Political Studies zyxwvuts (1992), XL, 51-66 zyxwv Cohen on Locke, Land and Labour ANDREW WILLIAMS* Jesus College, Oxford G. A. Cohen has argued that Locke’s remarks zyxwv on the value-creatingcapacity oflabour contain a premise which is both implausible and incoherently defended by Locke. I contest Cohen’s attribution oferror to Locke. and offer an alternative interpretation of his remarks, integrating them within his more widely discussed labour-mixture argument. However, I agree with Cohen, although for distinct reasons, that Locke’s remarks do not constitute a plausible anti-egalitarian argument. I Recent accounts of Locke’s political thought are testimony to the continued decline of the once popular image of him as a conservative advocate of unrestricted capitalism, which was encouraged by the work of C. B. Macpherson and Robert Nozick.‘ Richard Ashcraft, for example, drawing upon extensive biographical information, has illuminated the practical and theoretical character of Locke’s political radicalism.’ James Tully and Jeremy Waldron have challenged, in different ways and to varying degrees, the popular view of Locke’s theory of pr~perty.~ A relatively neglected aspect of the latter subject is my concern in this paper. I shall focus upon sections zyxw 40 to 43 of Chapter zy 5 of Locke’s Second Treatise, in which he makes a number of claims concerning the value- creating capacity of labour characteristic of which are the following: zy . . .labour makes the fargreatestpart zyxwv of the value of the things we enjoy in this world. And the ground which produces the materials is scarce to be reckoned in as any, or at most, but a very small, part of it . . . ‘Tis Labour, then, which puts the greatest part of Value upon Land, without which it would scarcely be worth anything. . .,Natureand the earth furnished only the most worthless materials, as in themselves4 My treatment of these remarks will be both exegetical and substantive. First, I shall contest an interpretation of these previously neglected passages which has * For their excellent comments I am grateful to G. A. Cohen, J. Chan, M. G. Clayton, J. N. Gray, D. L. Miller, M. Philp and an anonymous reviewer. ’ C. B. Macpherson, The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1962) and R. Nozick, Anarchy, State and Utopia (New York. Basic Books, 1974). ’ R. Ashcraft, Revolutionary Polirics and Locke’s Two Treatises of Government (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1986). ’ J. Tully, A Discourse of Property (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1980) and J. Waldron, The Righr to Private Property (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1988), Ch. 6. ‘ References to P. Laslett’s edition of John Locke’s Second Treatise of Government (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1960). are by chapter. section and line numbers. For the above passages see Locke, Second Trearise, V.42.16 and V.43.8, respectively. 0032-3217/92/Ol/OOSl-16 zyxwvu 0 1992 Political Studies