Locke On Capitalist Appropriation

• Published date: 01 December 1951
• DOI: 10.1177/106591295100400402
• Date: 01 December 1951
• Subject Matter: Articles

LOCKE ON CAPITALIST APPROPRIATION
C. B. MACPHERSON
University of Toronto
LTHOUGH
John Locke’s theory of property has always been rec-
ognized as an essential part of his theory of civil society and
*’
government, its full importance seems scarcely to have been real-
ized. Nor has the attention given it been as careful as it deserves. Locke’s
writings, of course, invite one to read between the lines; indeed, this is
unavoidable if one is to make sense of the Second Treatise. But in doing
so it is dangerously easy to neglect the plain statements and implications
of the lines themselves in favor of some attractive theory which a careful
reading of the lines would forbid. In nothing has this been more apparent
than in the readings of Locke’s theory of property. The view presented
here cannot claim to be exempt from this danger, but a fresh examina-
tion of what Locke wrote about property rights may support a rather
different view of the purpose, and hence the importance, of Locke’s theory
of property, from that which has found favor recently. The purpose of
this article is to suggest a consistent construction of Locke’s theory of
property right, and to show that the assumptions involved were the
assumptions made by Locke. The implications of his theory of property,
and of its implicit assumptions, for his theory of the state, must be left
mainly for later examination.
The definition of property. We cannot begin to examine the implica-
tions of Locke’s doctrine that &dquo;the great and chief end, therefore, of men’s
uniting into commonwealths, and putting themselves under government,
is the preservation of their property&dquo; (§ 124),1 repeated in many variations
throughout the Second Treatise (e.g., §§94, 134, 138, and 222), without
noticing the peculiar definition Locke gives of property. Men’s &dquo;lives,
liberties and estates ... I call by the general name, property.&dquo; (§ 123)
&dquo;By property I must be understood here, as in other places, to mean that
property which men have in their persons as well as goods.&dquo; (§ 173) If
Locke had held consistently to this unusually wide definition of property
his political theory would not be nearly as distinct from others as it is. But
it is clear that by property, much of the time Locke meant land and com-
modities ; that is, property in the more usual sense. This is obviously so
in the crucial sections on the limitations of the legislative power (§§ 135,
1
Unless otherwise indicated, references are to sections in John Locke: The Second Treatise of Civil
Government and a Letter Concerning Toleration, edited by J. W. Gough (Oxford: Blackwell; New
York: Macmillan, 1947). Gough’s edition is superior to others currently in use in that it is based
on the 1764 edition of the Treatises embodying corrections and additions made by Locke to his
earlier editions.
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551
138, 139), where he distinguishes between the individual’s right to life
and to property; it is equally so in the whole of chapter v of the Second
Treatise, entitled &dquo;Of Property.&dquo;
It needs no argument to establish that Locke, in spite of his attempt
to use property in the broad sense in which he defined it, had the nar-
rower and more usual sense in mind, both when he set out to demon-
strate the existence and extent of the natural right to property and when
he sought to demonstrate the limitations of governmental power. But
his inclusion of life and liberty, as well as estate-of one’s person as well
as one’s goods - in the term property is itself curious. It is usually
explained by saying that Locke regarded possessions as extensions of per-
sonality, and that he emphasized this by making the same term cover
personality (life and liberty) and possessions. There is no doubt that
Locke regarded the right to possessions as derived from the right to life
and to one’s own labor, for he says that &dquo;every man has a property in
his own person; this nobody has any right to but himself. The labour
of his body and the work of his hands we may say are properly his.&dquo;
(§ 27) But still, why should Locke define life and liberty as property?
Why speak of a property in his own person, rather than a right to his
own life and labor?
Locke sometimes writes as if life and liberty were valuable because
they were means of getting possessions. In the First Letter Concerning
Toleration, in which the doctrine of the purpose of civil society is set
out more succinctly than in the Treatise, we read that
the
...
pravity of mankind being such that they had rather injuriously prey upon the
fruits of other men’s labours than take pains to provide for themselves, the necessity of
preserving men in the possession of what honest industry has already acquired, and also
of preserving their liberty and strength, whereby they may acquire what they farther
want, obliges men to enter into society with one another....&dquo;
2
Again, in his insistence that everyone has a property in his own
person -
&dquo;the labour of his body and the work of his hands&dquo; -
one might
see an assumption that the powers of the body (life) are valuable as
means of acquiring material possessions; the concept of a property in one’s
own person is introduced in order to establish a right to the acquisition
and possession of goods or, to use Locke’s own word, to their &dquo;appro-
priation.&dquo;
The paradox that, to Locke, life and liberty derive their value as
instruments for the acquisition of property cannot be fully sustained,
but it is illuminating that Locke can write as if personality was an
extension of possessions, rather than possessions being an extension of
personality. We shall return to this point after we have examined
2 The Second Treatise of Civil Government and a Letter Concerning Toleration, p. 152. My italics.

