Reasoning From the Natural State in Life

Locke begins his argument with the state of nature, a hypothetical situation of how life was like before society. In this hypothetical state, individuals are born free and equal and have moral rights under the Fundamental Law of Nature. In this state of nature, Locke introduces his premise that since God gave the earth and its fruits to men in common, everything belongs to everyone. In this hypothetical state, people have the natural resources that they need to be happy, but that these resources are useless until men apply their labor to them.

With this in mind, Locke then proceeds to describe how commonly available resources can become legitimate private property which excludes the right of other men. I will now present the following premises in Locke’s argument for property rights:

Every man has the right to own his own person Every man has the right to own the labor produced by his person Every man has the right to own something in which he has mixed his labor with To clarify, by right, I am referring to a moral right and not a legal right, as the situation assumes a state prior to government and conventions.

These premises make up Locke’s argument, in that man obtains property rights through the mixing of his labor. The reasoning is that since man owns his own person (body) and the labor that he produces with his person, by mixing his labor with a previously unowned object, man now has a rightful claim to the object that excludes the claims of others on this object.

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It is through this labor that man can remove something from common ownership to that of private ownership.

I will now propose an objection to Locke’s argument on property rights in an attempt to show that there is no right of ownership prior to laws or conventions on the grounds Premise #3 cannot resolve situations where there is a collaboration of labor. For his argument, Locke used a simple example of picking apples from a tree, in that since man put his labor into picking the apples from the tree, he mixes his labor with the apple. As a result, the apple belongs to him. Here, I find Locke’s example to be plausible, in that it is simple but not representative of all situations. It is not always straightforward that I own what I have mixed my labor with, particularly in situations of collaboration.

Now I will provide an example to support my claim. Suppose that there is an apple pie, which is produced through a joint of labor. I will assume that the collaboration of labor involves a farmer, a miller, and a baker, as the apple pie went through multiple production processes to get to its current state. Each aforementioned person played a role in the production of the apple pie and mixed their labor with the said object. In this situation, I will raise this question: who owns this apple pie? If more than one person owns the pie, how would the rightful shares of each person be determined? This is a situation where Locke’s premise cannot provide a straightforward answer.

However, one can argue in Locke’s defense that through the implications of premise #3, all three people own the apple pie, as all of them had mixed their labor with it. Since all three people have a rightful claim to the apple pie, Locke’s theory would suggest that each person’s rightful share would then depend on the amount of labor each contributed into making the apple pie. In other words, the amount of time that each person put into the process. To explain this through a scenario, suppose that person X and person Y worked twice as hard as person Z. Their respective shares would then be 40%, 40%, and 20%.

While this argument seems logical, I will now present an counterargument, in that labor itself can be measured in other aspects other than the length or duration. For example, other aspects to consider could be the level of skill or the intensity of each labor. Let us revisit the previous example with this new concept. Suppose that person X and person Y worked twice as long as person Z, but that person Z worked twice as hard, in that his labor required more skill and was more intense. In this case, how would the share of the apple pie then be divided? Locke’s premise #3 fails to provide a clear answer to this question.

Based on my objections to Locke’s argument, I find it plausible that there can be such a right in the state of nature. Now I will move on to the topic of taxation and natural property rights. Although I disagree with Locke that there can be the right of ownership in the state of nature, I will now argue that assuming property right is a natural right, taxation is an unjustified violation of this right, on the grounds that taxes can be used for redistributive purposes that it does not benefit the individual.