A POSTCAPITALIST PARADIGM: THE COMMON GOOD OF ...

law stated, he said, “that men, being once born, have a right to their
preservation, and consequently to meat and drink, and such other things
as nature affords for their subsistence;” 91 The Revelation, on the other
hand, proved that God had created the world for humankind. Locke addressed
this double challenge, and in turn attempted to show “how men
might come to have a property in several parts of that which God gave
to mankind in common, and that without any express compact of all the
commoners.” 92
How, however, can this transition from the “omnia sunt communia”,
from the common use of the earth and its resources, to a private property
which excludes all other fellow humans, be justified? For Locke, it
is the freedom of the individual that explains this transition: “Though the
earth, and all inferior creatures, be common to all men, yet every man
has a property in his own person.” 93 This, says Locke, thus also applies
to the labour of the individual. And since the fruits of the earth only
through labour achieve a form in which they can be useful to humans,
so, he adds, such a thing “hath by this labour something annexed to it,
that excludes the common right of other men.” 94 To avoid leading these
two stated premises ad absurdum, Locke ads in very brief – and also inconsequential
– form, “at least where there is enough, and as good, left
in common for others.” 95 We should hold this condition in our memories:
what if private property of the one leads to the lack of all property by
91 John Locke, “An Essay Concerning the True Original Extent and End of Civil Government”,
The Second Treatise of Civil Government, 1690, http://www.constitution.org/jl/2ndtreat.htm,
Ch. 5, Sec. 25.
92 Ibid.
93 Ibid, Sec. 27. Locke, who himself accepted slavery in the British colonies in North
America, was at the same time critical of it for fundamental reasons, since he justified
capitalist private property through the freedom of the individual. Slavery, he
said, was “the state of war continued, between a lawful conqueror and a captive.”
Cynically, he asserted the acquiescence of the slave to his slavery, for should the
slave find that “the hardship of his slavery outweigh the value of his life, it is in his
power, by resisting the will of his master, to draw on himself the death he desires.”
(ibid, Ch. 4, Sec. 23).
94 Ibid, Sec. 27.
95 Ibid.
137