CEOs at prominent firms such as Apple, Tesla and Goldman Sachs have required employees to return to the office, curbing the working from home trend that got going at the start of the pandemic.
One point that jumps out at me is how this shows that skilled employees have a lot of market muscle today – firms need to persuade them to do certain things and don’t have all the power.
Consider: Labour is not homogenous and takes time to replace. We have seen a dramatic example of this in the airline sector, where thousands of staff, such as those working in security and baggage handling, were let go, creating a bottleneck problem when restrictions ended. Airlines are now scrambling to get people re-hired, but that is not easy as employees and contractors must go through security vetting. Hence the thousands of cancelled and rescheduled flights that have been a feature of the holiday travelling season.
What all this shows is how flawed Karl Marx was in his claim that capitalists have the superior bargaining power over “workers” and that business owners hope to create a “reserve army” of the unemployed who will put downward pressure on wages, hence creating the “surplus” that becomes profit.
Among the many things wrong with Marx’s idea is that claim that the majority of the risks and uncertainties are on the employees’ side. Hiring and retaining labour, including skilled labour, is not straightforward. There are search costs to consider in hiring, and employers know that it is often better to retain a worker, even if they could get someone a bit cheaper, than have the cost and time of hiring another. Also, a worker is paid a wage/salary, at least initially, whether a firm has made a profit or not, and that is a risk the employer has to bear (otherwise why else do firms have revolving credit facilities to manage cashflow?) Further, all workers are to some extent also “capitalists” – they have built skills and character (punctuality, agreeableness, ability to follow rules, get on with others and serve clients, etc) that take time and effort to acquire. A plumber, software programmer or security manager have capital sitting in their heads, and when a firm hires such a person, it is renting that capital.
There are of course of lots of reasons why Marx’s description of labour/capital relations is wrong and simplistic (example: his insertion of the idea of “socially necessary labour” begs the question of how one knows what that is, and it turns out that SNL is revealed by the interplay of prices in a market, rendering his idea circular). But the current working from home/office argument seems to bring home a particular point, which is that those supposedly evil capitalists don’t have all the power, and in many cases, have far less than even they might have hoped for.
Addendum: Thomas Sowell’s critique of Marxism remains one of the most succinct and effective that I have read. Also, there is a segment in Robert Nozick’s Anarchy, State and Utopia where he demolishes the “exploitation” theory very effectively. Another good treatment of the issue is by Kevin McFarlane, an engineer and libertarian.
It was more than Karl Marx – the false idea that the labour market was structurally biased against employees (in favour of employers) was a common place of 19th century economics, especially in the United kingdom.
This false thinking led to the Trade Union Acts of 1875 (the Disraeli Act) and 1906 – Acts that started the relative (relative) decline of British industry, and created Structural Unemployment. Keynes ignored the real problem, the Trade Union Acts, and pushed creating more money (from nothing) to deal with this unemployment – trying to deal with Structural Unemployment by “increasing demand” is terrible folly.
Even Winston Churchill must bear some of the blame – he supported the 1906 Trade Union Act denying that it would increase unemployment, but (at the same time) pushed the creation of “Labour Exchanges” to try and deal with the increased unemployment that he denied would be created.
That was not good conduct – not at all.
For a proper examination of how the labour market really works and how the government supported “Strike threat System” radically distorts it – see the works of the late W.H. Hutt.
“…but that is not easy as employees and contractors must go through security vetting.”
Indeed they must. And apparently it takes ages – like, many weeks (Why? What are “they” actually doing all that time?). Or even longer, “because Covid”.
This is not the fault of the airlines or their employees, ex or otherwise.
It is simply good old government incompetence, yet again.
The other aspect of all of this is that it has shown to many commuters how much of their lives they are wasting on their daily commute back and forth, including the joys their forefathers knew such as having after school time with their children while the sun still shines.
