The Modern State Concerns The Concept Of Property

A core aspect of the modern state concerns the concept of property. Whether property encompasses objects, land, or even ideas, we have laws to define the process by which we can justly gain ownership of certain things and to give us security once we hold this property, and a judicial system to punish those who don’t abide by the rules. But to what extent do we have a right to property, and how do we justly obtain it? The British philosopher John Locke (1632-1704) argues that the origins of private property are to be found in how we use our labour to appropriate things to ourselves. Private property, for Locke, is pre-political in the sense that it exist prior to the creation of the state – it is a natural right, not by convention. However,†¦show more content†¦The argument begins with the idea that God gave the world to all men in common, and reason so that we can make the best use of it – a precept derived from both reason and revelation. Yet, while the world may be common, for Locke it is also clear that we have property in our own person, and also in our own labour (Locke, 1980 [1689], sections 25-27). Following from this, that to which we apply our labour in turn becomes our property: By utilising our labour in removing something from the common, this object has, â€Å"by this labour something annexed to it, that excludes the common right of other men† (ibid, section 17). So, by picking an apple from a tree or catching a fish from a stream, I am joining to it my labour, something to which nobody else has rights to but me, and thus it becomes my own private property. Furthermore, Locke argues that by tilling and improving land, or enclosing areas of it, this too constitutes the just acquisition of property, subject to the constraint that there is as much, and as good left for others (ibid). Despite the apparent strength that one may see in this argument, particularly with regard to its tight logical structure, if we look to Locke’s concept of self-ownership, which provides the foundations for the subsequent theory of labour-mixing, we can begin to see how the theory is unsatisfactory. Key to Locke’s idea of