Table Of ContentThe Limits of
Lockean Rights
in Property
This page intentionally left blank
THE LIMITS OF
LOCKEAN RIGHTS
IN PROPERTY
Gopal Sreenivasan
New York Oxford
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
1995
Oxford University Press
Oxford New York
Athens Auckland Bangkok Bombay
Calcutta Cape Town Dar es Salaam Delhi
Florence Hong Kong Istanbul Karachi
Kuala Lumpur Madras Madrid Melbourne
Mexico City Nairobi Paris Singapore
Taipei Tokyo Toronto
and associated companies in
Berlin Ibadan
Copyright © 1995 by Gopal Sreenivasan
Published by Oxford University Press, Inc.
198 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016
Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise,
without the prior permission of Oxford University Press.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Sreenivasan, Gopal.
The limits of lockean rights in property / Gopal Sreenivasan.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-19-509176-0
1. Locke, John, 1632-1704. Two treatises of government.
2. Locke, John, 1632-1704—Views on property. 3. Locke, John,
1632-1704—Contributions in political science. 4. Property.
I. Title.
JC153.L87S68 1995
320.1'01—dc20 94-32889
987654321
Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper
To my Amma and Appa
This page intentionally left blank
Preface
This little book descends, largely by addition, from the B.Phil, thesis I
submitted in Oxford in Trinity Term, 1988. A considerable part of the
delay in its reaching this stage is due to the infrequency with which I was
able to make time to work on it while completing a Ph.D. in Berkeley. In
the interval, of course, a prodigious amount of work on Locke and his
account of property has appeared in print, so that I sometimes have had
the feeling devant moi le deluge. I have tried, by and large, to respond to
this work in the course of my discussion, certainly to the extent that it
presents some clear argument for a thesis either contrary or complemen-
tary to one of my own. I regret, however, that John Simmons's recent
book The Lockean Theory of Rights has reached me too late to discuss
here. But I take some encouragement from the fact that we are in agree-
ment on a number of points, at least in the form of our conclusions.
In the course of preparing this work, I have profited from the assis-
tance of a number of teachers and friends. My greatest debt is to my
B.Phil, supervisor, Jerry Cohen, and I am pleased to have a forum more
public than an obscure corner of Duke Humphrey's Library in which to
thank him. It was he who originally encouraged me to publish the thesis,
and his unfailingly generous, rigorous, and instructive supervision ac-
counts for so much of it surviving in the present discussion. He was fur-
thermore kind enough to continue to read and criticise new material, even
after I had left Oxford. Christopher Taylor, who chaired the examina-
tion committee in my year, helpfully allowed me to read the notes he had
made, and I should like to thank him, as well as Daniel Bell and David
Keen, for various useful comments on the thesis. I am extremely grate-
ful to James Tully for his invaluable encouragement, support, and ad-
viii Preface
vice, as I am to Samuel Scheffler, who took a supererogatory interest in
a project that had nothing to do with my dissertation and not only made
helpful comments about the whole manuscript, but very kindly encour-
aged me to persevere in face of various obstacles.
Later versions of the manuscript benefited from the criticism of anony-
mous referees. Thanks also go to the staff at Oxford University Press for
all their help. Finally, 1 should like to thank the Social Sciences and
Humanities Research Council of Canada and the Committee of Vice-
Chancellors and Principals of the Universities of the United Kingdom
for fellowship support of the original thesis, and the University of Cali-
fornia, Berkeley, for a Humanities Graduate Research Grant that helped
to finance the completion of the project.
Princeton, New Jersey G. S.
June 1994
Contents
1. Introduction, 3
Locke's Property and Lockean Property, 4
Rights in Property, 7
The Context of Locke's Argument, 13
The Consent Problem, 15
Rights and the Means of Preservation, 17
Overview, 18
Part I. Property in the Two Treatises
2. Property without Consent, 21
Natural Law and Natural Rights, 21
The Consent Problem, 24
The Bare Structure, 32
Money and Scarcity, 35
Waldron's Critique, 37
Rights and the Means of Preservation, 41
Enough and as Good, 47
Tully and Community Ownership, 50
Labour's Abundance, 54
3. Mixing or Making? 59
Labour, Mixing, and the Tradition, 60
The Workmanship Model, 62
God and Creation, 69
Man as Maker, 74
