JOHN LOCKE, WHO LIVED from 1632 to 1704, had an enormous influence on the American founding and, consequently, American society. As will become clear, he did not seek ways to destroy the sovereignty of the individual; he sought to understand and cultivate it. Unlike the utopians, who build insensate societies based on their own prejudices and fantasies, Locke explored the true nature of man, including his acquisition of knowledge and use of intuition, reason, and sensation. It is not necessary to agree with all of Locke’s conclusions to celebrate his extraordinary insight.
In An Essay Concerning Human Understanding1 (published in 1690), which is an extensive examination of the capacity of the human mind, including its limits—Locke dramatically distinguished his philosophical approach from the utopians. He explained: “Since it is the Understanding that sets Man above the rest of sensible Beings, and gives him all the Advantage and Dominion, which he has over them; it is certainly a Subject, even for its Nobleness, worth our Labour to enquire into. The Understanding, like the Eye, whilst it makes us see, and perceive all other Things, takes not notice of it self: And it requires Art and Pains to set it at a distance, and make it its own Object. But whatever be the Difficulties, that lie in the way of this Enquiry; whatever it be, that keeps us so much in the Dark to our selves; sure I am, that all the Light we can let in upon our own Minds; all the Acquaintance we can make with our own Understandings, will not only be very pleasant; but bring us great Advantage, in directing our Thoughts in search of other Things” (I, 1, 1).
For Locke, the individual has value, dignity, and significance. Rather than advance a dogma in search of a fantasy, Locke believed that the individual’s mind was worth exploring. As if lecturing the utopians, Locke wrote, “When we know our own Strength, we shall the better know what to undertake with hopes of Success: And when we have well survey’d the Powers of our own Minds, and made some Estimate what we may expect from them, we shall not be inclined either to sit still, and not set our Thoughts on work at all, in Despair of knowing any thing; nor on the other side question every thing, and disclaim all Knowledge, because some Things are not to be understood.…” (I, 1, 6)
“I thought that the first Step towards satisfying the several Enquiries, the Mind of Man was apt to run into, was, to take a Survey of our own Understandings, examine our own Powers, and see to what Things they were adapted. Till that was done, I suspected that we began at the wrong end, and in vain sought for Satisfaction in a quiet and secure Possession of Truths, that most concern’d us whilst we let loose our Thoughts into the vast Ocean of Being, as if all the boundless Extent, were the natural and undoubted Possessions of our Understandings, wherein there was nothing that escaped its Decisions, or that escaped its Comprehension. Thus Men, extending their Enquiries beyond their Capacities, and letting their Thoughts wander into the depths where they can find no sure Footing; ’tis no Wonder, that they raise Questions and multiply Disputes, which never coming to any clear Resolution, are proper to only continue and increase their Doubts, and to confirm them at last in a perfect Skepticism. Whereas were the Capacities of our Understanding well considered, the Extent of our Knowledge once discovered, and the Horizon found, which sets the boundary between the enlightened and the dark Parts of things; between what is and what is not comprehensible by us, Men would perhaps with less scruple acquiesce in the avow’d Ignorance of the one; and employ their Thoughts and Discourse, with more Advantage and Satisfaction in the other” (I, 1, 7).
Locke found that experience, uncovered through observation and right reason, is decisive to comprehending man. “Let us then suppose the Mind to be, as we say, white Paper, void of all Characters, without any Ideas. How comes it to be furnished? Whence comes it by that vast store, which the busy and boundless Fancy of Man has painted on it, with an almost endless variety? Whence has it all the materials of Reason and Knowledge? To this I answer, in one word, From Experience. In that, all our Knowledge is founded; and from that it ultimately derives it self. Our Observation employ’d either about external, sensible Objects; or about the internal Operations of our Minds, perceived and reflected on by our selves, is that, which supplies our Understandings with all the materials of thinking. These two are the Fountains of Knowledge, from whence all the Ideas we have, or can naturally have do spring” (II, 1, 2).
Locke carried forward his scrutiny of man’s understanding with an anti-authoritarian approach to the civil society and governance. As if explicitly rejecting Thomas Hobbes’s view of human nature, where in the state of nature man is in perpetual fear and society must rely on an all-powerful sovereign for security, in The Second Treatise of Government2 (composed between 1685 and 1688), Locke asserts, “so that he that will not give just occasion to think that all government in the world is the product only of force and violence, and that men live together by no other rules but that of beasts, where the strongest carries it, and so lay a foundation for perpetual disorder and mischief, tumult, sedition, and rebellion (things that the followers of that hypothesis so loudly cry out against), must of necessity find out another rise of government, another original of political power.…” (1, 1)
Indeed, Locke took the view opposite of Hobbes’s. He argued, “To understand political power right, and derive it from its original, we must consider, 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. A state also of equality, wherein all the power and jurisdiction is reciprocal, no one having more than another; there being nothing more evident, than that creatures of the same species and rank, promiscuously born to all the same advantages of nature, and the use of the same faculties, should also be equal one amongst another without subordination or subjection, unless the lord and master of them all should, by any manifest declaration of his will, set one above another, and confer on him, by an evident and clear appointment, an undoubted right to dominion and sovereignty” (2, 4). “This equality of men by nature … makes it the foundation of that obligation to mutual love amongst men, on which he builds the duties they owe one another, and from whence he derives the great maxims of justice and charity” (2, 5).
