Locke: The Problem of Hoarding Goods

"And thus came in the use of money, some lasting thing that men might keep without spoiling, and that by mutual consent men would take in exchange for the truly useful, but perishable supports of life." (Section 47)

John Locke, A second Treatise on Government. Hackett Publishing Company, Indianapolis and Cambridge 1980. (Gutenberg txt). Image: P.D. White. http://www.pdwhite.com/dragons-hoard.html

In order to sanction the right to private property which is so essential in Locke's theory, he had to prove why it was such an attractive idea. He did so by stating that private property is more lucrative than common or shared property. A field, he said, will yield to one person about as much as this person will invest. If many people cultivate a field with the goal to get only as much grain as they can consume themselves, the field will produce very little. However, if one person works the field intensively, and invests all his time and energy in it, the produce is increased tenfold, if not a hundred or even a thousandfold. The surplus, of course, was to be shared by everyone, after all it is against the natural law to hoard perishable resources, and waste them. 

Having proved that private property was indeed more lucrative, Locke had yet to evince how it was worth someone's precious time and energy. After all, there was always the risk that one industrious person would work himself to death, all the while feeding a bunch of opportunists: people who only needed to sit by and wait while the harvest threatened to rot. The invention of money, whereby gold, which is naturally scarce and therefore valuable was substituted for perishable goods, was a convenient solution in order to prevent such a situation. Money, to Locke, is the motor behind industriousness. It allowed hardworking people to get every penny's worth of their time in the field. Since money kept forever, and because it was not a commodity that people needed in order to live, breathe or be healthy it was exempt from the restrictions against hoarding, condoning the unlimited, unconscionable accumulation of it. Ironically, though, the problem Locke first set out to solve was the problem of the unlimited, unconscionable accumulation of power. 

Instead of denying the problem of the unlimited accumulation of goods, Locke faced it head-on and decided that it didn't have to be detrimental to his theory. The desire to amass property doesn't have to be problematic if it doesn't harm anybody physically by creating scarcity. His solution, therefore was, once again not political -it preceded the instigation of a legal authority- but economical. If everyone were to keep working in their fields, their orchards, their workshops resources would become so plentiful that no one would ever have to be hungry again. To many modern readers this will sound like an oversimplified, if not blatantly naive portrayal of productivity. Time has taught us that there is no inexhaustible resource, and concerning what little there is, increased labour will not always yield bigger produce. 

Locke: on Property

“Though the earth, and all inferior creatures, be common to all men, yet every man has a property in his own person: this no body has any right to but himself. The labour of his body, and the work of his hands, we may say, are properly his. Whatsoever then he removes out of the state that nature hath provided, and left it in, he hath mixed his labour with, and joined to it something that is his own, and thereby makes it his property.” (section 27)

John Locke, A second Treatise on Government. Hackett Publishing Company, Indianapolis and Cambridge 1980. (Gutenberg txt). Image: dreamstime.com

Property, to Locke, is as important as self-preservation. In fact, his concept of self-preservation is derived from the right to self-ownership: after all "every man has a property in his own person". Self-ownership includes the right to life, health and freedom because these sustain it, but also the right to whatever is a product of one's hands, and one's labour. Property is assembled by mixing that labour with a natural resource i.e. the labour of picking an apple makes that apple the property of the picker. But why is property so important to Locke, when in Hobbes is was wholly neglected? 

Locke, unlike Hobbes, was looking for ways to strengthen the individual’s position in relation to his lord and to his fellow man. He did so by granting him a right of property. If citizens can be landowners, they can contribute financially, which makes them a powerful demographic; private property is more lucrative than shared property, to both society and individual. Whereas in a shared operation people might shirk work, private landowners will not. They will exploit their resources to the utmost degree, after all, the benefits are theirs and do not need to be divided over a large group of people. These benefits  become especially worthwhile with the invention of money, which allows them to be hoarded. Additionally, having property means one has the ability to step out of a social contract. Imagine a person born under a polity which eventually he disagrees with, but, by which he has acquired a lot of property. All that is necessary for him to break with the contract is to give up said property and move out. The benefit for those under a Lockeian contract (as opposed to a Hobbesian) is that one need not be in mortal danger to break with it. The conditions are far more lenient.  

Locke: an Alternate State of Nature

"Men living together according to reason, without a common superior on earth, with authority to judge between them, is properly the state of nature. But force, or a declared design of force, upon the person of another, where there is no common superior on earth to appeal to for relief, is the state of war: and it is the want of such an appeal gives a man the right of war even against an aggressor, tho' he be in society and a fellow subject." (section 19)

John Locke, A second Treatise on Government. Hackett Publishing Company, Indianapolis and Cambridge 1980. (Gutenberg txt). Image: sir G. Kneller, portrait of John Locke.1697. Houghton Hall 1779.

