Justice:What's the right thing to do?Episode 4: John Locke: Property Rights

Justice Episode 4 John Locke: Property Rights

Locke’s two big ideas: private property; consent

Part 1: The Land is Mine

The philosopher John Locke believes that individuals have certain rights- to life, liberty and property- which were given to human beings in “the state of nature”, a time before government and laws were created. Locke also argues that the natural rights are undeniable. We can not give them up.

“…every man has a property in his own person. This nobody has any right to but himself. The labor of his body, and the work of his hands, we may say, are properly his.” — John Locke

Locke: We not only acquire our property in the fruits of the earth, but the land. “As much as a man tills, improves, cultivates and can use the product of, so much is his property. He by his labor enclose it from the common.” — John Locke

The idea that rights are unalienable seems to distance Locke from a libertarian. A libertarian wants to say we have an absolute property right in ourselves therefore we can do with ourselves whatever we want. Locke is not a sturdy ally for this view. Instead he said if you take natural rights seriously you will be led to the idea that there are certain constraints on what we can do with our natal rights, constraints given either by God or by reason reflecting on what it means really to be free. So there is a difference between Locke and libertarians.

But when it comes to Locke’s account of private property he begins to look like a good ally, because his arguments for private property begins with the idea that we are the proprietors of ourselves (our own person) and therefore of our own labour and therefore of the fruits of our labour including not only the things we gather and hunt in the state of nature but also we acquire a property right in the land that we enclosed and cultivate and improve.

Locke’s great experiment is to see if we can give an account of how there could be a right of private property without consent, before government and legislators arrive on the scene to define property.

Part 2: Consenting Adults

Consent is an obvious, familiar idea in moral and political philosophy. Locke says that legitimate government is government founded on consent.

There are many inconveniences in the state of nature. The main inconvenience is that everyone can enforce the law of nature, everyone can do the punishing, everybody is insecure in their enjoyment of his or her undeniable rights to life, liberty and property. That’s why people want to leave.

Here’s where consent comes in. The only way to escape from the state of nature is to undertake an act of consent where you agree to give up the enforcement power and to create a government or a community where there will be a legislature to make law and where everyone agrees in advance to abide by whatever the majority decides.

“The supreme power [legislature] cannot take from any men any part of his property without his own consent.” —John Locke

“For the preservation of property being the end of government and that for which men enter into society, it necessarily supposes and requires that people should have property.” — John Locke

“Men therefore in society having property, they have such a right to the goods, which by the law of the community are theirs…”

“Governments cannot be supported without great charge, and it is fit every one who enjoys his share of the protection, should pay out of his estate his proportion for the maintenance of it. But still it must be his own consent, i.e. the consent of the majority, giving it either by themselves or their representatives chosen by them.” —John Locke

So the consent is the collective consent.

The libertarians have two grounds for disappointment in Locke. First that the rights are unalienable and therefore I don’t really own myself. Second, once there is a legitimate government based on consent, the only limits for Locke are limits on arbitrary takings of life or liberty or property, but if the majority decides or if the majority promulgates a generally applicable law, and if it votes duly according to fare procedures then there is no violation whether it’s a system of taxation or a system of conscription.

The dark side of Locke:

The settlers were enclosing lands in America and engaged wars with the native Americans. Locke who was an administrator of one of the colonies may have been as interested in providing a justification for private property through enclosure without consent.

Why is consent such a powerful moral instrument in creating political authority and the obligation to obey?

#PrivatePropertyConsentMoralandPoliticalPhilosophy