Cohen on Locke, Land and Labour
| Published date | 01 March 1992 |
| DOI | 10.1111/j.1467-9248.1992.tb01760.x |
| Author | Andrew Williams |
| Date | 01 March 1992 |
| Subject Matter | Article |
Political
Studies
(1992),
XL,
51-66
Cohen
on
Locke, Land and Labour
ANDREW
WILLIAMS*
Jesus
College,
Oxford
G.
A. Cohen has argued that Locke’s remarks
on
the value-creatingcapacity oflabour
contain a premise which is both implausible and incoherently defended by Locke.
I
contest Cohen’s attribution oferror
to
Locke. and offer an alternative interpretation of
his remarks, integrating them within his more widely discussed labour-mixture
argument. However,
I
agree with Cohen, although for distinct reasons, that Locke’s
remarks do not constitute a plausible anti-egalitarian argument.
I
Recent accounts of Locke’s political thought are testimony to the continued
decline of the once popular image of him as a conservative advocate of
unrestricted capitalism, which was encouraged by the work
of
C.
B.
Macpherson
and Robert Nozick.‘ Richard Ashcraft,
for
example, drawing upon extensive
biographical information, has illuminated the practical and theoretical character
of Locke’s political radicalism.’ James Tully and Jeremy Waldron have
challenged, in different ways and to varying degrees, the popular view of Locke’s
theory
of
pr~perty.~ A relatively neglected aspect of the latter subject
is
my
concern in this paper.
I
shall focus upon sections
40
to
43
of
Chapter
5
of Locke’s
Second
Treatise,
in which he makes a number of claims concerning the value-
creating capacity of labour characteristic of which are the following:
. .
.labour makes the fargreatestpart
of
the value
of the things we enjoy in this
world.
And
the ground which produces
the
materials
is
scarce to be reckoned
in as any,
or
at most, but
a
very small, part
of
it
.
.
.
‘Tis
Labour,
then, which
puts the greatest part
of
Value upon Land,
without
which
it
would scarcely
be
worth anything.
.
.,Nature and the earth furnished
only the most worthless materials, as
in
themselves4
My treatment
of
these remarks will be both exegetical and substantive. First,
I
shall contest an interpretation of these previously neglected passages which has
*
For their excellent comments
I
am
grateful to G.
A.
Cohen,
J.
Chan,
M.
G. Clayton,
J.
N. Gray,
D.
L.
Miller,
M.
Philp and an anonymous reviewer.
’
C.
B.
Macpherson,
The Political Theory
of
Possessive Individualism
(Oxford, Clarendon Press,
1962)
and
R.
Nozick,
Anarchy, State and Utopia
(New York. Basic Books,
1974).
’
R.
Ashcraft,
Revolutionary Polirics and
Locke’s
Two
Treatises
of
Government
(Princeton,
Princeton University Press,
1986).
’
J. Tully,
A
Discourse
of
Property
(Cambridge, Cambridge University Press,
1980)
and
J.
Waldron,
The Righr
to
Private Property
(Oxford, Oxford University Press,
1988),
Ch.
6.
‘
References to P. Laslett’s edition of John Locke’s
Second Treatise
of
Government
(Cambridge,
Cambridge University Press,
1960).
are by chapter. section and line numbers. For the above passages
see Locke,
Second Trearise,
V.42.16
and
V.43.8,
respectively.
0032-3217/92/Ol/OOSl-16
0
1992
Political Studies
52
Cohen
on
Locke,
Land and
Labour
recently been advanced by
G.
A.
Cohen.’ On that view, they formulate a
premise concerning the relative contribution of personal and natural resources to
the total value of their product, Locke’s apparent defence of which Cohen
effectively criticizes. Secondly,
I
shall propose an alternative interpretation. It
stresses the role of egalitarian considerations in Locke’s theory, contrary to the
once popular view, and suggests Cohen’s criticism of Locke is misdirected.
Thirdly,
I
shall argue that even
if
interpreted differently, Locke’s argument still
offers no solace to defenders
of
contemporary inequality.
Cohen’s critique
of
Locke rests on his attribution to Locke of one
or
both of the
following arguments, which he refers
to
as the value/appropriation argument and
the value/inequality argument. Both contain the premise that ‘labour is
responsible for virtually
all
the value of what we use and consume’, where this is
understood to
exclude and
contrust
with the contribution of natural resources.
However, the arguments differ both in the manner in which they explain the
moral significance of this claim of
relative contribution
and in the conclusions
they generate. The value/appropriation argument is a defence of the claim that
the original appropriation of commonly owned natural resources
is
legitimate
because
it
does not deprive others of valuable resources. The valuelinequality
argument supports the distinct claim that the current unequal distribution
of
valuable resources
is
justified since, from the common premise, they reflect only
differences
in the productivity of labour, and because, for independent reasons,
persons are entitled to the products of their own labour.
Additionally, Cohen argues that both arguments are flawed because of the
vulnerability of the relative contribution claim. This arises
for
two reasons, which
he illustrates by the following example:
If
J.
R.
Ewing,
or
Donna Krebs, produces a well yielding one thousand
barrels
of
oil
a
day
after
five
minutes’
excavation,
then
we
cannot
infer,
on
the
Lockean
ground
that
no
oil
comes
without
digging,
that
his
or
her
labour,
us
opposedro
the
land,
is
responsible
for
all
that
oiL6
The first simply refers to the gross implausibility of equating the
dzfference
which
a factor of production makes
to
total output with the
contribution
to the value of
that output which the factor makes relative to other factors. The second refers to
the logically flawed manner in which Locke allegedly defends such an equation by
invoking the following subtraction criterion for identifying the relative con-
tribution made by a factor. Assuming only land and labour are the relevant
resources, the criterion claims that the proportion of value yielded by labour is
equivalent to
Amount land yields with labour
-
Amount land yields without labour
Amount land yields with labour
Thus, as Cohen understands him, Locke uses the subtraction criterion to infer
from such often true claims as
(1)
The application of labour makes land produce
See
G.
A.
Cohen, ‘Marx and Locke on Land and Labour’,
Proceedings
of
the
British
Academy,
LXXI
(1985).
pp.
367-71.
’
Cohen, ‘Marx
and
Locke’,
p.
378.
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