LOCKE Flashcards
Political context
- War with catholic Charles II -> restoration of absolutist monarchy = crown holds absolute right to all property
- He attacked this divine right of kings, making him a ‘leveler’ (communist)
His central metaphor?
People own their body and generate property by physical labour
His conception of natural law?
- God had given the earth ‘to the children of men’ = all mankind own the land in common
- Property is found internally ‘in his own person’
- An individual can’t appropriate without consent of all fellow commoners, this was a revolutionary idea that not all property was the crown’s, rather that it was no ones until they worked on it and made it theirs
How would someone acquire physical property?
‘Labour’ of his body and the ‘work’ of his hands
What is the logic behind Locke’s theory of work = property?
By labouring on a piece of land, or joining something else to it through effort, the thing is distinct from the original common form
This makes it different due to labour and therefore an individual’s property
Why did Locke support capitalism?
Labour was not yet a commodity so it didn’t have the dehumanising effect is does now
Asserted that alienation of property through making it distinct from common was central to capitalist production
What was Locke’s view on money?
It’s value was created by its unequal distribution
It is an asset that never spoils, so it was ‘neither unjust nor foolish to accumulate any amount of land to make it produce a surplus to convert to money and use it as capital’
Locke’s view on labouring class?
‘A necessary part of the nation. It’s members are not politically active and cannot live a fully rational life’ -> pre universal men’s suffer age
What was Locke’s spoliation proviso?
He justified the use of money as ‘some lasting thing that men might keep without spoiling, and that by mutual consent (trade), men would take in exchange for the truly useful but perishable supports of life’ (food etc)
What would happen without money in Locke’s view?
That without it ‘plentiful bounty is useless as it cannot be exchanged/sold for something permanent’
Life would revert to wildness
