Autor: Manent, Pierre

Buch: An Intellectual History of Liberalism

Titel: An Intellectual History of Liberalism

Stichwort: Locke 3; Gesellschaft: Hobbes (negative Begründung), L. (Geld, Wirtschaft); das hungrige Individuum - Natur - Recht auf Eigentum - politische Ökonomie;

Kurzinhalt: The Lockean state of nature is both more individualistic and more social than that of Hobbes. Rights, in the form of the fundamental right to property, belong to the solitary individual, and this individual builds up positive relationships with others.

Textausschnitt: 44b These two conclusions of Locke's are obviously of great importance for the elaboration of liberal doctrine and deserve reflection. Let us look first at the invention of money. It is, by definition, an agreement. The origin of this agreement is the natural desire of the individual who wants to make the goods he has produced, and is incapable of consuming, incorruptible, in order to exchange them for other consumer goods which he needs. This desire is linked to the desire for preservation and is an ingenious device for satisfying it more completely. At the same time, it implies a relationship between the individuals who conclude the agreement: it is a kind of contract. Thus one sees being born from nature a society, a series of regulated relationships among individuals. In Locke's interpretation, "society," or at least its essential elements, is born before the political institution. I have mentioned that Hobbes had already elaborated the distinction between civil society and the state, or between civil society and political society. But his "civil society" is originally founded on a negative sociability, that of war. Prior to the political institution, it is essentially unbearable. With Locke, it becomes bearable. Society becomes the series of economic exchanges into which men enter as laborers and owners. The Lockean state of nature is both more individualistic and more social than that of Hobbes. Rights, in the form of the fundamental right to property, belong to the solitary individual, and this individual builds up positive relationships with others. (Fs) (notabene)

44c Locke's second conclusion concerns the delicate problem of the relationship of the individual, labor, and property. At the start, labor and property are closely linked in their common source, the individual. My labor is mine because I am the owner of my person, and my property is mine because it has its origin in my labor. Labor and property are related to each other in a circular way; at the center of this circle is the individual. But Locke is very precise: labor is only the beginning of ownership. Eventually, labor is separated from ownership. More precisely, the right to property is separated from the worker's right to the fruits of his labor. (Fs)

45a Is the laborer's right infringed, then? Not at all, Locke answers. The peculiarity of labor is not to produce the right to property, it is to produce value. The distinctive feature of property is to preserve this value, to prevent it from disappearing or being wasted. This value is best preserved when its preservation is an extension of the individual's desire for preservation. In other words, when he does not discuss the origin of property, Locke considers labor as "disindividualized," as the quantity of social labor as a whole. If property is separated from the laborer, it is not the laborer who is robbed, it is the value of labor that is preserved. (Fs)

45b In other words, in the beginning, the owner's right and the laborer's are one and the same. But once the invention of money and the development of trade make it possible for labor to be productive, to produce more than is necessary for the producer's consumption, owner and laborer become distinct. The right to property remains an individual right, the laborer's right becoming the right of work to see its product preserved, which can be done only through the individual right to property. And the laborer's right is not infringed since according to Locke, the condition of an agricultural laborer, in a society thus defined by labor's productivity and the individual right to property, is more comfortable than that of an Indian king in America. Locke begins with a strictly individualistic and moral justification of property rights and ends with a collective and utilitarian one. The final justification of the right to property is its economic utility. (Fs)

45c What Locke has made us see is the development of economic society from its modest beginning in the hungry individual. All economic life, including trade, labor's productivity, and the right to property, takes on the natural and incontestable character of the hungry individual's right to nourish himself. In this hungry individual lies the primordial basis of human life. One sees why the liberal program, once completely elaborated, made the right to property and the economy in general the foundation of social life. Although the rules organizing social life must be born strictly from the right of the solitary individual, they can find their foundation only in the relationship of this individual to nature. Simultaneously, the relationship of the individual's labor to nature conjures up a world essentially distinct from that of the individual's rights: the world of value, of the productivity of labor, of utility. From the second point of view, the right to property is no longer considered man's fundamental natural right, it is simply the means of preserving the values that result from labor's productivity, the means of production and the exchange of values. (Fs)

45d After Locke's time, and in large part thanks to him, the right to property was recognized as the fundamental natural right. When it no longer had to play this role, attention focused on this second aspect. The economy appeared less the product of solitary individuals asserting their rights, and more the "system" of production and exchange of values, "the system of political economy." And the determining notion of political economy ceased to be the absolute right of the individual, becoming an essentially relative notion, interest or utility. Locke embodies that moment when liberalism became fully aware of its foundation in the individual right to property. At the same time, he made it possible to understand how the liberal philosophy of natural right spontaneously transformed itself into an entirely different type of thought: political economy. (Fs)