In addition, the cost of commuting in terms of rail tickets, car travel, coffee and meals expenditure has put money back in the former commuters pockets (or at least did until inflation started to sky rocket)
So you can quite understand why many of those former commuters are reluctant to return to their City offices and indeed when forced to do so, some have chosen to quit and obtain work-from-home positions with other companies.
All very well, but those work-from-home positions can as easily be offered to someone in Chennai as Chichester, so the convenience brings with it a Damoclean problem of job insecurity.
Quite how this will resolve itself in the long run is unknown.
The Nobility (or those who think themselves nobility, like CEOs) do not like the masterless man or woman. Now many nobles are discovering the difficulty of putting the leash back on their peasants. The ex-employees can look at their memories and decide that job isn’t worth it. It’s not always that easy to get them back into the office.
Not exactly a rerun of post-Black Death England, but there are similarities…
🙂
As Heinlein noted in “Starship Troopers”:
He had been droning along about “value,” comparing the Marxist theory with the orthodox “use” theory. Mr. Dubois had said, “Of course, the Marxian definition of value is ridiculous. All the work one cares to add will not turn a mud pie into an apple tart; it remains a mud pie, value zero. By corollary, unskillful work can easily subtract value; an untalented cook can turn wholesome dough and fresh green apples, valuable already, into an inedible mess, value zero. Conversely, a great chef can fashion of those same materials a confection of greater value than a commonplace apple tart,with no more effort than an ordinary cook uses to prepare an ordinary sweet.
“These kitchen illustrations demolish the Marxian theory of value –the fallacy from which the entire magnificent fraud of communism derives –and to illustrate the truth of the common-sense definition as measured in terms of use.”
Blackwing1 the history of the theory of value is a bit odd – David Ricardo’s Labour Theory of Value (which was inspired by some confusion of thought in Adam Smith himself) was largely discredited by the late 1820s – even in Britain (thanks to Richard Whately and Samuel Bailey) – but then the demented theory came back, thanks to John Stuart Mill “Principled of Economics” 1848. Mill did not refute the arguments against the theory, he just pretended the arguments did the not exist “the theory of value is settled” – this theory being that of family friend David Ricardo and J.S. Mill’s own father James Mill.
It was the same on LAND (the Ricardo theory just accepted as correct – with all its anti private ownership of land implications) and on privately owned manufacturers – with worker coops being assumed (by J.S. Mill) to be better. In short to present Mill as the great libertarian alternative to Marx is not a good idea.
By the way – for those who do not know. The Disraeli Act of 1875 was not about “legalising unions” (whatever some history books may tell you) – they were already legal (they had only been illegal during the Napoleonic Wars period) – the Disraeli Act was about legalising para military acts (such as “picketing” – a military term for a military act, a “picket line”) and preventing unions being sued.
The Act of 1906 made this all worse – and, ironically, Winston Churchill was later forced (as Home Secretary) to bring in the army against unions, because the Act of 1906 (which he had supported) got rid of peaceful, civil remedies.
This phenomenon can be better understood if you compare it with Wittgenstein’s remark. Told by a friend that people used to think the Sun went round the Earth “because that’s what it looked like”, Wittgenstein thought for a bit and then asked,
In Victorian England, the word “capitalist” conjured up a picture of a wealthy, comfortably-placed man commanding correspondingly poor and hard-worked employees. Thomas Sowell notes cases where left-wing activists who investigated things sometimes realised the full picture had more in it. For example, one New York leftie (Jacob Riis IIRC) realised during his reforming activities – and said so in passing – that in the New York garment industry, the typical ‘exploiting’ operator of a sweatshop business managed on very thin margins under great pressure (but did not, IIRC, reform anything in his policies, and managed never to notice other relevant information).
(And having written that, I prudently note myself in passing that, after mocking the biased write-up that early Victorian legal practice in employment gets from the usual left-wing suspects in our day, some of us might nevertheless not think that quite everything it inherited from French-revolution-time anti-conspiracy laws and etc. was perfect libertarianism devoid of points to criticise. 🙂 )
Actually, the labor theory of value goes back at least to John Locke’s second Treatise of Government, specifically wrt land ownership.
