1.0 INTRODUCTION

Property rights are particularly contentious in liberalist and socialist circles, disagreements ranging from whether property rights liberate and are a fundamental right; or whether they create conditions that enslave and subsequently infringe upon individual liberties and freedoms. In literature, Locke’s conception of property is often cited as the foundation for liberalism thought in property. In his Two Treatises of Government, he advocates for property as a natural right. Therefore, a state that recognises and secures property rights would also be securing their citizens’ rights and freedom. Marx disagrees on the basis that such relations are not as simple as Locke suggests: Locke’s conception of property rights do not take into account a society - specifically post-industrial - that divides its labour for the production of commodities. Further, Marx contends that private property in bourgeois society creates a division between those who own the means of production and those who do not. In this sense, property is an obstacle rather than a fundamental right for Marx; it justifies the exploitation of the working class and keeps them from truly attaining freedom.

In this essay, we will explore how Locke and Marx conceived of property rights, appraising their historical contexts, and where they depart from their understanding of property and freedom.

2.1 LOCKEAN THEORY OF PROPERTY

Locke’s conception of property stems from his ideas around natural law and the rights we derive from it. In his justification, all men were created ‘equal and independent’ in the ‘state of nature’, before God where all men are his property. Following this, Locke comes to the conclusion that because the state of nature demands that we are free from the beginning, our natural rights must also reflect this – the right to live unsubordinated and free.1

To uphold this law, property rights are also essential for Locke who believes property and ownership is a necessity for protecting the sanctity of life and liberty. In his Second Treatise, he explains this using Christian morality and the existence of God to justify his claims, in particular, how property from the ‘commons’ becomes individually owned:

God, who hath given the world to men in common, hath also given them reason to make use of it to the best advantage of life and convenience.2

Because life is sacred and is God’s own property, Locke’s property rights are chiefly made up of two reasonings: first is that the first property we own are our bodies, upholding the natural law that we are independent and free; the second is that by making use of the world around us, we ‘annex’ our labour with that which is removed from the ‘common’ and make it a part of our own bodies – or simply put, our property.3 In a sense, if the natural law is true, Locke insists that property is a natural right along with the right to live and the right to freedom; or as he says:

...that being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions.4

2.2 LOCKE’S THEORY OF LABOUR VALUE

A particularly contentious point about Locke’s property rights is whether his theory of labour justifies the bourgeois private property ownership which Marx denounces. Lockean metaphysics allows for property rights as an extension of an individual’s right to life and freedom. However, Locke’s property rights are limited by three conditions. The first is that the appropriation of property is tied fundamentally to one’s own labour.5 The second is that property rights can only be legitimate if there are “enough, and as good left in common for others”,6 meaning that ownership must also respect the right not to infringe upon other people’s equal access to resources similar in quality. The third is the spoilage limitation, which states that an excessive amount of a particular resource left spoiling in an individual’s hand is considered illegitimate.7 This can be traced back to the idea that when mankind makes use of the ‘commons’, they are increasing its value by adding their labour to it. Therefore, an excessive accumulation of property by individuals means it must not be reaching its productive potential and would be in violation of this theory.

An important critique of Locke’s theory of labour is Macpherson’s interpretation of Locke’s turf argument, where it appears that Locke advocates for a wage-relationship. For Macpherson, Locke contradicts his own limits on property rights when he states that the “turfs that my servant has cut...become my property”.8 In a post-industrial reading of his theory of labour, this would indeed be justification for bourgeois property rights and the alienation of labour. Locke suggests that despite having servants labour on his grass, the wage-relationship and compensation overrides his own failure to work on his own grass (using his own labour), and, within this condition, the grass can still be considered his property. Macpherson extends this by claiming that Locke’s turf argument gives fertile ground for bourgeois land accumulation.9 Specifically, Locke has created a condition that allows for labour to be alienated and where accumulating land beyond one’s own personal labour can be considered legitimate. With the labour of workers, the bourgeois owner has made it more productive than it would otherwise be if left in the commons, and is exempt from the condition that property rights extend only to what the owner can feasibly use and work with himself.