The Glorious Revolution was to Locke as the civil war was to Hobbes; the two important political events supplied these great thinkers with crucial moments of insight. In 1688 king James the II (of England) was overthrown by parliament. The struggle was mainly a religious one: the Catholic Royals had always clashed with parliament, which was predominantly protestant. However, both parties had been pressing each other’s buttons for over centuries now, competing for power. A year after the Glorious Revolution the Bill of Rights was drawn up, which first attributed citizens with inviolable rights. 

Locke abhorred absolute, unlimited power. His work on political theory does its best to protect citizens from the whimsy of their ruler(s) consolidating their position and property. Clearly, Locke had a decidedly better opinion about mankind, as his view on the natural condition will demonstrate. Locke's natural condition is, exactly as in Hobbes' theory, a pre-political world where people are rational agents, roughly equal to each other. However, where in Hobbes' theory this equality bred war and damnation, Locke sees it as the foundation for empathy and respect. Reason teaches man too cherish that which makes him human, and therefore to cherish the same in others. As a result, it is a natural law to preserve one's fellow man as well as oneself (with the latter taking precedence over the former in drastic circumstances).  While this natural law is adhered to by the general majority, things will start to fall apart when even some few individuals fail to respect it. 

To deviate from the golden rule -treat others as you would like to be treated yourself- is, according to Locke, irrational, but it happens. People are often overruled by their passions: covetousness, greed, lust etc. The threat of this irrationality is a constant concern for the inhabitants of the idyllic natural condition. When one individual falters, and endeavours to subject others to his will, the response from the community –for it is by that time a community, if not yet a polity- is fierce and indignant. Whereas generally an offense should be repaid in proportion to the severity of its consequences, some offenses will call for a more emotional response; and crucially, with everyone being free and equal, everyone is free to become his or her own executioner. For lack of a neutral authority to decide on proper justice, there is no deterrent against revenge. Thus a circle of enmity and malice is born and gone is the Arcadia of the natural condition. 

Hobbes: Irrationality and the Social Contract

“There is a fourth major problem with Hobbes's analysis, one which obviously bothered him considerably. How is his theory going to work for someone who fears eternal damnation more than an immediate earthly death? Why should someone who fears God more than the Sovereign obey the Sovereign rather than God? (...) the fear of invisible powers is stronger than the fear of violent death as long as people believe in invisible powers, i.e., as long as they are under the spell of delusions about the true character of reality; the fear of violent death comes fully into its own as soon as people have become enlightened.”

Ian Johnston. (lectures) On Hobbes Leviathan. Vancouver Island University. Last edited Dec. 2002. http://records.viu.ca/~johnstoi/introser/hobbes.htm [05-04-13] Image: M. Dur. Touch Wood. Cartoonstock. 

In order for his theory to work, Hobbes relies on the presupposition that man is a rational being. After all, the social contract is a set of rules that all (or most) rational creatures would adhere to. But how rational are humans really? It is important to question these presuppositions because Hobbes may take them for granted. Sure, man is possessed of a rudimentary kind of rationality that enables him, for example, to weigh pros against cons, or to do some basic problem-solving; but man is also afraid of the dark, deeply religious and sometimes incredible stubborn and/or irrational.  

It is not an act of reason to believe that, during mass, the wine and bread physically turn into the blood and flesh of Christ, but rather an act of faith. Faith, to Hobbes, was very problematic, not only because the Pope competed with the sovereign for the obedience of the people, but also because faith or superstition -so ingrained into our thoughts- will keep us from giving the social contract a fair consideration.

It is not just religion that has to be curbed in order for the social contract to stand a fighting chance. Hobbes overlooks, or merely refuses to accept many 'irrational', but essentially human characteristics that have the potential to overthrow the social contract. The human need for bonds, friendships and love is blatantly neglected in Hobbes' theory. Man may not be the sociable animal of ancient Greece, who revels in politics, but he is also certainly not solitary. Family matters.  Hobbes insistence on vertical bonds i.e. laws between sovereign and citizen is not enough to offer adequate direction. The natural hierarchy between people, families, neighbourhoods, religious orders as well as the bonds between them (and their Gods) all need to  be kept in mind in the formulation of any kind of social contract. 

Focus: Rationality

Now that More, Machiavelli and Hobbes have all passed the revue, -each contributing their own answers to perennial questions regarding political philosophy, it seems only right that, in order to avoid repetition, and to add an agreeable specificity to this blog, one particular topic should be singled out among others which is to be focused on in more detail.

From this point onward I'll try to comment on the concept of rationality as it is used by the political philosophers that have yet to follow: Locke and Rousseau. Rationality is an interesting concept because, in the 18th century, the age of reason, it occupied an important role in any theory about humankind and the manner in which he congregates. Rationality has been both lauded and criticized and it appears in many different definitions. Furthermore, because rationality is believed to be such an inherent part of human nature, and because political philosophers merely derive their theories on politics from their view of human nature, a research on rationality is sure to come to some interesting conclusion.