Aristotle and Locke on Property, Labor, and Capitalism

Introduction: Philosophy and Economic Thought

The correlation between economic principles and philosophical inquiry is considerable. Both are significantly preoccupied with discourse and disagreement about how people live. Economic structures and philosophical treatises alike are weighted by questions relating to how individuals relate to one another, how individuals function within the context of an organized society, and how individuals generally conduct themselves. Both discussions are also shaped by no small degree of moral consideration, which was frequently present in the minds and writing of history's great thinkers.

Thus, in examining the works of the seminal Greek philosopher Aristotle (384–322 BC) and those of the British empiricist John Locke (1632–1704), we find a continuity in certain themes relating to the inherency of property ownership and, in this, a materialism that prefigures the permeation of capitalism. Simultaneously, however, the two thinkers are distinct in their understanding of labor as a condition of capitalism, with Aristotle — writing roughly two millennia earlier — proving to be the more critical of the two.

The Nature of Property and Acquisition

A fundamental principle underlying the economic system assessed by both men is the nature of property and acquisition. Both understood economies to be largely based on a set of natural principles that dictated how the process of gaining material wealth would unfold. Where this involves such crucial assets as private or commercial land, industrial resources, or other forms of capital, Aristotle and Locke share common ground in their belief that the attainment of material goods was an absolutely essential and inevitable outcome of social interaction and civic development. As Murray notes, "Aristotle judged natural the human need for some art of acquisition for households and cities; moreover, he recognized that this provisioning process could take a number of different forms and that those different forms were of great consequence" (70).

Aristotle believed there was an inevitability by which men would come to adopt their various roles in society, occupying different professions and crafts to which a certain compensatory value was assigned. To better understand this value, we may consider the ideas of John Locke, who offered foundational capitalist ideals relating supply and demand to a scheme by which pricing is established. Locke placed a high degree of value on the understanding of human impulses as necessarily feeding into this system, with human experience precipitating the need or desire for certain commodities and the willingness to exchange a fair sum for them. The element of demand stimulates a system within which property, the protection of property, and the advancement of comfort, goals, and viability through expanded property ownership all become necessary human ends.

Locke's Defense of Individual Entitlement and Labor

Central to Locke's vision of capitalism is his conception of the individual as a functional and independent social and economic unit. To his perspective, "though the earth, and all inferior creatures, be common to all men, yet every man has a property in his own person: this no body has any right to but himself. The labour of his body, and the work of his hands, we may say, are properly his" (Murray, 136). Locke here voices an idea that would come to serve as one of the guiding principles of capitalism — namely, that in the self, one possesses the entitlement to receive compensation for the value one contributes to social, economic, and political structures. The self was capable of achieving great things and was equally entitled to reap what it might sow through its own merits.

This is the precipitating notion by which the competitive nature of free-market capitalism would come to be so staunchly defended as a core aspect of human nature. Where Aristotle conceives of acquisition and property ownership as aspects of human nature broadly, Locke extends this further, arguing that individual entitlements vary according to individual abilities.

Conclusion: Shared Foundations, Divergent Visions

Though Locke's ideals would be essential in the development of western civilization as it exists today, it would really be the perspective of Aristotle that offers us a compelling window into the early and obvious objections to the nature of capitalism. Their shared view on property ownership suggests that there may be something innate in the human need to acquire — both in terms of what property practically enables in terms of survival and in terms of the various functions served by goods of a non-essential nature.