The "Gully Foyle Bashes Libertarianism" extravaganza.

[JohnFKennedy]

Philip,

Firstly, it should be noted that Locke talks about property in two senses. Aside from the narrow definition of man mixing his labour with natural resources to create property, in the Second Treatise he also discusses a more capacious definition in §87

'Man being born, as has been proved, with a Title to perfect Freedom, and an uncontruled enjoyment of all the Rights and Priviledges of the Law of Nature, equally with any other Man, or Number of Men in the World, hath by Nature a Power, not only to preserve his Property, that is, his Life, Liberty and Estate, against the Injuries and Attempts of other Men; but to judge of, and punish the breaches of that Law in others, as he is perswaded the Offence deserves, even with Death it self, in Crimes where the heinousness of the Fact, in his Opinion, requires it.'

Of course, Locke most certainly was not an advocate of a libertarian or a liberal ideology (to suggest as such would be to suggest an intention that simply could not have been there) and certainly did not regard those property rights as absolute (or at least absolute in the sense that several posters around here have argued they are), as he also made clear in his discussion of the beginning of political societies in the Second Treatise in §120:

'To understand this better, it is fit to consider, that every Man, when he, at first, incorporates himself into any Commonwealth, he, by his uniting himself thereunto, annexed also, and submits to the Community those Possessions, which he has, or shall acquire, that do not already belong to any other Government. For it would be a direct Contradiction, for any one, to enter into Society with others for the securing and regulating of Property: And yet to suppose his Land, whose Property is to be regulated by the Laws of the Society, should be exempt from the Jurisdiction of that Government, to which he himself the Proprietor of the Land, is a Subject. By the same Act therefore, whereby any one unites his Person, which was before free, to any Commonwealth; by the same he unites his Possessions, which were before free, to it also; and they become, both of them, Person and Possession, subject to the Government and Dominion of that Commonwealth, as long as it hath a being. Whoever therefore, from thenceforth, by Inheritance, Purchase, Permission, or otherways enjoys any part of the Land, so annext to, and under the Government of that Commonwealth, must take it with the Condition it is under; that is, of submitting to the Government of the Commonwealth, under whose Jurisdiction it is, as far forth, as any Subject of it.'

That all leads me to enquire quite what you meant when you stated that libertarians is predicated upon the doctrine that Lockean property rights are absolute or near-absolute. Locke saw political society as essential to the preservation of property rights. These were not absolute property rights, but ones held by virtue of an original contract between citizens and state, which would seem to undermine the possibility of their being absolute, although that obviously depends on what you meant by absolute.

[JohnFKennedy]

I wasn't suggesting you claimed Locke believed that, my intention was more to point to the fact that Locke's ideas about property were strongly linked to his arguments on political society, such that the legal framework and the principles of property don't seem to be divisible. That's where my final query about what you meant by 'absolute' came from.

Apologies, the 'by virtue' comment was slightly loosely worded (I blame it on writing that at one in the morning). What I meant by that remark was that the creation of society alters - and tempers - the nature of property rights from their position in a state of nature. Hence the section (§120) I quoted above where he discusses the uniting of property to a commonwealth.