It seems important to him that at least some governments have actually been formed in the way he suggests. How much it matters whether they have been or not will be discussed below under the topic of consent, since the central question is whether a good government can be legitimate even if it does not have the actual consent of the people who live under it; hypothetical contract and actual contract theories will tend to answer this question differently.
There are important debates over what exactly Locke was trying to accomplish with his theory. One interpretation, advanced by C. Macpherson , sees Locke as a defender of unrestricted capitalist accumulation. Macpherson claims that as the argument progresses, each of these restrictions is transcended. The spoilage restriction ceases to be a meaningful restriction with the invention of money because value can be stored in a medium that does not decay 2.
The sufficiency restriction is transcended because the creation of private property so increases productivity that even those who no longer have the opportunity to acquire land will have more opportunity to acquire what is necessary for life 2. The third restriction, Macpherson argues, was not one Locke actually held at all. Locke, according to Macpherson, thus clearly recognized that labor can be alienated. He argues that its coherence depends upon the assumption of differential rationality between capitalists and wage-laborers and on the division of society into distinct classes.
Because Locke was bound by these constraints, we are to understand him as including only property owners as voting members of society. Alan Ryan argued that since property for Locke includes life and liberty as well as estate Two Treatises 2.
While this duty is consistent with requiring the poor to work for low wages, it does undermine the claim that those who have wealth have no social duties to others. Previous accounts had focused on the claim that since persons own their own labor, when they mix their labor with that which is unowned it becomes their property.
Robert Nozick criticized this argument with his famous example of mixing tomato juice one rightfully owns with the sea.
When we mix what we own with what we do not, why should we think we gain property instead of losing it? Human beings are created in the image of God and share with God, though to a much lesser extent, the ability to shape and mold the physical environment in accordance with a rational pattern or plan.
Only creating generates an absolute property right, and only God can create, but making is analogous to creating and creates an analogous, though weaker, right. Since Locke begins with the assumption that the world is owned by all, individual property is only justified if it can be shown that no one is made worse off by the appropriation.
Where this condition is not met, those who are denied access to the good do have a legitimate objection to appropriation. Once land became scarce, property could only be legitimated by the creation of political society. Waldron claims that, contrary to Macpherson , Tully , and others, Locke did not recognize a sufficiency condition at all.
Waldron takes Locke to be making a descriptive statement, not a normative one, about the conditions that initially existed. Waldron thinks that the condition would lead Locke to the absurd conclusion that in circumstances of scarcity everyone must starve to death since no one would be able to obtain universal consent and any appropriation would make others worse off. In particular, it is the only way Locke can be thought to have provided some solution to the fact that the consent of all is needed to justify appropriation in the state of nature.
If others are not harmed, they have no grounds to object and can be thought to consent, whereas if they are harmed, it is implausible to think of them as consenting.
Sreenivasan does depart from Tully in some important respects. The disadvantage of this interpretation, as Sreenivasan admits, is that it saddles Locke with a flawed argument. Those who merely have the opportunity to labor for others at subsistence wages no longer have the liberty that individuals had before scarcity to benefit from the full surplus of value they create.
Moreover, poor laborers no longer enjoy equality of access to the materials from which products can be made. Simmons presents a still different synthesis. He sides with Waldron and against Tully and Sreenivasan in rejecting the workmanship model. Locke thinks we have property in our own persons even though we do not make or create ourselves.
Simmons claims that while Locke did believe that God had rights as creator, human beings have a different limited right as trustees , not as makers. According to the former argument, at least some property rights can be justified by showing that a scheme allowing appropriation of property without consent has beneficial consequences for the preservation of mankind.
This argument is overdetermined, according to Simmons, in that it can be interpreted either theologically or as a simple rule-consequentialist argument.
Like Sreenivasan, Simmons sees this as flowing from a prior right of people to secure their subsistence, but Simmons also adds a prior right to self-government. Labor can generate claims to private property because private property makes individuals more independent and able to direct their own actions. Some authors have suggested that Locke may have had an additional concern in mind in writing the chapter on property.