On reading the second Treatise, i did not find the theory compelling, but i thought it harmless. I favor NAP as a principle of legitimization of private property (or ‘estate’ as Locke wrote it), and justify NAP on the basis of my moral intuitions.
— Incidentally, i am intrigued by Paul Marks almost never mentioning Locke. If there is one author whom i consider a Prophet in normative politics (as distinct from positive/descriptive politics), that is John Locke.
And even on the issue of human agency: while i think that Hume made a cogent criticism of incompatibilism, i also think that Locke gave a far more developed account of agency. (However, i know Locke’s account only at 2nd hand.)
Back to the office? Not Likely.
Shallow single self-absorbed millennials – often 2nd generation dysfunctional narcissists with poor role models – find it hard to live with themselves without outside distractions and markers of identity. Few of these people were star performers and creative synergizers when we all were in the office. Most didn’t have the traits of character and social skills.
Everyone else I know – and I work in Israeli hitech – *loves* working from home. Especially now that daycare and schools are back to full time after Covid.
The only exceptions – the only ones coming in to the office more than 1 or 2 days a week – are people who have no physical space to accommodate work, such as recent grads doing the roommate thing in Tel Aviv, or parents on deadline during school vacation.
Here in Israel even the hitech nerds have deep social networks: family, friends, neighbors, school, youth groups, army buddies, college pals. Between half and 2/3 of Israeli society are religious enough to attend Sabbath services and around 1/3 of the men attend morning prayers. Many more have Sabbath meals with friends and family. That is built-in social interaction.
Nobody needs work for basic human relationship needs, as described in many articles like these. And a few ruthless boom-and-bust cycles have underscored to Israeli techies that our sector does not operate according to old socialist cradle-to-grave employment models – or with any real loyalty.
Before Covid one-way commutes into the Tel Aviv metro area were at or over 1 hour. Work from home gives people back 2 hours of each day, and removes a major source of stress. Working mothers no longer have that mad dash to the school/daycare before it closes. We have the flexibility to handle countless small chores as is convenient.
It is worth noting that work from home is encouraging large numbers of people to think of themselves as free agents. Like the unexpected awakening of many parents during Covid-imposed remote learning – work from home is cultivating a generation of free market liberals, which is probably not what the left intended when it launched the Covid scare.
“Marx’s idea is that claim that the majority of the risks and uncertainties are on the employees’ side”
I’m not entirely certain Marx is entirely wrong. Certainly the start-up and operation costs are borne by the owners, but the owners are rarely the ones losing limbs in factories, or buried alive in mines, or shot while jockeying a register. Not to mention things like being laid off when their job is offshored or are replaced by someone from India with an H1B visa who will work for 1/3 of the pay and not being able to pay the mortgage (which I think was more along the lines of what Marx was discussing: the economic uncertainty workers carry). Think of all the common workers who lose everything when a business goes under, including their pensions they have diligently been paying into for their entire career, while board members get multimillion dollar golden parachutes.
@Steven R
Think of all the common workers who lose everything when a business goes under,
Workers don’t lose everything, they lose their job, and assuming they have taken the time to make themselves sufficiently valuable, move on and get another one. The people who poured their capital, their life savings, their credit as well as their hopes for the future are the ones who lose everything.
including their pensions they have diligently been paying into for their entire career,
Anyone who keeps their pension under the control of the employer is a fool, or at the very least, an anachronism. Any company that co-mingles their employee pension funds with general operating funds, and therefore subject to loss in a collapse are crooks. Here in Illinois the teachers and other public employees pay into a pension fund managed by the state. Would it surprise you that the state basically stole this money and used it to buy votes? Would it surprise you to know that the follow on obligations are utterly crippling the state and causing taxes to go up and up?
