MidTerm Key

Question 1

According to John Locke, the State of Nature is subject to reason and is characterized by freedom, property, and equality. Provide two of Locke’s explanations for why they people would give it up and consent to government.

Answer 1

1. The State of Nature too easily slides into a State of War
2. Laws under established government are clearer and more explicit than the law of nature (which must be correctly deduced using reason)

Question 2

Locke makes several distinct criticisms of Filmer’s claim that the power of the monarchy derives from a father’s power over his family. Describe two of them.

Answer 2

1. The Bible orders children to honor their parents (of both sexes), but Filmer never proposes giving governmental power to mothers, as would be required if governmental and parental power overlapped.
2. Paternal and despotic power have nothing to do with that of the magistrate: the first falls short of it, and the second exceeds it.

Question 3

Locke writes that “the Grass my Horse has bit, the Turfs my Servant has cut… become my Property” (Second Treatise, Section 28). Explain why Marx might claim that this passage would be exploited by capitalists to undermine the entire moral logic of Locke’s theory of property.

Answer 3

The moral logic of Locke’s theory of property is that people have absolute dominion over their own bodies. Their labor, the product of their bodies, creates property when it is used to transform nature. Ergo, the right to property is a direct outgrowth over people’s right to their bodies. Marx might argue that once a person has a right to the property created from another person’s labor (like a servant), the logical connection between property and self-ownership is severed.

Question 4

In our assigned readings, Marx claims both that the long-run price of a commodity is simply its cost of production, and that the labor theory of value explains a commodity’s long-run price. Can both claims be true? Explain why or why not.

Answer 4

Marx claims that commodity prices/exchange values are the sum of the following four factors, labor time embedded in: raw materials, capital depreciation, and new/“living” labor time, which itself is divided between wages and surplus value (or, loosely speaking, profit). The cost of production is determined by the first three items only. Thus the two accounts of long-run price are at odds with one another unless surplus value or profit is zero. [Given Marx’s insistence that the existence of surplus value is a routine product of capitalism under fully competitive conditions, this is unlikely to be a frequent outcome.]