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.
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