Picking Lockes

    

  
                                The Ideas of John Locke in the Twenty-first Century

            As I concluded my comments on Iceland, its history, and its politics, I considered the following question:  Every society must find a balance between individual liberties and the rights of the state; between the right of private property, and the security of that part of the natural environment still held in common; and between personal responsibility and social responsibility.  It seems that Iceland has struck a balance that not only differs from the U.S., but also differs slightly from the rest of Western Europe.  Yet Iceland also differs from other Western democracies in one other way: they did not rely on the philosophy of John Locke as a founding principle.   Their democracy was founded in 930 AD, centuries before Locke was born.  While Iceland is the world’s oldest democracy, the second oldest is surely the federation of Six Iroquois Nations, whose parliament began about 1150, and still functions today.  (Originally, it was just the five nations—the Tuscarora did not join until 1742.)   The Iroquois took nothing from Locke, yet Locke, quite knowingly, took a great deal from the Iroquois.   And the Iroquois also took a different view of these issues, being different from the heirs of Locke in some of the same ways that Iceland is different.  Could there be a connection?

            I declined to write about this until I had the opportunity to think it through, and until I could re-read Locke’s Second Treatise of Government.  Having now done this, I can assure you that there is a connection.  If you have not yet read the series of posts on Iceland, it might be useful to do so before beginning this opus.  To read them in order, they are entitled: “Iceland, Day one”;  “Iceland, Day 2&3”;  “Iceland, Day four”;  “Iceland, Day 5&6”;  “A view of Iceland”; “Iceland, Early History”; and “Iceland, Recent History.”   You must page back into “older posts,” to find the first.

            First, let me explain that this is in no way an attack on John Locke. Locke is called the father of Liberalism, and as a lifelong Liberal, I would no more wish to attack Locke than the Delhi Lama would wish to attack the Buddha.  Locke was the first to articulate the universal right to self determination, self government, and individual freedom.   The basic ideas found in our own Declaration of Independence:  “….that all men are created equal, and that they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, and that among these are the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; and that it is to secure these rights that governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed…...” are a summary of Locke’s most central ideas.  (Except that Locke speaks of the pursuit of property, not happiness.)

            Locke not only provided a theoretical framework for self government based on consent of the governed, he also provided a theory for the origins of government, of private property, and of basic human rights.   He theorized that when man was in “a natural state,” he was utterly free and independent, and that all were equal, and that no man had the right to give orders to another.  What evidence did he offer?  He had carefully studied all information available to him about American Indians, especially the Iroquois.   He knew that the Iroquois claimed such rights, and he assumed that these people were “man in the natural state.”

            Locke says that while all men were originally free, they weren’t very secure, since if someone were to violate their freedom or seize their property, there might not be anyone to defend them.  They had a natural right to defend themselves, but that might not be effective. So in practice, men in the natural state might enjoy few rights at all, if their rights were routinely trampled by whichever bully wished to do so.  Locke felt that most men in the natural state would respect each other’s rights, but there would always be a few who did not. So men might bind together in groups and defend their rights collectively, and form some sort of government, with each man transferring to the government some of his right to use force in his own defense.  But, Locke emphasized, this transfer of rights to some state entity could be revoked if abused. People have the right to form governments—and the right to change them.

            Charles C. Mann, in his book, 1491—America before Columbus, reminds us how much Locke took from the Iroquois.  My own review of this book is in the archives of this blog.  Let me quote from it:

            The political institutions of the Indians were often as sophisticated as their agriculture. The Six Iroquois Nations had an elected parliament which dates back to about 1150 AD and which still functions today.  It is the second oldest representative democratic body on the planet, second only to Iceland.   The pre-Columbian Indians did not practice slavery, and their women enjoyed a status much closer to gender equality than European women at the time.  When English and French settlers first encountered the Iroquois, they were dumbfounded by their “outrageous” ideas, such as the belief that all men were by nature free—that no man could be owned by another—and that every man had an equal right to a voice in the governing of his country.  

