Contemporary Views of Locke's Theory of Property

Abstract

<p> In chapter five of the Second Treatise, John Locke explains that every man's natural right in his person and his person's labour gives him an exclusive right over whatever he removes from the natural common by his labour vdthout the __ consent of all the other commoners. This natural appropriation initially has two limits. First, everyone is entitled to have as much property as he can use before it spoils. Second, each appropriation must leave enough and as good in common for others. These limits give everyone direct access to nature and restrict each man's property. </p> <p> At section thirty-six of the Second Treatise, however, Locke states that the invention of money alters original appropriation. Since money does not spoil, men may acquire as much property in it as they desire with the consequence that men now begin to acquire more of everything, especially land, than they themselves can use. Soon there is no longer enough and as good land left in common for everyone. Can men move to a mode of appropriation which does not leave sufficient land in common for all?</p> <p> Leo Strauss and C. B. Macpherson argue that according to Locke, once men introduce money they consent to transcend the limits to appropriation and move to unlimited individual appropriation. James Tully and John Dunn oppose this interpretation. Dunn argues that the notion that men may acquire property without limit contradicts Locke's view that a man's labour is his way to eternal salvation. Tully argues that once the sufficiency proviso is violated, natural appropriation in the state of nature becomes disfunctional, and men must move to reconstitute in civil society the natural mode of limited appropriation. </p> <p> This study compares and contrasts the main lines of each author's argument with respect to unlimited appropriation, and how each author employs key passages in Locke's works to support his position. This reveals how key passages in Locke's works can have radically different meaning for different interpreters. Rather than attempt to arrive at a new interpretation of Locke on property, my intention is to set side by side two opposed views of the significance of Locke's theory of property, and hence systematize a small part of the vast body of literature on Locke on property.</p>