of property invests such individuals with an ascendancy by virtue of which, without any labor of their own, they draw an unearned income which they can apply to the satisfaction of their wants. . . . Neither does our actual law of property .. set itself the task of providing for every want a satisfaction proportionate to the available means. Our codes of private law do not contain a single clause which assigns to the individual even such goods and services as are indispensable to the maintenance of his existence. So far as our private law is concerned, the situation is somewhat brutally but very rightly expressed by Malthus in a passage which by its very frankness has attained a certain fame. A man who is born into a world already possessed, if he cannot get a subsistence from his parents on whom he has a just demand, and if the society does not want his labor, has no claim or right to the smallest portion of food, and, in fact, has no business to be where he is. At Nature's mighty feast there is no vacant cover for him. She tells him to be gone, and will quickly execute her own orders.' What Malthus says here of food applies to the satisfaction of all other wants." 1

We are, then, confronted with this fact, that in our present property law no attempt is made to secure a just distribution of wealth. There cannot,

1 Right to the Whole Produce of Labor, p. 3. The quotation from Malthus is from his Essay on the Principle of Population, 2d edition (1803), p. 531

however, be any question that, if it were possible to obtain distributive justice by legal means, the effort should be made. The socialists claim that this can be done, or at least that a distribution of wealth more just than that which competition now secures can be obtained. Every socialistic scheme necessarily has two sides—the productive and the distributive. Upon the productive side, the claim is that the nationalization of instruments of production will increase their economic efficiency. Whether this be true, or if true, whether the administrative difficulties involved can be successfully met, we must leave to the economists and publicists to answer. Upon the distributive side, the socialist's claim is that, if all products become the property of the State, it will be possible to apportion to the workers the respective shares to which they are entitled. It is with this claim that we are here especially concerned.

In order to make their claim good, it is necessary for the socialists to fix upon a principle of desert that is both more just than that which is now realized in the economic world, and one that is possible of at least an approximate enforcement by the State. Our next task is, then, to determine whether the various principles of distributive justice that have been put forward by socialistic schools fulfil these conditions.

CHAPTER V

CANONS OF DISTRIBUTIVE JUSTICE- THE LABOR

THEORY

IN this and following chapters we propose to examine the validity of the various canons of distributive justice which have been put forward from time to time by socialistic writers as of absolute validity. The first and most important of these is that which declares that economic goods should be distributed wholly to those who have produced them by their labor.

Suggestions and chance statements of the labor theory can be found in various writings from the earliest times, but the idea is first found fully set forth and argued by Locke in his Two Treatises of Government.

The part played by the economic element in Locke's political scheme is a very prominent one. In fact, he conceives the need for some protection for their property to have been the chief motive which has urged men to form political unions. Individual liberty is itself treated by him as a form of property, namely, that right of ownership which a man properly has over himself. Thus Locke is able to say, "The great and chief end therefore of men uniting into commonwealths, and putting themselves

under government, is the preservation of their prop

erty.

"1

The right of ownership which one has over himself Locke, of course, derives directly from natural law. Property in objective things, however, Locke founds wholly upon labor. "God," he says, "who hath given the world to men in common, hath also given them reason to make use of it to the best advantage of life and convenience. The earth and all that is therein is given to men for the support and comfort of their being. And though all the fruits it naturally produces, and beasts it feeds, belong to men in common, as they are produced by the spontaneous hand of nature, and nobody has originally a private dominion exclusive of the rest of mankind, in any of them, as they are thus in their natural state, yet being given for the use of men, there must of necessity be a means to appropriate them some way or other before they can be of any use, or at all beneficial, to any particular men. The fruit or venison which nourishes the wild Indian who knows no enclosure, and is still a tenant in common, must be his, and so his-i.e. a part of him — that another can no longer have any right to it before it can do him any good for the support of his life."

66

Though the earth and all inferior creatures be common to all men, yet every man has a 'property' in his own person.' This nobody has any right to but himself. The 'labor' of his body and the 'work'

1 Op. cit., Book II, Chapter IX, § 124.

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 labor with it, and joined to it something that is his own, and thereby makes it his property. It being by him removed from the common state nature placed it in, it hath by his labor something annexed to it that excludes the common right of other men. For this labor' being the unquestionable property of the laborer, no man but he can have a right to what that is once joined to, at least where there is enough, and as good left in common for others." 1

The qualification expressed in the last clause is to be especially noted, inasmuch as it would seem at once to deprive his theory of all value, except as applied to a people in a primitive state of civilization, and inhabiting a comparatively thinly settled territory. This limitation of the right of acquisition by labor by the rights of others, he renders still more definite in the following. "It will, perhaps, be objected to this," he says, "that if gathering the acorns of the fruits of the earth, etc., makes a right to them, then any one may engross as much as he will. To which I answer, Not so. The same law of nature that does by this means give us property, does also bound that property too. . . . As much as any one can make use of to any advantage of life before it spoils, so much he may by his labor fix a property in. Whatever is beyond this is more than

1 Op. cit., Book II, Chapter V, §§ 26, 27.