Isaac Freedman

The Natural Law and the Acquisition and Accumulation of Property

John Locke, in the Second Treatise on Government, argues that the fundamental purpose of
government is to protect and enforce property rights. When a government fails to fulfill that
purpose, it is not legitimate and the people governed by it have a right to remove it from power
and establish another government. Governments do not create the rights that they protect; these
rights, what Locke considers natural rights, are rooted in nature. They exist when a government
is in power and after it is disbanded. How does man come to have these rights? In particular, how
do men come to own goods property which the government is supposed to protect? And,
finally, if governments protect these goods, then who or what governs their acquisition and
accumulation? This paper addresses Lockes view on these questions. I offer insight on different
components of Lockes thought, including the difference between property acquisition and the
origination of civil society as well as the effect of the invention of money. As we will see, the law
of nature governs both property origination and all forms of property accumulation.
PROPERTY AND THE NATURAL LAW
First and foremost in Lockes argument is the concept of the state of nature. He argues that
man is in this state when he does not live under a government. There is perfect freedom and
perfect equality. The law of nature, defined by reason, governs the state of nature. It obliges
everyone and teaches all mankind that being all equal and independent no one ought to
harm another in his life, health, liberty or possessions. (6) These are what Locke considers
natural rights, and beside the right to property, he does not derive them from other rights. He uses
the right of life to justify the right of property. He argues, men, being once born, have a right to
their preservation, and consequently to meat and drink, and such other things as nature affords
for their subsistence. (25) He appropriates goods from nature so that he can survive. This need
to appropriate to survive justifies the right to own property.

But what is Lockes definition of property? He provides a definition of property as something

that nobody has any right to but himself. (27) It includes ones body, labor, and possessions.
Man comes to own property when he acts on that good i.e. when his labor is mixed with the
good. His premises are the following:
(1) Every mans person is his own property.
(2) Every mans labor is the property of his own person.
(3) That with which a persons labor has been joined is the mans own property.
It is first important to note that in this argument there are three separate components of a
human the man himself, his person or body, and his labor. Lockes takes premise (1) as a given
based on the theory of natural rights, which argues every man has a property in his own
person. (19) The connection between (2) and (1) incorporates the idea of control. Labor is an act
exerting energy. Your body exerts this energy, and because you own your body, you own what
your body has exerted.

In simpler terms, what you do is yours. Although (3) is more

complicated, it is the most critical premise in the argument. The mixing of labor with a good held
in common, makes that good yours - it is individualized. The point is that labor, something that
according to our natural rights is properly ours, effects a change in the status of something that
was not ours prior. It becomes ours because it contains our labor. Or, in Lockes words, The
labour that was mine, removing [goods] out of that common state they were in, hath fixed my
property in them. (20) The infusion of labor into the good is the pivotal moment in which a
good moves from the common to the private, and becomes ones own.
In fact, the creation of property, involves only ones own labor. It does not involve, nor does
it require, the consent of other men. Requiring the consent of others would create a world in
which no man could farm crops, cultivate land, or consume goods, since in midst of gathering it
from others, man would find it nearly impossible to survive. Property originates when a man

combines his labor with the good. It is not a social process. It is an unsocial process. It is for the
good of ones own being, and it is done by ones own self. That is not to say property would exist
in a vacuum. The concept of property is naturally a social concept; it delineates what one man
owns, and what another does not. Men are not self-sufficient and must work together to survive.
But the origination of property does not require social agreement, only individual action.
In contrast, consider the origination of civil society, which does require social agreement in
the form of a social contract. Locke argues that civil society originates because of a general
need to protect the property that originates with man. Its formation, while dependent on the
origination and accumulation of property in the state of nature, is not natural in the same sense
that property is natural. Man does not have a right to life, liberty, property, and civil society.
Civil society fundamentally exists to protect mans natural right of property. It originates because
men give their consent to be governed. In contrast, no consent is necessary when man makes a
thing his own property.
The purpose of civil society is to adjudicate property disputes. Locke argues that justice will
be dealt to transgressors of the natural law in the state of nature, but only in on an unequal,
inconsistent, and infrequent basis. Since there is no legal code, no judicial branch to adjudicate
legal disputes over property, and no central power of enforcement, man is the judge, jury and the
executioner in his own cause. Civil society is created to fulfill these roles to provide a legal
code, an impartial judge and an executor of the law. Indeed, in agreeing to create civil society,
man surrenders his perfect equality and freedom he had in the state of nature. In return, he gains
the governments protection of his property.
If the job of the government is to protect property, then who or what governs the acquisition
and accumulation of it? Lockes argument advocates the unrestricted acquisition of property

