Recent Forum Topics › Forums › The Public House › John Locke and the real meaning of "Property Rights."
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July 4, 2016 at 8:36 am #47807Billy_TParticipant
Locke may well be the patron saint of the libertarian right. He is often cited as among the first “classical liberals,” and for right-libertarians, or “propertarians,” this is the political umbrella under which “freedom and liberty” reside.
But many likely do not realize that Locke was a supporter of slavery, made a fortune from it, and his conception of “property” was unprecedented for his time — and not in a good way. The following two articles by John Quiggin go into detail about this, and point to further reading:
A note about the author, and the online source: Quiggin is a highly respected economist from Australia, with “Social Democratic” leanings. He is not the typical author published in Jacobin, which tends to be much further to his left. I read his excellent Zombie Economics, which I recommend, and have had conversations with him online — he is far from being a “radical.” So it actually came as a bit of a surprise when I read the articles above, though it shouldn’t have. This view of Locke has been forming for sometime now. It’s a reassessment that was once virtually relegated to leftists, but now has become almost “mainstream.” I also bumped into it when I read The Origin of Capitalism, the brilliant history by Ellen Meiksins Wood, though she doesn’t spend too much time on the subject.
Regardless, will return to add more on the above, but hope folks here will read the two articles by John Quiggin to start the classical liberal ball rolling.
- This topic was modified 8 years, 5 months ago by Billy_T.
July 4, 2016 at 9:33 am #47819nittany ramModeratorSo Locke’s theories on property were created with his circumstances in mind. They serve him and his situation with little regard for anyone else. The mantra of libertarianism – “I got mine so fuck everyone else.”
July 4, 2016 at 9:47 am #47820Billy_TParticipantSo Locke’s theories on property were created with his circumstances in mind. They serve him and his situation with little regard for anyone else. The mantra of libertarianism – “I got mine so fuck everyone else.”
Yes. Very true.
It’s important to note than he was among the first to consider “property” and ownership of property in this way:
If it did not make a profit, it was not their “property” per se. No one really “owned” it and it could be taken from the person who did not make a profit from it. He tried to make this a “moral” issue as well, pushing the idea that failure to generate profit from the land was immoral, and meant it was righteous to take it away — from Native peoples, small farmers, “peasants” and the like. This helped spur capitalist appropriation of land from “traditional” cultures (like India) which had a totally different concept of “ownership.” Common ownership. Communal. Cooperative. This also applied to Ireland and the Americas.
While this concept initially focused on land, and land use, it also set the table for a revolutionary concept of production. Who owned one’s own direct production? Capitalism created, for the first time ever, a legal and social structure that said, “Tom, as capitalist owner, can own the production of Ned, Bill, Jane, Mary, Jack, Barbara” and so on. The pre-capitalist world just had no conception of “ownership” like this.
Capitalism is based on slavery, in essence. On the same concept that one human being can own others, their bodies, their time, their production — and what was once their land.
July 4, 2016 at 10:01 am #47824nittany ramModeratorIf it did not make a profit, it was not their “property” per se. No one really “owned” it and it could be taken from the person who did not make a profit from it.
An arbitrary and self-serving conception of property.
I like it.
My neighbor has some under-utilized cherry trees in his back yard. I think I’ll appropriate his back yard and sell some pies.
July 4, 2016 at 10:08 am #47830Billy_TParticipantIf it did not make a profit, it was not their “property” per se. No one really “owned” it and it could be taken from the person who did not make a profit from it.
An arbitrary and self-serving conception of property.
I like it.
My neighbor has some under-utilized cherry trees in his back yard. I think I’ll appropriate his back yard and sell some pies.
Yeah, I mean, he’s just letting them grow and stuff, instead of selling the fruit to Walmart. He needs to be punished for that!!
July 4, 2016 at 11:35 am #47838znModeratorI don’t like reductive political blog-itorials, no matter what their orientation.
Locke on property is a very complex issue and does not reduce to the things being said here.
And I have no agenda in this other than that of preferring far-reaching and nuanced historical analysis over any of its opposites.
…
Historical Overview
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/property/
There are extensive discussions of property in the writings of Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, Hegel, Hobbes, Locke, Hume, Kant, Marx, and Mill. The range of justificatory themes they consider is very broad, and I shall begin with a summary.
