Monday, February 8, 2010
Mixing one's labor
Another set of issues we might try to sort out is what's underneath the metaphors Locke uses for how what he calls labor generates property: mixing, investment, etc. Even granting that we understand 'labor' in the special sense we discussed -- the exercise of volition (liberty) with intent to manifest one's identity in the world, paradigmatically in acts of self-preservation -- how is the mixing supposed to make the end product our own? As Nozick asks rhetorically, if I pour my can of tomato juice into the ocean, have I made the ocean mine or foolishly dissipated my tomato juice? Less flippantly, why is it that Locke says I am entitled to the whole product of my labor, rather than just to the value that my labor has added to the natural commons with which I have mixed it?
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2 comments:
Locke claims that the labor of an invidual indisputably belongs to that same individual, as it is the excercise of his or her liberty. Once man applies his labor to something in the natural world, the "mixing" of labor and object has taken place. Locke reasoned that since labor is properly owned by the laborer, the object being labored upon is annexed through the labor and thereby becomes part of the individual.
I view the metaphor of mixing much like the digestion of the acorn we discussed in class. Once the acorn was consumed, it was digested and, in a literal sense, became part of the consumer. Just as food once consumed becomes part of the consumer, "estate" once labored becomes part of the laborer, and thus his property.
This does seem to be more or less what Locke has in mind. But when we're not literally digesting the thing appropriated, we will need a clearer account of why we should be entitled to the whole product...
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