Title: Ownership and Accountability: The Structure and Purpose of Locke’s Property Doctrine
Abstract: Locke’s treatment of property rights in the Second Treatise is an integral part of his anti-absolutist political project. The aim of “Of Property” is to show how it is possible for property rights to arise outside of commonwealths so that governments can be held accountable for how they regulate property. Locke pursues this aim in five steps. First, he poses a puzzle: Since all people hold the world in common as a gift from God, how is private property even possible? Second, he develops a solution: Individual persons can acquire private property rights in the shared world because each person has an exclusive property right in themself, and we incorporate resources into our action through labor on the common. Third, Locke limits this right of appropriation with a sufficiency proviso and a waste proviso that together aim to secure individuals in their common right to the world. Fourth, Locke lays out an account of economic growth in two phases that track the transition from pre-monetary economies to monetary economies. Fifth, and finally, Locke offers a move to political community as the proper route towards stable property relations that serve the preservation of all.
