What Makes Something Truly Ours?
In Of Property, Chapter V of the Second Treatise of Government, John Locke asks a question that appears simple but leads to much larger questions about freedom, work, wealth and justice:
How can something become mine if the world was originally given to everyone?
Locke begins with the idea that the earth and its natural resources belong to humankind in common.
But people must use these resources in order to live.
Food must be gathered. Land must be cultivated. Water must be collected. Nature may be common to everyone, but human beings cannot survive unless individuals are able to make use of particular parts of it.
So how does common property become private property?
Locke’s answer begins with the individual.
He argues that every person has a property in his own person. Our bodies belong to us. Therefore, our labour also belongs to us.
If a person takes something from nature and adds his labour to it, he adds something that is his own.
An apple growing naturally on a tree belongs, in the beginning, to no particular person. But if someone picks that apple, the act of gathering it changes its position. Human labour has been added to what nature provided.
For Locke, this is the beginning of property.
This does not require the permission of every other person.
If everyone had to obtain the agreement of all humanity before eating an apple or drawing water from a stream, ordinary life would become impossible. Locke therefore argues that labour can create a legitimate claim without universal consent.
But there are limits.
Locke does not initially say that a person may simply take as much as possible.
His first important limit is that there must be enough, and as good, left for others.
His second limit concerns waste.
A person may take what can genuinely be used. But if someone gathers so much food that it rots before it can be consumed, that person has taken more than his proper share.
For Locke, nature was not given to human beings simply to be wasted or destroyed.
The same reasoning is then applied to land.
If someone works land, cultivates it, plants it and makes productive use of it, Locke argues that this labour can establish a claim to that land.
Again, however, the original argument assumes that enough land of similar quality remains available to others.
This raises one of the most important questions in the text:
Does ownership come simply from possession, or from what we contribute through our work?
For Locke, labour is central.
But human societies do not remain in this simple condition.
Everything changes with money.
Food spoils. Gold and silver do not.
People can therefore exchange things that would perish for something durable that can be kept for a very long time. Money makes it possible to store value and accumulate far more than one person could directly use.
This creates a major change.
Without money, there is little reason to own vastly more land or goods than one can actually use.
With money, wealth can continue to grow.
Locke recognises that this makes unequal possession possible. He argues that because people agree to give money value, they also consent to a system in which some people can possess much more than others.
The argument therefore moves from a very simple world of nature, labour and use to a much more complicated world of money, accumulation, law and government.
And this creates difficult questions.
How much can one person fairly own?
If labour creates property, what happens where many people contribute labour?
Does the right to property remain unlimited after the original conditions have changed?
What does it mean to leave “enough and as good” for others in a world where land and resources are limited?
Does consent to the use of money really mean consent to very large inequalities?
And can wealth become so concentrated that the property of some begins to reduce the freedom or opportunities of others?
Locke also recognises an important difference between the original state of nature and organised society.
In established societies, property is governed by laws and agreements. A person cannot simply take common land because he has decided to work it. Existing laws and the rights of others must also be respected.
This brings government into the picture.
The introductory material to the reading explains that, as property relations become more complex, society needs an authority capable of establishing and protecting common rules of justice. Locke sees this as an important function of government.
Of Property therefore asks us to think about much more than ownership.
It asks us about the relationship between the individual and the community, work and reward, freedom and limits, wealth and justice.
Perhaps its deepest question is still remarkably current:
How can we protect what individuals legitimately create without forgetting that the world from which all wealth ultimately comes was not created by any one of us?
Locke gives labour a powerful place in the origin of property.
But he also reminds us that property begins within limits: use rather than waste, and individual ownership without denying others their own opportunity.
The tension between these ideas remains with us.
Property may protect individual freedom, but justice also asks what our ownership leaves for others.
- George Ph Georgiou is an Alumnus and Ambassador of Agora Dialogue, contributing to its continuing exchange of knowledge, ideas and thoughtful public dialogue.
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