Though the water running in the fountain be every one's, yet who can doubt, but that in the pitcher is his only who drew it out? His labour hath taken it out of the hands of nature, where it was common, and belonged equally to all her children, and hath thereby appropriated to himself.
The water in the pitcher has been removed from nature. A location on the earth's surface can't be removed from nature. It's always going to be exactly where nature put it, until we find a way to move the earth.
John Locke Second Treatise of Government
Chapter V - On Property Section 28-32
Sec. 28. He that is nourished by the acorns he picked up under an oak, or
the apples he gathered from the trees in the wood, has certainly
appropriated them to himself. No body can deny but the nourishment is his.
Not so fast, John. They are only rightly his if he did not deprive others of the opportunity to gather them. If the people of the community have agreed among themselves that it is best for all if the wild apples are left on the tree until they are ripe, rather than being harvested too early on a grabbers-get basis, then going to clean out the tree the day before the agreed harvesting time does NOT gain rightful ownership of the apples. Similarly, if others also know about and intend to pick up some of the acorns under that oak tree at the appointed time, going there first and picking up all the acorns plainly violates others' equal rights to access the resource.
I ask then, when did they begin to be his? when he digested? or when he eat?
or when he boiled? or when he brought them home? or when he picked them up?
and it is plain, if the first gathering made them not his, nothing else
could.
It may be plain to Locke, but as shown above, it is not clear they are rightly his at all.
That labour put a distinction between them and common: that added
something to them more than nature, the common mother of all, had done; and
so they became his private right.
No, they did not become his private right if he deprived others of them, as explained above.
And will any one say, he had no right to those acorns or apples, he thus appropriated, because he had not the consent of all mankind to make them his?
Blatant strawman fallacy. It was not all mankind that had the opportunity and liberty to use the resources, and suffered a deprivation through his appropriation of them.
Was it a robbery thus to assume to himself what belonged to all in common?
It may well have been, as explained above.
If such a consent as that was necessary, man had starved, notwithstanding the plenty God had given him.
OTC, if Locke's principle of "grabbers get" had been generally accepted among our hunter-gatherer forebears, the apples would always have been harvested too early, and been sour and lacked nutrients; much time and effort would always have been wasted as acorn harvesters went to the tree when there were too few acorns on the ground to make the effort pay, out of fear of not getting any if a grabber took them all. Not permitting the grabber to appropriate common resources to himself just by taking them first avoids the Tragedy of the Private.
We see in commons, which remain so by compact, that it is the taking any part of what is common, and removing it out of the state nature leaves it in, which begins the property;
No, appropriation of common property by private grabbers, with which Locke was surely familiar in the form of land enclosures, violates the pre-existing common right of use.
without which the common is of no use.
Locke knew better than this. The commons were of enormous use precisely because they could be used to PRODUCE what had not previously existed as common property; and the right to remove what was already there did not begin with the removal: rather, the removal was only rightful and permissible because the user had a pre-existing right to use the common for that purpose.
And the taking of this or that part, does not depend on the express consent of all the commoners.
Perhaps not, but it
DOES depend on the
institutional consent of those who administer the common on
behalf of all the commoners.
Thus the grass my horse has bit; the turfs my servant has cut;
and the ore I have digged in any place, where I have a right to them in
common with others, become my property, without the assignation or consent
of any body.
Flat false, as proved above. If permitted, such grabbers-get depredations would indeed result in a tragedy of the privatized commons. Fortunately, real commons were not unmanaged, and thus avoided the tragic fate Locke's notion would have consigned them to.
The labour that was mine, removing them out of that common state they were in, hath fixed my property in them.
Garbage lacking any supporting facts or logic. The only way labor secures a property right all by itself is when it produces a product using only resources that either no one else wanted, or that the user made just compensation for depriving others of.
Sec. 29. By making an explicit consent of every commoner, necessary to any
one's appropriating to himself any part of what is given in common, children
or servants could not cut the meat, which their father or master had
provided for them in common, without assigning to every one his peculiar
part.