            Europeans saw these “naïve and silly” ideas as proof that the Indians would always be “ungovernable savages.”  They also found such ideas so amusing that they were quickly reported back to Europe.  But not all Europeans were amused.  The philosophers of the Enlightenment took these ideas seriously and argued about them for the next hundred years. John Locke was particularly impressed.  He saw the Indians as “man in the natural state.”  So he assumed that Iroquois concepts of individual freedom and equality must be the natural rights of man.  Jefferson and the other framers of the American constitution were familiar with the writings of Locke.  They also had direct personal knowledge of Iroquois democracy, and knew that it actually worked.  Democracy is not an invention that can be patented, but if it were, the Iroquois may have the prior claim.  In any case, Western democratic institutions and ideas of freedom and equality probably owe more to the Iroquois than to the Magna Charta.

            Locke builds on this individual freedom to create a right of private property.  He asserts that before civil government, all property was held in common, but that individuals could appropriate to themselves a portion of the common store of resources to the extent that they required these things to live.  And they did not need the advance consent of the other stakeholders to do this, because they needed these things to live, and everyone has a basic right to life. The way in which common resources can become individual property is as follows:  all persons already have personal property in the form of their own bodies and the labor of their own bodies.  Every man owns his own labor. If, in extracting nature’s bounty, I have invested some of my own labor, then the useful outcome becomes mine alone.  Apples growing in the wilderness belong to everyone.  But if I invest labor into finding them, picking them, and carrying them back to the village, then they are not the apples of all mankind—they’re mine.  The apples represent the bounty of nature, and nature belongs to everyone.  But by the time they sit in a basket in front of my hut, they also represent an amount of labor—my labor.  And since the two values, natural value and labor value, are by then inseparably co-mingled, I may claim exclusive ownership, since if anyone else claimed a share of it, they would be confiscating some of my labor.  That’s where private property comes from—the mingling of one person’s labor with goods previously held in common.   The fish in the ocean belong to everyone—until some individual goes to the trouble of catching some of them.  The same applies to land.  If I find a piece of wilderness land that no one is using, it’s mine to use if I wish to use it.  And if I make “improvements,” such as clearing off trees,   ploughing and planting, and building fences,  then not only does the produce become mine, but the land itself,  since by then the overwhelming majority of its value owes to improvements wrought by my labor—not to the original value of some worthless piece of wilderness land.  The land, according to Locke, was in and of itself nearly worthless. Only my labor made it worth something, because only since my investment does it produce anything useful to humans.  He believed that God gave the planet to humans, and only to humans, and He intended that humans use it for their needs.  So for Locke, the only measure of the worth of anything is what it produces that is useful to humans.  (I should point out that in 1689, there were few in Europe who would have disputed this point.  The wilderness which we today define as priceless was in Locke’s time deemed worthless.  And the Bible, which Locke quotes and which Europeans did not then doubt, clearly says that God gave man total dominion over the earth and all its creatures.)  Locke gave two reasons why undeveloped land was nearly worthless:  Firstly, it produced nearly nothing, and secondly, there was a limitless supply of it.  He conceded that in some areas, such as most of Europe, most of the arable land was taken.  But he claimed that worldwide, even considering the whole earth’s population, if one were to consider the Americas, there was at least twice as much land as the human race could ever use.

            Did Europeans have the right to take American land?  Locke claimed that they did.  Why?  Because the Indians were not really using it.  Locke totally misunderstood how the Indians used the land.   He assumed since the Indians did not enclose or plough the land, or build permanent structures, they were just occupying the land, not actively using it. As Dan McGovern points out in his excellent book, The Campo Indian Landfill War, prior to the coming of the white man, Indians used fire to actively manage their environment, and did so more effectively than it has ever been managed since.  Charles C. Mann makes the same point in 1491—America before Columbus (Reviewed in these pages—see archive.)   But Locke argued that since the Indians were not “using” the land, any European farmer could rightly seize and use as much as he could personally farm, and by “improving it,” the land became his own. Thomas Jefferson understood how the Indians used land, but felt that they did not use it very efficiently. He argued that any European farmer could feed thirty times as many people on the same quantity of land, so in a world of hungry people, long term survival of the “savage” way of life was difficult to justify.  All throughout the colonization of America, the Locke principle of taking from nature as much land as you could personally use, and making it your own by improving it was the operating principle. Even the Homestead Act would give anyone 160 acres, but only if he lived on the land, worked the land, and “improved” the land.