FFS, if you have your pension with your employer get it out under your control, and if you can’t, then get a new job where you can.
while board members get multimillion dollar golden parachutes.
Yeah, well I agree with you there, that is bs. Those people are the MBA types not the entrepreneurs who create businesses.
But I’d say also I am just not at all a fan of the “employment” model. It is this weird edifice of complex legal rights, obligations, odd payment structures and so on mostly the let the government control the whole thing and tax them the most (employees are far and away the most heavily taxed people on the planet.) Let people sell their labor for a fair price, hopefully they have multiple sources of income. Hopefully they are paid by the work produced, not the hours spent warming a seat. If they want healthcare, pensions, maternity leave, PTO and so on, let them pay for it themselves.
Work from home has most clearly revealed the divide between the productive and the unproductive. Businesses are full to the brim with basically useless people — people who contribute almost no value, and often contribute negative value. Those are the people who want to go back to work (including all those mostly useless middle managers) because if they are judged on their work output rather than their benchwarming capability, then they are in deep trouble.
Work from home is one of the few good things to come out of Covid.
A plumber, software programmer or security manager have capital sitting in their heads, and when a firm hires such a person, it is renting that capital.
This is exactly right, and it is worth pointing out that often the employer put that capital in his head. I am reminded of a time I had this employee, programmer, who was absolutely horrible. Terrible attitude. Dragged everyone down. Constantly late, constantly complaining, constantly taking for ever to get things done. However, he had acquired expertise in a particular piece of hardware that one of our commercial partners produced. To be clear, he didn’t arrive with this knowledge, I paid him for many, many months while he studied the stuff and learned how it all worked. I wanted to get rid of him so much, but this cache of knowledge he had made him basically un-fireable. Then one day he walked in and quit, and getting someone in to replace him, and reacquire that knowledge must have cost quarter of a million dollars.
If you have ever run a tech company you will have had a similar experience.
And when the economy is like this, low unemployment, hard to fill spots, workers have immense power, even if all you know how to do is make a cup of coffee. I am reminded of the fact that when Trump was President the economy was so good for employees that employers were holding job fairs in prisons just in the hope that an ex-con might deign to come work for them.
What cripples the power of employees? Big government who spend in profligate ways, cripple the economy, drive up inflation, drive up unemployment. This increases the supply over the demand, and employees lose all their power.
You’re weighting your statement towards people whose employment tasks can be performed away from a work site, of course. Outside of tech, bookkeeping, and some sales slots, a lot of work must be performed “at work.” For those people, an eagerness to return to a worksite isn’t always a sign of mediocrity. More like a return to paychecks.
(I’m only pointing this out to say that not all people who are campaigning for a viable worksite once again are guilty of sloth or mediocrity. 😉 )
Yes Snorri – although that was a Locke was pushing a labour theory of ownership, rather than labour theory of value (as such).
David Ricardo took the confused (very late) ideas of Adam Smith – and made them the centre of his (false) theory of value, although Ricardo also had a false theory of land which inspired Henry George and was not finally refuted till Frank Fetter refuted it.
As for John Locke – his theory on land goes back to his view of the Bible, specifically the Book of Genesis.
The Bible was very important to most people at the time – but scholars were divided as to whether God gave the world to people unowned (to be claimed by occupation – the view of Hugo Grotius and others influenced by the law, both Roman Law and Common Law) or owned-in-common.
Bizarrely (for those who hold John Locke to be a libertarian hero) Locke (like the German thinker Pufendorf) took the latter view – that God gave the world to humanity-in-common, so that individual ownership had to be “justified” – hence his labour theory of property, “mixing your labour” with the soil rather than just living there.
