The Normativity of Work: Lockean and Marxist Overlapping Consensus on Just Work

Introduction

In recent debates in political theory, the status of work in a just society and its meaning to individuals have been considered as second-order issues (Muirhead, 2012). For instance, in his seminal work, John Rawls famously argued that the distribution of meaningful work should not be considered as a problem of justice, because justice is about securing just and fair social background conditions for members of a society, and the meaning of work should be left to the citizens themselves (Muirhead, 2012, p. 23; Rawls, 1971, p. 258). Hence, although Rawls had a clear articulation of fundamental interests of human beings in general, he had very few discussions on the relevance and interplay between those fundamental interests and work (Hsieh, 2008). Nonetheless, ‘[w]ork was once at the center of modern social and political theory’ (Muirhead, 2012, p. 21). For many modern thinkers, work is of paramount importance to a person’s well-being and the social structure as a whole (Dupre & Gagnier, 1996). To name a few examples: Marx’s concern over alienated labour is well known—that he thinks the modern form of productive activity is a torture to many of the individuals who perform the task, and hence this constitutes an essential element of his critiques of capitalism. Even Adam Smith, who has long been perceived as a typical advocate of the free market system, also worried that the growing division of labour might deprive some people of their moral and social virtues which are essential to a healthy society, as their work requires only endless repetition of routine tasks that are not conducive to the development of important human capacities (Satz, 2010, pp. 45–56). The implication, therefore, is that some forms of work are harmful to the individual and society, and they need external regulations.

Among many thinkers who have dealt with the problem of work, an interesting pair for comparison is Locke and Marx. Although this might not be Locke’s own intention, he has long been regarded as a ‘bourgeois theorist’ who had provided a systematic defence of the capitalist system of which unlimited accumulation of capital is its defining feature (Issac, 1987; Macpherson, 2011). Locke’s principles of just acquisitions of private property have inspired contemporary libertarians such as Robert Nozick who had employed the Lockean Proviso in his justification of the entitlement theory (Nozick, 1974; Waldron, 1983). Marx, nonetheless, is beyond doubt one of the most outspoken critics of capitalism. The apparent tension between Locke and Marx might lead us to the conclusion that their respective views of work are entirely different and contradictory. Yet, in this article, I argue that they share many significant similarities concerning work. By articulating their similarities and differences, I hope to show that, concerning the problem of work, there is an overlapping consensus on some of the essential requirements of just work even between thinkers who have polarized political and economic views, and consequently this overlapping consensus might provide a set of normative requirements that demand respect across different positions of the political spectrum. Before I proceed, some words of clarification are needed: by work, I mean not the product of productive activities, such as an artwork; instead, I mean the active exercise of human labour power in productive activities broadly defined (Berki, 1979, pp. 35–36).

The essay is structured as follows. In the second part, I will discuss the comparability of the two thinkers; in the third part, I will argue that they both reject the pure instrumentalist view of work and share the view that labour, the capacity to work, is central to human agency; in part four, I will articulate the implications of Marx’s concept of alienated work, and show Locke’s agreements and disagreements to these implications; finally I will argue that both thinkers share the idea of social responsibility in their discussions of work.

The Context and Their Comparability

The first question one might raise to such comparison is that their conceptions of work are not comparable because they are using the same word in two radically different contexts. Locke’s extensive treatment of labour is in the Second Treatise, in which he discusses how work, an active use of one’s labour power, can justify the private appropriation of natural resources, specifically in the state of nature (Locke, 1980). However, Marx’s discussion of work is clearly situated in the heyday of capitalism: an industrial society in which the division of labour is well developed and the negative consequences of the modern form of work are more visible than in Locke’s time. In response to this critique, one must not forget that Locke is aiming to show the relation between work and property in general, as he says: ‘I shall endeavor to shew, how men might come to have a property in several parts of that which God gave to mankind in common, and that without any express compact of all the commoners’ (Locke, 1980, p. 25). This is to say that he can be read as offering a philosophical justification of the private property system given the challenge that no one can claim to naturally own anything except his own labour (Locke, 1980, p. 27; Macpherson, 2011, pp. 250–251; Vaughn, 1978, pp. 311–312). Because of this, Macpherson even accuses Locke of reading ‘the image of market man’ back into the nature of man (Macpherson, 2011, pp. 268–269). Regardless of the accuracy of this accusation, there is no reason to think that Locke limits his conception of work in the state of nature and early stages of civil society, as in the discussion, crucial features of modern society such as accumulation of wealth, market relation, and the extensive use of money are all visible. In other words, at least Locke’s discussion of the use of labour can be articulated as general principles that are applicable to the modern context; otherwise, it would be difficult to understand how Locke could enlighten his contemporary readers. For Marx, his conception of work is located in the context of modern political economy:

