Every Man has Property in his Own Person - Book Report/Review Example

Every Man has Property in his Own Person Introduction The focus of this paper is to discuss the theory of John Locke on private property and his ment that "Every man has property in his own person." This is going to be a very straightforward discussion; however, the concern of this paper is on evaluating Locke's theory, so the focus of interest is rather wider. Locke's theory of property has two characteristic elements. The first element consists in a need to divorce the legitimacy of appropriation from the requirement that everyone consent to it, together with an ingenious device for doing so, the stipulation that appropriation not impair anyone's access to the materials needed to produce her subsistence. This element is the apparatus of the consent problem (Attas, 2000). The second element is the principle that individuals are entitled to a property in the products of their making, provided that there is no legitimate objection to their use of the relevant materials. This is the element the doctrine of maker's right. The conjunction of these elements defines the distinctive logic of Locke's argument. Ideally, of course, to have as complete an understanding of the matter as possible, but the question of how private property is exactly to be defined is rather intractable (Bastiat, 2003). Further consideration of its intricacies contributes little to one's ability to examine arguments for the legitimacy of the institution. Since private property represents but one form of property regime, the discussion begins by distinguishing it from other varieties of property. The challenge is to characterize the notion of a property right quite generally. Having done so, private property is fairly straightforwardly distinguished as the property regime in which this right is primarily vested in private individuals or firms. Every Man has Property in his Own Person According to Clarke and Kohler, in an ordinary person's perspective, property is defined to be an object that is "tangible" and owned by a natural person, a group, an organization or a unit of government (Clarke and Kohler, 2005). However, Clarke and Kohler say that this definition is not true for the subsequent basis: it mystifies the term property with different issues of property, and it did not succeed to identify the issues of property that it may be also intangible. From lawyer's point of view, property is not just an object, although objects can be regard as property. Property is a secured belief under the law, being able to put parameters on some benefits from that object based on the nature of the case. Although these debate about property in which Locke and these authors participated was shaped by a concern, the same cannot be said for the idiom in terms of which this debate was conducted (Broad, 2000). Locke writes in the language of seventeenth-century natural law and natural rights discourse and his theory of property is informed by the intellectual matrix constituted by that tradition. The starting point for the analysis of property in this natural law tradition is the common right which men have in all things (Carson, 2004). That this is a familiar proposition does not excuse Locke from having to provide an argument for it. Locke's argument begins from the premises that men are 'all the Workmanship of one Omnipotent, and infinitely wise Maker; All the Servants of one Sovereign Master, sent into the World by his order and about his business'. If observes, 'to John Locke this was a proposition of common sense, the initial proposition of a work which appeals to common sense throughout.' From the fact that God created man to do his bidding, it must be concluded that God intended for man to be preserved and 'not that so curious and wonderful a piece of Workmanship by its own Negligence or want of Necessaries, should perish again, presently after a few moments continuance'. This conclusion is reinforced by rational consideration of the strong desire of self-preservation which God has planted in man as a principle of action: 'Reason, which was the voice of God in him, could not but teach him and assure him, that pursuing that natural Inclination he had to preserve his Being, he followed the Will of his Maker'. On Locke's account, the original and foundation of all Law is dependency (Carson, 2004). A dependent intelligent being is under the power and direction and dominion of him on whom he depends and must be for the ends appointed by that superior being. If man were independent he could have no law but his own will not end but himself. In the study of Clarke and Kohler (2005), they presented three theories on private property: (1) occupation theory, that the effortless factor of occupation or possession of a material thing validates legal security of the owner's state to the thing, (2) the labor theory, that an individual has an ethical right to the possession and have power over things he creates or purchases in the course of his or her labor; (3) the "contract" theory -that private property is the effect of a contract between a person and his community. Hence, these theories of private property impose a natural duty on mankind: 'Everyone is bound to preserve himself' and, other things being equal, 'to preserve the rest of Mankind'. It follows that men have a natural right to preservation and to preserve themselves, these two natural rights may be distinguished by considering the particular duty each right imposes on others when possessed by a rights-bearer. In the former case, others have a duty to refrain from directly endangering the Almost as common to the traditional natural law analysis of property as the initial assumption of property in common is a notorious difficulty to which that assumption gave rise. Man may be endowed communally, but he must be nourished individually (Clarke and Kohler, 2005). Yet, in taking any particular item from the common, it would seem that a man violates the rights of the other commoners, to whom, ex hypothesi, that particular item also belongs. An original community of property therefore appears to be inconsistent with the formation of individual property rights. Consequently, 'this community being supposed, it seems to some a very great difficulty, how any one should ever come to have a Property in any thing'. Locke sets himself the task of resolving this difficulty. To be precise, Locke sets himself a somewhat more ambitious task: he wants to demonstrate not simply that his initial community of property can be reconciled with the emergence of individual property rights, but that this can be done without recourse to the mediation of consent. The Treatise of Government The Two Treatise of Government is the most popular and influential land acquisition theories by Locke. This theory is patterned according the truism of a formerly un-owned dimension. This explains a vaguely invented self-possession in asserting that there should always be "enough and as good" left, for people to obtain, when possession has been earned. The theory presents, this means in fact that there can be no