Strawman fallacy. No one claims explicit and unanimous consent is needed, as institutions administer common resources on behalf of all. The children and servants know what portion of the meat they are entitled to by tradition and institutional arrangements, and do not try to take more.
Though the water running in the fountain be every one's, yet who can
doubt, but that in the pitcher is his only who drew it out? His labour hath
taken it out of the hands of nature, where it was common, and belonged
equally to all her children, and hath thereby appropriated it to himself.
But only because the institution or trust administering use of the fountain on behalf of all who have a right to use it has recognized THAT much appropriation of the common resource as rightful and permissible in that it does not deprive others of their like use of it. Take more than your share, leaving others without, and the property right in what is taken vanishes.
Sec. 30. Thus this law of reason makes the deer that Indian's who hath
killed it; it is allowed to be his goods, who hath bestowed his labour upon
it, though before it was the common right of every one.
But only because no one is consequently deprived of their liberty, as there are plenty more deer like that one.
And amongst those who are counted the civilized part of mankind, who have made and multiplied positive laws to determine property, this original law of nature, for the
beginning of property, in what was before common, still takes place;
LOL! Locke lived in the time of the enclosures, and certainly knew better than to imagine they were based on any such principle.
and by virtue thereof, what fish any one catches in the ocean, that great and still
remaining common of mankind; or what ambergrise any one takes up here, is by
the labour that removes it out of that common state nature left it in, made
his property, who takes that pains about it.
Within the limits identified above.
Sec. 31. It will perhaps be objected to this, that if gathering the acorns,
or other fruits of the earth, &c. makes a right to them, then any one may
ingross as much as he will. To which I answer, Not so. The same law of
nature, that does by this means give us property, does also bound that
property too. God has given us all things richly, 1 Tim. vi. 12. is the
voice of reason confirmed by inspiration. But how far has he given it us? To
enjoy. 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: whatever is beyond
this, is more than his share, and belongs to others.
OK, so Locke understands his claim above was indefensible. He has just chosen an indefensible way of trying to make it defensible.
Nothing was made by God for man to spoil or destroy. And thus, considering the plenty of natural provisions there was a long time in the world, and the few spenders; and to how small a part of that provision the industry of one man could extend
itself, and ingross it to the prejudice of others; especially keeping within
the bounds, set by reason, of what might serve for his use; there could be
then little room for quarrels or contentions about property so established.
ROTFL!! Wishful thinking refuted by all history. OTC, there must be from the outset an established principle that wherever one's appropriation of common resources works to the prejudice or injury of others, depriving them of what they would otherwise be at liberty to use, just compensation is due for the damages thus inflicted.
Sec. 32. But the chief matter of property being now not the fruits of the
earth, and the beasts that subsist on it, but the earth itself; as that
which takes in and carries with it all the rest; I think it is plain, that
property in that too is acquired as the former.
But in fact it plainly isn't, as the earth itself -- and the locations on its surface -- cannot be removed from nature by labor as food growing wild can, nor can it be produced by labor as crops and domestic animals can.
As much land as a man tills, plants, improves, cultivates, and can use the product of, so much is his property.
We've already seen that in addition to not being the case for more than a microscopic fraction of all the land that is owned in the world, this claim can't be true, as it implies the landless have no rights to life or liberty.
He by his labour does, as it were, inclose it from the common.
Locke knew that was not how the commons were being enclosed, and he hasn't provided any factual or logical support for his claim anyway.
Nor will it invalidate his right, to say every body else has an equal title to
it; and therefore he cannot appropriate, he cannot inclose, without the
consent of all his fellow-commoners, all mankind.
Right: he can't rightly enclose it even
WITH the consent of all mankind, because they cannot rightly dispose of the rights of generations unborn.
God, when he gave the world in common to all mankind, commanded man also to labour, and the penury of his condition required it of him. God and his reason commanded him to subdue the earth, i.e. improve it for the benefit of life, and therein lay
out something upon it that was his own, his labour. He that in obedience to
this command of God, subdued, tilled and sowed any part of it, thereby
annexed to it something that was his property, which another had no title
to, nor could without injury take from him.
I.e., the product of his labor. Not the location where it was produced, as that cannot be taken from others without injury.
