Natural laws, rights and property
Locke was a man in England who supported Shaftesbury. Shaftesbury was a politician who desired the powers of the king to be restricted. He made moves in the parliament at that time to prevent James, the brother of King Charles from becoming the successor to the throne. However Shaftesbury was defeated and he was sent on exile together with Locke to Netherlands. This is where Locke wrote the two treatises that advocated for property as a natural right, the need and role of the government.
Locke proposed views on property as a natural right that have proven to be contentious. First of all he said that in the beginning God gave the land to all the humanity. There was nothing like private property in the beginning. It is men who started the concept of private property.
The divine law given by God was that land should be owned communally by the people. Locke’s view on natural laws from which men derived their natural rights was normative and not descriptive. His ideas were based on what should be the practice in the society and not what was happening at that time. Locke put forward that the natural laws could be understood by anyone as long as they employed their human reasoning (Tuckness, 2010) There are three natural rights that a human has.
First it is the right to live. The second natural right is the right to freedom as long as it does not obstruct other people from exercising their right to live. The third right, which is the most contentious is the man’s right to property as long as it does not interfere with other men’s right to freedom and life.
According to Locke if any one interfered with the three natural rights he was disobeying God. If God had given someone the right to live he had also given the individual the right to own property. Locke saw labor as something owned by the individual. Anything that the individual mixed with his labor becomes his property. Labor was a good thing because as people engaged in productive labor there was production of goods and services that served every one (Locke, 1988 [1689], II, para 27).
The natural right to property according to Locke was affected by the application of labor to a certain piece of land. As the land becomes scarce there arises a government to take care or protect the private property of individuals. The government only rules with the consent of the people. If the government does not ensure that the people are able to exercise their three natural rights then the government is removed and there arises a new government that will take care of the people.
Locke noted that with the introduction of a monetary system, an individual would be able to own more land than he would be applying labor to directly at one particular time. A businessman is able to accumulate land and the concept of private property arises.
Criticisms
First of all, in laboring in a piece of land there is no right that the laborer has to the piece of land. The land has an owner who gets the proceeds of the firm. Locke viewed labor as something that the worker owns. The view was criticized by Karl Marx since in the capitalist society; there are the rich elite who own property and other means of production.
They employ the workers in their companies. There is a high level of unemployment in the society causing the workers to withstand adverse working conditions and low wages since they know if they quit or complain the employer would just recruit from the reserve of employed workers. Simmons contested Locke’s view that the labor belongs to the individual. He put forward that worker’s labor actually belonged to the rich (Simmons, 1992, p335)
On land being a natural right, this would be a hard concept to apply in the world today because it is a scarce resource. Hume contested the idea of natural right to property since it a scarce resource. He said that an individual could only own a piece of land after getting the financial resources to purchase the land (Hume, 1978, p489). That is why in the governments of today, countries have three categories of land.
There is private property and public land. Once someone has purchased a piece of land no other individual can access the land to labor in it or put into other uses without the consent of the owner(Waldron, 2010). The owner has the right to do anything with his land as long as it is legal use of the land. Public land is owned by the state and is communal property such as parks and other recreational centers.
Locke began with the idea that in the beginning land belonged to all the people equally. The concept of communal or common property was supported by several scholars. Plato had the similar views with Locke. He believed that concept of private property should not be encouraged. It would only go to ensure that the interests of just a select
few and not everyone in the society (Plato, 1993, 426b-c) Aristotle however saw the benefits of private property. He put forward that private property ensured efficiency in the market place. Every one now was forced to mind his own financial affairs and ensure his business was running place (Aristotle, 1988, 1263a)
I disagree with this view because even in the olden days, land was a scarce resource. There were fights and wars between different kings as they choose to possess more land. The one who owned the land was the one who had survived and won the battles. Later, in the evolution of society and the increase in economic development, people started to trade for land using money instead of fighting.
I do not agree with Locke that the government in place would work to ensure that people are able to exercise their natural law to property. Like Marx, I agree that one of the ills in the society is the creation of the elite class that is politically connected. The rich elite are able to influence the government to put policies and market systems that help them in amassing more wealth and suppressing the poor.
The people cannot really overthrow the government when they realize what they are doing is wrong. The workers are in the mercy of the rich elite who control the government. Karl Marx did not have any faith in a government that promoted private property without inequality. He therefore saw the workers getting tired of the rich elite and arising to overthrow the government in a socialist revolution (Marx & Engels, 1999, p15) This would end the evil capital system in the world.
References
Aristotle (1988) The Politics [c. 330 BCE], Stephen Everson (ed.), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Hume, D. (1978). A Treatise of Human Nature [1739] L.A. Selby–Bigge and P. H. Nidditch (eds.).Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Locke, J. (1988). Two Treatises of Government [1689] Peter Laslett (ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Marx, Karl and Fredrich Engels. Communist Manifesto. New York; Signet Classics, 1999.
Plato, Republic [c. 370 BCE], Robin Waterfield (trans.), Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993.
Simmons, A. (1992). The Lockean Theory of Rights, Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Tuckness, A. (2010). Locke’s Political Philosophy. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Fall Edition. Retrieved from: https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2010/entries/locke-political/
Waldron, J. (2010). Property and Ownership. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Winter Edition. Retrieved from: https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2010/entries/property/