property acquired at all, since each achievement of property is a component of the inclination towards a condition where there is not "sufficient and as superior" left. Based on the theories of Locke's contemporary like Stuart Mill, they both agree that the groundwork of property is construction, but concludes that land, since it must be initially un-owned, cannot become property (Attas, 2000). This theory distinguishes property in land as a lawful unit only, and asserts that land rent increases value not directly caused by the labor of the possessor is a merchandise of society and therefore should be reallocated to society through taxation. According to the property law of Ackerman, there is a probability that as an alternative for classifying the association between the possessor and his property, property law focuses on the association that happens between the possessors with the value of property (Clarke and Kohler, 2005). Every source user is envisions as investment package of rights and other possible consumers; certainly in the contemporary American structure the customs in which consumer rights may be lawfully enclosed and dispersed are astonishingly diverse. And it is almost certainly never true that the law consigns to any individual the right to make use of everything in completely any means he satisfies. Therefore, it perils severe uncertainty to recognize any individual as the possessor of any particular thing. At one level of description, the aim of Locke's argument is to demonstrate that men can legitimately acquire individual property rights in things in the state of nature. This aim is to be achieved within the theoretical framework given by the natural law tradition (Clarke and Kohler, 2005). The original condition of the state of nature in this framework is one of positive communism, in which everything is owned by everyone in common. This natural right to property in common, which everyone enjoys, is equivalent to the natural right to the means of preservation. The natural right to the means of preservation ultimately derives from the fundamental law of nature, which enjoins the preservation of mankind. In order to achieve his aim, then, Locke has to show that positive communism constitutes no impediment to the legitimate acquisition of individual property rights in the state of nature (Bastiat, 2003). Locke had previously attempted to solve this problem by positing a worldwide compact in accordance with which individual property rights were acquired through universal consent. Although it interrupts the order of Locke's own presentation, we shall proceed immediately to his solution of the consent problem. The presumption that positive communism is an impediment to individual appropriation rests on the supposition that individual appropriation violates everyone's right to property in common (Carson, 2004). If this supposition is mistaken, however, then the presumption underlying the consent problem will prove to be specious. Locke's strategy, accordingly, is to argue that under certain conditions individual appropriation does not violate anyone's right to property in common and hence its legitimacy requires the consent of no one (Locke, 1988). The individual property rights men may acquire in accordance with Locke's integrated argument are subject to two provisos (Carson, 2004). The first requires that one appropriate only as much as one can use before it spoils, and is imposed by the law of nature. The second proviso is the sufficiency condition, imposed by the exigencies of avoiding recourse to universal consent in a context of positive communism. Conclusion The structure of Locke's argument for the legitimacy of private property is clearly analyzable into two distinct substructures. The substructures have been identified as the apparatus of the consent problem and the doctrine of maker's right. From the standpoint of the argument itself, these substructures are interdependent (Attas, 2000). Without the contribution of the latter, the legitimacy of appropriating particular things remains unexplained. The issue between these interpretations turns on the question of whether an able-bodied individual can exercise his right to the means of preservation other than by laboring (Bastiat, 2003) If he cannot, then our interpretation is upheld. As alternative means of exercising this right, the competing interpretation proposes the rights of charity and inheritance. But since the former of these rights does not inhere in able-bodied individuals and the latter does not excuse them from laboring, they do not constitute alternatives in the required sense. There are limitations in the nature of property of Locke arise in virtue of the fact that the right to use a thing does not entail any of the other standard incidents of liberal ownership. Some of these other incidents or elements thereof represent what we have called permissible incidents of private property (Carson, 2004): The theory on property by Locke is limited with respect to its permissible incidents in the sense that these incidents may be legitimately included in a more determinate specification of The theory of property only granted some supplementary argument or social agreement in favor of their inherence.. The legitimacy of Locke's view on property, however specified in relation to its permissible incidents, is also subject to and hence limited by four conditions. Foremost among these is the sufficiency condition (Attas, 2000). This condition requires the conservation of everyone's liberty of access to the means of production at the surplus level (Clarke and Kohler, 2005). The other three conditions on the legitimacy of Locke's view on property are the spoilage condition and the necessity of satisfying the disabled right of charity and dependent children's right of maintenance. Since everyone is originally entitled to this access in the state of nature, a weaker sufficiency condition would allow the institution of private property to injure some people by infringing their access to the means of production and would thereby reinstate the presumption that their consent is required (Clarke and Kohler, 2005). No attempt was made in general to determine the level of surplus production at which everyone's liberty of access to the means of production must be conserved, but a case was made that the sufficiency condition would, in any event, be satisfied by a regime of Locke's theory on property that limited property in the material means of production to the greatest universal share. References Attas, Daniel ( 2000). "Freedom and Self-Ownership," Social Theory and Practice, No. 26, pages 1-23.London: Routledge. Bastiat, Frdric (2003). The Law. Edited by Andr S Estermann. New York: Foundation for Economic Education. Carson, Kevin A. (2004). Studies in Mutualist Political Economy. Fayetteville: Mutualist.org. Clarke, Alison and Kohler, Paul (2005) Property Law: Commentary Materials. Cambridge University Press. Locke, John 91988). Two Treatises of Government. Third/Student edition. Edited by Peter Laslett, Raymond Geuss, and Quentin Skinner. New York: Oxford University Press. Read More