We also get, in Locke, the idea of “as much and as good left for others” (which is impossible – if one farms or ranches some land, the price of the remaining land goes up), and the idea that if a ship’s captain does not sell his food cargo at a port where there is starvation (without any contract to do so), but goes somewhere else (to get a higher price) he is “guilty of murder” – that would make trade and production impossible (as there is always someone starving somewhere – so one should give the cargo to them) – Mr Locke seems to have had no common sense, and certainly no grasp of basic legal principles (someone who thinks that not “selling! someone food, for essentially nothing, is “murder” is just wrong). Why produce anything if someone who is in need can claim it? This is a confusion of the virtue of justice (to each their own) and the virtue of CHARITY (as in “faith, hope and charity”) – justice and mercy are not the same thing, to think they are is the fallacy of “Social Justice”.
“But Locke is a libertarian hero” – well, yes, but we can not just hide what he actually wrote (in the Venditio and so on).
Ah, that’s true. I did not think about this clearly enough.
It’s a common mistake to read Locke as if his primary interest was to okay the foundations for the 1688 Glorious Revolution. But his 2nd treatise was written in 1660 when his clear engagement was really with the foundations of/justification for the evolving empire in West Indies and American colonies. Take another read of it with that background in mind and things become much clearer.
Thank you Snorri.
Michael Taylor – I think it was his mistaken view of the Book of Genesis, I know that sounds very odd to modern ears, but at the time it was take very seriously. If Locke had followed (say) the Dutchman Hugo Grotius (the world is UNOWNED till a bit is claimed by peaceful occupation), rather than the German Samuel Pufendorf (the world is owned in common by all of humanity – so private property must be “justified” in some way), it would have been better.
However, I accept your point Mr Taylor – it was useful (to put it mildly) for Locke to be able to say that local people did not really own the land, because they had not “mixed their labour” with it (they had just hunted or gathered stuff) – thus leaving areas open to colonisation.
Steven R: Think of all the common workers who lose everything when a business goes under, including their pensions they have diligently been paying into for their entire career, while board members get multimillion dollar golden parachutes.
Much depends on whether the workers’ pensions are linked to the company itself, or instead held in a separate pot (as is the case with most private schemes today). Even in the 19th Century, Friendly Societies, mutual aid groups, or “thrifts” (to use the US name) grew up so that workers could build some much-needed financial buffer against bad times. There is also the point that C-suite executives can and do get fired for lousy performance. It is up to shareholders to insist that under-performing executives don’t walk away with a “golden” anything. Also, it is arguably the fault of limited liability laws as well as by the sheltered position of some big firms (getting various special favours from the State) that mean that owners don’t feel the cold blast of competition as much as they should.
That’s why I am in favour of rolling back the State and getting rid of what Ayn Rand called “the politics of pull”, or which is also known as corporatism. Create a vigorous free market economy where bankruptcy exerts the same discipline as the unapologetic drive for honest profit.
I’m not entirely certain Marx is entirely wrong. Certainly the start-up and operation costs are borne by the owners, but the owners are rarely the ones losing limbs in factories, or buried alive in mines, or shot while jockeying a register.
Indeed; there is a division of labour. Then again, bosses tend to be the ones who are harried by the media for the sin of being bosses in the first place, or for being their allegedly filthy rich, etc. In very large firms with layers of management there can be a disconnect between the risks of one part of a job and another, but bear in mind that, with civil liability, for example, managers have to carry the can when things go wrong, and lawsuits can hold firms to account. Reputations for safety are hard to acquire but can be lost very fast. (Who wants to work for a sloppy coal mine or construction firm when there are nicer alternatives that pay as well?) An entrepreneur who works a 15-hour day, six or seven days a week, trying to build a business and meet a payroll at the end of every month, to take examples from start-ups, will often put their own health on the line. (Of course they hope to hit the jackpot eventually, and live an easier life.)
In a properly functioning labour market, jobs that are dangerous tend to be harder to get workers for as time goes by, and we forget that life was dangerous for most people more than a century ago before modern medicine and safety tech; today, if a person works on an offshore oil rig, underground coal mine or as a scaffolder, they tend to be decently paid. That pay contains a sort of premium for the risks involved, other things being equal in a normally functioning labour market. It is also worth noting that in today’s market, industrial injuries carry big insurance consequences.
