Second Treatise of Government (1690)

The social contract theorist: when NEW people ENTER the situation without full disclosure and consent, are they part of a social contract? ( )

Thankfully, we don't analogize the United States government as our parents. Parenthood implies a duty to guide and hold authority over its citizens. However, it was aptly utilized by John Locke to explain how minors are protected in their decision making by those God placed as their guardians, but conversely, government, through a commonwealth, is a voluntary association of men using common law to protect the most precious thing of all: property. And yes, property includes one's self.

Laying the groundwork for federalism and arbitrariless ajudication of the law to promote equality and protect our "rights," John Locke writes a persuasive piece on a form of government not really in existance since the Roman empire. It is no wonder why the American Founding Fathers so widely adopted ideas from this writing. ( )

“Mine!”

It begins early with a child yelling, “Mine!” We have all heard him/her bursting into tears and the quick crawl/run/waddle to a parent claiming the injustice of lost property. From an early age, we feel the seemingly self-evident truth of private property. We were given an object; we collected items; we connected those items in ways that made a new and much better object.

In all of these scenarios, we learned the idea of “mine.” In John Locke’s Second Treatise of Government, the author presents a theological case for government authority through the principle of property.

The Premise of Property

Any discussion regarding John Locke’s Second Treatise of Government must center on property. A highly influential writing on political philosophy, Locke’s tome details the ways in which a society organizes and manages itself. But before one can state maxims regarding political government, one must discuss the reasons for organizing societal connections. For Locke, this reason begins with private property.

Locke’s justification for private property begins with the assumption that God the Creator fashioned a world for humanity to subdue and manage. Locke writes,

“God, who hath given the world to men in common, hath also given them reason to make use of it to the best advantage of life, and convenience. The earth, and all that is therein, is given to men for the support and comfort of their being” (18).

The earth, then, exists in a supporting role to humankind; it carries no first order intrinsic value. Instead, it functions instrumentally for the good of humanity.

From this position, Locke believes that private property arises from mixing personal labor with land from the God-given commons of the earth. Locke argues,

“Though the earth, and all inferior creatures, be common to all men, yet 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 labour with, and joined to it something that is his own, and thereby makes it his property. It being by him removed from the common state nature hath placed it in, it hath by this labour something annexed to it, that excludes the common right of other men: for this labour being the unquestionable property of the labourer, no man but he can have a right to what that is once joined to, at least where there is enough, and as good, left in common for others” (19).

Thus, while God provides commons for the good of all humanity, the ability for any human to conduct work allows him or her to transfer land held in common into private property.

To illustrate, under Locke’s philosophy of property, I cannot travel to a pristine wilderness and, upon discovering it, proclaim the land my property. Instead, I must cultivate this discovered land. By building on it and utilizing its soil for food, I then possess the right to proclaim the land my private property.

In short then, Locke suggests that God, who created humanity through labor, considers humans God’s property. God provides the earth as a common for which humans can use their God-given gifts of manual labor to cultivate and transfer the earth into private hands.

Governance

The need for political government arises from this principle of private property. When a society expands beyond the simplicity of cultivating open commons into private property, the need to protect and govern property becomes an important issue. Locke reasons,

“Political power is that power, which every man having in the state of nature, has given up into the hands of the society, and therein to the governors, whom the society hath set over itself, with this express or tacit trust, that it shall be employed for their good, and the preservation of their property” (89).

Even though the Second Treatise of Government explores many specific matters in the execution of governmental affairs in a united society, the core principles behind these discussions surround Locke’s theological notion of property and the need for governing those God-given rights.

Locke: An American Ideal

Interestingly, I find that Locke’s arguments sound natural as if they are ingrained in the psyche of American society and capitalism as a whole. John Dunn, in an essay titled “Measuring Locke’s Shadow” confirms this idea when he writes,

“Locke is still intractably America’s philosopher, and still very much America’s philosopher for what still seems ever more peremptorily America’s globe. He is the sign on the banner of America’s imperious external reach, her cultural, imaginative, ideological, economic, and even political Griff nach der Weltmacht [bid for world power].”

Put differently, Locke’s ideas on property and the need for government to authorize and protect it are the modus operandi for American business and politics.

Property as Dominance

In fact, Locke’s ideas seem to be the foundation for the domination of nature for which society now encounters drastic repercussions. In other words, to align theologically with Locke’s views on property, one must translate “dominion” in Genesis 1:28 as “domination.” What else could private property mean other than the absolute control of a specific portion of God’s creation?

By assuming “domination” of God’s creation in Genesis 1:28, I find tension in Locke’s arguments. Given Locke’s premises, God owns humanity because God created us through work. Under the same assumption, God possesses all of creation. Therefore, humans cannot possess an absolute right over a portion of creation because they were not the first to labor on it.

It then follows that the God-given commons for which humans carry the right to fill and subdue is not a space which humans carry the right to section off into private property but an area owned by God given to humans in common to share and steward for the good of the whole.

Locke centers his political philosophy on a theological case for private property. By mixing labor with the God-given commons, private property arises. As an extension, political governance exists to protect that property. Nevertheless, the notion that God created and thus possesses the created world forces us to consider the earth in stewardship instead of domination. Even though we feel the pull of private property from an early age, our connection to an item through work does not require it to become our private possession.

With dense philosophical writing, Locke’s Second Treatise of Government is a difficult but rewarding read. Despite my reservations regarding Locke’s premises, this book is a must read for anyone interested in politics.

Originally published at http://wherepenmeetspaper.blogspot.com ( )

Locke is boring.

And I won't back down from that.

