Locke, Tully, and the Regulation of Property
| Published date | 01 March 1984 |
| Author | Jeremy Waldron |
| Date | 01 March 1984 |
| DOI | 10.1111/j.1467-9248.1984.tb00168.x |
| Subject Matter | Article |
Political
Studies
(1984),
XXXII,
98-106
Locke,
Tully,
and
the
Regulation
of
Property
JEREMY
WALDRON
University
of
Edinburgh
Central to the political theory of John Locke is the claim that individual
property rights are possible in a pre-political state of nature, and that these are
based, not on the consent of mankind, but on the unilateral appropriative acts
of those who are to have the rights in question.’ Subsequently, according to
Locke, many
if
not all of the individuals who are seised of these natural
property rights become by their own consent members of a political society,
subject to the requirements of positive
law.
And
so
the question arises: what
happens, in this transition from the state of nature to civil society, to the
natural property rights of these individuals? Are they retained intact in
political society, or are they now subject to conventional review and redistri-
bution?
At first sight, it seems as if Locke favours the former alternative. Time and
again, he stresses that man enters political society ‘to preserve his property’2
(where ‘property’ includes estate as well as life and liberty). The government,
he argues,
‘is
obliged to secure every ones Property by providing against those
.
.
.
defects
.
.
.
that made the State of Nature
so
unsafe and ~neasie’.~ It is
difficult to see how we can make sense of this unless we assume that the
property entitlements which are to be secured under government are
the
same
as
the property entitlements whose enforcement was
so
insecure in the state of
nature. The logic of the idea of
preservation
seems to indicate
a
continuation
of natural entitlements in civil society. Otherwise, what would it be that men
enter society to preserve?
While this is the most obvious reading of Locke’s argument, it is far from
uncontroversial. In his recent book,
A
Discourse on Property: John Locke and
his Adversaries,”
James Tully disputes it. He attributes to Locke ‘the remark-
able conclusion that property in political society is a creation of that s~ciety’,~
and that when he enters political society, ‘(a)ll the possessions a man has in the
I
J.
Locke,
Two Treatises
of
Government,
edited by
P.
Laslett (Cambridge, Cambridge
University Press,
1960).
All subsequent references
to
this work are by treatise number and section
number.
2
Locke,
Two Treatises,
II,87,94, 123,124, 127,
131,
137,
138,171, 199,201,222,226,229.
3
Locke,
Two Treatises,
11,
131.
J.
Tully,
A
Discourse
on
Property:
John
Locke and
his
Adversaries
(Cambridge, Cambridge
University Press,
1980).
OO32-3217/84/0l /oO98-09/$03
.OO
@
1984
Political Studies
5
Tully,
Discourse
on
Property,
p.
98.
To continue reading
Request your trial