The Second Treatise of Government: An Introduction to John Locke

The Only Resource You’ll Ever Need

This is a brief on John Locke and The Second Treatise that I prepared for my exam on political philosophy at the London School of Economics. May it help you in whatever way you need to prepare for Locke. It’s not complete, but covers most areas.

It covers Locke on topics of the state of nature, private property, consent, state of political authority and obligation, and limits to political authority. This is a resource, not an essay.

“Critiques Of” includes philosophers or ideas that challenge the topic. “Importance Of” explains the most important points on the topic from the philosopher’s point of view. And “Excerpts Of”, as the name suggests, offers a few quotes by the philosopher.

LOCKE BRIEF

INDEX

I STATE OF NATURE

II PRIVATE PROPERTY

III CONSENT

IV STATE OF POLITICAL AUTHORITY AND OBLIGATION

V LIMITS TO POLITICAL AUTHORITY

I STATE OF NATURE

CRITIQUES OF:

• Kant/Rawls: “A Thought Experiment”
• Dunn (1969): It creates the state of political authority to further God’s purpose.
• Dunn: Locke’s theory of natural rights is only one of duties.
• Schulz (2011): a) people do not know exactly what violations of the law of nature are b) they are biased in their own cases c) they lack the power to carry out their judgments
• Nozick (1977): “Right to suicide”
• Strauss (1953): Locke’s natural rights are individualistic

IMPORTANCE OF:

• State of liberty and equality in which no one has power over another and all are free to do as they please. The state of nature exists wherever there is no legitimate political authority able to judge disputes and where people live according to the law of reason.
• No natural hierarchy, because natural law renders all people equal.
• Conflict-ridden, but not necessarily a state of war. But, other than the law of nature, there is no constraint on people’s actions.
• Law of nature: a) ‘No one ought to harm anyone else in his life, health, liberty, or possessions.’ b) ‘Everyone ought, when his own survival is not at stake, to do as much as he can to preserve the rest of mankind. Law of nature can be broken even if that implies not listening to reason.
• Everyone can execute the law of nature: a) they can judge whether an infringement has taken place b) they can determine the appropriate penalty c) they can administer that penalty.

NATURAL RIGHTS IN:

• A universally obligatory moral law promulgated by the human reason as it reflects on God and His Rights, on man’s relation to God and on the fundamental equality of all men as rational creatures.
• Pre-political and thus inalienable: Locke’s natural rights are not the product of political, legal and social convention, but held in virtue of our common nature.
• Highest priority be given to individual self-preservation and whatever is necessary to achieve the preservation of the individual.
• Liberty to acquire property as long as it does not interfere with anyone else’s liberty.
• Duty: a) to preserve one’s self b) to preserve others when self-preservation does not conflict c) not to take away the life of another d) not to act in a way that “tends to destroy” others

EXCERPT OF:

“All men are naturally in that state and remain so till by their own consents they make themselves members of some politic society.”

“The state of nature is a state of liberty but not of license. ‘The state of nature has a law of nature to govern it, which obliges everyone; and reason, which is that law, teaches all mankind who will but consult it that, being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty or possessions.”

“Men living together according to reason, without a common superior on earth with authority to judge between them is properly the state of nature”

“What state all men are naturally in, and that is, a state of perfect freedom to order their actions, and dispose of their possessions and persons, as they think fit, within the bounds of the law of nature, without asking leave, or depending upon the will of any other man”

“For men being all the workmanship of one omnipotent, and infinitely wise maker; all the servants of one sovereign master, sent into the world by his order, and about his business; they are his property, whose workmanship they are, made to last during his, not one another’s pleasure”

“Though man in that state have an uncontrollable liberty to dispose of his person or possessions, yet he has not liberty to destroy himself, or so much as any creature in his possession.”

“And in the case, and upon this ground, every man hath a right to punish the offender, and be executioner of the Law of Nature.”

“I see not how the magistrates of any community can punish an alien of another country; since, in reference to him, they can have no more power than what every man naturally may have over another.”

“One may destroy a man who makes war upon him … for the same reason that he may kill a wolf or a lion; because such men … have no other rule, but that of force and violence, and so may be treated as beasts of prey, those dangerous and noxious creatures, that will be sure to destroy him, whenever he falls into their power.”