@bobby b
You’re weighting your statement towards people whose employment tasks can be performed away from a work site, of course
Yes, for sure. But waitresses and line assembly guys and I guess trial lawyers aren’t really demanding to stay home, because home means no paycheck (actually some people are demanding to stay home and not do their job and still get paid — often these people work for the government). But thanks for the reminder, I do sometimes project my experience onto others.
@Johnathan Pearce
they tend to be decently paid. That pay contains a sort of premium for the risks involved, other things being equal in a normally functioning labour market. It is also worth noting that in today’s market, industrial injuries carry big insurance consequences.
It is also worth pointing out that because of this, even the most heartless bastard of a boss has a very strong financial incentive to make the workplace safe simply because not doing so will cost them big. Why go to the expense of getting someone to clear the snow off the path to your business? Because the United States is full of people who will sue the crap out of you if you don’t and someone slips and falls. A potential one million dollar judgement can offset the cost of a lot of snow shovels.
I used to work for a company that sold various cosmetic items. They had this problem of producing suitable safety labels and documentation to go on their delivery trucks and they were willing to spend almost any amount of money to get it right. Why? Because if the truck got inspected and had one can of hairspray without the suitable hazard labels (yup, really, hair spray is considered a dangerous item) the fines will be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Lots of high brow thinking in this thread. Here’s something low brow and basic. The cost of keeping your home warm is about to go through the roof. I suspect that working from the offy will suddenly become much more attractive. 🙂
Here in Illinois the teachers and other public employees pay into a pension fund managed by the state. Would it surprise you that the state basically stole this money and used it to buy votes? Would it surprise you to know that the follow on obligations are utterly crippling the state and causing taxes to go up and up?
Of course, the government-sector unions were complicit in getting the state to use that money to buy votes.
I’m very close to the point where it will warm the cockles of my cold, cold heart to see retired government-sector workers homeless and starving when their pensions that I’ve been paying for go bust.
🙂
I do my best to provide a mixture.
It depends. For people in cold climates who live close to the office and can walk to work, working in the office becomes more attractive. But for people in, say, California, Texas, and Florida, the cost of commuting increased much more than the cost of central heating — or air conditioning. (Correct me if i am wrong.)
Ted Schuerzinger
I’m very close to the point where it will warm the cockles of my cold, cold heart to see retired government-sector workers homeless and starving when their pensions that I’ve been paying for go bust.
You mean you’d like to see the cop who kept your streets safe, or the teacher who educated your child or the fireman who put out the fire near your house, cold and starving? Because those are the people who would get screwed. The people responsible? Nothing will ever touch them. If the teachers union actually cared about teachers they’d be demanding that teachers could convert their pensions to 401ks. But of course no politically minded person would ever want that big chunk of cash to be under the control of the person who earned it, instead they’d rather use it to manipulate companies into ESG, or pay themselves big bonuses, or support the political candidates they like.
This is the consequence of the employment model, and especially the unionized employment model and even more especially the government unionized employment model. People should be paid for the work they do in a free market of labor, they shouldn’t have a chunk of that taken away and spent by their “betters” in ways that their “betters” deem appropriate irrespective of whether it is “for-their-own-good”™.
I am sympathetic for the firemen at least…
Agreed, I think the move to a more fluid system rather than offices full of people locked into an employer & full-time-employee relationship has much to commend it.
Perry de Havilland (London)
I am sympathetic for the firemen at least…
I think this is a media effect. The minority are the loudest. Most cops are decent people honestly trying to help, and most teachers are people who love kids and education and care about what they are doing. Of course there are a few bad eggs in both and bureaucracy being what it is they tend to float to the top. Unfortunately those bad ones seem to be the loudest and the most widely discussed. My kids have had a lot of teachers and nearly all of them have been pretty great. I have encountered a few pretty leftie ones, but even they are primarily concerned with giving the kids a good education without all the BS. And similarly I know a few cops and have had to deal with a few, and they have all been hard working professionals who deal honestly and fairly. Of course I live in nice neighborhoods with great schools, so anecdote is not the singular of data.
