“That all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” When Thomas Jefferson wrote that iconic phrase for the Declaration of Independence, he was considerably influenced by the natural law philosophies of John Locke. Locke was one of the first to introduce the idea that property is acquired through labor, and that the value of that property is fundamentally intertwined with the effort of your labor. This idea reflects the American glorification of hard labor as a method of upward social mobility and as an indicator of success. While his views on property are fairly divisive, Locke’s beliefs in natural rights and the necessity
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In America, property ownership plays a large role, but in a communist country like China, that role is diminished. Property ownership still carries a lot of weight in America’s modern political society, but Locke’s particular agriculture-centric view of property holds little relevance in today’s industrialized society. In his writing, Bertrand Russell brought up the example of a Ford car manufacturer, and questioned how you could estimate which part of the total output is due to your own labor. As jobs become more and more compartmentalized, it becomes increasingly difficult to parse out the results of each individual’s labors. We can’t really look at property rights through the same lens that Locke did because labor as a concept has changed so …show more content…
Property ownership as a form of political capital has inherently classist roots, as it discounts the opinions and needs of non-property owners, who will almost always be the poor and otherwise underprivileged. Those who have the most significant stakes in political policy, and stand to lose the most because of it, are often the very people who are unable to own property and are thus reliant upon the powerful and wealthy to make vital decisions about their wellbeing. The current significance of property ownership in politics proves that although the laws may have changed, we as a society have not yet moved on from the policies of Locke’s day that disenfranchised the working
In America, property ownership plays a large role, but in a communist country like China, that role is diminished. Property ownership still carries a lot of weight in America’s modern political society, but Locke’s particular agriculture-centric view of property holds little relevance in today’s industrialized society. In his writing, Bertrand Russell brought up the example of a Ford car manufacturer, and questioned how you could estimate which part of the total output is due to your own labor. As jobs become more and more compartmentalized, it becomes increasingly difficult to parse out the results of each individual’s labors. We can’t really look at property rights through the same lens that Locke did because labor as a concept has changed so …show more content…
Property ownership as a form of political capital has inherently classist roots, as it discounts the opinions and needs of non-property owners, who will almost always be the poor and otherwise underprivileged. Those who have the most significant stakes in political policy, and stand to lose the most because of it, are often the very people who are unable to own property and are thus reliant upon the powerful and wealthy to make vital decisions about their wellbeing. The current significance of property ownership in politics proves that although the laws may have changed, we as a society have not yet moved on from the policies of Locke’s day that disenfranchised the working