of intrinsic values. He describes an early stage of human existence "before the desire of having more than men needed, had altered the intrinsic value of things, which depends only on their usefulness to the life of man," and later he argues that "The greatest part of things really useful to the life of man.
Gold, silver and diamonds are things that fancy or agreement hath put the value on, more than real use, and the necessary support of life. The language of intrinsic value is not an integral part of his argument and perhaps can be read as a sop to tradition. Even if we accept the premise that Locke really believed in some philosophical hierarchy of values, however, this does not necessarily imply that he disapproved of the changes in values brought about by money, or that the changes were irrational.
In fact, all the evidence presented so far in this essay supports exactly the opposite view. Certainly, the concept of an intrinsic value of things that is morally superior to market values plays no role in his economic thought. Seliger's second argument for the moral superiority of the political over the economic realm is even less convincing. He claims that equality is a virtue and since Locke posits a natural political equality and not a natural economic equality, Locke must have been showing the moral superiority of political life over economic.
Even if that were the case, it is not self-evident that the actual political order is more conducive to equality than the economic order. The whole issue is muddied by the fact that Seliger gives no discussion of the nature of equality but then, neither does Locke. There is evidence, however, that if the equality Seliger has in mind is some notion of equal treatment, Locke did see a rough and ready sort of equality in economic interactions.
In his short piece on the just price mentioned earlier in connection with Dunn's criticism of MacPherson Locke states that the market price is the just price, and that the economic activities of entrepreneurs in the marketplace will lead to a pretty "fair and equal account. Seliger goes on to argue, however, that the supposed moral superiority of the political order over the economic order is further evidenced by Locke's attitude toward economic regulation.
This is a particularly important problem since Locke explicitly stated that labor gives title to property in the state of nature, but "in governments the laws regulate the right of property.
Since Locke did not mention any instances of economic regulation in the Two Treatises , Seliger turns to the economic writings for specific instances of Locke's attitude toward state regulation of economic activity, but reads far more into Locke's statements about regulation than can be supported by the texts. Seliger asserts that Locke did not in his economic writings oppose all forms of economic regulation, only ill-advised ones.
His opposition to interest rate regulation is well-known as is his conviction of the futility of price regulation in general. This is clearly not a laissez-faire policy prescription, yet neither is it an argument for "credit regulation" as Seliger suggests, nor is it typical of an attitude that favors limiting private initiative to "discourage the concentration of capital.
It certainly is stretching the passage beyond the breaking point to argue that it shows Locke's concern for preventing too great a concentration of capital for the sake of the public interest. Seliger's attempt to show the moral supremacy of the political over the economic sphere misses the point of Locke's writing. Locke's Treatises , like his economics contain both normative and descriptive passages.
Much of Chapter V of the Second Treatise , the property chapter, is descriptive. It describes how autonomous individuals with the desire for ease, comfort, and enjoyment operate within the constraints set by nature to overcome the limitations of the economic environment. In Locke's thought, government is the logical arbiter of conflict exacerbated by economic growth. Government is not superior to the economic institutions evolved by reasonable men, government is a means to accomplish a desired end.
In his attempt to counter MacPherson's characterization of Locke as a partisan of an evil, unlimited, oppressive capitalism, Seliger has taken the tack of showing how Locke really believed in a limited, restrained form of welfare statism. Seliger's Locke endorses government which controls the alleged excesses of capitalism and metes out a measure of charity to those in distress. Seliger's Locke would be quite comfortable with modern western-style democratic governments where government undertook all manner of economic regulation and property transfers so long as it could be shown to represent the "manifest advantage of the public".
Perhaps this is one more instance of a modern commentator anachronistically reading contemporary ideas back into the writings of an early political thinker, or perhaps Seliger is correct that the nature of contemporary liberalism was shaped by the implications of Locke's theory of property. Whichever alternative is the case, it is clear that Locke himself would have been horrified by the excesses of the modern welfare state on grounds both of efficiency and equity.
Locke the economist would have recognized the absurdity of much of the bureaucratic maze that controls current economic life, and would have railed against the foolish and inefficient forms of economic regulation to which the individuals within the modern welfare state are subject. Leo Strauss was essentially correct in his claim that Locke believed effective government would have to take account of the passions or interests of individual citizens in framing legislation.
Locke's own economic pamphlets drive home the point again and again that regulation which fails to take incentives into account is worse than useless. Current legislation that erects disincentives to economic growth would probably have set him to writing tract after tract with titles like "Some Considerations of the Disastrous Consequences of Setting Up a Department of Energy and Lowering the Supply of Petroleum Products. Locke would also very likely have been horrified by the fiscal structure of modern governments and here, his objection would be primarily on the grounds of equity.
While he believed that governments had the right and duty to regulate property for the good of the whole of society, his basic premise was that "people should have property. The King had no right to arbitrarily confiscate or reallocate property among citizens unless there was an overriding public interest.
It is no doubt true that the "overriding public interest" without clear agreement on what constitutes such an interest provides the loophole for the modern welfare state.
