State 1: Nature
- According to Locke: “[m]en living together according to reason, without a common superior on earth, with authority to judge between them, is properly the state of nature”
* no one has more power than another (not sure this is true - eg, monkeys with strength/gender)
2 possibilities:
- negative communism, no one has any rights, so no one owes anyone any duties
- affirmative communism where everyone equal access to the world resources, and therefore owe each other duties at the outset
Locke seems to start with an affirmative communism
Yet, how can people make private use of God's resources without violating the rights of another? If you eat a fruit, it becomes your flesh, and no one else has a right to it anymore.
The paradox of plenty
Locke claims that, when something becomes your body, it becomes your own. Additionally, anything made with your own labor from that which you took from nature, becomes your own. However, to take this:
- No one may appropriate more than they can use before it spoils. Nothing was made by God for man to destroy.
- Appropriation from the common only permissible if there is "enough, and as good" left for others
- He gets the product of his own industry, what his ancestors leave to him, and charity gives every man a title to keep him from extreme want
Principle of charity seems to mean you don't violate the commons when you take what you need to survive, but that the community would violate appropriator's rights by trying to stop them.