We have proceeded from the premises of political economy. We have accepted its language and its laws. We presupposed private property, the separation of labour, capital and land, and of wages, profit of capital and rent of land—likewise division of labour, competition, the concept of exchange value, etc. (Marx, 1978f, p. 70)

It is in this background that Marx discusses the problem of alienated labour. Unlike Locke, Marx’s analysis shows that alienated labour is a distinctive modern problem created by the combination of the private property system and the division of labour, because alienated labour is the result of the lack of purchasing power and the particularization of productive activities. Without the capitalist mode of production, the problem of work might appear in a less urgent form. Though Marx’s critiques are deeply embedded in modern political economy, his critiques of modern work presuppose an ideal-type conception of work, which could be read as an abstract and general account of what work ought to be like. ¹ The critiques of alienated labour presuppose a conception of non-alienated labour. While the conception of alienated labour can be seen as a critique of modern political economy, the conception of non-alienated labour can be read as a general account of the requirements of work, if it is not alienated. Since both of them can be read in a more abstract way as discussing what work entails and ought to be, this constitutes the basis of comparison.

Work and Human Agency

As Macpherson succinctly puts it: ‘[Seventeenth-century leveller writers] wavered between a view of a man’s labour as a commodity and a view of it as an integral part of his personality’ (Macpherson, 2011, pp. 266–267). This is the same for both Locke and Marx: they waver between a view that work is instrumental to a person and a view that work is integral to a person. At first glance, Locke might appear to be advocating an instrumentalist account of work (Sayers, 2005, pp. 608–609). In discussing the significance and motivation of work, Locke apparently draws on the ‘survival argument’:

[N]atural reason … tells us, that men, being once born, have a right to their preservation, and consequently to meat and drink, and such other things as nature affords for their subsistence (Locke, 1980, p. 18).

God, who hath given the world to men in common, hath also given them reason to make use of it to the best advantage of life, and convenience. The earth, and all that is therein, is given to men for the support and comfort of their being. …yet being given for the use of men, there must of necessity be a means to appropriate them some way or other, before they can be of any use, or at all beneficial to any particular man. (Locke, 1980, p. 26, italics added)

That is, natural reason commands a person to preserve himself, and in order to preserve himself, he must consume natural resources. God has given everyone abundant amount of natural resources, but one has to exercise one’s labour power to acquire them for one’s own use. Work, thus, is purely instrumental because it is only a means of appropriating resources that are necessary for one’s survival.

