Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-m6dg7 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-20T00:56:32.120Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Inalienable Right, Alienable Property and Freedom of Choice: Locke, Nozick and Marx on the Alienability of Labour

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 November 2009

Edward Andrew
Edward Andrew
Affiliation:
Scarborough College, University of Toronto
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article attempts to illuminate a contradiction at the heart of the notion of natural rights. Natural rights are commonly thought to be both inalienable and the property of individuals. As the right or the law is privatized as my rights, her rights, our rights or their rights, rights come to be viewed as personal properties. A distinction is made between personal possession and private property (which entails the title to alienate what is owned) in order to speak significantly of our possession of inalienable rights. For Locke, we possess an inalienable right to life and liberty precisely because we do not own our lives and liberties. Moreover, we can alienate our person, or our ability to labour, precisely because it is our private property. For Nozick, rights are individual properties. Thus, for Nozick as distinct from Marx, one has the right to sell anything (one's life, liberty, labour or soul) at the market price.

Résumé

Cet article tente de faire ressortir une contradiction inhérente au concept de droit naturel. On envisage souvent les droits naturels comme inaliénables tout en étant la propriété des individus. Le droit (objectif) paraít impersonnel ou encore propriété collective mais les droits (subjectifs) semblent une propriété personnelle (mes droits, ses droits, nos droits ou leurs droits). L'auteur établit une distinction entre une possession personnelle et la propriété privée (impliquant le droit de l'aliénation). Selon Locke, on a un droit inaliénable à la vie et a la liberté précisément parce que la vie et la liberté ne sont pas la propriété privée. Aussi, on peut vendre sa personne ou sa force de travail précisément parce que c'est sa propriété privée. Chez Nozick, les droits sont des biens individuels. Ainsi, pour Nozick, à la différence de Marx, on a le droit de vendre quoi que ce soit (sa vie, sa liberté, son travail et son âme) au prix du marché.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Political Science/Revue canadienne de science politique , Volume 18 , Issue 3 , September 1985 , pp. 529 - 550
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Political Science Association (l'Association canadienne de science politique) and/et la Société québécoise de science politique 1985

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 de Tocqueville, Alexis, Democracy in America (New York: Vintage. 1945).Google Scholar vol. 1. chap. 3.

2 Polin, R., “The Rights of Man in Hobbes and Locke,” in Raphael, D. D. (ed.). Political Theory and the Rights of Man (London: Macmillan, 1967), 24.Google Scholar

3 Ibid.

4 Ibid., 25.

5 But see Ron Replogle's thoughtful criticism in “Natural Rights and Distributive Justice: Nozick and the Classical Contractarians,” this JOURNAL 17 (1984), 65–86.Google Scholar However, Replogle criticizes Nozick from a perspective of individual rights subject to “side-constraints,” a perspective which does not distinguish inalienable right from alienable property.

6 Hart, H. L. A, “Are There any Natural Rights?,” The Philosophical Rei-iew 44 (1955), 182.Google Scholar

7 Wasserstrom, R., “Rights, Human Rights, and Racial Discrimination.” The Journal of Philosophy 61 (1964), 629, 632.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

8 Tay, A. E. S., “The Sense of Justice in the Common Law,” in Kamenka, E. and Tay, A. E. S. (eds.), Justice (New York: St. Martin's 1980). 82.Google Scholar

9 Waldron, J.. “A Right to Do Wrong,” Ethics 92 (1981), 21–39.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

10 Simmons, A. J., “Inalienable Rights and Locke's Treatises,” Philosophy and Public Affairs 12 (1983), 192.Google Scholar Simmons' view that Locke held all rights to be alienable is also maintained by Richards, B. A., “Inalienable Rights: Recent Criticism and Old Doctrine,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 29 (1969), 403–04.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

11 Locke, John, Two Treatises of Government, ed. by Laslett, Peter (Cambridge: University Press, 1963), II, 193.Google Scholar

12 Ibid., I, 30, 52–54, 85–87: II, 6, 23, 135, 149, 172. See Windstrup, G., “Locke on Suicide,” Political Theory 8 (1980), 169–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

13 Paul, J. and Paul, E. F., “Locke's Usufructuary Theory of Self-Ownership,” Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 61 (1980), 390.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

14 Locke, Two Treatises, II, 123.

15 Ibid., II, 27.

16 Ibid., II, 28.

17 Macpherson, C. B., “Locke on Capitalist Appropriation,” Western Political Science Quarterly 4 (1951), 550–64;CrossRefGoogle Scholar“The Social Bearing of Locke's Political Philosophy,” Western Political Science Quarterly 7 (1954), 1–22;CrossRefGoogle ScholarThe Political Theory of Possessive Individualism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962), 197–222.Google Scholar

18 Day, J. P., “Locke on Property,” Philosophical Quarterly 16 (1966), 207–21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

19 Locke, J., Some Considerations of the Lowering of Interest and Raising the Value of Money, in Works (London: Longmans, 1794), vol. 5, 36.Google Scholar

