Kirby: Some Lockean Animals Are More Equal Than Others

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 John Locke’s 1690 Second Treatise unmistakably provided the foundation for the United States’ rebellion against Great Britain, and the Founding Fathers’ pursuit of a restricted governmental body. The arguments in Chapter V, “Of Property,” also demonstrate that in his civil society, “some animals are more equal than others.” (Orwell) All men subsist equally in “perfect freedom” in his State of Nature, where “men are not bound to submit to the unjust will of another.” (Locke 8, 13) But once man appropriates property, borne through his laboring of material, he has a right to such property. Locke provided bounds to property rights, namely that man should not own in excess, where materials would spoil, leave nothing for the rest of men, or be possessed without requisite labor. Money diminishes such limitations.

Because money allows for the trade of perishable property, man’s conquest for unlimited property was now reasonable. As he wrote: “And if he also bartered away plums, that would have rotted in a week, for nuts that would last good for his eating for a whole year, he did no injury; he wasted not the common stock…so long as nothing perished uselessly in his hands.” (Locke 28) Herein lies the problem of unrestricted purchasing power: when nothing remains to appropriate (thus some men eventually left without right to property), they must sell their labor to those with such rights.

In Locke’s civil society, where empty-handed men agree to labor for a propertied man, the fruits of their labor benefit none but their employer. He explains that “the turf my servant has cut;...become my property, without the assignation or consent of any body. The labour that was mine, removing them out of that common state they were in, hath fixed my property in them.” (Locke 20) An unpropertied man seems here to be no more than objective property itself when unrestrictive purchasing power persists in Locke’s civil society.

In fact, when Locke’s government is introduced, these unpropertied men are reduced to non-actors in civil society. Political power during Locke’s time was held by, of course, the sovereign, as well as the propertied-taxpayers. A government protection against estate infringement leaves a majority of men unprotected, to be taken advantage of without defense. Arguably, the Hobbesian notion that society signs away man’s state of nature to an unlimited sovereign holds true in a Lockean structure. One must only switch out (or add to) sovereigns with property owners.

Indeed, Smith notes in Lectures on Jurisprudence that man does not enter a contract with his society by chosen devotion or obedience. He writes: “But how can you avoid staying in it? You were not consulted whether you should be born in it or not.” (Smith 403) Instead, authority and utility force some men to sacrifice autonomy in civil society. I find it relevant to ask then: while Hobbes is clearly more pessimistic about the warlike nature of men, does Locke’s construct of government not force us to wonder if restraint really leads to more liberty than a natural state, unburdened by money, would? For the powerful, liberty is always inalienable.

Comments

  1. Henry LongJanuary 19, 2023 at 12:58 PM

    I think that your keen argument against Locke stems from a disagreement about a particular premise of Locke's argument. You write that "Herein lies the problem of unrestricted purchasing power: when nothing remains to appropriate (thus some men eventually left without right to property), they must sell their labor to those with such rights." As I understand it, Locke would disagree that there would ever be a situation "when nothing remains to appropriate." Hobbes clearly defines the problems that arise from scarcity: he writes that "if two men desire the same thing, which nevertheless they cannot both enjoy, they become enemies" (Hobbes 75). Locke, unlike Hobbes, does not have a clear concept of material scarcity. Locke writes that "appropriation of any parcel of land, by improving it, [cannot be] any prejudice to any other man, since there was still enough, and as good left; and more than the yet unprovided could use" (Locke 21). For Locke, since property is not especially scarce, there will never be a situation in which one without property must sell labor to those with property. That said, the nonexistence of scarcity is a dubious premise.

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