It is true that in Locke’s account, part of the values of work comes from its instrumental value—as a way of maintaining one’s life. Nonetheless, the very first reason why people ought to work is not only because they have to survive but also because survival is the fundamental law of nature: ‘by the fundamental law of nature, man being to be preserved as much as possible’ (Locke, 1980, p. 16). This is why Locke claims that: ‘God commanded, and his wants forced him to labour’ (Locke, 1980, p. 34, italics added). ² In other words, if work is the command of God, to work as hard as possible and to gather as much as possible under the limitations that he specified is what reason requires. Thus, work is integral to a person’s rationality; it is not just instrumental to the survival of a person, but is closely linked to the manifestation of a person’s rationality. Locke’s claim is not at all surprising if we take into account the seventh-century understanding of the poor, most of whom were working class people. It was widely believed that they were not capable of working efficiently and behaving rationally because of ‘some deep-seated moral flaw’; they were ‘slothful, unreliable, and attached to irregular and dangerous habits’ (Hundert, 1972, pp. 3–4). In A Report to the Board of Trade to the Lords Justices 1697, Respecting the Relief and Unemployment of the Poor, Locke says very clear that ‘[the reason of the misery of the poor is due to] nothing else but the relaxation of discipline and corruption of manners’ and ‘Virtue and Industry being as constant companions on the one side as Vice and Idleness are on the other’ (Hundert, 1972, p. 5). The solution, for Locke, is to find work for the poor or even to coerce them to work, as he believes that through hard labour the poor would become industrious and hence be able to live well in the society (Hundert, 1972, p. 5). Suggesting hard labour as the solution of the poor’s irrationality implies that work itself is a form of education, that it can reform an irrational being to become rational and virtuous.

Besides work being essential to character formation and the development of fundamental capacities, Locke goes further to claim that labour, the capacity to work, is constitutive of human agency:

for it is labour indeed that puts the difference of value on every thing … I think it will be but a very modest computation to say, that of the products of the earth useful to the life of man nine tenths are the effects of labour; nay, if we will rightly estimate things as they come to our use, and cast up the several expenses about them, what in them is purely owing to nature, and what to labour, we shall find, that in most of them ninety-nine hundredths are wholly to be put on the account of labour … labour makes the far greatest part of the value of things we enjoy in this world. (Locke, 1980, pp. 40, 42)

Therefore, work is an activity that shows the distinctive human agency to transform the external material world for their use (Hundert, 1972, pp. 6–8). It is by work that human beings show how they are not constrained by external conditions and are able to reshape material environment to improve their own lives.

Marx intersects with Locke at this point. ‘Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly found’ (Marx, 1978d, p. 595). Given the material conditions, men’s productive activities are confined to certain types; yet, their productive activities also change and reshape the material conditions. Similar to Locke, Marx thinks that this interactive process of confronting and shaping the external environment through labour demonstrates human agency (Sayers, 2005, p. 612).

In other words, human beings develop their own consciousness in productive activities. When confronting the external world which is alien to human beings, they have the capacity to alter it in accordance with their own imagination and needs. It is through productive activities that human beings realize themselves as distinct from other species. More precisely, working on nature and giving nature a human form is a process of ‘objectification’. By objectifying the nature in human form, external things embody our characteristics, and human beings gradually see themselves in external things. This is a gradual development of one’s consciousness to oneself (Sayers, 2005, pp. 612–614). It is, therefore, explicit that in Marx’s conception, work is an activity that displays the distinctive human agency. However, unlike Locke, Marx does not think that people can develop their essential capacities and realize their fundamental well-being through all kinds of work. While Locke believes that work itself, even hard labour, can promote the well-being of the worker—by making an irrational being industrious and rational, Marx thinks that some form of work can be detrimental to human as productive being.

Work, Alienation and Individual Well-being

Even though both Locke and Marx recognize the huge potentialities that human beings unfold in work, Marx is aware of how work can become a torment to workers, especially in the modern economic system. For Marx, productive activities are not all the same in different historical periods: ‘In the social production of their life, men enter into definite relations that are indispensable and independent of their will, relations of production which correspond to a definite stage of development of their material productive forces’ (Marx, 1978e, p. 4). The stage of the material productive force of the society determines the relation of production, and this mode of production determines the scope and types of work that are available in the society. For instance, it is only under a capitalist system that one can see a pin factory worker, standing in front of a mass production line, only responsible for a tiny part of the whole pin production process; such division of labour cannot be found in feudal societies. His discussion of the problems of work, especially his critiques of alienated work, is a context-specific critique based on the features of the capitalist mode of work.

Among many of his critiques of capitalism, the critique of alienated work is one of the most well-known critiques. The general form of his critique is that if labour is the essential capacity of human beings, then work is a crucial activity that enables people to exercise their labour to improve their productive and creative capacities. People should find it fulfilling and rewarding. Nonetheless, though in fact in modern society work occupies people most of their time, it is rather experienced as a form of torment (Sayers, 2005).