20 Locke, Two Treatises, I, 92.

21 Ibid., II, 65.

22 Ibid., 116.

23 Ibid.

24 Nozick, Robert. Anarchy, Slate and Utopia (New York: Basic Books, 1974). 9.Google Scholar

25 Ibid., 58.

26 Locke, Two Treatises, II, 57.

27 Ibid., II, 6.

28 Ibid., II, 149.

29 Ibid., II, 6; compare I, 42–54, 85–86.

30 Ibid., II, 23.

31 Ibid., II, 172.

32 Ibid., II, 119.

33 , John Locke, A Letter Concerning Toleration, in The Second Treatise of Government and a Letter Concerning Toleration, ed. by Gough, J. W. (Oxford: Blackwell, 1966), 129.Google Scholar

34 Ibid.. 129–31, 135–40, 154–55; compare with Immanuel Kant, The Metaphysic of Morals, in Reiss, H. (ed.). Kant's Political Writings (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970), 151.Google Scholar

35 Locke, A Letter. 137.

36 Ibid., 128–29, 154–55.

37 Ibid., 128.

38 Locke, Two Trealisex. II, 168.

39 . Ibid.. II. 240.

40 Ibid., II. 135.

41 Hobbes in chapter 21 of Leviathan argued against a conscript army and for an army composed of professional volunteers who have a contractual obligation to fight. The sovereign has the right to conscript an army, but the subject has the right to avoid conscription because it is merely cowardice and not injustice to refuse to fight. One's civil obligations are conditional on the sovereign securing the subjects' lives (and allowance ought to be made for men of "feminine courage"). However, in his concluding chapter of Leviathan, and almost as an after-thought, Hobbes asserts that individuals have no rights to refuse to fight in the event of an emergency or threatened dissolution of civil society. Nevertheless, it is difficult to see why a Hobbesian would stand fast to fight when he could follow Hobbes's example and flee at the first outbreak of hostilities.

42 Tarkov, N., Locke's Second Treatise and ‘The Best Fence Against Rebellion,’ The Review of Politics 43 (1981), 198–217.Google Scholar

43 Umbeck, J., “Might Makes Rights: A Theory of the Formation and Initial Distribution of Property Rights”, Economic Inquiry 19 (1981), 39.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

44 Locke, Two Treatises, II, 20, 21, 87, 91, 94, 168, 176, 241–42.

45 Macpherson, The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism; Strauss, Leo, Natural Rights and History (Chicago: University Press, 1953);Google ScholarCox, R. H.Locke on Peace and War (Oxford: Clarendon, 1960);Google ScholarRyan, A., “Locke and the Dictatorship of the Bourgeoisie,” Political Studies 13 (1965), 219–30;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Day, “Locke on Property; Seliger, M., The Liberal Politics of John Locke (London: Allen and Unwin, 1968);Google Scholar Nozick. Anarchy, State and Utopia; Becker, L. D., “The Labour Theory of Property Aquisition,” Journal of Philosophy 73 (1976), 653–64;CrossRefGoogle ScholarSteiner, H., “The Natural Right to the Means of Production,” Philosophical Quarterly 27 (1977), 41–49;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Paul and Paul, “Locke's Usufructuary Theory”; Pbole, R., “Locke and the Bourgeois State,” Political Studies 28 (1980), 222–37;Google ScholarWaldron, J. J., “Enough and as Good for Others,” Philosophical Quarterly 29 (1979), 319–28;CrossRefGoogle ScholarWaldron, J. J., “Locke's Account of Inheritance and Bequest,” Journal of the History of Philosophy 19 (1981), 39–52;CrossRefGoogle ScholarTully, J., A Discourse on Property: John Locke and His Adversaries (Cambridge: University Press, 1980).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

46 Locke, Two Treatises, II, 50; compare II, 30, 38, 45.

47 Ibid., II, 158.

48 MacPherson, , The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism;Google Scholar compare with Ryan. "Locke and the Dictatorship of the Bourgeoisie" and Seliger, The Liberal Politics of John Locke.

49 Locke. Two Treatises, II, 140.

50 Ibid., 11, 41.

51 Ibid., II. 44.

52 Ibid., II, 40.

53 Ibid.

54 Ibid., II, 43.

55 JrMansfield, H. C.., “On the Political Character of Property in Locke.” in Kontos, Alkis (ed.), Powers. Possessions and Freedom (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1979), 23.Google Scholar

56 Marx, Karl, Critique of the Cotha Programme (New York: International Publishers, 1938), 3.Google Scholar

57 Locke, Two Treatises, 11, 45.

58 Ibid.

59 Becker, “The Labour Theory of Property Acquisition,” 660.

60 Steiner, “The Natural Right to the Means of Production,” 49.

61 Engels, Friedrich, Hen Eiigen Diihring's Revolution in Science (New York: International Publishers, 1966), 339–40.Google Scholar

62 Marx, Critique of the Gotha Programme, 8.

63 Lindsay, A. D., Karl Marx's Capital (London: Oxford University Press, 1925). 107.Google Scholar

64 Locke, Two Treatises, II, 6.

65 Nozick, Anarchy, State and Utopia, 262–63.

66 Held, V., “John Locke on Robert Nozick,” Social Research 43 (1976), 191.Google Scholar

67 Locke, Two Treatises, 364.

68 Nozick, Anarchy, Slate and Utopia, 283.

69 Ibid.. 95.

70 Rawls, John. A Theory of Justice (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972). 102–08.Google Scholar