“That in the state of nature every one has the executive power of the law of nature, I doubt not but it will be objected, that it is unreasonable for men to be judges in their own cases, that self-love will make men partial to themselves and their friends; and on the other side, that ill nature, passion and revenge will carry them too far in punishing others.. I easily grant, that civil government is the proper remedy for the inconveniences of the state of nature”

“He who would get me into his power without my consent, would use me as he pleased when he had got me there, and destroy me too when he had a fancy to it”

“Thus in the beginning, all the World was America.”

II PRIVATE PROPERTY

CRITIQUES OF:

• Nozick (1977): “Mixing tomato juice with the ocean.”
• Nozick: The government has no right to take property to use for the common good. The Lockean proviso means that the appropriation makes no one worse off than if it had remained unowned.
• Schulz (2011): Prudent to collect more than you need (i.e. to counter famine.)
• MacPherson (1962): Advocate of a Protestant work ethic and the spirit of capitalism.
• MacPherson: Only property owners can be voting members of society
• Kelly (2007): The fair enjoyment of the value produced by laboring is that it does not provide and exclusive claim to real property in land.
• Tully and Arneil: Expropriation of land of the natives through just war even though they used the land as a hunting ground that supplied a whole people.
• Rousseau/Marx: The wage labor and the monetary system entrenches unequal distributions of power and advantage that are just as arbitrary as the arbitrary power he saw in political absolutism. (by Kelly, 2007)
• Simmons: He underestimated the extent to which wage labor would make the poor dependent on the rich, undermining self-government.
• Waldron (2002): The only genuine constraint derived from the Law of Nature is that of non-spoilage.
• Pufendorf: When we consent to the state we transfer our right to sovereign who gives us back property rights. This is an alienation contract that turns possession into property.

IMPORTANCE OF:

• Pre-political, not conventional and requires consent to be varied or altered. Thus, no taxation without representation and/or arbitrary expropriation of property.
• Self-ownership and, therefore, we can draw from the common resource for our self-preservation.
• Labor-mixing and labor theory of value: produce would not have existed without labor, so nobody can claim a share of it on the basis of their claim to common stock.
• Initial acquisition compatible with common rights of all others if spoilage and sufficiency (‘enough and as good for others’) do not interfere.
• Abundance in the state of nature makes initial acquisition legitimate. Once land becomes scarce, property rights could only be legitimized by the creation of political society.
• Invention of money solves spoilage and sufficiency constraint. It solves spoilage because money does not decay, and sufficient as people can acquire property through their labor.
• Response to individualist anarchist who ask: why do we need any kind of state at all?
• Material inequality is part of the natural order and the appropriate reward for hard work and effort.
• Property is natural in one sense, and conventional in another.

EXCERPT OF:

“Though the water running in the fountain be everyone’s, yet who can doubt but that in the pitcher is his only who drew it out? His labor hath taken it out of the hands of nature, where it was common and belonged equally to all her children, and hath thereby appropriated it to himself”

“The fruits of the earth are given for use and enjoyment; and ‘as much as anyone can make use of to any advantage of life before it spoils, so much he may by his labor fix a property in…”

“We have an initial private property right in our own person, … every man has a property in his own person. This no Body has any Right to but himself. The Labour of his Body, and the Work of his Hands, we may say, are properly his. Whatsoever then he removes out of the state that nature hath provided, and left it in, he hath mixed his labor with, and joined to it something that is his own, and thereby make it his property.”

“As much land as a man tills, plants, improves, cultivates and can use the product of, so much is his property. He by his labor does as it were, enclose it from the common.”

“…every man has a property in his own person. This nobody has any right to but himself. The labor of his body, and the work of his hands, we may say, are properly his.”

“For the preservation of property being the end of government and that for which men enter into society, it necessarily supposes and requires that people should have property.”

