Lubna Alli

Locke’s passage on property rights, and his work in general, is intimidating at first glance. The language is dense and the context in which it was written is far removed from our social contexts today, but nonetheless, Locke’s work is one of the most accessible today. I have studied the Second Treatise of Government in detail before, but it felt like I was re-learning it again this time around, which allowed me to iron out certain ideas I was unclear about before. I turned to YouTube and Sparknotes to supplement the gaps in my understanding. I understood the idea behind the property of the person, and the labour associated with that equating to ownership. He says that when an individual adds their own labor, their own property, to a foreign object or good, that object becomes their own because they have added their labor. As such, if I were to pick an apple, then by this logic it becomes mine because I have added my own labour to it and made it my property. This same logic could then apply to land and cultivating it or farming on it to build a house. He goes on to say that this appropriation of goods does not demand the consent of humankind in general, meaning that each person has license to appropriate things in this way by individual initiative.  

The caveat he posits with this is around the idea of bounded acquisition, or in simpler terms, you only take as much as you can use. He says that a person may only acquire as many things in this way as he or she can reasonably use to their advantage. Locke applies these rules to land: a person in a state of nature can claim land by adding labor to it–building a house on it or farming on it–but only so much as that person can reasonably use without waste. Locke then defines labor as the determining factor of value, the tool by which humans make their world a more advantageous and rewarding place to inhabit. 

Locke finishes by talking about money, which although simple in concept, became a little more blurry for me to grasp in full. He talks about how money, backed by labor and the natural rights of people, becomes the basis for expansion beyond the subsistence level of property. He mentions trading and money being an equal playing field for the exchange of labour that is rooted in property. I can see how this is rooted in the ownership of property if you trace the logic of his argument backwards, but I think I still need more reasoning to back up the money side of this argument as it relates to property. 

Sources:

John Locke. n.d. [1689]. Chapter 5, Of Property. From Two Treatises of Government. Raleigh, N.C.: Generic NL Freebook Publisher. Accessed January 14. 10 pages.