Locke himself presumed such an interest would be obvious, and limited to alleviating starvation and defense against the princes of other countries with whom Britain existed in a state of nature, or at worst, a state of war. MacPherson was essentially correct in arguing that Locke believed most people would agree on the proper limitations on government control over property, but not because he excluded all the poor and laboring classes from his definitions of "the people.
Much has been made of a passage in the Second Treatise in which Locke refers to "amor sceleratus habendi, evil concupiscence" as a cause of corruption in societies. Seliger considers this one more evidence of the irrational nature of economic wants. However, when the reference is taken in context, it clearly refers to the greed not of productive property owners, but to the greed of princes who lust after the wealth of their subjects and who need to be restrained by the wary public.
Locke could not imagine men living long in a state of nature because he couldn't imagine those ends being satisfied in a civilized manner without a government to referee disputes and to provide a legal setting.
However, it is incumbent upon government to abstain from subverting the economic ends of its citizens by overstepping its mandate. In this important sense, government is subservient not to the economy per se, but to the wills of the people who above all desire to protect their lives, liberties and estate.
This is the overriding message of the Two Treatises of Government and the relationship between government and the citizen's property rights.
Full citations for works listed in the Endnotes may be found in the following Bibliography. Peter Laslett, ed. All references to Locke's Second Treatise are to Laslett's edition. Laslett argues convincingly that Locke wrote the Two Treatises to provide intellectual support for Shaftesbury's revolutionary plotting during — Richard Ashcraft in a recent paper puts the date a bit later — which serves to intensify its revolutionary intent.
Laslett's Introduction to the Two Treatises , p. Grotius and Pufendorf, both of whom were familiar to Locke, argued that men received the right to property from the consent of the original communal owners in the state of nature. Locke on the other hand denies that this is true ownership simply by virtue of God's original gift. The major thrust of his argument however was not directed primarily against Grotius and Pufendorf, but against Robert Filmer who had argued in the Patriarcha that God gave the world absolutely to Adam from whom contemporary monarchs were directly descended and who therefore had the right to parcel out land as they saw fit by right of donation from Adam.
See Locke's Second Treatise , p. This was especially apparent in Grotius for whom every individual was surrounding by the Suum , that which belongs to a person, or was "proper" to it. Included in the Suum were one's "life, limb and liberty. Israel Kirzner has noted the entrepreneurial nature of the labor which creates property, as has Karen I.
John Locke. Economist and Social Scientist. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, Many political theorists have assumed Locke was espousing a labor theory of value in an economic sense in the Second Treatise although there is no support for such a belief. See Karen I. Vaughn's article, Winter, This description of the development of a money commodity appeared in Hobbes' Leviathan and shows up again much later in Menger's Principles of Economics The Free Press, Glencoe, Illinois, , p.
Second Treatise , pp. Consider, for example, Locke's Second Treatise , pp. For that which acts any community, being only the consent of the individuals of it, and it being necessary to that which is one body to move one way; it is necessary the body should move that way whither the greater force carries it, which is the consent of the majority.
See Lois G. Schwoerer's article, Strauss, Natural Right and History , p. Sidney was convicted of treason for writing against Filmer's Patriarcha. Sidney used many of the same arguments Locke had used in the Second Treatise. See Peter Laslett, pp. This was Peter Laslett's major contribution in his introduction to the Two Treatises. In fact, I agree with Richard Cox that Locke had absorbed and made use of Hobbesian ideas, but he cannot be viewed as simply an extension of Hobbes, nor does the history of Locke's concealment of his authorship support the contention that he did so solely to avoid being called a Hobbist.
Richard Cox, Locke on War and Peace , pp. Cox, Locke on War and Peace , pp. Second Treatise , p. See C.
MacPherson, Political Theory , p. MacPherson makes the mystifying statement that Locke "identifies money and capital, and assimilates both to land," without any clarification about what this means either economically or politically. Although MacPherson never specifically explains why he believes capitalism requires differential rights, he probably has some vague idea that because incomes are unequal in capitalist societies this must be justified by differences in rights rather than in capacities.
See Fox-Bourne's biography for Locke's poor law reform. Locke's Some Considerations , p. For more on Locke's attitude toward the poor see the article by Vaughn Locke, Some Considerations , p.
MacPherson, Political Theory , pp. MacPherson here seems to view all possible moral codes as equally valid: both the "bourgeoisie" code that preaches work hard, accumulate, and be well off, and one that says don't bother working very hard but depend on the efforts of others to sustain you. He also seems to be suggesting that there really were significant differences in rationality between rich and poor as well as differences in values. On this, see Vaughn's John Locke. This is the major thrust of Locke's first economic essay, Some Considerations.
After " vain ambition, and amor sceleratus habendi, evil concupiscence, had corrupted mens' minds into a mistake of true power and honour. Men found it necessary to examine more carefully the original and rights of government; and to find out ways to restrain the exorbitances, and prevent the abuses of that power which they having intrusted in another's hands only for their own good, they found was made use of to hurt them.
Laslett notes the correct interpretation of this passage. Csajkoroski, Casimir J. Dunn, John. The Political Thought of John Locke. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, Grotius, Hugo.
Edited by James Brown Scott. Oxford: Clarendon Press, Kendall, Willmoore. John Locke and the Doctrine of Majority Rule. Urbana: University of Illinois Press,
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