Response to Umer and Dara (wouldn't let me comment due to length)

Hey Umer and Dara, this is a really interesting discussion that I think, contrary to what you said in your original post Umer, gets at a central part of Anderson's argument:  Locke considered inequality to be one of the issues that humans leave the state of nature to address. I agree with Umer that Locke does not necessarily believe scarcity is the only cause for conflict in the state of nature, although I think your argument to that effect makes sense Dara. Locke talks about conflict within the state of nature as resulting from punishing transgressions of the law of nature, which include theft and assault. It's easy to see how these could result from scarcity, but also how they might just be an easier way for someone to get something they want than by justly appropriating the commons, since the latter requires labor. 

I think Anderson is reaching here, and not just here. Maybe Locke cared about addressing poverty once the commons have been appropriated, but he certainly cared about the natural right to ones own property. The former requires a good bit of (admittedly sensible) extra-textual reasoning, the latter is stated explicitly again and again throughout the Second Treatise. Anderson also relies on Locke's role in English politics, the ideological context of the Puritan work ethic, and his other writings to make her case. Taking the Second Treatise at face value, I think Locke's openness to redistributive policy is murky at best.

The paper focuses heavily on the sections from the property chapter that create confusion as to whether and how the "as much and as good" proviso holds after the creation of money. Where Waldron reads the section on tacit consent to money as a weak argument for money's removal of the sufficiency proviso, Anderson reads it as an acknowledgement of the need for a "solution to the failure of the sufficiency proviso" in nature, which the state can provide (Anderson 34). She grounds this in a desire to be charitable to Locke and not accept that he would argue that the poor would consent to a convention that leads to their own impoverishment. I found this unconvincing. Given Locke's views of the poor that Anderson explored later on in the paper, is it so hard to believe that he would make that argument?

Looking back at the section you quoted Umer, I also noticed that Locke qualified his desire for a person to look after the good of others as only necessary "when his own preservation comes not in competition," (Locke Para. 6). In the chapter on the ends of political society and government, his individualist streak is even clearer. He says that "no rational creature can be supposed to change his condition with an intention to be worse,"  meaning the state is "obliged to protect every one's property." To me, this is clearly in contrast to the idea that the people form states to remedy poverty, thereby making the rich worse off with respect to their property than they are in the state of nature.

I think Anderson's argument for a progressive Locke with respect to land in particular is harder to refute, since Locke states directly that the value of the land comes from those who work it. That those workers should be poor and landowners rich certainly seems counter to Locke's ideas and implies that the landowners did not follow the sufficiency proviso. I agree that he would therefore want some of that wealth redistributed. I think Anderson's error is connecting that case to a proviso-based obligation for the state to address poverty writ large. When wealth comes not from land but from investment of funds acquired through gifts or labor income, what grounds could there be to redistribute? Imagine a world where the commons are appropriated in accordance with the proviso and everyone has an essentially even amount of land. There is no doubt that some might still become fabulously rich, and others relatively poor. I don't think we can say that Locke would object to that, and arguing otherwise, as Anderson does, require arguing that civil society must resolve scarcity-based conflicts in accordance with a principle other than the preservation of property and life that Locke so clearly delimits.

The centrality of land in Anderson's argument forces her to rely on the economic conditions of Locke's time. Her argument that people enter society to look after one another more generally seems to be out of keeping with Locke's views on the centrality of self preservation. Although convincing, I don't think her argument is sufficient to dethrone Locke as a libertarian.