John Locke Lite.

• Author: Brock, Martin
• Position: Letters - Letter to the Editor

I haven't read Michael Otsuka's book and don't know his work. Tom Palmer's assessment of it in the January issue could be on target. But his review ironically suffers the disease its title, "John Lock Lite," describes. Palmer correctly quotes Locke's praise of private property, but his citation begins in the middle of section 37 of Locke's discussion "Of Property" in his Second Treatise of Government, thus omitting these words: "men had a right to appropriate, by their labour, each one of himself, as much of the things of nature, as he could use: yet this could not be much, nor to the prejudice of others, where the same plenty was still left to those who would use the same industry. To which let me add, that he who appropriates land to himself by his labour, does not lessen, but increase the common stock of mankind."

Palmer begins with "he who appropriates land to himself" but the words he quotes could mislead readers concerning Locke's larger purpose. I don't expect Palmer to quote Locke's every word; however, the last words from "Of Property" are also noteworthy in this regard. There, Locke calls appropriation of more land than one man employs by his own labor "dishonest," at least in a primitive context. This underlies some 18th-...