“As their cities are composed of families, so their families are made up of those that are nearly related to one another. Their women, when they grow up, are married out, but all the males, both children and grand-children, live still in the same house, in great obedience to their common parent, unless age has weakened his understanding, and in that case he that is next to him in age comes in his room; but lest any city should become either too great, or by any accident be dispeopled, provision is made that none of their cities may contain above six thousand families, besides those of the country around it. No family may have less than ten and more than sixteen persons in it, but there can be no determined number for the children under age; this rule is easily observed by removing some of the children of a more fruitful couple to any other family that does not abound so much in them. By the same rule they supply cities that do not increase so fast from others that breed faster; and if there is any increase over the whole island, then they draw out a number of their citizens out of the several towns and send them over to the neighbouring continent, where, if they find that the inhabitants have more soil than they can well cultivate, they fix a colony, taking the inhabitants into their society if they are willing to live with them; and where they do that of their own accord, they quickly enter into their method of life and conform to their rules, and this proves a happiness to both nations; for, according to their constitution, such care is taken of the soil that it becomes fruitful enough for both, though it might be otherwise too narrow and barren for any one of them. But if the natives refuse to conform themselves to their laws they drive them out of those bounds which they mark out for themselves, and use force if they resist, for they account it a very just cause of war for a nation to hinder others from possessing a part of that soil of which they make no use, but which is suffered to lie idle and uncultivated, since every man has, by the law of nature, a right to such a waste portion of the earth as is necessary for his subsistence. If an accident has so lessened the number of the inhabitants of any of their towns that it cannot be made up from the other towns of the island without diminishing them too much (which is said to have fallen out but twice since they were first a people, when great numbers were carried off by the plague), the loss is then supplied by recalling as many as are wanted from their colonies, for they will abandon these rather than suffer the towns in the island to sink too low.--Thomas More Utopia. Book II
In a famous footnote, which inspired many generations of Marxist historians, in chapter 28 of Capital, Book 1, Marx calls attention to, and quotes, the description of the deleterious effects of the violent enclosures on farming communities in Book 1 of Utopia. Marx attributes the quote to Thomas More and not to the character Raphael Hythloday. This is notable because Thomas More is also a character in Utopia, with a perspective distinct from Hythloday's. This makes Utopia notorious (recall this post) difficult to interpret because one cannot take for granted that any character, including More, speaks for the author.
To the best of my knowledge Marx never commented on the passage quoted above. In context, it is Hythloday's description of Utopian policy (that he endorses). The first part of the paragraph describes some of the mechanisms the Utopians use to keep population in a fixed equilibrium. (Given that the Utopians have managed to root out famine, and run food surpluses, we can infer there are more mechanisms.) One of the mechanisms mentioned in the passage is the practice -- which resonates with known Greek and Roman history -- to send out colonists in order to control population in the homeland (Utopia).
The Utopian colonists settle in places where the land can support more inhabitants than the existing local population. At that point the colonized either voluntary allow themselves to be subsumed under the Utopians way of life or resist; and then get attacked by the Utopians.
At this point, Hythloday mentions the Utopian justification for colonial war: when "a nation [hinders] others from possessing a part of that soil of which they make no use, but which is suffered to lie idle and uncultivated, since every man has, by the law of nature, a right to such a waste portion of the earth as is necessary for his subsistence." This argument has been called "the agricultural argument" (by Thomas Flanagan) and it has been treated, as Barbara Arneil implies, as an anticipation of features of the Lockean proviso.
To be sure, the actual law of nature reported Hythloday is better understood as a kind of right of necessity. The idea that under great duress you can take from others some of their property in order to survive. This right of necessity was common ground in the sixteenth century, and we find echoes of it as late as Adam Smith and Sophie de Grouchy, although to the best of my knowledge it was not used to justify colonial war.
It is peculiar that Hythloday does not note that the justification for colonial war is patently being abused. The Utopian colonists are not starving at home. At any given time, the Utopians have two years' food stored. To repeat, they leave Utopia in order to keep the population stable (which is the point of the whole paragraph in context) not to flee famine.
As an aside, when a few pages later, Hythloday, moves to the subject of war, he presents them as near pacifists: "They detest war as a very brutal thing, and which, to the reproach of human nature, is more practised by men than by any sort of beasts. They, in opposition to the sentiments of almost all other nations, think that there is nothing more inglorious than that glory that is gained by war." It turns out that there are only three official justifications for war: (i) "either to defend themselves or their friends from any unjust aggressors;" (ii) or to "assist an oppressed nation in shaking off the yoke of tyranny." In addition, and somewhat surprisingly also (iii) "offensive wars" but they never do that "unless they had been consulted before the breach was made, and, being satisfied with the grounds on which they went, they had found that all demands of reparation were rejected, so that a war was unavoidable." Hythloday seems to have forgotten the justification for colonial wars.
To return to the main argument. The Utopian justification for colonial wars is, of course, not just rooted in version of the right of necessity. As we have seen it also relies on the idea that one has no right to keep others from appropriating uncultivated land. When Utopia was published (1517), the Spanish were just starting their colonial projects. (Hythloday is presented as Portuguese who had traveled, in part, with Amerigo Vespucci.) So, the book has an uncanny prophetic quality. It is, then, no surprise that this feature of the Utopian justification for colonial wars are thought to anticipate Locke (recall):
Nor was this appropriation of any parcel of land, by improving it, any prejudice to any other man, since there was still enough and as good left, and more than the yet unprovided could use. So that, in effect, there was never the less left for others because of his enclosure for himself. For he that leaves as much as another can make use of, does as good as take nothing at all. Nobody could think himself injured by the drinking of another man, though he took a good draught, who had a whole river of the same water left him to quench his thirst. And the case of land and water, where there is enough of both, is perfectly the same.
It is uncanny how much this resembles the Utopian frame of mind. After all, the whole point of Utopian ideology and practice is to improve the land. Of course, the Utopians have no interest in defending individual property rights (Locke); their colonies also embrace communal ownership.+ And while I don't mean to suggest that the Utopians have an explicit formulation of the spoilage condition, they would clearly endorse it.*
I close with three observations: first, the pre-history of the Lockean proviso explicitly involves a colonial project. Second, the Lockean proviso has roots in very egalitarian tendencies (for the in-group); this suggests that -- pace my colleague Bas Van der Vossen -- the left libertarian interpretation of Locke may well be defensible on broader contextual grounds.
Third, and finally, there is no contradiction between Hythloday's endorsement of colonial land-grabbing of idle land, and his criticism of enclosure of the commons (which need not be idle, after all). It is uncanny how, when discussing colonialism and Wakefield's political economy, in chapter 33 of Capital, Marx sees the connection: "We have seen that the expropriation of the mass of the people from the soil forms the basis of the capitalist mode of production. The essence of a free colony, on the contrary, consists in this — that the bulk of the soil is still public property."
Of course, Marx goes on to say that the: "secret" of prosperity is that "every settler on it therefore can turn part of it into his private property and individual means of production, without hindering the later settlers in the same operation." But, analytically, as More discerned, this is also true of communist settler colonies.
+There are a few exceptions to this rule, but that need not concern us here.
*It's true that the Utopians only belatedly have heard of Genesis. So, they lack a biblical justification.
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