The ancient authors speculated about the relation between property and virtue, a natural subject for discussion since justifying private property raises serious questions about the legitimacy of self-interested activity. Plato (Republic, 462b-c) argued that collective ownership was necessary to promote common pursuit of the common interest, and to avoid the social divisiveness that would occur ‘when some grieve exceedingly and others rejoice at the same happenings.’ Aristotle responded by arguing that private ownership promotes virtues like prudence and responsibility: ‘[W]hen everyone has a distinct interest, men will not complain of one another, and they will make more progress, because every one will be attending to his own business’ (Aristotle, Politics, 1263a). Even altruism, said Aristotle, might be better promoted by focusing ethical attention on the way a person exercises his rights of private property rather than questioning the institution itself (ibid.). Aristotle also reflected on the relation between property and freedom, and the contribution that ownership makes to a person’s being a free man and thus suitable for citizenship. The Greeks took liberty to be a status defined by contrast with slavery, and for Aristotle, to be free was to belong to oneself, to be one’s own man, whereas the slave was by nature the property of another. Self-possession was connected with having sufficient distance from one’s desires to enable the practice of virtuous self-control. On this account, the natural slave was unfree because his reason could not prescribe a rule to his bodily appetites. Aristotle had no hesitation in extending this point beyond slavery to the conditions of ‘the meaner sort of workman.’ Obsessed with need, the poor are ‘too degraded’ to participate in politics like free men. ‘You could no more make a city out of paupers,’ wrote Aristotle, ‘than out of slaves’ (ibid., 1278a). They must be ruled like slaves, for otherwise their pressing and immediate needs will issue in envy and violence. Some of these themes have emerged more recently in civic republican theories, though modern theories of citizenship tend to begin with a sense of who should be citizens (all adult residents) and then proceed to argue that they should all have property, rather than using existing wealth as an independent criterion for the franchise (King and Waldron 1988).
In the medieval period, Thomas Aquinas continued discussion of the Aristotlean idea that virtue might be expressed in the use that one makes of one’s property. But Aquinas gave it a sharper edge. Not only do the rich have moral obligations to act generously, but the poor also have rights against the rich. Beginning from the premise that ‘[a]ccording to the natural order established by Divine Providence, inferior things are ordained for the purpose of succoring man’s needs…’ (Aquinas ST, p. 72), Aquinas argued that no division of resources based on human law can prevail over the necessities associated with destitution. This is a theme which recurs throughout our tradition—most notably in Locke’s First Treatise on Government, (Locke 1988 [1689], I, para. 42)—as an essential qualification of whatever else is said about the legitimacy of private property (Horne 1990).
In the early modern period, philosophers turned their attention to the way in which property might have been instituted, with Hobbes and Hume arguing that there is no natural ‘mine’ or ‘thine,’ and that property must be understood as the creation of the sovereign state (Hobbes 1983 [1647]) or at the very least the artificial product of a convention ‘enter’d into by all the members of the society to bestow stability on the possession of…external goods, and leave every one in the peaceable enjoyment of what he may acquire by his fortune and industry’ (Hume 1978 [1739], p. 489). John Locke (1988 [1689]), on the other hand, was adamant that property could have been instituted in a state of nature without any special conventions or political decisions.
Locke’s theory is widely regarded as the most interesting of the canonical discussions of property. In part this is a result of how he began his account; because he took as his starting point that God gave the world to men in common, he had to acknowledge from the outset that private entitlements pose a moral problem. How do we move from a common endowment to the ‘disproportionate and unequal Possession of the Earth’ that seems to go along with private property? Unlike some of his predecessors, Locke did not base his resolution of this difficulty on any theory of universal (even tacit) consent. Instead, in the most famous passage of his chapter on property, he gave a moral defense of the legitimacy of unilateral appropriation.