The ideas in the book, however, are sound, at least along all the main lines of argument. And it is historically important, shaping influence, etc., and, actually, I think, much more so than certain other so-called Cornerstones of Western Civilization thinkers (Plato springs to mind for some reason). Stripped down to a pot-boiler summary, he says that a government by the consent of the governed, in which is the state is an instrument of the people, is better than having the whole country be prey to some Noxious Brute of a tyrant. And that's true, and at the time, it needed to be said, and there's still something to be said for being reminded of it. (And, of course, there's something to be said for a political philosopher whose ideas can be put into pot-boiler-summary form without producing an Emperor's New Clothes thing, where, suddenly--with say, I don't know, Plato or Marx--you'd just have to censor the pot-boiler summary, or maybe even stop people from boiling water in pots altogether, because if they did that, they might just learn too much about what perfect plans the political obscurantists are cooking up for them.)

But I think it might also be reasonably said that, as a piece of prose, this book is no shining triumph. Nope, not the most accessible Treatise you'll ever pick up and read. It's more of a grind...

I guess I might add one other thing though. I think that one of the other things Locke was saying was that, in a free country, the government is not your parent, and the state should not be able to treat you like a child if you're free. The relationship that free people have with their government should not be the same relationship that small children have with their parents. It's just that, since Locke's style, if you can call it that, (although I suppose I should thank him for writing in something that can tentatively be called English, which is better than many literati did back then--they mostly wrote in Latin, not least because it was something the ordinary sort couldn't access), is so opaque that you almost can't figure out what he's saying unless you already have a decent idea what he's saying before you start, and then give it a long long time to digest after you're done reading.

(7/10) ( )

This is an absolutely essential document concerning government.

Consider Lockean libertarianism, which allows unilateral use and appropriation [of natural resources] but requires the satisfaction of some version of the Lockean proviso that “enough and as good” be left for others. Lockean libertarianism views natural resources as initially unprotected by any property rule (no consent is needed for use or appropriation) but as protected by a compensation liability rule. Those who use natural resources, or claim rights over them, owe compensation to others for any costs imposed (Cf. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/libertarianism/#2).

Mark Townsend and Paul Harris reported in The Observer, Sunday 22 February 2004, that: "Climate change over the next 20 years could result in a global catastrophe costing millions of lives in wars and natural disasters.

A secret report, suppressed by US defence chiefs and obtained by The Observer, warns that major European cities will be sunk beneath rising seas as Britain is plunged into a 'Siberian' climate by 2020. Nuclear conflict, mega-droughts, famine and widespread rioting will erupt across the world.

Not surprisingly, the United States Federal government is preparing to take over the ownership of all of the water within its borders and away from its citizens and States and outlaw its use except as allowed by its Department of Homeland Security.

The US Senate on 2 April 2009 introduced a new law called the Clean Water Restoration Act (S.787 IS) to amend the Federal Water Pollution Control Act (Clean Water Act) by, and quoting directly from this new law:

(1) by striking `navigable waters of the United States' each place it appears and inserting `waters of the United States';

(2) in section 304(l)(1) by striking `NAVIGABLE WATERS' in the heading and inserting `WATERS OF THE UNITED STATES'; and

(3) by striking `navigable waters' each place it appears and inserting `waters of the United States'

and then adding:

(25) WATERS OF THE UNITED STATES- The term `waters of the United States' means all waters subject to the ebb and flow of the tide, the territorial seas, and all interstate and intrastate waters and their tributaries, including lakes, rivers, streams (including intermittent streams), mudflats, sandflats, wetlands, sloughs, prairie potholes, wet meadows, playa lakes, natural ponds, and all impoundments of the foregoing, to the fullest extent that these waters, or activities affecting these waters, are subject to the legislative power of Congress under the Constitution.'

Rarely has a government so sweepingly appropriated a basic natural resource such as water away from its people.

#34 and #149 are key.

"God gave the world to men in common" but it should not remain there. . . . "He gave it to the use of the industrious and the rational" (#34).

A long history resides in the Natural Rights tradition of resisting tyrants, going back into ancient Israel and Rome. Aquinas wrote on this, but the unambiguous champion of a right, or even duty, of principled resistance is John Locke. He wrote in his Second Treatise on Government:

"That subjects, or foreigners attempting by force on the properties of any people, may be resisted with force, is agreed on all hands. But that magistrates doing the same thing, may be resisted, hath of late been denied: as if those who had the greatest privileges and advantages by the law, had thereby a power to break those laws, by which alone they were set in a better place than their brethren."

The text can be found online:

Cf. http://www.constitution.org/jl/2ndtreat.htm

In 1690, John Locke, in the Two Treatises of Government described the beginning of political societies (Chapter VIII, 95).

"Men being, as has been said, by nature all free, equal, and independent, no one can be put out of this estate and subjected to the political power of another without his own consent, which is done by agreeing with other men, to join and unite into a community for their comfortable, safe, and peaceable living, one amongst another, in a secure enjoyment of their properties, and a greater security against any that are not of it. This any number of men may do, because it injures not the freedom of the rest; they are left, as they were, in the liberty of the state of Nature. When any number of men have so consented to make one community or government, they are thereby presently incorporated, and make one body politic."

In Chapter IX (Sec.131), Locke further describes the Ends of Political Society and Government.

"But though men, when they enter into society, give up the equality, liberty, and executive power they had in the state of nature, into the hands of the society . . . yet it being only with an intention in every one the better to preserve himself, his liberty and property."

According to Locke, what do people gain when they agree to give up their liberty and be bound by the laws of society?

Individuals give up a portion of their liberty with the intention of better preserving themselves, their liberty, and property.

Locke concludes that the:

"The supreme power of any commonwealth is bound by laws to employ the force of the community domestically or abroad to prevent or redress foreign injuries, and secure the community from inroads and invasion" (IX, Sec. 131).