John Locke
State of nature: why people need an impartial judge
locke-state-of-naturelocke-law-of-naturelocke-natural-rightslocke-judge-in-own-caselocke-civil-societyEight households, one countryside
season 0Feuds and wealth over time
Try: run the state of nature at 60% partiality until two or three feuds are burning, then switch to civil society. The disputes keep coming at the same rate, but they now end at the judge instead of in raids. Set partiality to 0% in the state of nature: with perfectly fair men, Locke's state of nature is peaceful.
Property: mixing labor with the commons
locke-labor-propertylocke-provisolocke-spoilagelocke-moneylocke-improvementThe commons, tile by tile
proviso holds: enough and as good leftLand enclosed and output
Try: run the spoilage economy to 60 families. Each holding stops at 5 tiles (all a family can use before the plums rot), so the commons lasts until about 48 families. Reset with money: industrious families save silver, hire hands and enclose far more, so the proviso breaks much sooner. Total output climbs too, and landless families earn a wage well above what foraging the shrinking commons would give them, which is Locke's defense of the result.
Consent: how much power to hand over
locke-consentlocke-trustlocke-separation-of-powerslocke-rule-of-lawExpected rights violations per year
Who holds which power
50 sampled years at this setting
Try: start at 0% (no government: every violation is private) and drag right; the orange curve falls fast. Keep going to “absolute” and the purple curve takes over. Then switch off all three checks: the safe amount of power to entrust shrinks, because the same power is now more likely to be turned against the people it was given to protect.
Breach of trust and the right of revolution
locke-right-of-revolutionlocke-long-trainlocke-no-tax-without-consentThe people's trust in the legislature
month 0 · government #1- nothing yet
Try: press Run with ordinary mistakes only; trust dips and recovers forever, because Locke thought people bear much from rulers before they resist. Then click one breach: it hurts, but is forgiven. Now click three or four breaches in quick succession: each weighs more than the last, because a pattern reveals a design, and trust falls through the line.
Toleration: force can make hypocrites, not believers
locke-tolerationA parish of 180 souls
year 0Profession vs belief, and conflict
Try: run the established church for 100 years. Outward conformity (dashed) climbs, but the sincere line hardly moves: force fills pews, not minds, and the clash count keeps rising. Switch to toleration mid-run: people profess what they believe, grievances fade, and the clash curve flattens.
What a typical family keeps, per year
year 200Hobbes, Leviathan (1651)
Without a common power, life is a war of all against all and there is “no place for industry.” Fear drives people to hand an undivided, unaccountable sovereign everything, because any limit invites a return to war. In this model he is right that the Leviathan beats anarchy.
Locke, Second Treatise (1689)
Escaping polecats and foxes by submitting to a lion is no bargain. People enter society to protect their property, so a power that can take it at will defeats the purpose. Government is a trust with limits, and a people can remove a trustee who betrays it.
Try: set tyrant chance to 0%. A benign Leviathan does almost as well as limited government, which is Hobbes's best case. Now raise it to 50%: every tyrant on an absolute throne drags income down for a whole reign, and fear of the next one keeps investment low even after he dies.
- takeawayRights come first, government second. People leave the state of nature for a practical reason: no one should be judge in his own case. They do not give up their rights by leaving.
- takeawayProperty begins with labor, and money lets it grow past the spoilage limit. The proviso (“enough and as good”) is where the theory is most contested, and Locke's defense rests on how much improvement raises everyone's output.
- takeawayPower is held in trust and is limited, divided and conditional. A long train of abuses dissolves the trust, and conscience lies outside the magistrate's reach altogether.
Key concepts · 19
John Locke- State of nature
The condition of people with no common superior on earth to judge between them: free and equal, but without a settled judge.
Unlike Hobbes's war of all against all, Locke's state of nature has a moral law and can be peaceful. Its defect is practical: every dispute must be settled by the parties themselves, so it tends to slide into conflict.
Two Treatises of Government (1689)
↑ see it in the visualization - Law of nature
A moral law knowable by reason that binds everyone even without government: no one ought to harm another in life, health, liberty or possessions.
Because this law comes first, rights are not gifts of the state. Government's laws are legitimate only insofar as they serve and enforce it.
Two Treatises of Government (1689)
↑ see it in the visualization - Natural rights: life, liberty, estate
Rights each person has by nature; Locke calls the three together 'property' in a broad sense.
The whole purpose of political society is to preserve them. The phrase echoes in the US Declaration of Independence (with 'pursuit of happiness' in place of property).
Two Treatises of Government (1689)
US Declaration of Independence (1776)Virginia Declaration of Rights (1776)↑ see it in the visualization - Every man judge in his own case
In the state of nature each person holds the executive power of the law of nature: the right to judge and punish offenses against himself.
Self-love makes people partial to themselves and their friends, so punishment is seen as aggression and answered with revenge. This 'inconvenience' is the main reason to leave the state of nature.
Two Treatises of Government (1689)
Blood feuds in medieval IcelandHighland clan feuds↑ see it in the visualization - Civil society
The community formed when people give up their private power to punish to the public, gaining an established law, an impartial judge, and a power to enforce judgments.