Though the Earth…be common to all Men, yet every Man has a Property in his own Person. 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 1988 [1689], II, para. 27)
The interest of Locke’s account lies in the way he combines the structure of a theory of first occupancy with an account of the substantive moral significance of labor. In the hands of writers like Samuel Pufendorf (1991 [1673], p. 84), First Occupancy theory proceeded on the basis that the first human user of a natural resource—a piece of land, for example—is distinguished from all others in that he did not have to displace anyone else in order to take possession. It did not particularly matter how he took possession of it, or what sort of use he made of it: what mattered was that he began acting as its owner without dispossessing anyone else. Now although Locke used the logic of this account, it did matter for him that the land was cultivated or in some other way used productively. (For this reason, he expressed doubts whether indigenous hunters or nomadic peoples could properly be regarded as owners of the land over which they roamed.) This is partly because Locke identified the ownership of labor as something connected substantially to the primal ownership of self. But it was also because he thought the productivity of labor would help answer some of the difficulties which he saw in First Occupancy theory. Though the first occupier does not actually dispossess anyone, still his acquisition may prejudice other’s interests of others if there is not, in Locke’s words, ‘enough and as good left in common’ for them to enjoy (Locke 1988 [1689], II, para. 27). Locke’s answer to this difficulty was to emphasize that appropriation by productive labor actually increased the amount of goods available in society for others (ibid., II, para. 37).Immanuel Kant’s work on property is less well known than Locke’s, and is more formal and abstract. Kant began by emphasizing a general connection between property and agency, maintaining that there would be an affront to agency and thus to human personality, if some system were not arrived at which could permit useful objects to be used. He inferred from this that ‘it is a duty of right to act towards others so that what is external (usable) could also become someone’s’ (Kant 1991 [1797], p. 74) Though this legitimated unilateral appropriation, it did so only in a provisional way. Since the appropriation of a resource as private property affects everyone else’s position (imposing duties on them that they would otherwise not have), it cannot acquire full legitimacy by unilateral action: it must be ratified by an arrangement which respects everyone’s interests in this matter. So the force of the principle requiring people to act so that external objects can be used as property also requires them to enter into a civil constitution, which will actually settle who is to be the owner of what on a basis that is fair to all.
G.W.F. Hegel’s account of property centers on the contribution property makes to the development of the self, ‘superseding and replacing the subjective phase of personality’ (1967 [1821], para. 41a) and giving some sort of external reality to what would otherwise be the mere idea of individual freedom. These rather obscure formulations were taken up also by the English idealists, most notably by T.H. Green (1941 [1895]), who emphasized the contribution that ownership makes to ethical development, to the growth of the will and a sense of responsibility. But neither of these writers thought of the development of the individual person as the be-all and end-all of property. In both cases it was thought of as a stage in the growth of social responsibility. Both saw the freedom embodied in property as ultimately positive freedom—freedom to choose rationally and responsibly for the wider social good. In Karl Marx’s philosophy, Hegel’s sense of there being several stages in the growth of positive freedom is framed in terms of stages of social development rather than stages of the growth of individuals (Marx 1972 [1862]). And for Marx, as for Plato, social responsibility in the exercise of private property rights is never enough. The whole trajectory of the development of modern society, says Marx, is towards large-scale cooperative labor. This may be masked by forms of property that treat vast corporations as private owners, but eventually this carapace will be abandoned and collectivist economic relations will emerge and be celebrated as such.
The general merits of private property versus socialism thus became a subject of genuine debate in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. John Stuart Mill, with his characteristic open-mindedness treated communism as a genuine option, and he confronted objections to the collectivist ideal with the suggestion that the inequitable distribution of property in actually existing capitalist societies already partakes of many of these difficulties. 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 1994[1848], pp. 14–15)
Mill is surely right, at least so far as the aims of a philosophical discussion of property are concerned. Indeed, one way of looking at the history we have just briefly surveyed is that it is the history of successive attempts to tease out, from the mess of actually-existing maldistribution and exploitation, some sense of the true principles on which the justification of an ideal system of private property would rest, and a sense too of other aspects of moral enterprise which such an institution might serve.July 4, 2016 at 12:05 pm #47841Billy_TParticipantI don’t like reductive political blog-itorials, no matter what their orientation.
Locke on property is a very complex issue and does not reduce to the things being said here.
And I have no agenda in this other than that of preferring far-reaching and nuanced historical analysis over any of its opposites.
Of course it’s complex. And the articles I posted deal with it in that way. My own comments were not an attempt to reduce that complexity, but to highlight key elements. And I think those key element point to “far-reaching and nuanced historical analysis,” etc. etc. They open up a wealth of new ways to assess how we got to this point in time, with the legal and social structures now in place. They show the foundation for a rather pernicious view of “property” and the logical results stemming from that view.
July 4, 2016 at 12:11 pm #47842znModeratorAnd I think those key element point to “far-reaching and nuanced historical analysis,” etc. etc
Well we differ on that.