“Men therefore in society having property, they have such a right to the goods, which by the law of the community are theirs…”

III CONSENT

CRITIQUES OF:

• Hume: Tacit consent is coerced; can we seriously say that a poor peasant or artisan has a free choice to leave his country when he knows no foreign language or manners and lives from day to day by the small wages which he acquires? We may as well assert that a man, by remaining in a vessel, freely consents to the dominion of the master, though he was carried on board while asleep and must leap into the ocean and perish the moment he leaves her.
• Copleston (1993): Locke apparently did not realize that a majority might act tyrannically with regard to the minority.
• SEP: Few people have actually consented to their governments so no, or almost no, government are actually legitimate. This conclusion is problematic since it is clearly contrary to Locke’s intention.
• Simmons: “Philosophical anarchism”; most people do not have a moral obligation to obey the government
• How we can consent by simply using the highway of a country?
• Sandel (2006): Locke consents to non-arbitrary taking; if we have to preserve ourselves how can we be treated by a majority to go into war? Locke is against the arbitrary taking or singling out a person to fight, but if there is a general law such that the government choice is non-arbitrary, its not a violation of people’s basic rights.

IMPORTANCE OF:

• Mechanism by which political societies are created and individuals join societies to assure the protection of their lives, liberties and estates.
• Trust: consent as a prerogative is a trust placed by the people in the executive, which the executive is free to use as long as it uses it fairly. So, the executive only has power inasmuch as the people invest in it and a good leader will be tacitly allowed a large amount of prerogative by his peoples if his judgments tend to benefit everyone.
• Remember that a trust differs from a contract in that the trustee retains the unilateral right to judge the terms of the trust, whereas a contract requires both parties to agree variation in the terms. This is important for Locke’s argument about the right to resistance.
• Reciprocity: if a man grows up in a certain political society, inherits property in accordance with the laws of the State and enjoys the privileges of a citizen, he must be supposed to have given at least a tacit consent to membership of that society. For it would be utterly unreasonable to enjoy the privilege of a citizen and at the same time to maintain that one was still in the state of nature. In other words, a man who avails himself of the rights and privileges of a citizen of a certain State must be supposed to have voluntarily undertaken, at any rate tacitly, the duties of a citizen of that State.
• Quality of present government: the logic of Locke’s argument makes consent far less important in practice than it might appear. Tacit consent is indeed a watering down of the concept of consent, but Locke can do this because the basic content of what government are to be like is set by natural law and not by consent. If consent were truly foundational in Locke’s scheme, we would discover the legitimate powers of any given government by finding out what contract the original founders signed. For Locke the form and powers of government are determined by natural law. What really matters is not previous acts of consent but the quality of present government, whether it corresponds to what natural law requires. Locke does not think that walking the streets or inheriting property in a tyrannical regime means we have consented to that regime. It is thus the quality of actual consent, that determine whether a government is legitimate.
• Rule by majority vote: A constitution is created by consent of the people as part of the creation of the commonwealth.
• In order for society to work they cannot revoke consent whenever they wish: the society will have to be defended and if people can revoke their consent to help protect it when attacked, the act of consent made when entering political society would be pointless since the political community would fail at the very point where it is most needed.

EXCERPT OF:

“Men being by nature all free, equal and independent, no one can be put out of the this estate and subjected to the political power of another without his own consent. “

“It is necessary the body should move that way whither the greater force carries it, which is the consent of the majority.”

“… Governments cannot be supported without great charge, and it is fit every one who enjoys his share of the protection, should pay out of his estate his proportion for the maintenance of it. But still it must be with his own consent, i.e. the consent of the majority, giving it either by themselves or their representatives chosen by them.”

IV STATE OF POLITICAL AUTHORITY AND OBLIGATION

CRITIQUES OF:

• Kelly (2007): Kelly turns to normative philosophical arguments to explain legitimacy and obligation.

IMPORTANCE OF:

• Transfer of rights: people in the state of nature conditionally transfer some of their rights to the government in order to better insure the stable, comfortable enjoyment of their lives, liberty and property.
• Benefits: a civil society provides an established, settled, known law; a known and indifferent judge; power to back and support the sentence for no other end but the peace, safety and public good.
• Civil society as a united body of individuals under the power of an executive that protects their property and well being, and designs legislation to govern their behavior.
• Limits make it legitimate: the people have the power to remove or alter the legislation if for example the government taxes people’s property without their consent.
• Locke accounts for threat of unconstrained executive power.

