Comment: ‘The condition of human life, which requires labour and materials to work on, necessarily introduces private possessions.’ (John Locke). (1991)
The sentence closes §35 of chapter V, “Of Property”, in John Locke‘s Second Treatise of Government (1689). Its claim: private property is neither the sovereign’s gift nor a product of agreement but a necessity of the human condition, prior to government. As an account of possession for use it persuades; as a warrant for unlimited private ownership it overreaches.
The Argument in Context
- The problem. Sir Robert Filmer (Patriarcha, published 1680) argued that a common grant made any appropriation depend on everyone’s consent. Locke retorts: if such a consent as that was necessary, man had starved (§28).
- Two premises. God commanded man to subdue the earth, and by commanding to subdue, gave authority so far to appropriate (§35); and human wants force men to labour. Appropriation is thus a duty, not a usurpation.
- The mechanism. Every man has a property in his own person (§27). Mixing that labour with what nature left in common makes it his, land included (§32).
- The contrast within §35. English commons stay common by compact and need the commoners’ consent to enclose; in the primordial condition the law was rather for appropriating.
- Built-in limits. Appropriation is rightful only where enough and as good remains for others (§27) and nothing spoils, for nothing was made by God for man to spoil or destroy (§31).
The Case for Locke
- Title by work, not birth. It undercut feudal and royal title and anticipated the labour theory of value of Adam Smith and David Ricardo; labour yields nine-tenths of value (§40).
- Productivity. Enclosure does not lessen, but increase the common stock (§37). Garrett Hardin’s “tragedy of the commons” (1968) restated the incentive logic.
- Freedom. Robert Nozick‘s entitlement theory (Anarchy, State, and Utopia, 1974) builds on it.
Critiques
- Conventional, not natural. Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Discourse on Inequality, 1755) traced civil society to the first man who fenced land and said this is mine: possession needs recognition, not merely labour.
- Labour turned against Locke. The turfs my servant has cut become the master’s (§28). Karl Marx showed that under wage labour the worker’s labour founds another’s property; C. B. Macpherson (The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism, 1962) adds that money dissolves the spoilage limit.
- The metaphor. Nozick asked why pouring one’s tomato juice into the sea should win the sea rather than lose the juice.
- Commons that work. Elinor Ostrom (Governing the Commons, 1990) showed communities managing forests and fisheries without privatisation: need requires secure access, not necessarily private title.
- Empire. In the beginning all the world was America (§49): uncultivated land counted as waste, licensing settler dispossession, as James Tully shows.
The Indian Illustration
The Forest Rights Act, 2006 recognises title to forest land cultivated before 13 December 2005, a Lockean labour-and-use test, yet also vests community forest resource rights in gram sabhas. Mohandas K. Gandhi‘s aparigraha and trusteeship accept possession for need while denying any right to surplus.
Conclusion
Locke is right that living requires appropriation and that labour gives a strong claim to its fruits. But the human condition necessitates secure possession for use, individual or collective, not unlimited private ownership; once money and wage labour enter, “necessarily” becomes ideology.