Neal Wood on Locke and "Agrarian
Improvement"
This piece is from Neal Wood's
John
Locke and Agrarian Capitalism and it briefly
describes the English progressive agrarian position which was the
context from which Locke wrote.
Those unfamiliar with seventeenth-century
English society may not recognize that much of the language of chapter
5 ["On Property"] was that of the agricultural improvers. Locke's emphasis
was always on increasing the productivity of land by labor and industry.
After quoting in the First Treatise
the command of God, Genesis 1:28, "Be fruitful and multiply, and replenish
the Earth," Locke explained that it included "the improvement too of
the Arts and Sciences, and the conveniences of Life." In the Second
Treatise Locke affirmed that God directed
man "to subdue the Earth, i.e. improve it for the benefit of Life." He
who complied with God's wishes "subdued, tilled and sowed" some part of
the earth. Furthermore, since "God gave the World to Men in Common... for
their benefit, and the greatest Conveniences of Life they were capable
to draw from it, it cannot be supposed he meant it should always remain
common and uncultivated. He gave it to the use of the Industrious and Rational."
Whatever else was entailed by the divine fiat, as interpreted by Locke,
it clearly and distinctly required men to enclose and cultivate the earth
for their benefit, and those who did so industriously and rationally, it
would seem, were especially blessed in God's eyes.
Locke's language is similar
to that of the seventeenth-century English agricultural reformers for whom
God's injunction in Genesis was a favorite justification in their call
for enclosure and utilization of waste land. God was the "Great Husbandman"
who had cursed the earth because of Adam's sin and had condemned him and
all human kind to lives of ceaseless labor on the barren land. Human redemption,
thenceforth, depended on transforming the original waste of the world into
fruitful and productive acreage. By art, that is, agricultural labor, man
through divine grace was capable of subduing nature and creating a "new
world"....
The word subdue of
the biblical text for these writers was more or less synonymous with the
Baconian notion of the domination of man over nature. The "true Naturalist"
in Boyle's view was one who not only understood nature but in addition
was able to master her by improving and increasing her products. To Boyle
and other Baconians the "empire of Man" over nature was a kind of moral
equivalent of war and conquest, and it was preferable to them because it
"is a Power that becomes Man as Man," a creature of reason, knowledge,
and dignity. Cultivation of the earth and the multiplication of its fruits,
therefore, were thought essential to the divinely ordained universal calling
of man.
Although Locke's own view
may not have been identical with the Baconian ideal of these reformers,
very little of what he said was opposed to it, and his vocabulary was often
theirs. He employed subdue in connection with agricultural cultivation.
More significant is his use of the terms improve, improver, improvement,
which do not appear in Genesis, for they had special relevance to the reformers
and projectors. An improver, to quote the Oxford English Dictionary,
was "One who applies himself to making land more productive or profitable."
He was one who introduced or applied the technical agricultural innovations
devised since the sixteenth century and who increased productivity by enclosure
and cultivation of waste land....
Locke left no doubt about
his opposition to idleness and stressed the importance of labor and industry
that would yield higher productivity....
Locke believed that the worth
of all commodities was due to industry, for "labour makes the far greatest
part of the value of things, we enjoy in this World." For this reason
the prince should protect and encourage "the honest industry of Mankind."
Labor and industry were the origins of property, and they accounted for
property differentials; those displaying the most industry and the greatest
effort would acquire more than those deficient in these respects. Nowhere
in the chapter or elsewhere in his writings did Locke object to wide disparities
in wealth or property. Indeed, he would probably have sided with most of
the improvers that the larger the individual holdings the more efficient
their management and the higher their productivity. A few dissenters...
in the sixties and seventies were against the trend, but they were a distinct
and uninfluential minority.
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