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552
the implications of Locke’s main arguments about property. It will then
be seen that there is reason to think that Locke was more consistent
in his definition of property than is generally allowed. Property in one’s
person, meaning property in one’s capacity to labor (§27), was of the
same nature as property in goods; it was a disposable asset.
The initial natural right to limited property. In order to show that
the purpose of government was the preservation of individual property,
Locke had to demonstrate that property was a natural right of the
individual-a right not derived from any contract or agreement to enter
society and not dependent on society and government, but one inhering
in each human being as such, like the right to life. At the beginning of
the Treatise Locke sets it down as self-evident that all men have a natural
right to property. The condition all men are naturally in is &dquo;a state of
perfect freedom to order their actions and dispose of their possessions
and persons as they think fit, within the bounds of the law of nature,
without asking leave, or depending upon the will of any other man.&dquo;
(§ 4) The bounds of the law of nature require that &dquo;being all equal and
independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or
possessions.&dquo; (§ 6) These propositions, which take for granted a natural
right to possessions, as well as to life, health and liberty, seemed to Locke
to require little demonstration; they followed from the axiomatic proposi-
tion that all men are naturally equal in the sense that no one has natural
jurisdiction over another, &dquo;there being nothing more evident than that
creatures of the same species and rank, promiscuously born to all the
same advantages of nature, and the use of the same faculties, should also
be equal one amongst another without subordination or subjection.&dquo; (§ 4)
If Locke had been concerned only to show that individuals had a natural
right to property &dquo;within the bounds of the law of nature,&dquo; he might
have left the matter there. But in fact he devotes a whole chapter to
the question of property right; and, since the upshot of the chapter is to
release the individual property right from the limitations of the law
of nature, we may not unfairly conclude that the removal of these
limitations was the main purpose of the extensive discussion of property
in chapter 5. Locke’s astonishing achievement was to base the property
right on natural right, and then to remove all the natural law limitations
from the property right.
The significance of the chapter may be lost by not attending to
Locke’s own opening statement of his intention. He begins by accepting,
as the dictate both of natural reason and of Scripture, that the earth
and its fruits were originally given to mankind in common. (§ 25) This
was, of course, the traditional view, found alike in medieval and in

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553
seventeenth century Puritan theory. But Locke accepts this position only
to refute the conclusions previously drawn from it, which made property
something less than an absolute and unlimited individual right.
But this [that the earth was given to mankind in common] being supposed, it
seems to some a very great difficulty how any one should ever come to have a property
in anything.... I shall endeavour to show how men might come to have a property
in several parts of that which God gave to mankind in common, and that without any
express compact of all the commoners. (§ 25)
Locke’s purpose, then, was at least to remove the doubts and reserva,
tions about individual property rights which were still in the minds of
those who had been brought up in the older tradition.
The opening stages of his argument are so...