Locke's three missing pieces of the state of nature are exactly what civil society supplies. People give up the right to be their own judges, not their rights themselves.
Two Treatises of Government (1689)
↑ see it in the visualization - Labor theory of property
Each person owns himself and his labor; by mixing labor with something unowned in the commons, he makes it his property without anyone's permission.
It explains how private property can arise without universal consent, which Locke thought impossible to get. It is the root of the liberal case that property is prior to the state.
Two Treatises of Government (1689)
↑ see it in the visualization - The Lockean proviso
Appropriation is legitimate only where 'enough, and as good' is left in common for others.
It limits the labor theory. Critics argue it eventually fails once land is all owned; Locke and later Nozick replied that owners make the land so much more productive that latecomers are still better off than in the commons.
Two Treatises of Government (1689)
English enclosuresHomestead Act (1862)Nozick's reading in Anarchy, State, and Utopia↑ see it in the visualization - Spoilage limitation
No one may take more than he can use before it spoils; letting acorns rot or plums decay offends the law of nature.
In a world of perishable goods this caps every holding at what one family can use, so there is little inequality and plenty left for others.
Two Treatises of Government (1689)
↑ see it in the visualization - Money by tacit consent
Durable things like gold and silver, valued by agreement, let people store the surplus of their land without it spoiling.
Money removes the spoilage cap, which makes large and unequal holdings legitimate in Locke's view, because people consented to money. It also makes land worth improving far beyond subsistence.
Two Treatises of Government (1689)
↑ see it in the visualization - Improvement and the value of labor
Labor makes the far greater part of the value of things: cultivated land yields ten, even a hundred times what the same land yields left wild.
This is why enclosure can increase what is left for everyone. Locke contrasted a day-laborer in England with a king of a large territory in America who 'feeds, lodges, and is clad worse'.
Two Treatises of Government (1689)
↑ see it in the visualization - Consent of the governed
No one can be put under another's political power without his own consent; consent may be express or tacit (by enjoying property under a government).
It makes legitimacy depend on the governed rather than on conquest or divine right. Tacit consent is the weakest link: critics like Hume asked whether a poor peasant who cannot emigrate really consents.
Two Treatises of Government (1689)
↑ see it in the visualization - Government as a trust
The legislative is a fiduciary power, given for a purpose (the preservation of property) and limited by it.
A trustee who acts against the purpose of the trust forfeits it. That idea turns obedience into something conditional.
Two Treatises of Government (1689)
↑ see it in the visualization - Legislative, executive, federative
Locke separated the power to make laws, the power to execute them, and the power over war, peace and alliances.
If those who make laws also execute them, they may exempt themselves from their own laws. Montesquieu later developed the separation of powers further, and it shaped the US Constitution.
Two Treatises of Government (1689)
US Constitution (1787)Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws (1748)↑ see it in the visualization - Standing laws, not arbitrary decrees
The legislative must govern by promulgated, established laws applied equally, not by extemporary decrees.
Known rules let people plan and protect them from the ruler's whim. Freedom, for Locke, is living under a standing rule, not the absence of rules.
Two Treatises of Government (1689)
↑ see it in the visualization - No taxation without consent
Government may not take any part of a person's property, including by taxes, without his consent or that of his representatives.
Otherwise property would not really be property. The principle became the slogan of the American Revolution.
Two Treatises of Government (1689)
Stamp Act crisis (1765)Glorious Revolution (1688)↑ see it in the visualization - Right of revolution
When the government acts against the trust, power reverts to the people, who may set up a new legislative; with no judge on earth, they 'appeal to heaven'.
It answered the charge that resistance means anarchy: dissolving a government is not dissolving society. It was used to justify 1688 and, explicitly, 1776.
Two Treatises of Government (1689)
Glorious Revolution (1688)American Revolution (1776)↑ see it in the visualization - A long train of abuses
People do not rebel over slips of human frailty; only a long train of abuses, all tending one way, makes a design against them visible.
This is Locke's answer to the fear that a right of revolution invites constant upheaval. The phrase reappears almost word for word in the Declaration of Independence.
Two Treatises of Government (1689)
↑ see it in the visualization - Toleration
The magistrate's power covers civil interests only; it cannot reach the care of souls, because belief cannot be compelled by outward force.
Persecution produces hypocrites, not believers, and fuels conflict. Locke's toleration had limits by modern standards: he excluded atheists and those he thought owed allegiance to a foreign prince.
A Letter Concerning Toleration (1689)
Toleration Act (1689)Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom (1786)Wars of Religion↑ see it in the visualization - Against absolute monarchy
Absolute monarchy is not a form of civil government at all, because the monarch remains in the state of nature with his subjects, judge in his own case.
Against Hobbes and Filmer: escaping polecats and foxes only to be devoured by lions is no bargain. Government must be limited because rulers are men too.
Two Treatises of Government (1689)
Filmer's PatriarchaHobbes's Leviathan (1651)Exclusion Crisis (1679–81)↑ see it in the visualization