             So Locke’s first major flaw is that his theory, by misunderstanding how Indians used the land, allowed us to appropriate Indian land with an easy conscience. But with Europe bursting at the seams, we surely would have taken this land anyway, and somehow justified this taking.  Any society that can justify slavery can justify anything.  And even John Locke could justify slavery.  He said that although all men were born free, it was possible for a person to act so as to lose that freedom; (e.g. if a person did something to deserve a death penalty, and his judges were merciful and sentenced him to a life of slavery instead, he should have no complaint, because if he thought slavery was worse than death, he could always provoke his master to kill him.)  Well, in practice, it doesn’t work out that way.  What percentage of slaves shipped out of west Africa were convicted murderers?  And what about those born into slavery, a situation which had already become legal in the colonies at the time he was writing?

            While Locke only briefly mentions slavery, (3 paragraphs) he devotes a full 26 paragraphs to defending private property, including the acquisition and hoarding of unlimited amounts of private wealth.  He says that originally, when man was in the natural state, everyone was allowed to take from nature as much as he could use. If a man took a dozen fish from the lake and he and his family ate them all before any of them spoiled, that was fair.  But if he caught more than he could use and some of them spoiled, this was a crime against all others who might have wanted those fish.  This limitation of not taking more than you could use kept everyone fairly equal.

            But, says Locke, all that changes with the invention of money.  Gold is not actually useful.  You can’t eat it, burn it, or ride it. But at some point, civilized men, by common assent, agreed to accept gold and silver in exchange for things that are useful—for food, fuel, and fiber, etc.  And with the rise of commerce, it happened that some men accumulated more gold and silver than others.  But this is no crime, since gold does not spoil and nothing is wasted.  If I catch twice as many fish as I can eat and trade the excess for shiny metal, all of the fish are still eaten and nothing spoils.  So by hoarding gold, I am keeping gold out of circulation and depriving others from having it, but gold is not useful.  And nothing that is useful is withheld from anyone.

            Why would Locke take such pains to construct such an ingenious defense of unlimited private wealth?  He was not a disinterested party.  By 1689, he had become extremely wealthy, and so were most of his friends. And why would an essay which is mainly about freedom use such convoluted logic attempting to defend slavery?  Locke had made his money from stock in many British companies, and they all in some way profited from slavery.

            Locke was personally conflicted, but no more so than any other affluent Englishman of his age.  Yet he established the right to self government, to personal freedom, and to private property.  These are of great value. He built a great house, and we all live in it.  I have no desire to burn it down.  The trouble is that some of the foundation blocks he used in building this house were badly cracked and have now begun to crumple.  Our task should be to carefully remove and replace these flawed blocks, while preserving the house.

            So, which of Locke’s foundation blocks would I replace? Three mainly—and I’ll list them in ascending order of importance:  That the only measure of value of anything is in the goods it can provide for humans; that wilderness land, (“unimproved” land) is nearly worthless; and that these undeveloped lands are available in unlimited abundance.

            Locke may be forgiven for his first error.  In thinking that the only measure of value was what could be directly used by humans, he failed to understand that almost every species on the planet indirectly affects humans.  We breathe oxygen from leaves in the upper Amazon, wild insects pollinate our crops, phytoplankton sustains our fisheries etc.  We can forgive him for not knowing this, because until after WWII, few people anywhere knew it.  In fact, we are only now beginning to understand the complex ways in which all life is intertwined.

