Key Arguments

• Marx introduced "labor power" as a natural force to explain productivity and a progressing wealth process; Locke traced property to a natural origin of appropriation.
• Both aimed to depict the "process of growing wealth as a natural process, automatically following its own laws and beyond wilful decisions and purposes."
• Consequently, "a check or control of the process of wealth" was equated with an attempt to "destroy the very life of society."

Source Quotes

And these means, body and hands and mouth, are the natural appropriators because they do not “belong to mankind in common” but are given to each man for his private use. Just as Marx had to introduce a natural force, the “labor power” of the body, to account for labor’s productivity and a progressing process of growing wealth, Locke, albeit less explicitly, had to trace property to a natural origin of appropriation in order to force open those stable, worldly boundaries that “enclose” each person’s privately owned share of the world “from the common.” What Marx still had in common with Locke was that he wished to see the process of growing wealth as a natural process, automatically following its own laws and beyond wilful decisions and purposes.

Just as Marx had to introduce a natural force, the “labor power” of the body, to account for labor’s productivity and a progressing process of growing wealth, Locke, albeit less explicitly, had to trace property to a natural origin of appropriation in order to force open those stable, worldly boundaries that “enclose” each person’s privately owned share of the world “from the common.” What Marx still had in common with Locke was that he wished to see the process of growing wealth as a natural process, automatically following its own laws and beyond wilful decisions and purposes. If any human activity was to be involved in the process at all, it could only be a bodily “activity” whose natural functioning could not be checked even if one wanted to do so.

If any human activity was to be involved in the process at all, it could only be a bodily “activity” whose natural functioning could not be checked even if one wanted to do so. To check these “activi ties” is indeed to destroy nature, and for the whole modern age, whether it holds fast to the institution of private property or considers it to be an impediment to the growth of wealth, a check or control of the process of wealth was equivalent to an attempt to destroy the very life of society. The development of the modern age and the rise of society, where the most private of all human activities, laboring, has become public and been permitted to establish its own common realm, may make it doubtful whether the very existence of property as a privately held place within the world can withstand the relentless process of growing wealth.

Key Concepts

• Just as Marx had to introduce a natural force, the “labor power” of the body, to account for labor’s productivity and a progressing process of growing wealth, Locke, albeit less explicitly, had to trace property to a natural origin of appropriation
• he wished to see the process of growing wealth as a natural process, automatically following its own laws and beyond wilful decisions and purposes.
• a check or control of the process of wealth was equivalent to an attempt to destroy the very life of society.

Context

15 THE PRIVACY OF PROPERTY AND WEALTH: Parallel between Locke’s and Marx’s naturalization of wealth processes and the political implication of resisting regulation.