However, I disagree with this interpretation, as it fails to take into account precisely Locke’s own attitude towards unlimited property rights and the uncharitable nature of capitalist labour appropriation Locke would have been opposed to. As Tully argues, this interpretation fails to take Locke’s turf argument within the context of his publication.10 Published after the Glorious Revolution of 1688, Locke’s ideas could be said to be a rationalisation of anti- monarchist sentiments.11 In Locke’s specification of ‘servant’ for example, Tully argues that it does not presuppose the same wage-relationship which Macpherson confers.12 He argues that Locke’s master-servant can only be established under the condition that the servant is free to choose to oblige or not; otherwise, this relationship is invalid by Locke. Contrastingly, for a wage-relationship this is not a necessity for the worker-bourgeois relationship.

His Treatises were, in a way, justifications against privileged rights of monarchy, and as Tully states,13 the conclusion that he advocates for unlimited rights with landowners, simply does not cohere to his attitudes against such privileges. In his work, Tully discusses how labour is not the only means by which property rights can be established by Locke; that in fact there is charity,14 which when an individual has secured their own comforts, they must “as much as he can, to preserve the rest of Mankind”.15 The same capitalist avarice which Macpherson attributes to this relationship is unfounded; as Tully explains, the acquiring of property is a means to perform “the duty and right to support and comfort God’s workmanship”,16 including other people and their natural rights. Further, he believes that the master-servant relationship has different connotations, where it is not simply labour being exchanged but obligations for one another, which presupposes a less complicated and less disinterested relationship than that of the bourgeois landowner and the worker.17 Gronow discusses this further, asserting that Locke’s justification for property is more closely resembling individual property;18 that is, property owned in connection to personal labour, rather than private property, which assumes privileges that would have been held by his contemporary pro- monarchist opponents; that of a right to land, regardless of the condition of others.

In a way, historically, this also points to a particularly salient point about Locke’s work; that his labour theory did not anticipate the dehumanising capitalist division of labour, and that he assumes a much simpler pre-Industrial relationship with labourers and property rights.

3.1 MARX ON LOCKEAN PROPERTY RIGHTS

In Marx’s Theories of Surplus Values, his notebook suggests that he was critical of Locke’s theory of property, particularly, his spoilage limitation which did not extend to the accumulation of money.19 Although, ultimately, Marx agrees that Locke’s theory of property describes individual property and not private property, he was critical of Locke’s conception of property rights, nevertheless. In Treatises, Locke adds that money is a social construct in which society has tacitly consented to its circulation.20 This is drawing from his ideas from his social contract which states that those who own land are benefiting from society and must therefore be compliant to its laws through the concept of these landowners giving their tacit consent. Further, Locke says that as money does not ‘spoil’,21 the spoilage limitation does not apply, and the accumulation of money is possible. In a way, we can interpret this as a justification for the unequal wealth distributions in his society; however, he also buttresses this with the fact that it is the society’s own duty to uphold the natural law and implement laws that restrict land possessions so that the natural rights of its citizens are not infringed upon, lest the society be made illegitimate.22 For Marx, however, although he did not disagree with Locke, his writings clearly indicate Marx’s deep understanding of Locke’s own contributions to the capitalist bourgeois mindset – that the post-Industrial society is justified on personal labour, rather than the ‘expropriation’ of the labour of the working class. Although, Locke did not advocate for unequal rights per se, this justification of unequal distributions of money and possessions can be evidence of his failure to fully evaluate the accumulation of money as a major barrier for realising the natural rights he ardently defends.

