Locke, Money, and America

This chapter examines John Locke’s influential account of private ownership and the accumulation that takes place when a monetary system develops, laid out in Chapter V of the second of his Two Treatises of Government (1690). The disruptive impact of money is apparent when Locke moves from describing its adventitious historical appearance-money is a chance discovery, as he presents it-to justifying its far-reaching consequences. I argue that Locke’s attempt to defend money’s effects (it extends legitimate ownership beyond self-preservation, utility, and present use) remains at the level of assertion rather than demonstrating a matter of right. I also consider how Locke’s narrative of money relates to America which he frequently invokes-a place formerly characterized by the absence of money (“Thus in the beginning all the World was America, and more so than that is now; for no such thing as Money was any where known”)-and to his anthropology of Amerindians. I lay out some of Locke’s assumptions about the relationship of Amerindians to property, land, and a money economy; and I look at the nebulous status Locke gives to Amerindians, who are placed both inside and outside of consent to “common money.” I argue that despite his knowledge of Amerindian forms of currency, Locke keeps them outside of an international monetary order in his narrative in order to maintain that their land is available for occupation.