I have also heard that the police in Britain have gone a bit nutso. So I guess YMMV.
Is it true that one can generalize about British police, though?
I know that one cannot generalize about American police, not even within a State; but i must admit that i am ignorant as to which extent one can generalize about British police.
Michael Taylor:
I suppose that Michael had in mind Locke’s opinions on slavery, in addition to his opinions on land ownership.
As i remember, Locke’s position on slavery was not at all favorable to the trans-Atlantic slave trade: he wrote that slavery was legitimate only for prisoners of war, and then only as long as the conflict lasted. That rules out buying slaves (without documentary evidence that they are legitimate prisoners of war) AND shipping them to another continent.
That Locke had a financial interest in the slave trade, does not affect the validity of his theory, which objectively went against his interests.
— I must also clarify that, while regarding Locke as a prophet, i certainly do not regard him as the only prophet. It is just that other political ideas that i regard as close to revealed truth, cannot be as easily located in a single text as the ideas in Locke’s 2nd Treatise.
Snorri – there is also the bizarre founding document that Locke wrote for his patron Lord Shaftsbury, about what later became North and South Carolina.
Long sections about “leet” (SERF) men and women – whose descendants were to be serfs for all generations, tied to the land and owning their masters service.
These serfs were to be white (so the 1619 Project is not interested) – supposedly to be signed up from England (where serfdom had died out) on the basis of “you can have this land to farm – as long as you agree to be a serf, and that that your descendants be serfs for ever”.
This mad plan was never put into action – but John Locke did write it.
And serfdom can be introduced into areas that never had it – indeed (contrary to Marxism) serfdom is not normally some “economic process”, it is normally imposed by law by rulers (often for tax or military reasons).
After all to ban people LEAVING is what serfdom is about – and that is not a normal “crime” in any legal system, it has to be MADE a “crime” by the edicts of rulers.
In the Roman Empire this was done by the Emperor Diocletian – there was no change in technology (in Marxist language “forces of production”) creating a different “mode of production” – what Diocletian did was to protect tax revenue for the state. Under Diocletian taxes had become crushing – and it was feared that peasants would run away rather than pay them.
The Grand Dukes of Moscow who introduced serfdom into Russia (many centuries later) had similar motivations.
Snorri,
The key give-away, I think, is precisely his passage on slavery, which comes very near the beginning of the 2nd Treatise. And the point of that passage was precisely that it gave a philosophical get-out for indentured servitude, which, of course, was the foundation of forced labour in the West Indies. The indentured servants – who to all intents and purposes were treated almost identically as slaves – were often prisoners of war/abductees of war, for whom the alternative to shipping to the West Indies would indeed have been death. This was the dreadful 17th century after all, with no shortage of losers in the serial wars in England, Scotland, Ireland.
His problem is twofold. First, although the misery of indentured servitude in the West Indies was little different from chattel slavery, it did have an end, and – crucially – the indentured servants were not owned (and, for example, mortgaged). So Locke was setting up a straw-man which let him avoid thinking too hard about the implications of chattel slavery.
The second problem is that whilst he wrote the 2nd Treatise in 1660, the next year, 1661, saw the publication of the Barbados Slave Code (or Act) which for the first time was very explicit about the difference between indentured servitude and chattel slavery, was explicitly racist in intention and execution, and set different codes for behaviour towards (ie, punishment of) indentured servants and chattel slaves.
Locke, in other words, tried to dodge the horror of the problem, and failed. And so on to the Carolinas . . .
Paul: good points. Now i better understand what John Adams wrote about Locke.
Michael: I published my comment before seeing your latest.
I have only one pushback: presumably, Locke did not write the Barbados Slave Act, and therefore bears no responsibility for it.
Snorri,
No, his timing was just unfortunate.