July 4, 2016 at 12:13 pm #47843Billy_TParticipantThe “improvement” of land was big for Locke and his followers as well. Like “property,” their idea of “improvement” was quite radical as well:
First, he invokes his usual claim that there is plenty of land for everybody, so appropriating some land for agriculture can’t be of any harm to the hunter-gatherers. This is obviously silly. It might conceivably be true for the first agriculturalist (though on standard Malthusian grounds there is no reason to suppose this), or the second or the fiftieth, but at some point the land must cease to be sufficient to support the preexisting hunter-gatherer population. At this point, well before all land has been acquired by agriculturalists, his theory fails.
Locke must surely have known his claim to be false, not as a matter of abstract reasoning, distant history, but in terms of contemporary fact. His Treatises on Government were published in 1689, a year after the outbreak of King William’s War (the North American theatre of the Nine Years War). The core issue in this war, as in a string of earlier conflicts, was control of the fur trade, the most economically significant form of hunter-gatherer activity. But underlying that was the general pressure arising from the steady expansion of European agriculture into lands previously owned by Indian tribes.
As a capitalist, and shareholder in American businesses such as the (slaveholding) Bahama Adventurers, Locke could scarcely have been unaware of these facts. Indeed he refers in the Treatise to American contacts who gave him his information.
Locke’s real defense is that regardless of whether there is a lot or a little, uncultivated land is essentially valueless. All, or nearly all, the value, he says, comes from the efforts of the farmers who improve the land. Since God gave us the land to improve, it rightfully belongs to those who improve it.
July 4, 2016 at 12:14 pm #47844znModeratorWell we differ on that.
For example what is the Comanche view on owning a horse?
Interesting question right there.
July 4, 2016 at 12:17 pm #47845Billy_TParticipantWell we differ on that.
Did you read the two articles I linked to? And have you read The Origin of Capitalism? The far-reaching and nuanced historical analysis is in both.
Frankly, I didn’t get that from the Stanford encyclopedia article, and it’s “reductive” as well. It has to be, given its format.
Of course, we’re both constrained here by limitations on space and time. As was the Stanford article, etc.
July 4, 2016 at 12:19 pm #47847Billy_TParticipantFor example what is the Comanche view on owning a horse?
Interesting question right there.
True. Without looking it up, and going just from memory, I don’t think they thought of it in terms of ownership — at least not personal ownership. Horses belonged to the tribe, and were for tribal use. Collective, etc.
But, again, I’d need to go back and research that.
July 4, 2016 at 2:03 pm #47857waterfieldParticipantFor example what is the Comanche view on owning a horse?
Interesting question right there.
True. Without looking it up, and going just from memory, I don’t think they thought of it in terms of ownership — at least not personal ownership. Horses belonged to the tribe, and were for tribal use. Collective, etc.
But, again, I’d need to go back and research that.
Well-what your research will tell you is that the horse question raised here had nothing at all to do with any socialistic views of property. Warfare was a huge element of Commanche existence. Of all the plains indians they alone gathered more horses and became far more skilled at using them in warfare much like the use of tanks during modern wars. Not only did they steal horses from other tribes and settlers but they were particularly skilled in gathering ferel horses, breaking them, and using them in battle. Simply put, the gathering of as many horses as possible was looked upon as weaponry, a strategic design that all but made individual ownership of them impossible.
July 4, 2016 at 2:20 pm #47858znModerator. Not only did they steal horses from other tribes and settlers but they were particularly skilled in gathering ferel horses, breaking them, and using them in battle.
They also bred and sold horses.
In fact it was hard to deal with the comanche because they would make treaties with one area of Texas and not another. They didn’t recognize a general “government of Texas.” In the areas where they had treaties, they became primary horse dealers.
Each individual comanache would own anywhere from 5 to 1000 horses (though the highest number would tend to be a highly regarded veteran war leader).
You’re right, they were great horse warriors of their world. Some have said they were the greatest horse warriors in history; some have said it’s the comanche and the mongols both, each in different ways. A comanche warrior could hang from the side of his horse and aim a bow and arrow accurately from that position, shooting from the side of the horse’s neck.
It wasn’t just war though. Comanche prized mobility. So much so that they simply failed to understand jails and prisons—the comanche had a fierce reputation for torturing prisoners, and saw nothing wrong with that, but to them, locking someone up in a closed space meant they were not being regarded as human. Take away a man’s ability to move freely, and he was no longer really a person.
And of course they hunted from horseback.
