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Two contexts
Locke's Two Treatises of Civil Government have a double historical context - the context in which they were written, mainly the early 1680s, and the context in which they were published.
It is clear that the works were published in 1690 in order to justify the Glorious Revolution. His aim, he said, was:
[to] establish the Throne of our Great Restorer, Our
present King William; to make good his Title, in the Consent of the People,
and justifie to the World, the People of England, whose love of their Just and
Natural Rights, with their Resolution to preserve them, saved the Nation
when it was on the very brink of Slavery and Ruine. (Preface to First Treatise.)
The 1690 text contains other contemporary references to link it to the Glorious Revolution but the origin of the text is considerably earlier:
As a result of Peter Laslett's scholarship, particularly
his critical edition of Locke's Two Treatises,' it is now widely accepted
that Locke wrote this work some years prior to the Glorious Revolution
rather than after it. However, at least as early as 1888, it was claimed that
the First Treatise belonged to the period 1680-1685. For reasons spelled
out in his Introduction, Laslett suggests the winter of 1679-1680 as the
period of authorship. Thus he concludes that the "Two Treatises is an
Exclusion Tract, not a Revolution Pamphlet." In fact, Laslett's dating
of the Two Treatises has been frequently termed "the new orthodoxy."
The period of authorship is extremely important, since it might help
to uncover Locke's purpose in writing the Two Treatises, and thus better
reveal the meaning this text had for Locke. Some scholars have been
unsatisfied with Laslett's dating of the authorship, particularly of the
Second Treatise. R.W.K. Hinton suggests that the first draft of the
Second Treatise can be dated to 1673-1675 and was largely inspired by
the royal abuses of power of that period.5 More recently, in a paper
delivered at a Symposium on John Locke (March 21-23, 1980) at the
Folger Shakespeare Library, and also in a later version, Richard
Ashcraft questioned Laslett's dating of the authorship of the Second
Treatise. Ashcraft associates the- Second Treatise with Shaftesbury's
plan of insurrection against Charles II, following the latter's dissolution
of the Oxford Parliament in March 1681. (George T. Menake, 'A Research Note and Query on the Dating of Locke's Two Treatises', Political Theory, Vol. 9, No. 4 (Nov., 1981), pp. 547-550: 547.)
Work and property
Classical legal theory
This theory was available e.g. in the Institutes and Digest of Justinian, with which Locke was familiar. The essential argument is that:
that which is no one's property (res nullius), in
some cases, and that which is everyone's common property (res communis omnium),
becomes my private property when I take possession of it. This is called "natural
possession," and according to Nerva the younger, as reported by Paul in the Digest
(D.41,2,1), it is the origin of all ownership. As examples, he mentions "things captured on land, in the sea or in the sky." (Roger T. Simonds, 'John Locke's Use of Classical Legal Theory', International Journal of the Classical Tradition, Vol. 3, No. 4 (Spring, 1997), pp. 424-432: 427.)
So why not use classical legal theory ?
It would have been politically incorrect for any English Protestant writer of the
seventeenth century to make overt use of Roman civil or canon law language, even
though at the same time the English courts were quietly taking over and translating
into the vernacular many of the essentials of Roman jurisprudence. Denigration of
Roman and canon law, and of civilian practitioners, was a major tactic in the rhetorical
battles between the partisans of Parliament and partisans of the Crown during the
early Stuart regimes. Roman law was thought to justify despotism. After the Commonwealth and Restoration, this particular issue disappears, since civilian learning
and practice is no longer a credible rival or threat to the supremacy of Parliament and
the common law. What Locke does in his political writings was considered dangerous
or even treasonous by royalists, because by arguing for a revival of allodial property
rights ['allodial: absolute private ownership of land: GT] he undermines the legal basis of the theory of absolute royal powers and prerogatives. Of course, he is also proposing to limit the powers of Parliament for the
same reasons, which probably accounts for the fact that his views never had the strong
influence in England that they enjoyed in the American colonies.
It is not surprising, then, that Locke does not avail himself explicitly of the most
obvious classical solution to the problem of justifying the conversion of common property into private property.(Simonds: 428)
Locke's labour theory of property
The central matrix of Locke's labour theory of property is theological and scriptural.
Locke assumes ... that the products of my labor belong to me, and in an earlier
passage he gives it a theological application (Second Treatise):
For men being all the Workmanship of one Omnipotent, and infinitely wise
Maker; All the servants of one Sovereign Master, sent into the World by his
order and about his business, they are his Property, whose Workmanship
they are, made to last during his, not one anothers Pleasure. (2.6)
Thus, God himself is a laborer, in creating the world, and his dominion over the world
is justified by that fact. The world, including mankind, is God's work-product. The
way in which Locke later applies this labor theory to human property is somewhat
similar but differs at two important points. First, the human "person" is said to be the
property of the man, although the man is the property of God. Secondly, the things
which are to become my private property are not only those things which I have
created, if any, but those things with which I have mixed or joined my labor.
First, as to the human person:
Though the Earth, and all inferior Creatures be common to all Men, yet
every man has a Property in his own Person. This no Body has any Right to
but himself. (2.27)
Here it is quite clear that by "person" Locke means "body," which is still one of the
common uses of the word "person"; but by "body," in this particular context, he
means the same thing as "man" or "self." It is the "man" (sic) that owns the "person," and that man is "himself" and not "other body."
...
Secondly, as to the conversion of common property into private property:
The Labour of his Body, and the Works of his Hands, we may say, are
properly his. Whatsoever then he removes out of the State that Nature hath
provided, and left it in, he hath mixed his Labour with, and joyned to it
something that is his own, and thereby makes it his Property.... For this
Labour being the unquestionable Property of the Labourer, no Man but he
can have a right to what that is once joyned to, at least where there is
enough, and as good left in common for others. (2.27.) (Simonds: 425-6.)
'Mixing' - that curious term
Just an endnote observation :
The act of appropriation itself is what Locke calls mixing or joining labor with the
object. But obviously, as many of Locke's critics have complained, starting with David
Hume, labor is not literally the sort of thing that can be mixed or joined with anything.
If we think of labor as mechanical exertion, or force, we can say that it is applied to
some object at a particular time and place. In that case, according to classical Newtonian
mechanics, the object itself exerts an equal and opposite force on the laborer, yet we
would hardly grant that the object thereby exerts labor. The reason is that labor is not
merely an application of force; it requires an act of will or intention, an element of
subjectivity. All the more doubt, therefore, that we can speak of mixing or joining such
a thing with inert materials like air and water. (Simonds: 426.)
