Locke and Property Locke\'s Second

Locke and Property

Locke's Second Treatise: The Right to Property

John Lock is considered one of the founders of modern governmental thinking. His two treatises on government laid the foundations for the democracy of the New World that began less than a century after they were published, and many of the political debates held today reflect some of the arguments both addressed and/or instigated by Locke in his Two Treatises. These writings touch on almost every conceivable tangent of political thought and governmental responsibility and rights, remaining highly relevant and highly controversial even today. From defining and elucidating his perception of the origin and current state of civil liberties to his explanation of the origin and necessity of government and society itself, Locke proceeds with careful and deliberate reasoning from one point to the next with barely a pause between one logical assertion and the next. It is his discussion of property, however, that is often considered the crux of his Second Treatise, and the basis for the rest of the thoughts, observations, and conclusions that are contained within these seminal works of political thought.

This does not men that every Locke scholar agrees on the importance of the passages directly concerning property, or indeed even on what Locke meant exactly when he made certain claims regarding property. In order to come to a better and more informed understanding of what Locke might have been trying to say, it is necessary to place his comments on property in the context of the Second Treatise as a whole. many of the interpretations of the property section of this treatise seem to run counter to other much clearer assertions and conclusions drawn elsewhere in the work. By finding and examining these inconsistencies, Locke's views on property and the role it plays in government -- and vice versa -- can be better understood and, if need be, refuted by further reasoning and careful debate.

In the fifth chapter of the second treatise, Locke asserts that "men have agreed to a disproportionate and unequal possession of the earth...by receiving [land] in exchange for the overplus gold and silver."

Locke is saying, fairly directly, that the system of monetary exchange and the physical pieces of money -- essentially worthless items such as gold and silver -- work by the long held implied agreement of their usage. In effect, Locke is saying that money and the unequal distribution of property (in this case useful and wealth-generating land) is an already established and therefore correct feature of human society, and that equal distribution is neither an inherent human right nor a political necessity. This in no way implies, however, that "greed is good," to quote Michael Douglas. In fact, a more careful reading of this passage reveals Locke's true beliefs concerning wealth and the distribution of property.

The first thing of great importance to note in this passage is that Locke expressly agrees that money "has its value only from the consent of men."

Things with intrinsic value like food and shelter may be traded for money -- this is, in fact, the purposes behind money as Locke sees it -- so many has no true value in and of itself. Given the political assertions made elsewhere in the treatise, namely that the right to govern is derived only from the consent of the people, it also seems evident that money would lose its value should men remove their consent.

This fact on its own is not especially important, but it leads to another implied assertion of Locke's that has much more immediate and practical ramifications. Locke goes on to say that hoarding money and amassing wealth does not pose any ethical or moral problems, because money (i.e. gold and silver) is a substance with no real value, and "may be hoarded up without injury to any one; these metals not spoiling or decaying in the hands of the possessor."

Money can only be hoarded because it has no real use; it will not feed or cloth someone who is starving or cold. This implies that things like food and clothing, which have obvious and immediate intrinsic values, cannot be rightfully hoarded in most societies because this will cause injury to someone else.

This places a severe limit on the power of money in Locke's construct; though it is deemed acceptable to hoard any amount of gold and silver, and though this gold and silver can be used to purchase things of real value like land and other property, it is not acceptable to maintain control of vast amounts of this property at the expense of others. A lord may own the land, therefore, but only because men have agreed on the value of the money that the land was purchased with, and only as long as the landowner continues to let others use the land to maintain a livelihood for themselves and their families.

Other passages in the Second Treatise of Government support this interpretation of Locke's meaning. Even the closing statement of the first chapter, which outlines the various rights of governments as Locke sees them -- including "the regulating and preserving of property" -- claims that all government actions must be undertaken "only for the public good."

As the government mandate to rule derived from public consent, it must be assumed that the definition of the public good must also be derived from that same public, and thus Locke's conclusion that men have consented to an unequal distribution of land and property is self-evident. This does not mean that men may not attempt to create more equality through established means -- earning money and buying their own land, for example -- and in no way should the passage in section fifty of the treatise be interpreted as making the protection of private property against any and all intrusions the essential or primary duty or even right of a governing body.

Further evidence of the unimportance of money and the monetary system in Locke's description of government and the way it ought to operate is found in the eight chapter of his Second Treatise. here, Locke maintains that in the establishment of a government or society, "every man, by consenting with others to make one body politic under one government, puts himself under an obligation, to every one of that society, to submit to the determination of the majority."