Theoria

Recently written as an aside in my chapter on Locke (also unedited):

Note: Appropriate, Private Property

The “means to appropriate” the common and thus transform it into private property is absolutely essential to Locke’s political theory and has significant consequences for the theory of political or civil society including the right of resistance to tyranny for “political power [is] a Right of making Laws [...] for the Regulation and Preserving of Property” (II, §3), “no Political Society can be, nor subsist without having in it self the Power to preserve the Property [...] of all those of that Society” (II, §87), “Government has no other end but the preservation of Property” (II, §94), “The only way whereby one devests himself of his Natural Liberty, and puts on the bonds of Civil Society is by agreeing with other Men to joyn and unite into a Community, for their comfortable, safe, and peaceable living one amongst the another, in a secure Enjoyment of their Properties, and a greater Security against any that are not of it” (II, §95), “And ’tis not without reason, that he seeks out, and is willing to joyn in Society with others who are already united, or have a mind to unit for the mutual Preservation of their Lives, Liberties and Estates, which I call by the general Name, Property” (II, §123), “The great and chief end therefore, of Mens uniting into Commonwealths, and putting themselves under Government, is the Preservation of their Property” (II, §124), “Men therefore in Society having Property, they have such a right to the goods, which by the Law of the Community are theirs, that no Body hath a right to take their substance, or any part of it from them, without their own consent; without this, they have no Property at all” (II, §138), “Political Power is that Power which every Man, having in the state of Nature, has given up into the hands of the Society, and therein to the Governours, whom the Society hath set over it self, with this express or tacit Trust, That it shall be employed for their good, and the preservation of their Property” (II, §171), “When the Governour, however intituled, makes not the Law, but his WIll, the Rule; and his Commands and Actions are not directed to the preservation of the Properties of hi People, but the satisfaction of his own Ambition, Revenge, Covetousness, or any other irregular Passion [is a tyrant]” (II, §199), “The Legislative acts against the Trust reposed in them, when they endeavour to invade the Property of the Subject” (II, §221), and “The Reason why Men enter into Society, is the preservation of their Property; and the end why they chuse and authorize a Legislative, is, that there may be Laws made, and Rules set as Guards and Fences to the Properties of all the Members of the Society, to limit the Power, and moderate the Dominion of every Part and Member of the Society” (II, §222). This is but a sampling of comments on the importance of property drawn from the entirety of the Second Treatise.

What, then, does it mean “to appropriate”? And is Locke correct in claiming that appropriation makes something “be his, and so his, i.e., a part of him”? Read literally, Locke’s claim is that appropriation of a thing makes that thing “a part of him.” It is not simply that the common is “privatized,” but that the common is made “a part of him,” of a particular individual – “a part of him” not unlike an arm or a leg or a kidney.
Appropriation combines two words: ‘ap-’ and ‘propriation.’ The English prefix, ‘ap,’ derives from the Latin prefix ‘ad,’ meaning ‘to,’ especially associated with the idea of ‘rendering.’ Hence, the first meaning of ‘appropriation’ is ‘to propriate.’ The simple meaning of ‘propriate’ is “to make one’s own.” We’ll return to this idea of “to make one’s own” shortly. Propriation has two significant alternative meanings: first, “Annexed or attached to an estate as a piece of property” and “Assigned or attached to a particular person.” The OED suggests that this latter meaning is equivalent to appropriate. Looking at appropriate, there are four relevant meanings – all in use when Locke was writing: (1) “To make (a thing) that private property of any one, to make it over to him; to set apart”; (2) “To take possession of for one’s own, to take to oneself”; (3) “To allot, annex, or attach a thing to another as an appendage”; (4) “To devote, set apart, or assign to a special purpose or use.” Appropriate entered into English via the French word “appropre,” which, like appropriate, derives from the Latin words “ad-” and “propius” meaning literally, “to render to one’s own.” Again, we see a similar cluster of meanings: (1) “to assign as private property or possession to; to set apart for a special purpose”; (2) “to assign or attribute as proper to”; (3) “to make one’s own; to take possession of.” Propre, here, carries the same sense as “proper” as in “to act properly” or a “proper noun.” Proper has meanings of correctness, but also of self-hood. The same meanings are found in “property”: a particular characteristic (the property of being hard), of belonging to a particular proprium or self, and of propriety or correctness (especially in manners, dress, etc; how one carries and presents oneself). Etymologically, “appropriate” appears to carry a number of meanings relevant to Locke’s theory: an idea of self, an idea of annexing, an idea of attaching, and an idea of correctness.

But, what about “private”? The English word “private,” like its French equivalent, derives from the Latin word “privatus.” In Latin, something that is privatus is “restricted for the use of a particular person or persons”; a private person is someone “not holding public office,” but also an “individual.” In medieval Latin, privatus becomes privatum meaning both “privy” (as in “privy to secrets”) and, euphemistically, as a “latrine” (as in where one does one private business; that which no one else is privy to). Private, in Latin as in English, is opposed to the public, to the common, but is also opposed to openness (in the sense of secrecy) and associated with the genitals and defecation. Hence, to be private is to be de-prived from the public, from the common and from the open. We can see many of these meanings in the Latin words privare (to deprive, to rob, to debar from the use of, to prevent from having, to release, to relieve) and privus (separate, single, individual, private, peculiar, deprived). Hannah Arendt is instructive on this point, “To live an entirely private life means above all to be deprived of things essential to a truly human life: to be deprived of the reality that comes from being seen and heard by others, to be deprived of an ‘objective’ relationship with them that comes from being related to and separated from them through the intermediary of a common world of things, to be deprived of the possibility of achieving something more permanent than life itself.”

“The thing appropriated is a thing distinct from common property. Now this feature is also shared by all religious and sacred things.” Both proprius and privatus contain ideas of “setting apart.” This is quite significant because another set of Latin word carry associated meanings. Sacre refers to the gods and anything in their power; sacer refers to a priest; and sanctum refers to something that which is set apart. The sacred is something that is set aside or set apart, that can only accessed by particular people in accordance with particular rituals. That which the sacred is aside from is the profane – the common, the everyday. “The sacred thing is, par excellence, that which the profane must not and cannot touch with impunity. [...] Sacred things are things protected and isolated by prohibitions; profane things are those things to which the prohibitions are applied and that must keep at a distance from what is sacred.” But, at the same time as being characterized by this absolute heterogeneity, the sacred is also radically ambivalent: the sacred is just as liable to be accursed as not – the sacred is not necessarily ‘holy’ or ‘clean’; it can also be ‘dirty’ and ‘dangerous.’ Hence, it is not just the meanings of ‘setting apart’ that are common to sacred, property and appropriation, but also the meanings of correctness and dirtiness. Arendt again, “all civilizations have rested upon the sacredness of private property.”

Appropriation, then, as the removal of a thing from the common and the subsequent transformation of that thing into private property carries a number of contradictory elements: correctness, neatness, secrecy, theft, toilets, intimacy, genitals, individual, separate.