only to the extent that the accumulation of that property does not violate the natural law. His
argument which suggests that as one mixes labor with goods, those goods become ones own
at first seems to suggest that the accumulation of property is only constrained by the amount one
can labor. But Locke argues that the law of nature itself limits property accumulation. As much
as any one can make use of to any advantage of life before it spoils, so much he may by his
labour fix a property in: what is beyond this, is more than his share, and belongs to others. (31)
Man has a right to own that which he uses, but he does not have a right to own what is
accumulated beyond what he uses. This excess accumulated property is wasteful and deprives
other men of the opportunity to accumulate that property.
Goods acquired but not used, such as meat that perishes in ones possession or fruit that rots
before it is had, are violate the law of nature. Such a man is liable to be punished; he invaded
his neighbors share, for he had no right, farther than his use called for any of them. (37) You
have a right to claim that which you need as your own, but nothing beyond that. Locke uses the
same argument to consider land: man has a right to the land he cultivates, but if either the grass
of his enclosure rotted on the ground, or the fruit of his planting perished without gathering, and
laying up, this part of the earth, notwithstanding his enclosure, was still to be looked on as waste,
and might be the possession of any other. (38) Thus, goods that you take which you cannot use
and land that you claim which you do not cultivate is not only not yours, but other men have the
right to claim it for their own use. Finally, man may accumulate property beyond which he
directly uses, however, if that property is used to trade for goods he ends up using either at the
present, or in the future if they are less perishable.
But how does Locke view money, which does not perish? The invention of money, and the
fact that it is a non-perishable good, presents a potential counterargument to Lockes theory of

property acquisition one that he manages to introduce but not address. Because money is both
lasting and scarce, it seemingly avoids violating the spoilage constraint inherent in the law of
nature. (49) Man may fairly possess more land than he himself can use the product of, by
receiving in exchange for the surplus gold and silver, which may be hoarded up without injury to
any one; these metals not spoiling or decaying in the hands of the possessor. (50). To Locke, the
invention of money by a tacit and voluntary consent indicates that, men have agreed to a
disproportionate and unequal possession of the earth. (50) The most industrious accumulate an
unlimited amount of property by acquiring perishable forms of property or land and exchanging
it for money. The law of nature appears to be inapplicable.
I argue, in line with the entirety of Lockes thought that, rather than the money causing the
limits in the law of nature on property accumulation to be useless, the law of nature applies to it
as well. To explain this, let us start by assuming that Locke would have no qualms agreeing with
the idea that based on the labor theory of property acquisition, there will be an unequal
distribution of property. The more industrious and intelligent naturally will accumulate more
property than others, and it is rightfully theirs. If this property is money, however, which as a
store of value is inherently non-perishable, the spoilage limit in the law of nature seems
ineffective as a way of limiting property accumulation.
But the law of nature actually can and does govern the accumulation of money as property. In
both the case of good accumulation and land use mentioned above, man not only has a right to
property when he combines his labor with a good, but a duty to use responsibly that property
once acquired. Perishable goods, such as food, must be used in the sense that they are to be
consumed. Land must be used - it must be cultivated. This use requirement is centered on the
view that goods or land acquired in the commons multiply the provisionary capacity of the good

or tract of land. Property accumulation increases the common stock of mankind: for the
provisions serving to the support of human life, produced by one acre of inclosed and cultivated
land are ten times more than those which are yielded by an acre of land of an equal richness
lying waste in common. (37) Use is required in ownership.
To the extent that land can either be cultivated or uncultivated, used or not used, accumulated
money can be invested or not invested, used or not used. Cultivated land adds to the betterment
of mankind. Investment in both the social and economic form, for example donating to charity or
providing loans respectively, adds to the betterment of mankind. The man who accumulates
disproportionate amounts of wealth has an obligation to invest that money, for the betterment of
others. The man who sits on exorbitant stores of money without responsibly doing anything with
it violates the natural law. He is not responsibly using that money. A man spending money on a
lavish house, car and other material goods, purely for himself and not for the betterment of
mankind, no longer has a right to that money. It goes back to the commons.
CONCLUSION
The law of nature governs the origination of property and limits its accumulation. While the
origination of civil society requires consent between men, property acquisition is natural and
does not require the consent of others. Man accumulates property when he mixes his labor with
something held in common. According to the law of nature, he may accumulate property until
the point at which that which he acquires is unused, uncultivated, or perishes. The invention of
money and its imperishability, however, does not render the law of nature inapplicable and
useless. Money can also be used or not used and it is this distinction that enables the law of
nature to govern the accumulation of money as property as well. Men must invest their money
for the general betterment of mankind.