EXCERPT OF:

“For no rational creature can be supposed to change his condition with an intention to be worse”

“Whosoever out of a state of nature unite into a community must be understood to give up all the power necessary to the ends for which they unite into society to the majority of the community, unless they expressly agreed in any number greater than the majority.”

“For government is everywhere antecedent to records, and letters seldom come in amongst a people till a long continuation of civil society has, by other more necessary arts, provided for their safety, ease and plenty.’

V LIMITS TO POLITICAL AUTHORITY

CRITIQUES OF:

• Locke is accused of creating a mechanism by which people will frequently rebel
• Copleston (1993): Locke apparently did not realize that a majority might act tyrannically with regard to the minority.
• Sandel (2006): That there be property, that there be respect for life and liberty is what limits government, but what counts as respecting my life and property that is for government to decide and define.
• Patrick Henry: “Give me liberty, or give me death”
• Kelly (2007): a) when the prince or government fails to act within, and enforce, the Law of Nature b) the prince or government fails to act to protect the public good (i.e. taxation without protection of the law) c) the prince has lost public trust d) when rulers act outside of the positive law
• Kelly: “Rwanda Hutu/Tutsi”
• Kelly: “Right to rebel as trump card.”
• St. Augustine: “An unjust law is no law at all.”

IMPORTANCE OF:

• Accountability: the executive prerogative is not a right, but a duty of the executive, and the people always retain the power to replace the executive. Locke establishes a new framework for executive power, in which kings and leaders are accountable for their actions, which must meet with public approval.
• Note that Locke does believe that there is such a thing as the public good which can be given an objective content. Hobbes had explicitly denied this on the grounds that the public interest is merely the individual interests of subjects and thus permanently in conflict until such as time Sovereign invents it. Thus the sovereign can never be accused of acting against the public interest. This conclusion is precisely what Locke wishes to deny in order to hold government to account.
• Right to revolution against unjust oppression Governments are dissolved when the prince or the legislative act in a manner contrary to their trust, as when either of them invades the property of citizens or tries to obtain arbitrary dominion over their lives, liberties or property. Thus, people must rebel if their natural rights and privileges have been violated.
• Not necessarily call to arms: All concerns about revolution are foolish, because they represent a fear of righteous process: it is rightful and dignified for people to rebel against unjust oppression.
• Limited government: a) the legislative must govern by promulgated laws which are the same for all and are not varied in particular cases b) these laws must be designed for no other end than for the good of the people. c) the legislative must not raise taxes without the consent of the people, given by themselves or their deputies. d) the legislative is not entitled to transfer the power of making laws to any person or assembly to which the people has not entrusted this power, nor can it do so validly.
• Functional division of power: legislative, executive, and federative; Locke shared the traditional opinion about balancing the power of government by placing several parts of it in different hands.
• Freedom of speech, of morality, of religion: a) Individuals have the right to express their opinion without fear of their consequences b) Individuals have the right to adopt any particular moral position c) Individuals have the right to adopt any particular religion.
• Dissolution if: a) The relevant group of people is dissolved through foreign conquest b) The legislative is proper distorted if the common will is replaced by a private will c) The executive abandons its function d) The legislative betrays the trust of the people by invading their property.
• Conquest cannot provide a basis for legitimate political authority and cannot affect the terms of inheritance or land holding of the conquered population. In fact once a country has been conquered and unjust aggressors have been killed or punished and just reparations have been repaid the legitimate involvement of the conqueror ceases. One consequence of this is that the conqueror is not entitled to impose a new government on the conquered people.

EXCERPTS:

“Hence it is a mistake to think, that the supreme or legislative power … can do what it will, and dispose of the estates of the subject arbitrarily, or take any part of them at pleasure.”

And if it is asked who is to judge when circumstances render rebellion legitimate, ‘I reply, the people shall judge.’ For it is only they, under God, who can decide whether the trustee has abused his trust or not.

“There can be but one supreme power, which is the legislative, to which all the rest are and must subordinate, yet the legislative being only a fiduciary power to act for certain ends, there remains still in the people a supreme power to remove or alter the legislative when they find the legislative act contrary to the trust reposed in them.”

“Wherever law ends, tyranny begins”

That is it.

This resource from Stanford’s Encyclopedia of Philosophy is very useful. Any feedback, or comments welcome.