Autor: Strauss, Leo

Buch: Natural Right and History

Titel: Natural Right and History

Stichwort: Locke; Eigentum

Kurzinhalt: Locke's doctrine of property, which is almost literally the central part of his political teaching, is certainly its most characteristic part.

Textausschnitt: 234a Locke's doctrine of property, which is almost literally the central part of his political teaching, is certainly its most characteristic part.1 It distinguishes his political teaching most clearly not only from that of Hobbes but from the traditional teachings as well. Being a part of his natural law teaching, it partakes of all the complexities of the latter. Its peculiar difficulty can be provisionally stated as follows: Property is an institution of natural law; natural law defines the manner and the limitations of just appropriation. Men own property prior to civil society; they enter civil society in order to preserve or protect the property which they acquired in the state of nature. But, once civil society is formed, if not before, the natural law regarding property ceases to be valid; what we may call "conventional" or "civil" property--the property which is owned within civil society--is based on positive law alone. Yet, while civil society is the creator of civil property, it is not its master: civil society must respect civil property; civil society has, as it were, no other function but to serve its own creation. Locke claims for civil property a much greater sanctity than for natural property, i.e., the property which is acquired and owned exclusively on the basis of natural law, of "the highest law." Why, then, is he so anxious to prove that property antedates civil society?2 (Fs)

235a The natural right to property is a corollary of the fundamental right of self-preservation; it is not derivative from compact, from any action of society. If everyone has the natural right to preserve himself, he necessarily has the right to everything that is necessary for his self-preservation. What is necessary for self-preservation is not so much, as Hobbes may seem to have believed, knives and guns as victuals. Food is conducive to self-preservation only if it is eaten, i.e., appropriated in such a manner that it becomes the exclusive property of the individual; there is then a natural right to some "private dominion exclusive of the rest of mankind." What is true of food applies mutatis mutandis to all other things required for self-preservation and even for comfortable self-preservation, for man has a natural right not only to self-preservation but to the pursuit of happiness as well. (Fs)

236a The natural right of everyone to appropriate everything that is useful to him must be limited if it is not to be incompatible with the peace and preservation of mankind. That natural right must exclude any right to appropriate things which have already been appropriated by others; taking things which others have appropriated, i.e., harming others, is against the natural law. Nor does natural law encourage begging; need as such is not a title to property. Persuasion gives as little a title to property as does force. The only honest way of appropriating things is by taking them, not from other men, but directly from nature, "the common mother of all"; by making one's own what previously belonged to no one and therefore might be taken by anyone; the only honest way of appropriating things is by one's own labor. Everyone is by nature the exclusive owner of his body and hence of the work of his body, i.e., of his labor. Therefore, if a man mixes his labor--be it only the labor involved in picking berries--with things of which no one is the owner, those things become an indissoluble mixture of his exclusive property with no one's property, and therefore they become his exclusive property. Labor is the only title to property which is in accordance with natural right. "Man, by being master of himself and proprietor of his own person and the actions or labour of it, [has] in himself the great foundation of property."3 Not society, but the individual--the individual prompted by his self-interest alone--is the originator of property. (Fs)

236b Nature has set "a measure of property": there are natural law limitations to what a man may appropriate. Everyone may appropriate by his labor as much as is necessary and useful for his self-preservation. He may therefore appropriate in particular as much land as he can use for tilling or grazing. If he has more than he can use of one kind of things (a) and less than he can use of another kind (b), he could make a useful to himself by bartering it away from b. Hence every man may appropriate by his labor not only what is in itself useful to him but also what could become useful to him if bartered away for other useful things. Man may appropriate by his labor all those things, but only those things, which are, or may become, useful to him; he may not appropriate things which through his appropriating them would cease to be useful; he may appropriate as much as he "can make use of to any advantage of life before it spoils." He may therefore accumulate many more nuts which "last good for his eating a whole year" than plums which would "rot in a week." As for things which never spoil and, in addition, are of no "real use," such as gold, silver, and diamonds, he may "heap" as much of them as he pleases. For it is not "the largeness" of what a man appropriates by his labor (or by bartering the products of his labor) but "the perishing anything uselessly in [his] possession" which makes him guilty of a crime against the natural law. He may therefore accumulate very little of perishable and useful things. He may accumulate very much of durable and useful things. He may accumulate infinitely much of gold and silver.4 The terrors of the natural law no longer strike the covetous, but the waster. The natural law regarding property is concerned with the prevention of waste; in appropriating things by his labor, man must think exclusively of the prevention of waste; he does not have to think of other human beings.5 Chacun pour soi; Dieu four nous tous. (Fs)

237a The law of nature regarding property, as hitherto summarized, applies only to the state of nature or to a certain stage of the state of nature. It is the "original law of nature" which obtained "in the first ages of the world" or "in the beginning."6 And it obtained in that remote past only because the conditions in which men then lived required it. The law of nature could remain silent about the interests or needs of other men because these needs were taken care of by "the common mother of all"; however much a man might appropriate by his labor, there was "enough and as good left in common for others." The original law of nature was the dictate of reason in the beginning, because in the beginning the world was sparsely populated and there was "plenty of natural provisions."7 This cannot mean that early men lived in a state of abundance showered upon them by their common mother; for if this had been the case, man would not have been compelled from the very beginning to work for his living, and the law of nature would not have prohibited so sternly every kind of waste. The natural plenty is only a potential plenty: "nature and the earth furnished only the almost worthless materials as in themselves"; they furnished "acorn, water, and leaves, or skins," the food and drink and clothing of the golden age or of the Garden of Eden, as distinguished from "bread, wine, and cloth." The natural plenty, the plenty of the first ages, never became actual plenty during the first ages; it was actual penury. This being the case, it was plainly impossible for man to appropriate by his labor more than the bare necessities of life or what was absolutely necessary for mere self-preservation (as distinguished from comfortable self-preservation); the natural right to comfortable self-preservation was illusory. But precisely for this reason, every man was forced to appropriate by his labor what he needed for his self-preservation without any concern for other men. For man is obliged to be concerned with the preservation of others only if and when "his own preservation comes not in competition."8 Locke explicitly justifies man's natural right to appropriate and to own without concern for the needs of others by referring to the plenty of natural provisions which was available in the beginning; but such unconcern can be justified equally well on his principles if one assumes that men lived in a state of penury; and it must be justified in the latter manner, since Locke says that the only men to whom the original law of nature applied lived in a state of penury. It is the poverty of the first ages of the world which explains why the original law of nature (1) commanded appropriation by labor alone, (2) commanded the prevention of waste, and (3) permitted unconcern for the need of other human beings. Appropriation without concern for the need of others is simply justified because it is justified regardless of whether men lived in a state of plenty or in a state of penury. (Fs)