How Ben Shapiro Might Consider Locke More Carefully

“Locke’s theoretical arguments prefigured another thinker who had a lot to say about labor and property: Karl Marx.”

Introduction

There is a furious debate taking place among political scientists about the influence of John Locke on the Constitution of the United States and on American culture more generally. This is because Locke is typically invoked (or disparaged) as the ideological defender of unbridled capitalism and tolerant liberalism. Everyone from anti-capitalist leftists to conservatives critical of liberal permissiveness have consequently ripped into the English philosopher. Despite this, Locke remains a popular reference point for the American way; and despite a recent surge in criticism of Locke on the part of conservatives such as Patrick Deneen, the lion’s share of praise for Locke still comes from those who are right-of-center. For instance, in his recent book How to Destroy America in Three Easy Steps (reviewed here), Ben Shapiro invokes Lockean principles about property and toleration while criticizing “disintergrationist philosophies,” which sought to undermine unity and faith in capitalism. As Ben Shapiro puts it:

“Human beings feel the necessity to control their environment; this is the root of property rights. John Locke correctly pointed out that ownership of property is merely an extension of the idea of ownership of your labor; when we remove something from the state of nature and mix our labor with it and join something of our own to it, we thereby make that property our own. The rights of property, James Madison wrote in Federalist No. 10, arise from the ‘faculties of man.'”

The appeal of Locke to conservative Americans is readily understandable. Few political philosophers offered as potent a defense of property as Locke, which he presents in the Second Treatise on Government as a natural right. More importantly, Locke upholds a conception of property that validates what Yale political scientist Ian Shapiro calls the “workmanship ideal.” Expressed simply, this is the notion that entitlements to property emerge because we mix matter with our labor. This, in turn, is linked to a whole host of cherished arguments about meritocracy and inequality. The general thrust is that the wealthy have gotten where they are because of hard work and talent, and we, consequently, have no basis to violate their natural rights to property through taxation and redistribution. The problem with this argument is that it is very vulnerable to a host of well-known objections, which far too many conservatives remain unwilling to address—or even contemplate. I will discuss some of these objections in the remainder of this essay.