There are mainly three aspects of the alienation of labour. The first aspect can be understood as a critique of the pure instrumentalist view of work:

the fact that labour is external to the worker, i.e., it does not belong to his essential being; that in his work, therefore, he does not affirm himself but denies himself, does not feel content but unhappy, does not develop freely his physical and mental energy but mortifies his body and ruins his mind. The worker therefore only feels himself outside his work, and in his work feels outside himself. He is at home when he is not working, and when he is working he is not at home. His labour is therefore not voluntary, but coerced; it is forced labour. (Marx, 1978f, p. 74)

Thus, although both Locke and Marx do not advance a pure instrumentalist view of work, Marx criticizes it. The pure instrumentalist view of work perceives work as merely a means to satisfy external needs such as material necessities. Accordingly, what kind of work a person engages in does not really matter when it can provide enough financial support to him. This view ignores the fact that, in modern society, work is an important locus through which people find their meanings and satisfactions. Many non-financial goods like individual excellence, a sense of contribution to the society, social recognition, and a sense of communal belonging can only be realized in work (Estlund, 2003; Gheaus & Herzog, 2016). In short, the first aspect of alienation is that workers find that the exercise of their essential capacity, labour, is no longer conducive to (but against) the realization of goods and meanings that are important to them. Locke fails to see that not all kinds of work can advance workers’ interests, but only those that provide enough room for workers to realize their goods can. Alienated work can even be extremely harmful: ‘man (the worker) no longer feels himself to be freely active in any but his animal functions … and in his human functions he no longer feels himself to be anything but an animal’ (Marx, 1978f, p. 74). To borrow Richard Sennett’s words: ‘people who make things usually don’t understand what they are doing’ (Sennett, 2008). Thus, alienated work prevents workers from acquiring a sense of engagement with their work. ³

The second aspect of alienated work is alienation from the worker’s product:

The external character of labour for the worker appears in the fact that it is not his own, but someone else’s, that it does not belong to him, that in it he belongs, not to himself, but to another … The product of labour as an alien object exercising power over him. (Marx, 1978f, p. 74)

The product has an independent power over the worker, and the worker cannot even afford to purchase the product that he produced. Such alienation reverses the relationship between the worker and the product. It is the market demand of the product that drives the worker to produce, and the worker himself is no longer the master of the product, but appears to be the slave of it. The implicit point here is that the source of values is the worker, as the worker is the one who produces the product. Marx shares with Locke that the labourer ought ⁴ to get the fruits of his labour. ⁵ But for Locke, a reasonable payment is an acceptable option (Locke, 1980, p. 41), because a person’s labour power can be legitimately purchased by others, ⁶ whereas Marx perceives wage-labour as an inherently exploitative relationship. Wage–labour is a legitimate relationship for Locke, and the justification of it is that the introduction of money and private property system would hugely increase the productivity, which, as a result, would benefit those who have nothing to appropriate but their own labour power (Locke, 1980, p. 41). A plausible interpretation is that this justification implies a requirement of reasonable payment, as the minimum line is a common ownership system in which everyone owns everything. ⁷ Marx’s conception of exploitation is based on the understanding that the price of the product equals the value of the labour power, measured in hours, required for the production (Marx, 1978a). The capitalists exploit the workers by paying less than the value of the labour power, that is, less than the price of the product. The claim presumes that the payment of unexploited work should be equivalent to the price of the products, and it is in this sense that Marx and Locke disagree with one another over the legitimacy of wage-labour relationships.

Following the first two aspects, the third aspect of alienated work is turning men’s species being ‘into a being alien to him’ (Marx, 1978f, p. 77). For Marx, ‘men is a species being … because he treats himself as a universal and therefore a free being’, whereas work is now experienced as forced labour, since it is merely for the sake of survival that people work (Marx, 1978f, p. 75). Human beings’ distinctive capacity now becomes merely ‘a means to [their] individual existence’ (Marx, 1978f, p. 77). Work, thus, has to be meaningful in the sense that it has to motivate people to work by reasons other than mere necessities.

