Locke’s labour-mixing argument licenses annexation by assuming nature has no own value

Evidence

The view of nature as terra nullius available for annexation, as empty, passive and without a value or direction of its own, often underlies and is implicit in early liberal arguments for the legitimacy of private property. For example, Locke’s famous argument in the second treatise justifying private property in terms of the ‘mixing’ of one’s own labour with natural resources in the state of nature, provides just such a licence for annexation (Locke 1960:329). The argument assumes not only that the natural world is ‘unowned’ (unless so mixed with labour) by other humans, but also that it does not ‘own’ itself. It assumes that nature is a nullity, without value or direction on its own account, and that these things are added in by human labour. Without such a nullity assumption, the ‘mixing’ analogy is not at all convincing and does not show that nature is simply available to the mixer. For why should the addition of labour make it possible to simply annexe the natural world, without constraints other than those arising from the needs of other humans? If nature has creativity, value and significance on its own account, the result of ‘mixing’ would be more like the mixing of one person’s labour with another’s or with what another person owns. There would be thus no case for simple appropriation, for claiming the ‘mixed’ human labour to be dominant in giving property rights and overriding the claim of the item to be ‘its own thing’, with its own agency, significance and value. As Vandana Shiva points out, Locke’s argument provides for those elite groups whose work counts as real ‘labour’ a similar licence for annexation by defining as ‘nature’ the work of marginalised groups, especially women and the colonised. — Val Plumwood, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature, 420

Categorization

• XREF: Terra nullius concept bridges directly to settler-colonial critique and land/place thread of the Eco-Justice polyad; also links ch9’s ‘naturalised and feminised status’ ideas via Shiva. — connects to: Locke justified colonial expropriation via labor theory, not natural racial inferiority — David Theo Goldberg, The Racial State, 28; Claims about European identity rest on a Lockean theory of property and cultivation. — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular:…, 811; Rights claims by nature serve capitalism unless supplemented by acknowledgment of responsibility — Donna Landry and Gerald MacLean, The Spivak Reader: Selected Works of…, 2214 (+5 more)
• QUESTION: Worth chasing how Locke’s nullity assumption of nature pairs with colonial terra nullius legal doctrine — the two may be one continuous intellectual move worth naming.

Broader Connections

• Locke justified colonial expropriation via labor theory, not natural racial inferiority #expands (0.88) — David Theo Goldberg, The Racial State, 28
• Claims about European identity rest on a Lockean theory of property and cultivation. #expands (0.85) — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular, 811
• Liberalism is organically embedded in the racialized nature-value hierarchy #expands (0.85)
• Lockean property logic lets oustees be displaced without being dispossessed. #expands (0.82) — Rob Nixon, Slow Violence and the Environmentalism…, 458
• The natural world offers nothing intrinsically resistant to capital’s commodification #corroborates (0.82) — Mark Fisher, Ghosts of My Life, 546
• Locke naturalized market creation as inevitable to defend his class’s property project #corroborates (0.80) — Mark Blyth, Austerity, 281
• Rights claims by nature serve capitalism unless supplemented by acknowledgment of responsibility #corroborates (0.75) — Donna Landry and Gerald MacLean, The Spivak Reader, 2214