            For his second error, he should have known better.  If you think an acre of untilled land has no value, let me ask you this:  Have you ever tried to make an acre of dirt?  One of the first official government actions in the United States to recognize the importance of unexploited land was probably the creation of Adirondack State Park in NY in 1892. Larger than all U.S. national parks combined, this area was set aside by New Yorkers--who had already seen what “development” had done to the Hudson Valley, some parts of which were by then an open sewer. Though it had once been the most beautiful river in the East, by the mid nineteenth century, much of the Hudson was ruined.  They feared that if the same logging were done in the Adirondacks, it would destroy needed watershed, silt up the Erie Canal and the Hudson, and leave an area so eroded as to look like the surface of the moon. In 1894, a constitutional change provided that Adirondack Park must never be developed—must remain “forever wild.”

            But for Locke’s last error--his claim that unused land would always be available in limitless abundance-- it is difficult to see how such a logical man could say something that outrageous.  The only explanation may be that Locke and his contemporaries, amazed by the vastness of the New World, were in the same position as a pack of feral Chihuahuas who stumble onto the carcass of a beached whale.  While a feral Chihuahua might understand intellectually that a very large whale is not at all the same as a “limitless” whale, from his standpoint it might as well be.   So when was it first appreciated that the New World lands were not unlimited?  Probably by 1798, the year Thomas Malthus published; and certainly by 1823, the year of the Monroe Doctrine.  The next milestone was 1890, when the Superintendant of the Census announced the closing of the American frontier. Many at the time worried that this closing would profoundly alter American society. They felt that the frontier had been central to the development of the American character, and without it, things would be radically different.  And they were right, though the expected change was not immediate, but slow and gradual.  The frontier had always been a social safety valve.  If wages in your eastern factory job were appallingly low, your boss could always say, “So, if you’re not happy, go west, get some free land, and make your own deal.”  If rent for a tenant farmer in the east was too high, the remedy was the same--- “Go get your own land.”  At least for free men, there was no problem that 160 acres of free or cheap land could not address. But with the frontier closed, then all of the old problems would have to be re-examined, and eventually fixed.  The widespread belief that there will always be enough resources for everyone allows a society to defer necessary social investments; and this is true whether this belief is grounded in actual historical experience of resource abundance or simply in a blind faith in John Locke’s promise. Yet once you admit that the things that sustain life are limited, and that everyone has a right to live, then a winner-take-all society can’t work.   Germany may have been the first to see this, as they established an old age pension plan in 1870. 

            Locke claimed that for one man to have vastly more than an average store of goods did not make his neighbors poorer.  This was true, he said, because the rich man was richer only because he worked harder, not because he controlled more resources. Undeveloped resources were in limitless abundance; hard work was the only missing ingredient.  Of course, if he was wrong about the unlimited resources, then he would be wrong about whether one man having more goods condemned another to have less.  And this would explain why free market conservatives have hung on so tenaciously to the idea of limitless resources, even if it’s a mathematical impossibility.

            We should expect that the degree to which a society demands and accepts redistributive economic policies should vary inversely with the persistence of the myth of a limitless resource base.  The United States has both a direct connection to Locke, and actual historical experience with free land, and therefore the strongest acceptance of this myth.  England has a direct connection to Locke, but no free land experience.  Continental Europe has only an indirect connection with Locke, and no free land experience, and Iceland has none of the above.  Iceland was founded in 930 AD, centuries before Locke; and even at that time, most of the usable land had been claimed.

            At this point, you may expect that I will launch into a detailed analysis of Icelandic law and social programs. No, that would take five years of research and produce a 900 page tome that I do not propose to write and that you would not care to read. Suffice it to say that modern Icelanders are more willing than most to admit that there are hard limits to what can be produced, and also more willing to submit to redistribution of that which is produced.  And the two go together.  If you’ve read my post on Iceland, then you are aware that their entire food and fiber base rests on a fishery and a narrow strip of coastal land. Imagine trying to convince an Icelander that good farm land is infinitely abundant.    Imagine trying to convince the Iroquois, who had fought many bloody wars over land, that land is infinitely abundant. They would see the falsity immediately. Though our situation is more complex, the falsity can be seen here as well, unless we try very hard not to see it.