Locke on the Common Division of Property - Jemma Nazarali

Something that stuck out to me about Locke’s understanding of property rights was his conception of labor in relation to the acquisition of property. According to Locke, laboring upon a common resource makes that resource one’s property. This is because man has a right to his labor, so mixing his labor with anything makes that thing his property. Furthermore, Locke claims that because labor takes effort, people have no incentive to acquire more property than they can enjoy: “it was a foolish thing, as well as dishonest, to hoard up more than he could make use of” (28). However, with modern technology, people can “labor” upon common resources without exerting very much effort. For example, the modernization of farming technology allows farmers to harvest more crops with the same, or even less, amount of effort. Thus, while people were once disincentivized from taking more property than they could enjoy, they now have little reason to limit their acquisitions as they can acquire much greater amounts of property with little increase in effort.

Furthermore, Locke claims that acquiring property is beneficial not only to the individual, but also to the community as a whole: “he who appropriates land to himself by his labor, does not lessen, but increases the common stock of mankind: for the provisions serving to the support of human life, produced by one acre of inclosed and cultivated land, are (to speak much within compass) ten times more than those which are yielded by an acre of land of an equal richness lying waste in common” (23). Therefore, as long as one was not appropriating more property than he could enjoy, he was actually contributing to society by laboring upon common resources. However, I wonder how Locke might have accounted for the negative externalities that often arise, especially in the modern era, from laboring upon common resources. For example, say an individual cuts down trees and builds a factory on a plot of land near a river. This might reduce air quality and contaminate the soil and water in the region, thereby negatively impacting the health of people living in the area as well as driving up healthcare costs. For arguments’ sake, say the remaining land was still of good quality and just as usable as it had been previously. The community as a whole would still be negatively affected by the laboring of one individual in terms of health effects. Therefore, Locke may not have been accurate in claiming that the appropriation of land is always beneficial to society as whole. Man can appropriate only as much as he can enjoy without limiting others’ access to that particular resource, while still causing harm to the community as a whole. Locke might respond by claiming that “Nothing was made by God for man to spoil or destroy,” a principle that men are bound to adhere to (21). Still, it is unclear what counts as destruction, and where Locke would draw the line in regards to industrialization and pollution of much of our land today.