David Armitage even argues that there is evidence that Locke was actively involved in revising the Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina at the same time he was drafting the chapter on property for the Second Treatise. A final question concerns the status of those property rights acquired in the state of nature after civil society has come into being.
It seems clear that at the very least Locke allows taxation to take place by the consent of the majority rather than requiring unanimous consent 2. Nozick takes Locke to be a libertarian, with the government having no right to take property to use for the common good without the consent of the property owner.
On his interpretation, the majority may only tax at the rate needed to allow the government to successfully protect property rights. At the other extreme, Tully thinks that, by the time government is formed, land is already scarce and so the initial holdings of the state of nature are no longer valid and thus are no constraint on governmental action.
His analysis begins with individuals in a state of nature where they are not subject to a common legitimate authority with the power to legislate or adjudicate disputes. From this natural state of freedom and independence, Locke stresses individual consent as the mechanism by which political societies are created and individuals join those societies. While there are of course some general obligations and rights that all people have from the law of nature, special obligations come about only when we voluntarily undertake them.
Locke clearly states that one can only become a full member of society by an act of express consent Two Treatises 2. Simply by walking along the highways of a country a person gives tacit consent to the government and agrees to obey it while living in its territory. This, Locke thinks, explains why resident aliens have an obligation to obey the laws of the state where they reside, though only while they live there. Inheriting property creates an even stronger bond, since the original owner of the property permanently put the property under the jurisdiction of the commonwealth.
Children, when they accept the property of their parents, consent to the jurisdiction of the commonwealth over that property Two Treatises 2. There is debate over whether the inheritance of property should be regarded as tacit or express consent.
On one interpretation, by accepting the property, Locke thinks a person becomes a full member of society, which implies that he must regard this as an act of express consent. On the other interpretation, Locke recognized that people inheriting property did not in the process of doing so make any explicit declaration about their political obligation.
However this debate is resolved, there will be in any current or previously existing society many people who have never given express consent, and thus some version of tacit consent seems needed to explain how governments could still be legitimate. It is one thing, he argues, for a person to consent by actions rather than words; it is quite another to claim a person has consented without being aware that they have done so. To require a person to leave behind all of their property and emigrate in order to avoid giving tacit consent is to create a situation where continued residence is not a free and voluntary choice.
Hannah Pitkin takes a very different approach. Tacit consent is indeed a watering down of the concept of consent, but Locke can do this because the basic content of what governments are to be like is set by natural law and not by consent. Pitkin, however, thinks that for Locke the form and powers of government are determined by natural law. What really matters, therefore, is not previous acts of consent but the quality of the present government, whether it corresponds to what natural law requires.
Locke does not think, for example, that walking the streets or inheriting property in a tyrannical regime means we have consented to that regime. It is thus the quality of the government, not acts of actual consent, that determine whether a government is legitimate. Simmons objects to this interpretation, saying that it fails to account for the many places where Locke does indeed say a person acquires political obligations only by his own consent.
John Dunn takes a still different approach. Simmons objects that this ignores the instances where Locke does talk about consent as a deliberate choice and that, in any case, it would only make Locke consistent at the price of making him unconvincing. Recent scholarship has continued to probe these issues.
Only those who have expressly consented are members of political society, while the government exercises legitimate authority over various types of people who have not so consented.
The government is supreme in some respects, but there is no sovereign. The former is more plausibly interpreted as an act of affirmative consent to be a member of a political society. Registering to vote, as opposed to actually voting, would be a contemporary analogue. Van der Vossen makes a related argument, claiming that the initial consent of property owners is not the mechanism by which governments come to rule over a particular territory.
Rather, Locke thinks that people probably fathers initially simply begin exercising political authority and people tacitly consent. This tacit consent is sufficient to justify a rudimentary state that rules over the consenters.
