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?

Locke's Central Impulse

It is easy to bring to the reading of Locke a predisposition to view property in a certain way, and to seem to find support for that view in the text (as the libertarian theorist Robert Nozick, for example, convinced himself that he was carrying out Locke's program). Given this tendency to project our assumptions onto Locke, and the richness the text exhibits when we're fishing for clues for any particular view, we must take on the difficult task, in all intellectual honesty, of trying to see where Locke's own most fundamental commitments lie.

The chapter on "Paternal Power" is very revealing in this regard, I think. It purports to distinguish the power of fathers over their children from that of rulers over their subjects, and does so clearly, but it also charts in some detail the reasons for and limitations of the ownership of children by their parents. Here property is only a little bit about rights, but a great deal about responsibilities and the limitations of power.

Another indication that Locke's account of property is as much about obligations as it is about acquisitiveness appears early in the First Treatise. I will share the passage with you in class on Monday, when we can also enumerate the various constraints Locke places on ownership, and discuss whether and to what extent the invention of money undermines them.

So What Does Locke Mean by Property?

As I hope will emerge more clearly as the text unfolds, property for Locke is whatever is proper to someone. That is, one's property is a right to anything, which may not be violated without consent. What is properly and justifiably one's own flows from the exercise of one's volition in the fulfillment of one's needs for survival and the rational enjoyment of life. His "labor" theory is a specification of the process whereby that exercise of volition, in the appropriate circumstances, entitles one to what that exercise produces. It is the metaphor that bridges from Life and Liberty on the one hand, which Locke thinks are obviously and undeniably our own, to the products of our labor on the other hand, our estate (the more usual referent of the term property).

We are entitled to our stuff, that is, by the proper use of our selves, and the term property, Locke insists, when used precisely, encompasses this whole complex: "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" (II, 173). In other words, property as a whole is "Life, Liberty, and Estate" (II, 87).

Owning Land

A follow-up to the land ownership thread on Keane's blog: Locke's commonsense account of what justifies title to land is, as our own perspective now allows us to perceive, rather specific to European culture, agriculture, and history. He extends his labor theory of property to land tenure, which relies for its persusasiveness on the way labor can multiply the productivity of land in agricultural contexts. Thus it seems obvious to Locke's contemporaries that the 'savages' in America are squandering natural resources by not building permanent settlements and farming more productively.

Ironically, the claim that one loses title to one's land by neglecting it, which ought to be a populist principle favoring land reform (landless poor willing to work could justly appropriate the land of absentee owners who did nothing with it) was actually used to disenfranchise indigenous people who had rather different patterns of life and ideas of ownership. This process was underway long before Locke. Here's John Winthrop, Jr. writing in 1629 (a text which Locke does not cite, but is obviously familiar to him):

"[the Indians in America] enclose noe Land, neither have any settled habitation, nor any tame Cattell to improve the Land by," so they were only entitled to their cornfields. Thus "the rest of the country lay open to any that could and would improve it. We may lawfully take the rest, there being more than enough for them and us."

So here the "enough and as good" clause and the labor theory of property applied to land function ethnocentrically as a justification for colonial appropriation.

Property as basis for Government in Locke

Ownership plays a central role in Locke's Second Treatise of Government because, Locke argues, it is a desideratum of any justifiable system of government that it respect people's property. This seems fair enough, though it places a heavy burden on what property is, where it comes from, and whether it can be justified. Thus we will read the entire Second Treatise (it is quite short), but our main focus will be on the even more compressed account he gives of the nature of property -- or rather on the several accounts that seem more or less loosely braided together in his treatment. One of our main tasks will be to attempt to tease apart these threads and understand them, both separately and together.

Preliminary Questions about Property

What are the features of a property-right? Many accounts include the right to possess (even in absentia), use, consume, transfer, profit from, and even waste one's property. Less prominent are discussions of the responsibilities that accompany ownership, including (on some accounts) to share it with the needy, preserve it on behalf of future owners, use it productively, and avoid acquiring more than you can make good use of.

What is the origin of property, and how (if at all) does this inform our normative understanding of contemporary arrangements?

Can a right of private property be justified at all? If so, how does such a justification work, and what are its limits?

Are there alternatives to private ownership on the one hand and government control on the other?

In what ways is ownership dependent on, or independent of, the social relationships and institutions that make its exercise possible?

A Paeon to Unquantifiable Value

In this unusually engaging commencement speech, Margaret Edson speaks as a classroom teacher to what is of value but won't fit on a pie chart or a bottom line. Thanks to David Langston for calling it to my attention.

http://www.vimeo.com/1085942