3.2 THEORY OF SURPLUS VALUE AND LABOUR

For Marx, property or rather private property, has no basis in universal or natural laws, unlike in Locke’s assertions. Using his theory of capital accumulation, Marx believes that it is a result of historical, social and political machinations that private property exists. Private property “exists only where the means of labour and the external conditions of labour belong to private individuals”,23 meaning that for Marx, it did not arise from a natural right for liberty, but from the necessary alienation of labour from workers by the bourgeoisie, and by extension the oppression and ‘expropriation’ of the working class.24 Forming the basis for this understanding is his theory of surplus value. In Capital, he discusses how money itself can be capital; that is, money purchasing commodity can in fact create money or rather – profit.25 This is distinct from Locke’s ideas about money, where, as Gronow argues, money as capital was simply not a concept in Locke’s ideas of property.26 For Locke, he believed strictly on personal labour justifying individual property ownership, which meant that he understood property strictly by its use-value,27 or the value equal to the labour put in. For Marx, he completes this theory, where the surplus-value is simply the ‘unpaid’ labour of the worker sold as a commodity for profit.28 In this way, private property creates the conditions for the worker to be alienated from their labour, and thus sold as a commodity.29 This allows for what Marx describes as an inverse relationship to exist with the worker and their labour output; that is, for the bourgeoisie to continue depreciating the worker’s value, while ‘expropriat[ing]’ their labour as commodity and selling it at a higher price. This alienation of labour forms the basis of his critique against private property, in particular, the moral and social consequences it has for the worker’s own life and liberties. Marx states:

The more the worker exerts himself, the more powerful becomes the alien objective world which he fashions against himself, the poorer he and his inner world become, the less there is that belongs to him.30

In a sense, Marx and Locke agree that the value of a commodity or ‘property’ in a general sense, is intrinsically equal to that of the labour that is put into it. Locke regards this as justification for individual property rights, while for Marx, it is used against the worker whose labour is taken from them, and then undervalued to generate profit upon exchange. As a result, the capitalist structures continue to work against the worker who is devalued and “diminished to the point of starvation”,31 while private property owners thrive from this class distinction and impoverishment.

3.3 THE ABOLITION OF PROPERTY

Marx not only believes that private property is an ideology used to justify oppression, but that its existence relies and fuels itself on the moral and social degradation of the worker’s own identity and freedom. Under the capitalist structure, which divorces and “estranges from man his own body”, Marx believes it tarnishes their own identities and relation to other people, reducing themselves to their labour which “opposed to him...confronts him as hostile and alien”.32 When their labour is alienated, what is also justified is their own dehumanisation into commodities.33 Marx believes this is the “spiritual and physical monster”,34 which capitalism creates. Having divided and removed all humanity from the worker’s labour, it creates a demoralising and unliberal society that objectifies and “chains” its people to bourgeois values that do not actually serve the working class.35 That the bourgeois justifications for capitalism have contradictions such as valuing freedom, while also exploiting workers, Marx believes that such contradictions must also bring about its own eventual breakdown, leading to the abolition of private property.36 Here he imagines a communist society where the means of production is collectively owned, and where the “the restoration of man as a social...human being” can finally take place for the workers.37

4.0 CONCLUSION

Although Locke’s conception of property was not specifically private property, his ideas laid the groundwork for his liberal contemporaries, who believed in private property rights as necessary to individual rights and freedom. For Marx, this is a bourgeois concept that oversimplifies Locke’s concept of personal labour to private property rights. While Marx does not question Locke’s metaphysics, he agrees that the use-value of a worker exists in their labour, but that it is not fully appreciated upon exchange, where the employer appropriates labour, and the worker’s compensation for it - is systematically depreciated. In a capitalist society, the value of labour is ‘expropriated’ to drive profit for the bourgeois class who own and control the conditions of their workers. In Marx’s view, freedom means to abolish private property; that is, to abolish that which protects a system that exploits workers, until they are reduced to nothing but “slave[s] to his own objects”.38

