Locke

“ Thus the grass my horse has bit; the turfs my servant has cut; and the ore I have digged in any place, where I have a right to them in common with others; become my property, without the assignation or consent of any body. The labour that was mine, removing them out of that common state they were in, hath fixed my property in them.”
 – John Locke, Two Treatises of Government

 My awesome econ class this semester just read Locke’s Two Treatises of Government, and we talked a lot about this passage – the turfs passage – because it’s been a heavily studied thing in economic history.  The big deal about it is the phrase “the turfs my servant has cut.”  Locke’s general idea of property is that, if you put work into something, and anybody else could have done it, than it is your property.  So if you plant an apple tree, it’s your apple tree, because anybody else could have planted an apple tree just as you did.  

So the turf’s passage causes many people to give an intellectual double take – it is easy to get that my horse’s grazing land is mine, and that if I dig ore it is mine – but I did not cut the turfs.  My servant cut the turfs.  So why is it my property and not my servants? Like I said, this causes many people to give an involuntary intellectual double take.  A little “what the hell” moment, if you will.  Locke’s point is that a person’s work creates his own property, so why is he saying that the fruits of one man’s labor are another man’s property?  This didn’t cause me to do an intellectual double take.  Look at language in which Locke writes – you can tell from the passage he likes to use personal pronouns.  He also likes to talk about “we” – he is including himself and his reader, although he may mean all of man when he says “we.”  Because he also likes to talk about man – man this and man that – to talk about the nature of . . . man.  And given when he was writing this, I am certain he was not using “man” as an all-inclusive and gender non-specific, as it is often used today.  His language and the time period in which he is writing make it clear to me that the fruits of my labor would not be counted in my property.  Just like the grass the servant cuts, the things that I create or achieve are the property of another.  The turf passage does not stand out to me because I do not stand out to Locke – it makes sense to me that he might consider the fruits of some people’s labor as a different person’s property because Locke has been telling me that this is the case the whole time.  

This is something I totally expect out of this class – these are not modern writings, and I do happen to know that history is not all hunky dory when it comes to the rights of women.  I’m actually really excited because my professor managed to get a female economist onto the reading list.   My point is just that all these feminist perspectives on things pop into my head and it’s totally awesome.