..
July 4, 2016 at 3:28 pm #47859waterfieldParticipantThey were also slave traders profiting immensely from the sale of prisoners as slaves-primarily from their devastating raids into Mexico but also from their capture of prisoners from warfare with other tribes.
July 4, 2016 at 3:43 pm #47860znModeratorThey were also slave traders profiting immensely from the sale of prisoners as slaves-primarily from their devastating raids into Mexico but also from their capture of prisoners from warfare with other tribes.
You know the history so you know the Comanche destroyed the Apache. Apache settlements were smaller and were built around agriculture, so they tended not to be mobile. They were easy for the far more mobile Comanche to find and easy for them to eradicate. This drove the Apache into mountainous regions where they were less vulnerable.
July 4, 2016 at 4:05 pm #47861waterfieldParticipantYeah-and after they broke off from the Shoshone they became estreme militaristic in their conquering of other tribes. They were vicious on the battle fields and reportedly on their raids into Mexico often did so for no other reason than the fight itself.
July 4, 2016 at 4:06 pm #47862Billy_TParticipantYes, that is interesting about the Comanche. It might make a good thread all on its own?
;>)
That said, and again, did you read the two articles by Professor Quiggin, or the book I mentioned? Any comments about the articles, specifically? Or about Locke’s theories about property and his own exploitation of the slave trade, in general?
July 4, 2016 at 5:04 pm #47864waterfieldParticipantsorry Billy: I have not/
July 4, 2016 at 5:21 pm #47867bnwBlockedComanche prized mobility. So much so that they simply failed to understand jails and prisons—the comanche had a fierce reputation for torturing prisoners, and saw nothing wrong with that, but to them, locking someone up in a closed space meant they were not being regarded as human. Take away a man’s ability to move freely, and he was no longer really a person.
So the Comanche tortured free range prisoners?
The upside to being a Rams fan is heartbreak.
Sprinkles are for winners.
July 5, 2016 at 9:11 am #47892Billy_TParticipantThis article (from Salon) talks about a present-day situation which is basically the fruit of Locke’s views on property. The drive to take our public lands away from us, hand them over to the states, so the states can sell them off to private interests, is Locke’s view in a nutshell — refined via right-libertarian myths and capitalism’s internal logic.
Grow or Die. If you have maxed out on the geographical unification of private markets, you have to go after the public sphere.
For their next trick, Republican magicians will make your federal land disappear
“All Americans have the right to experience and enjoy” federally managed lands, Tania Lown-Hecht of the Outdoor Alliance added. By contrast, “state lands are not public, and are governed by different rules than federal public lands. You don’t have a right to be on state lands, or the same rights as to how they are managed and sold.“
But the most important reason of all is money.
“The federal government has the resources to manage those lands,” Sterling said. The federal government has deeper coffers and can run at a deficit in lean times, which states can’t do.
“States are also required to balance their budgets — meaning if they have a budget crisis (say, due to wildfires), they would be forced to sell off formerly public lands to balance the budget,” Lown-Hecht explained.
And it’s this possibility — that states which have gained ownership over this land will eventually sell it to raise money — that is driving this entire campaign. Pulling back the curtain, one finds that the movement to transfer federal lands to state ownership is being funded and driven by conservative business groups that want that land to be turned over to corporate interests to be exploited for profit, even if doing so destroys the environment.
“The politicians and corporations pushing this agenda are doing it under the false pretenses of states rights,” Brad Brooks of the Wilderness Society argued, “knowing states can never afford to manage the land, and that states can sell off their lands, unlike public lands.”
July 5, 2016 at 9:17 am #47893Billy_TParticipantThe thinking is, which goes back at least to Locke’s, that land that has not been “improved” — as in, made profitable — doesn’t really belong to anyone — yet. It belongs to the first person who makes it profitable. And it’s somehow righteous to take that land away from people or tribes or a nation that doesn’t try to “improve” it. It’s righteous to demand that it be handed over to virtuous men and women who will turn it into profit, through development and/or exchange.
If it’s just sitting there, for all Americans to, you know, look at and enjoy, then no one really owns it and it’s ripe for the taking. Because nothing has any “value” if it can’t yield profits or be sold for profits — or both.
A truly destructive mindset, and one that the American ruling class has perfected, based on the English ruling class’s model, primarily.
- This reply was modified 8 years, 5 months ago by Billy_T.
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