Locke did not dedicate any of his texts to the study of ethics as a topic. Nonetheless, his writing contained in other topical areas, more so political philosophy, offers fundamental insights on a vast variety of ethical issues. On property, Locke set out restrictions on property accumulation in the state of nature. He argued people should accumulate as much as they can use, leaving enough for others to satisfy their own needs and to avoid spoilage. He further argued that in carrying out property accumulation, individuals ought to leave sufficient amounts and equally good properties for others. Additionally, Locke argued property accumulation ought to take place through one’s own labor. To this end, Locke decried illegitimate property accumulation (Vere, 1994) .
These views on the property have come under critical scrutiny from various scholars. Some have argued that the restrictions imposed by Locke have largely been transcended over time. Locke’s concern with spoilage stops being a meaningful restriction given advents like money that allow for storage in mediums that do not decay. And yet, it countered that the wastage Locke is concerned about is not just in the narrow sense of spoilage or decay, but rather extravagance, which is a real prospect even with mediums like money. This view is particularly important given the context he was writing in of European aristocratic order. With respect to his concern with sufficiency restriction, it has been argued that the ascent of private property and its claim to productivity mean that people no longer have to own property to acquire necessities of life; through the provision of labor, the needs may be adequately settled. Locke, as if envisaging this critique, had argued that property ownership was not a determinant in the acquisition of citizenship; that this was a natural right. In the First Treatise , Locke is clear about a duty to charity especially by the rich on those who have no means of subsistence (Vere, 1994) .
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A basic assumption in Locke's view on the property is that the world is owned by all and as such, individual property can only be justified if it does not leave others worse than they were. In circumstances where the good in question had no scarcity, Locke saw no problem in its appropriation, so long as it did not deprive the rest (Vere, 1994) . Where deprivation is caused, Locke thought that those denied access have legitimate grounds for objecting appropriation.
Locke held that living a moral life meant the pursuit of pleasurable good. The pleasurable good, thought Locke, is the truest and greatest happiness and entails judging the future and remote good, the infinite, the unspeakable and the eternal happiness of heaven. Locke thought that human action is always determined by those things that bring us the greatest unease at any particular time. He thus argued that we need to cultivate in ourselves the uneasiness for the endless joys of heaven. He was quick to caution that the human mind, in its narrow and weak state, has the propensity to judge instant pleasures to be representative of the pleasurable good. Our project is thus to circumvent this narrowness of the human mind and overcome terrestrial human desires thereby judging correctly those things that beget true happiness (Vere, 1994) .
This view on the essence of human life is reflected in his discussions on education. He places a direct connection between early childhood education and the discovery of true happiness. He notes that true happiness is critically dependent on an individual being of sound mind and body. In certain unique instances, he argues that some children have a strong constitution of mind that they do not need any great help to direct their minds to those things of greatest value-that beget pleasurable good. It is those who are educated and able to distinguish between what he terms ‘natural wants’ and ‘wants of fancy’ that become adults with greater liberty since they adhere to dictates of reason and not dictates of passion.
Locke’s views on diversity stem from his thesis on identity in which he postulated that the human body is not relevant in identity formation. He stressed that it is possible to have the same minds in two different bodies. He argued that psychological aspects of a person are more important in identity formation and evaluation. In his own words ‘identity consists not in the substance but the identity of the consciousness.’ This consciousness, contends Locke, is what is morally important for every thinking animal. The uniqueness of this consciousness is what according to Locke translates into unique personal identities (Vere, 1994) . Interpreted in a more contemporary sense, Locke seems to denounce phenotypical judgments of individuals in the form of racism and urges a more nuanced approach.
Whether Marx had an ethical vision is a matter subject to contention. Some scholars have suggested that Marx had varying ethical inclination reflected in the various stages of his life. The young Marx seemed to be heavily influenced by Aristotelian ethics which he attempted to link to universalization principle quite similar to Kantian categorical imperative. In later years, Marx seemed to have abandoned this standard seeing morality as incompatible with his touchstone theory of historical materialism. Towards his final years, he appears less of a determinist and more willing to embrace morality. Marx’s moral skepticism, it can be argued, stems from his skepticism of the existence of bad or good qualities. Some of his writings illustrated his scorn for moral philosophy and ethical principles. As some have persuasively argued, Marx saw morality as an ideology (Kian, 1991) .
Marx conflated moral ideals to religious ones and saw them, as he had fervently argued in discussing the former, as hypocritical and cognitively pretentious. Moral ideas were to him ideological expressions of class differences. To this end, Marx thought that a classless society-the triumph of the proletarian revolution against the bourgeoisie would completely abolish moral and religious frameworks by systematically debilitating their social and economic foundations. Marx’s absolute disdain for moral arguments is captured in his commentary that socialist counter morality to the predominant bourgeoisie morality present in his time was nothing more than outdated verbal rubbish and confusing ideological nonsense that would do more harm than benefit to the then labor movement. To Marx, the only ‘moral’ struggle is the complete emancipation of workers. As some of the correspondences of Marx have revealed, his usage of the term ‘proletarian morality’ in some of his addresses was more tactical than it was reflective of his conviction. He later suggested that if there were morality, then it would be subject to progress as other human knowledge has advanced (Kian, 1991) .
Conclusion
The ethical philosophies of Locke and Marx have been examined in this essay. It is appreciated that both thinkers did not handle ethics as an exclusive area of interest. Thus, their moral philosophy has to be derived from their broader writings. It is evident that Marx and Locke share some similarities such as their concern with an accumulation of property in the hands of the few and wastage, to the detriment of the majority. The two, however, have sharply contrasting views on what constitutes happiness in an ideal society. In cases of similarity between Marxian and Lockean ethic, what fundamentally sets them apart is the radicalness of Marx.
References
Kian, .. P. (1991). Marx and Ethics. Oxford: Oxford Scholarship Online.
Vere, C. (1994). The Cambridge Companion to Locke. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