Treaties between these governments would then fix the territorial borders. Hoff goes still further, arguing that we need not even think of specific acts of tacit consent such as deciding not to emigrate as necessary for generating political obligation. Instead, consent is implied if the government itself functions in ways that show it is answerable to the people. A related question has to do with the extent of our obligation once consent has been given. The interpretive school influenced by Strauss emphasizes the primacy of preservation.
Since the duties of natural law apply only when our preservation is not threatened Two Treatises 2. This has important implications if we consider a soldier who is being sent on a mission where death is extremely likely.
Grant points out that Locke believes a soldier who deserts from such a mission 2. Grant takes Locke to be claiming not only that desertion laws are legitimate in the sense that they can be blamelessly enforced something Hobbes would grant but that they also imply a moral obligation on the part of the soldier to give up his life for the common good something Hobbes would deny. According to Grant, Locke thinks that our acts of consent can, in fact, extend to cases where living up to our commitments will risk our lives.
The decision to enter political society is a permanent one for precisely this reason: 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.
People make a calculated decision when they enter society, and the risk of dying in combat is part of that calculation. Grant also thinks Locke recognizes a duty based on reciprocity since others risk their lives as well. A different approach asks what role consent plays in determining, here and now, the legitimate ends that governments can pursue. One part of this debate is captured by the debate between Seliger and Kendall , the former viewing Locke as a constitutionalist and the latter viewing him as giving almost unlimited power to majorities.
On the former interpretation, a constitution is created by the consent of the people as part of the creation of the commonwealth. On the latter interpretation, the people create a legislature which rules by majority vote.
A third view, advanced by Tuckness a , holds that Locke was flexible at this point and gave people considerable flexibility in constitutional drafting. A second part of the debate focuses on ends rather than institutions. Locke states in the Two Treatises that the power of the Government is limited to the public good. Libertarians like Nozick read this as stating that governments exist only to protect people from infringements on their rights.
On this second reading, government is limited to fulfilling the purposes of natural law, but these include positive goals as well as negative rights. On this view, the power to promote the common good extends to actions designed to increase population, improve the military, strengthen the economy and infrastructure, and so on, provided these steps are indirectly useful to the goal of preserving the society.
In arguing this, Locke was disagreeing with Samuel Pufendorf Samuel Pufendorf had argued strongly that the concept of punishment made no sense apart from an established positive legal structure. Locke realized that the crucial objection to allowing people to act as judges with power to punish in the state of nature was that such people would end up being judges in their own cases.
Locke readily admitted that this was a serious inconvenience and a primary reason for leaving the state of nature Two Treatises 2. Locke insisted on this point because it helped explain the transition into civil society. The power to punish in the state of nature is thus the foundation for the right of governments to use coercive force. The situation becomes more complex, however, if we look at the principles which are to guide punishment.
Rationales for punishment are often divided into those that are forward-looking and backward-looking. Forward-looking rationales include deterring crime, protecting society from dangerous persons, and rehabilitation of criminals.
Lawrence, Kan. Political Writings, ed. Joyce Appleby and Terence Ball. New York: Cambridge University Press, Kramnick, Isaac. Ithaca, N. Lee, Richard Henry. Alpheus T.
Mason and Gordon E. Baker, — New York: Oxford University Press, Locke, John. The Second Treatise of Government, ed. Thomas P. New York: Macmillan, Uzgalis, William. Theriault, S. Theriault, Sawyer A. John Locke and the Second Treatise on Government. The newsletter highlights recent selections from the journal and useful tips from our blog.
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Philosophy » Political Theory. Philosophy » John Locke. Monthly Newsletter Signup The newsletter highlights recent selections from the journal and useful tips from our blog. Follow us to get updates from Inquiries Journal in your daily feed. He was a social contract theorist, believing that the legitimacy of government relies on consent from its citizens which is given on the basis of equality.
He supported general MORE ». Limits lie at the heart of the American political system. No governmental body or figure has unlimited authority—all are checked by the others. However, beyond this, political thinkers are divided over how best to
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