FOOTNOTES

1 John Locke, Two Treatises of Government and A Letter Concerning Toleration, ed. Ian Shapiro (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008), 102.
2 Locke, Two Treatises, 111.
3 Locke, Two Treatises, 111-112.
4 Locke, Two Treatises, 102.
5 Locke, Two Treatises, 112.
6 Ibid.
7 Locke, Two Treatises, 113.
8 CB Macpherson, “Locke on Capitalist Appropriation”, Western Political Quarterly 4, no. 4 (1951): 552, doi: 10.1177/106591295100400402; Locke, Two Treatises, 112.
9 Macpherson, “Locke on Capitalist”, 559-560.
10 James Tully, A Discourse on Property: John Locke and his adversaries (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), 31.
11 James Farr and Clayton Roberts, “John Locke on the Glorious Revolution: A Rediscovered Document”, The Historical Journal 28, no. 2 (1985): 385. https://www.jstor.org/stable/2639105

12 Tully, A Discourse, 34.
13 Tully, A Discourse, 131-132.
14 Tully, A Discourse, 132.
15 Locke, Two Treatises, 102.
16 Tully, A Discourse, 131.
17 Tully, A Discourse, 34.
18 Jukka Gronow, "John Locke, Adam Smith and Karl Marx’s Critique of Private Property", in On the Formation of Marxism (Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2016), 233-234.

19 Karl Marx, “Theories of Surplus Values: Locke”, Marxists.org, accessed September 20, 2023, https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1863/theories-surplus-value/add1.htm#s4.
20 Locke, Two Treatises, 119-120.
21 Locke, Two Treatises, 119.
22 Locke, Two Treatises, 121.
23 Karl Marx, Selected Writings, ed. Lawrence H Simon (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 1994), 297-298.

24 Marx, Selected, 80.
25 Marx, Selected, 257.
26 Gronow, “John Locke”, 232-233.
27 Marx, Selected, 220-221.
28 Marx, Selected, 115-117
29 Marx, Selected, 41-42; Marx, Selected, 59.
30 Marx, Selected, 60.
31 Ibid.
32 Ibid.
33 Marx, Selected, 41-42; Marx, Selected, 59.
34 Karl Marx, “Comments on James Mill, Éléments D’économie Politique”, Marxists.org, accessed 28 September 2023, https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/james-mill/.

35 Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, The Communist Manifesto, ed. Frederick Engels (New York: International Publishers, 1948), 44.
36 Louis Boudin, The Theoretical System of Karl Marx: In the Light of Recent Criticism (Charles H Kerr & Co, 1907), 148-149, http://ia600207.us.archive.org/6/items/cu31924002673667/cu31924002673667.pdf

37 Marx, Selected, 71.
38 Marx, Selected, 61.

REFERENCES

Boudin, Louis. The Theoretical System of Karl Marx: In the Light of Recent Criticism. Charles H Kerr & Co, 1907. http://ia600207.us.archive.org/6/items/cu31924002673667/cu31924002673667.pdf.

Farr, James, and “John Locke on the A Rediscovered Document.” The 28, no. 2 (1985): 385–98. http://www.jstor.org/stable/2639105.

Gronow, Jukka. "John Locke, Adam Smith and Karl Marx’s Critique of Private Property". In On the Formation of Marxism. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2016.
doi: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004306653_017.

Locke, John. Two Treatises of Government and A Letter Concerning Toleration. Edited by Ian Shapiro. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008. https://doi.org/10.12987/9780300129182.

Macpherson, C. B. “Locke On Capitalist Appropriation”. Western Political Quarterly 4 no.4, (1951): 550–566. https://doi.org/10.1177/106591295100400402.

Marx, Karl. “Theories of Surplus Values: Locke”. Marxists.org. Accessed September 20, 2023. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1863/theories-surplus-value/add1.htm#s4.

Marx, Karl. Selected Writings. Edited by Lawrence H Simon. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1994.

Marx, Karl. “Comments on James Mill, Éléments D’économie Politique.” Marxists.org. Accessed 28 September 2023. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/james- mill/.

Tully, James. A Discourse on Property: John Locke and his adversaries. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980.