John Locke Social Inequality Essay

Social Inequality and the Right to Labor in Locke’s Second Treatise;

In Locke’s Second Treatise, there is an apparent tension between a citizen’s right to accumulate what can be ma[d]e use of to any advantage of [human] life before it spoils” and the citizen’s responsibility to leave “enough, and as good […] in common for others” (§31; §27). With the invention of money, laborers are able to overcome the spoilage limitation and possess unequal amounts of property; the question is whether this inequality provides more goods that are able to be enjoyed by society as a whole. If the inequality is “morally good,” it will provide greater access to things that benefit human life. While Leo Strauss argues that Locke morally justifies “unlimited appropriation without concern for the need of others,” John Dunn argues that Locke believed “unrestricted physical indulgence” was a “morally perilous” liberty (Strauss 242; Dunn 245). …show more content…
We can see how money is morally right by considering how the introduction of money-based claims to property encourage man to produce “possessions beyond the use of his family,” both in greater quantity and quality than he produced in the state of nature, and, thus, there are more and better goods available to society for use (Locke §31). Then, I will disprove Dunn by showing that Locke’s belief that the value of land comes primarily from labor means that individual right to labor cannot be hindered by social inequality. Since the right to labor cannot be hindered, the laborer has a right to earn money and can thus access the goods that society creates. This evidence proves that the introduction of money stimulates greater and better production of goods that advantage human life to which the society, from the poorest day laborer to the richest landowner, have