Autor: Strauss, Leo

Buch: Natural Right and History

Titel: Natural Right and History

Stichwort: Locke; Eigentum (Naturzustand, Gesellschaft); Geld

Kurzinhalt: Yet Locke teaches exactly the opposite: the right to appropriate is much more restricted in the state of nature than in civil society ... the introduction of money has introduced "larger possessions and a right to them"

Textausschnitt: 239a Let us now consider that form of the law of nature regarding property which has taken the place of the original law of nature, or which regulates property within civil society. According to the original law of nature, man may appropriate by his labor as much as he can use before it spoils; no other limitations are required because there is enough and as good left for others which has not yet been appropriated by anyone. According to the original law of nature, man may appropriate by his labor as much gold and silver as he pleases because these things are of no value in themselves.1 In civil society almost everything has been appropriated; land in particular has become scarce. Gold and silver are not only scarce but, through the invention of money, they have become "so valuable to be hoarded up."2 One should therefore expect that the original law of nature has been replaced by rules imposing much severer restrictions on appropriation than those which existed in the state of nature.3 Since there is no longer enough and as good left in common for everyone, equity would seem to demand that man's natural right to appropriate as much as he can use should be restricted to the right to appropriate as much as he needs, lest the poor be "straitened." And, since gold and silver are now immensely valuable, equity would seem to demand that man should lose the natural right to accumulate as much money as he pleases. Yet Locke teaches exactly the opposite: the right to appropriate is much more restricted in the state of nature than in civil society. One privilege enjoyed by man in the state of nature is indeed denied to man living in civil society: labor no longer creates a sufficient title to property.4 But this loss is only a part of the enormous gain which the right of appropriation makes after "the first ages" have come to their end. In civil society the right of appropriation is completely freed from the shackles by which it was still fettered under Locke's original law of nature: the introduction of money has introduced "larger possessions and a right to them"; man may now "rightfully and without injury, possess more than he himself can make use of."5 Although Locke stresses the fact that the invention of money has revolutionized property, he does not say a word to the effect that the natural right to heap as much gold and silver as one pleases has been affected by that revolution. According to the natural law--and this means according to the moral law--man in civil society may acquire as much property of every kind, and in particular as much money, as he pleases; and he may acquire it in every manner permitted by the positive law, which keeps the peace among the competitors and in the interest of the competitors. Even the natural law prohibition against waste is no longer valid in civil society.6 (Fs)

242a Locke does not commit the absurdity of justifying the emancipation of acquisitiveness by appealing to a nonexistent absolute right of property. He justifies the emancipation of acquisitiveness in the only way in which it can be defended: he shows that it is conducive to the common good, to public happiness or the temporal prosperity of society. Restrictions on acquisitiveness were required in the state of nature because the state of nature is a state of penury. They can safely be abandoned in civil society because civil society is a state of plenty: "... a king of a large and fruitful territory [in America] feeds, lodges, and is clad worse than a day-labourer in England."7 The day laborer in England has no natural right even to complain about the loss of his natural right to appropriate land and other things by his labor: the exercise of all the rights and privileges of the state of nature would give him less wealth than he gets by receiving "subsistence" wages for his work. Far from being straitened by the emancipation of acquisitiveness, the poor are enriched by it. For the emancipation of acquisitiveness is not merely compatible with general plenty but is the cause of it. Unlimited appropriation without concern for the need of others is true charity. (Fs)