Robert Nozick's mistake in interpreting the Locke property issue

Abstract

In Anarchy, State and Utopia (1974), Robert Nozick defends a minimal State that should not redistributes property once distributed by the individuals themselves. Nozick relies on the John Locke’s state of nature idea from his work Second Treatise of Government (1689), using, also, Locke’s way to explain the private property. Locke’s explanation of the origins of the private property is based on the idea of labor because Locke needed to overcome a criticism that Robert Filmer directed to Hugo Grotius a few years before. Grotius said that there was, originally, a common right to the goods and defended that private property rises from a contract among all individuals. Filmer attacks the idea that a contract has split common property into smaller pieces because this contract could not be signed by all mankind in the same time. Just like Grotuis, Locke thought that private property came up from common property, but he needed overcome Filmer’s objection directed to Grotius. Thus, the idea of labor rises like foundation of private property, since labor legitimates it, instead of the contract. Despite a large analysis about Locke’s theory of acquisition, where Nozick even discusses the role of labor in the emergence of private property, Nozick affirms that Locke thought original property unowned when, in fact, for Locke it was a common property for all people. The purpose of present paper is list and evaluate some of possible consequences of this small misinterpretation.