From his critiques of alienated labour, three principles can be derived: first, work ought to be meaningful. Since for Marx, the capacity to labour is a distinctively human capacity, the realization of our essential well-being therefore lies in the sphere of work. Work, in order to be meaningful, must first satisfy the subjective requirement of psychological fulfillment. As alienated work ‘does not [make the worker] feel content but unhappy’ (Marx. 1978f, p. 74, italics added), this implies that the subjective ‘fit’, for Marx, is important to any meaningful work (Muirhead, 2004). A worker can feel discontent and unhappy whenever he finds the job does not fit him. The subjective satisfaction requires an institutional arrangement of the freedom of occupation, as the worker himself is the sole authority to decide whether a particular work fits him. However, even though a person finds his work satisfying, it does not imply that the work is meaningful, because, for Marx, there are some objective requirements as well: ‘[alienated work] does not develop freely [the worker’s] physical and mental energy but mortifies his body and ruins his mind’ (Marx, 1978f, p. 74). The developmental aspect is crucial, as it requires work to be able to improve the workers’ creative and essential capacities. It is possible that someone might find a job satisfying whereas objectively the job does not in any way further his essential capacities. The second aspect entails a fair payment to the worker, as his conception of exploitation implies the worker has been unfairly treated by the employer and are unable to receive what he deserves. Marx’s understanding of fair payment is based on his labour theory of value. The correctness of his theory is disputable, but the normative underpinning is clear: exploitation means the unfair payment that an employer could impose on the worker due to the unequal power relationship between the two parties. The third aspect of alienation concerning the motivation to work reveals the background social conditions through which workers could have better chances to find meanings in their work. The insight from Marx is that if workers merely work for material necessities, such forced labour is against human freedom, and the life as a worker would be a torment rather than an enjoyment. Though in contemporary society it is still hard to completely exclude the factor of earning a living, a more egalitarian economic arrangement would nonetheless help people to diminish the role of material necessities in finding work. In short, the three principles of non-alienated work are (a) subjectively meaningful and objectively developmental; (b) fair reward; and (c) not entirely driven by necessities.

Work and Social Responsibilities

Among the three principles of Marx’s non-alienated work, Locke would only, to a certain degree, agree with the second and the third principles. For Marx, to rescue a worker means to rescue him from meaningless hard labour, whereas for Locke, to rescue a poor means to make him a worker and to push him into hard labour, regardless of whether it is meaningful or not. Both thinkers share the view that labour is an essential human capacity which demonstrates the distinctive human agency. Nonetheless, for Marx, work is for the satisfaction of physical, psychological, and mental needs that are internal to the worker, while for Locke, work is for the sake of something beyond the worker himself—God’s calling. When work is tied to the calling of God and is integral to the worker’s rationality, work is itself a good regardless of how the worker feels it—work is intrinsically good for the worker. Marx’s conception of human being centers on the capacity to labour. The meaningful use of one’s labour power depends partly on the subjective feeling, and partly on the structure of the work that the worker is conducting. Not all kinds of work are conducive to the meaningful use of one’s labour power. Despite this difference, they both share a view of fair payment, though for Locke it is about a reasonable payment that does not fall below the line of common ownership, whereas for Marx it is the removal of the capitalist extraction of labour value. Another similarity is that they both share the non-instrumentalist account of work: work should not be considered as merely for the sake of necessities; instead, some higher ends are associated with work.

Marx’s most well-known socialist principle concerning the duty to work is: ‘[f]rom each according to his ability, to each according to his needs’ (Marx, 1978b, p. 531). For any cooperative system to function, there must be resources, and resources come from production. Thus, the functioning of a society presupposes that in general people do work. In addition to this, in any socialist system, regardless of how one interprets the socialist principle, when any egalitarian distribution has to take place, there must be resources. All these imply a prima facie duty to work. ⁸ Marx, therefore, takes the duty to work as a social responsibility. Locke does not argue for a social responsibility to work, though he shares the view that people do have a duty to work. For Locke, such duty exists even before the formation of a society: the mixing labour principle exists in the state of nature. Work is the implication of the fundamental law of nature, because one has a duty to preserve one’s life, and that further entails a duty to work.

