In my law and economics class we have been going over property rights and after reading Locke, I’m going to go ahead and throw out there that he’s not so much a political philosopher as he is an economist.
An extremely famous economist (I believe it was Milton Friedman) said that the basis of freedom is property. Locke doesn’t go quite that far but he does certainly connect the two in a significant way. He even says that anyone who attempts to take away anyone’s property rights is actually attempting to enslave them. This is right in line with economics, the first principles of which are based on the right to own property and exclude others from that property. He does get a little extreme when he says that you can kill someone who tries to limit your property rights but then again, it is a state of war.
His solution to the state of war, government as the primary arbiter of justice and punishment, fits the economics textbook definition of government (ie. Government is an organization that has a comparative advantage in or monopoly on the legitimate use of force.) So for Locke, instead of killing the thief himself, he lets the government do it. But that’s just me getting really excited, I have a couple problems with Locke, despite my almost unnatural love of him.
And of course his section on property is one of the longest in the book. His principle of labor and ownership is…odd. It’s in almost perfect agreement with economics but it’s one of the places I tend to dissent. I simply don’t see why it is the case that just because I work on something it’s mine. I mean, it sounds nice, but not necessarily true, or even believable. If someone has some ore, and they give it to a blacksmith to fashion into a sword, is the sword the blacksmith’s or the person who originally gave the ore? When I say gave I don’t mean relinquished ownership, I mean simply put it in the blacksmith’s hands. It seems Locke would say it’s the blacksmith’s sword but did the owner of the ore really lose his ore simply because it changed shape? It just seems to me that labor and possession have a much more complicated relationship than Locke describes.
I also don’t entirely understand his view of slavery. From what I understand a man can’t give up his life because he does not rightly own it. However, he can have it taken from him, which means either death or slavery. Again, I simply don’t see why this is the case. It seems to me that if something can be taken, it can also be given. I’m pretty sure I’m missing something but I can’t seem to find it.
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Yeah, I saw economics all over the place. It is there in the discussion of the invention of money. The agreement in the past to give gold a value is the same principle that allows the modern world to operate with paper promises.
More importantly, however, I saw economics in Locke Chaper IX. From this chapter the founding fathers derived the basis for the famous phrase: "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." The use of "pursuit of happiness" by the founding fathers is just a euphemism for "property" which Locke unashamedly considers a priority of humans. And frankly that is true, as Machiavelli said, don't mess with people's property. The importance of property made think generally about materialism so, I would like to leave you with a link to George Carlin's talk about stuff: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvgN5gCuLac
Doesn't a man own his own body, therefore owning his life? Furthermore, a man cannot voluntarily commit to slavery due to self preservation. Self preservation being one of the fundamental elements of the law of nature.
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