Second Treatise of Government - 1 - The State of Nature, Liberty, and Property
Chapters 1 - 5
Quote
To understand political Power, right, and derive it from its Original, we must consider, what State all Men are naturally in ...
Notes
🔥 Locke says no one is created "above another" in nature. Even if Adam, the first Man (in the Bible), had a natural right to rule — which he didn't, says Locke — his family line is lost to us, so we wouldn't know who his inheritor would be anyway.
🔥 There must be some other origin of political power. Something different than divine right, or mere force or violence.
🔥 Political power is the right to make laws and set out the penalties for breaking them, including death. And these laws must be for the public good.
🔥 Reason, for whomever bothers to consult it, says that "being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his Life, Health, Liberty, or Possessions." We all belong to God, our Maker. We don't belong to anyone else and cannot be made the property of someone else.
🔥 We have no right to hurt anyone except to punish, or do justice to an offender. Any law is pointless if it isn't enforced. Everyone has the right to enforce this right equally.
🔥 The punishment should be proportionate to the crime and serve as a reparation of the offense and/or a restraint.
🔥 "Whoso sheddeth Man's blood, by Man shall his blood be shed."
🔥 People may object that if people execute their right of punishment, they'll easily take it too far because of their partiality and emotion. And so it's better that a government can step in as an impartial administrator of justice. But, Locke says, it depends what kind of government. What about absolute Monarchs? They are "but men" and subject to the same passions and partiality as any other.
🔥 All men are in the state of nature until they consent to join in a political community.
🔥 It is a fundamental right of nature to be able to preserve oneself. When someone makes war on you, they are appealing to rule by force and violence to take away your right to your own freedom.
🔥 There is a difference between the state of nature and the state of war. Under the state of nature, men live together according to reason and with no authority to judge between them. Under the state of war, men live by force and violence.
🔥 To avoid war is one of the great reasons why men choose to join a society in the first place.
🔥 "The Natural Liberty of Man is to be free from any superior Power on Earth, and not under the will of man."
🔥 "The Liberty of Man, in Society, is to be under no other legislative power, but that established, by consent, in the commonwealth.
🔥 Slavery is the state of war continued between a lawful conqueror and a captive.
🔥 "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."
🔥 But there has to be a particular way that a particular person acquires a particular piece of property, so that it's his/hers and no one else's. How does something become someone's property from out of the commons of Nature?
🔥 It's when man applies his labour to something that makes it his own. That's when it becomes appropriated to himself.
🔥 Fish in the sea is under the "commons" of nature until someone does the work of fishing it out. Then it's his.
🔥 But there is a limit. You cannot just take whatever you want. You can only take so much as you can actually use before it spoils or is wasted. "Whatever is beyond this is more than his share and belongs to others."
🔥 The same principle applies to land. As much as one can use, cultivate, and meaningfully make use of, "so much is his property."
🔥 And since there's enough land for everyone, if one person takes some, it's no less for anyone else. There's enough for them, too, Locke says.
🔥 "No man's labour could subdue or appropriate all; nor could his enjoyment consume more than a small part."
🔥 This arrangement would have been all fine, Locke says, were it not for the introduction of money, which allowed us a right to much larger possessions than we otherwise could. Money doesn't go bad like other of our possessions.
🔥 Human labour makes the land more valuable and prosperous. God meant for us to make good use of the land he's given us. It's more valuable and rich once Man applies his labour to it.
🔥 A piece of land combined with labour to produce products is worth more than a piece of land lying idle.
Thoughts
I wonder what Locke would say if he could see the way the world is today, and whether some of his ideas still hold up in the year 2025.
For example, that "human labour makes the land more prosperous." Interesting to contrast this with someone arguing from a climate change perspective who might say that our economic activity is killing the planet. That might be extreme, depending on who you talk to, but probably an argument he would encounter.
Or that "no man's labour could subdue or appropriate all." And yet there are people today who have accumulated quite a lot of wealth for themselves, arguably more than what they could ever use. Though Locke does say that the invention of money and the consensus around its having value messes with the system he's describing.
It's also interesting to see him use the Bible as the source of authority for so many of his arguments. That must have been a truly authoritative source when he was writing.