Locke’s other two principles of just acquisition also reveal some insights into work and social responsibilities. The spoilage principle shows that work, though as a means of manifesting one’s rationality and acquiring natural resources, should not cause social waste:

God has given us all things richly … But how far has he given it us? To enjoy. As much as any one can make use of to any advantage of life before it spoils … whatever is beyond this, is more than his share, and belongs to others. Nothing was made by God for man to spoil or destroy. (Locke, 1980, p. 31)

This is not a trivial principle even after the invention of money. In our times, there are cases in which farmers destroy their crops for the sake of controlling the supply in order to raise the price of their products. The speculation of cereals and oil futures might also result in social waste if the investors predict the market demand incorrectly. These would not be permissible under Locke’s principles. ⁹ The main point here is that Locke’s principle is embedded in an idea of social responsibility which requires people to consider the negative externalities of their productive activities.

The Lockean proviso limits any acquisition that would not leave ‘enough and as good’ to others (Locke, 1980, p. 33). Though Locke immediately withdraws this strict limitation, he argues that even if a person, through his labour or the labour he employed, acquires resources to the extent that does not leave enough and as good to others, as long as his acquisition can improve the well-being of others, then rational beings would not disagree with such an arrangement (Locke, 1980, p. 37). ¹⁰ The improvement of others’ well-being might be interpreted as a better life standard due to the introduction of private property, increasing employment opportunities, and so on. One example which might be criticized under this principle is speculation in property. On the one hand, speculation in property does create some additional employment opportunities, but on the other hand, often times it eventually results in housing bubbles, which cause economic downturn and thus large-scale unemployment problems. The normative underpinning of this principle, same as the spoilage principle, is also a social responsibility to take into consideration how one’s work might damage others’ interests, but this principle requires a further reflection on the nature of some jobs—those that are largely incompatible with the interests of the general public. Locke’s principle seems to provide a ground for criticizing these work.

Conclusion

Locke and Marx are prominent modern thinkers who have provided many insights into the nature and utilities of work. Both reject the dominant pure instrumentalist view of work—the belief that people work only because they want to earn a living. They share the view that work is essential to human agency, since work is the major site in which people could actively exercise their labour power to develop human rationality through reshaping the external environment. However, for Locke, work is conducted for the sake of something higher than human beings, such as God’s calling and the perfection of human rationality, whereas for Marx the purpose is down to the worker himself—the realization of the worker’s essence. Due to such difference, Marx realizes that some kinds of work would prevent workers from self-realization. Whenever the worker is entirely driven by necessities and whenever the work he does has not enough room for the development of essential human capacities, the worker can hardly find it fulfilling. The consequence is alienation—one’s labour power becomes something which is contradictory to one’s interests. Despite such difference, they both agree that a fair payment to workers is necessary based on different grounds. For Locke, the wage–labour relationship is grounded on the private property system, and it is legitimate because it advances the interests of the people. So the minimum line of reasonable payment is that workers must be receiving more than what they could expect under a common ownership system. While for Marx, according to his labour theory of value, all values of the product belong to the workers, and any extraction of labour value is exploitation. Furthermore, they both agree that there is a duty to work. For Marx, when the background condition is largely an egalitarian one—under the socialist system, then a person has a social responsibility to work, while for Locke, it is one’s natural duty to work, as this is the implication of the fundamental law of nature. Locke goes further to argue that a person’s work must also consider the interests of others—one has a social responsibility to take into account how one’s use of labour power might affect the interests of others.

In sum, the overlapping consensus between the two thinkers is (a) work is integral to human agency, and it is important that people do have the opportunity to work; (b) fair payment is necessary; (c) there exists a duty to work; and (d) work is not a private affair, as it is connected to a set of social responsibilities.