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Distributive Justice and the Tensions of Lockeanism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 January 2009

Eric Mack
Eric Mack
Affiliation:
Philosophy, Tulane University
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Extract

An ongoing tension exists within the Lockean tradition in political philosophy between the claim that each individual is the “Proprietor of his own Person” and the claim that nature is “that which God gave to Mankind in common.” The former claim points to a realm of discrete individual entitlements only formally equal in the sense of each individual having jurisdiction over his own person and not over any other person, while the latter points either to a collective entitlement to nature or to individual entitlements to substantively equal shares of nature. Were the two realms, that of persons and that of extra-personal nature, separate and independent, no tension would arise from the union of these two claims. But the realms are manifestly interconnected. Individuals acquire, use, labor upon, invest their time and energy on, and transform, more or less in accordance with their purposes, elements of extra-personal nature. And Locke and his followers believe that at least certain of these interactions with segments of nature give rise to individual property rights to the segments thereby appropriated, labored upon, transformed, or whatever. The traditional bridging notion is each person's right to his own labor which is seen as part of each person's proprietorship over himself. According to this tradition, if the right of each individual over his own person is to be respected, individual titles to appropriated, labored upon, or transformed nature must also be respected.

The task for anyone seeking to embrace all the strands within this Lockean heritage is to reconcile, a) this right to one's own labor and the (or some) system of private property rights tied to it (which system will include historical entitlement principles for legitimating later property configurations) plus the right of self-ownership (or some equivalent) which lies behind the right to one's own labor, with b) some distributionist ideal, at least with regard to natural resources.

Type
Research Article
Information
Social Philosophy and Policy , Volume 1 , Issue 1 , Autumn 1983 , pp. 132 - 150
Copyright
Copyright © Social Philosophy and Policy Foundation 1983

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References

1 John Locke, Second Treatise paragraphs 44 and 25.

2 Steiner, Hillel, “Slavery, Socialism and Private Property” in Nomos XXII: Private Property, ed. Pennock, J. R. and Chapman, J. W. (New York: NYU Press, 1980), 249.Google Scholar Passages will be identified within the text with an S.

3 Nozick, RobertAnarchy, State and Utopia (New York: Basic Books, 1974), 172.Google Scholar

4 Nozick, 160.

5 A less generous reading would interpret the leap to all “things” coming into this world attached to people as simply as illicit extension, to all objects, of the argument against the application of end-state or patterned principles to made objects. Note the same use of “things” in the manna-from-heaven passage: “things come into existence already held (or with agreements already made about how they are to be held).” 219.

6 Steiner, Hillel, “The Natural Right to the Means of Production,” in Philosophical Quarterly 27 (January, 1977)CrossRefGoogle Scholar: 44. Passages will be identified within the text with an N.

7 Personal conversation. Independently, Kirzner, Israel developes this thought in “Entrepreneurship, Entitlement and Economic Justice” in Reading Nozick, ed. J., Paul (Totowa, N.J.: Rowman and Littlefield, 1982)Google Scholar, claiming that, in a sense, profits are created de novo.

8 Nozick, 262–4.

9 But could not the alluring existence of A' deprive B' of an opportunity (to marry A) which he would have enjoyed, had A' not existed?

10 Steiner, Hillel “The Concept of Justice,” Ratio 16 (December 1974).Google Scholar Passages will be identified within the text with a C.

11 Steiner, Hillel, “The Structure of a Set of Compossible Rights,” Journal of Philosophy Vol. 0 (1977).Google Scholar Passages will be identified within the text with an R.

12 Steiner, Hillel, “Liberty and Equality,” Political Studies 29 (1981).CrossRefGoogle Scholar Passages will be identified within the text with an L.

13 Cf. R., 772–4; cf. also L, 558, where the claim recurs that “appropriative rights cannot be constituted by historical principles and must necessarily derive from end-state ones.”

14 Cf. N, 44; N, 48 and Steiner's, “Justice and Entitlement,” Ethics 87 (January, 1977).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

15 See Steiner's account of freedom in “Individual Liberty,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society (1974–75).

16 Cf. R, 769–71.

17 Steiner's view is not that existing persons have obligations to not yet existing (potential) members of future generations. Rather, it is that whoever appears has a right to an equal share where the magnitude of that share must be consistent with everyone else who will appear having access to a like share. There is, e.g., no obligation to allow future generations to come into existence) though there is an obligation not to force birth control on already existing agents.

18 For an excellent discussion, cf. section V of Fressola's, Anthony “Liberty and Property,” American Philosophical Quarterly 18 (October, 1981).Google Scholar

19 How far this actually is from Locke can be seen by recalling Locke's argument against a contractual basis for property rights: “Will anyone 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?… If such consent as that was necessary, man had starved, not withstanding the plenty God had given him.” Second Treatise, pgh. 28.

20 Cf. Nozick, p. 198–204.

21 Cf. Locke's argument, n. 19 above.

22 There is no real discussion of the basis for this principle in Steiner's essays although one or two passages suggest, as one would expect, that this principle is the special application to human beings of a more general principle of rights to equal resources or to equal liberty. On S. 248, the principle of self-ownership is spoken of as “embodying the principle of equal liberty.” In contrast, in personal conversation, Steiner has suggested that the right of self-ownership is a necessary presupposition of the rights which constitute the principle of equal “freedom/property.” This would make the highly intuitive anti-slavery principle hostage to far less intuitive ascriptions of rights.

23 For a discussion of the difficulties in attempting to apply distinct types of principles of justice to human endowments and to non-human resources, see Miller, Fred D. Jr, “The Natural Right to Private Property,” The Libertarian Reader, Machan, T. R. (ed) (Totowa, N.J.: Rowman and Littlefield, 1982).Google Scholar