By equality, Locke does not mean equality of outcomes or result. He does not mean conformity. Early in The Second Treatise of Government, Locke introduces the notion of the individual’s God-given inalienable rights, of which all individuals are entitled, and which provide the moral condition for civil society. “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; 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. And being furnished with like faculties, sharing all in one community of Nature, there cannot be supposed any such subordination among us that may authorize us to destroy one another, as if we were made for one another’s uses, as the inferior ranks of creatures are for ours. Everyone as he is bound to preserve himself, and not to quit his station willfully, so by the like reason, when his own preservation comes not in competition, ought he as much as he can to preserve the rest of mankind, and not unless it be to do justice on an offender, take away or impair the life or what tends to the preservation of the life, the liberty, health, limb, or goods of another” (2, 6). Thus, individual sovereignty, for one and all, is the key to understanding, accepting, and preserving the natural state of man and the civil society.
Unlike Hobbes, Locke observed that men generally get along with each other in the state of nature, for their own sake and the sake of the community, although it is certainly not perfect. A state of war exists in the state of nature only when one individual violates the laws of nature—that is, the inalienable rights of another. “In transgressing the law of Nature, the offender declares himself to live by another rule than that of reason and common equity, which is that measure God has set to the actions of men for their mutual security, and so he becomes dangerous to mankind.…” (2, 8)
Therefore, although the state of nature is not the violent, fearful condition that Hobbes described, the laws of nature are and can be violated. Moreover, the individual has the right to enforce the laws of nature against those who violate his rights and to assist others whose rights have been violated. The perpetrators are said to be committing acts of war against the society. “And in this case, and upon this ground, every man hath a right to punish the offender, and be executioner of the law of Nature” (2, 8). But Locke also observes that this can lead to injustices, since those enforcing their rights are not impartial. “[S]elf-love will make men partial to themselves and their friends; and, on the other side, ill-nature, passion, and revenge will carry them too far in punishing others, and hence nothing but confusion and disorder will follow, and that therefore God has certainly appointed government to restrain the partiality and violence of men. I easily grant that civil government is the proper remedy for the inconveniences of the state of Nature.…” (2, 13)
Locke makes the case for a civil and consensual government with just laws impartially enforced and in which the liberty and rights of the individual are respected, thereby rejecting the utopian centralized model where the philosopher-king, prince, sovereign, or “temporary” despot rules over “the masses” and shapes the individual against his will. Locke wrote, “The Natural liberty of man is to be free from any superior power on earth, and not to be under the will or legislative authority of man, but to have only the law of Nature for his rule. The liberty of man in society is to be under no legislative power but that established by consent in the commonwealth, nor under the domination of any will, restraint of any law, but what that legislative shall enact according to the trust put in it.… [F]reedom of men under government is to have a standing rule to live by, common to everyone of that society, and made by the legislative power erected in it. A liberty to follow my own will in all things where the rule prescribes not, not to be subject to the inconstant, uncertain, unknown, arbitrary will of another man, as freedom of nature is to be under no other restraint but the law of Nature” (4, 21). “This freedom from absolute, arbitrary power is so necessary to, and closely joined with, a man’s preservation, that he cannot part with it but by what forfeits his preservation and life together. For a man, not having the power of his own life, cannot by compact or his own consent enslave himself to anyone, nor put himself under the absolute, arbitrary power of another to take away his life when he pleases. Nobody can give more power than he has himself, and he that cannot take away his own life cannot give that power over it” (4, 22).
Locke further distinguishes himself by asserting not only the individual’s fundamental right to private property but also the government’s obligation to respect and uphold that right, for it is central to the sovereignty of the individual. He describes the nature of labor and property in the state of nature, the transition from bartering to the use of money, and what is, in essence, the societal vitality of the market system. Locke explains that in the state of nature, “The earth and all that is therein is given to men for the support and comfort of their being. And though all the fruits it naturally produces, and beasts it feeds, belong to mankind in common, as they are produced by the spontaneous hand of Nature, and nobody has originally a private dominion exclusive of the rest of mankind in any of them, as they are thus in their natural state, yet being given for the use of men, there must of necessity be a means to appropriate them some way or other before they can be of any use, or at all beneficial, to any particular men.…” (5, 25) “Though the earth and all inferior creatures be common to all men, yet 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. 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 makes it his property. It being by him removed from the common state Nature hath placed it in, it hath by his labor something annexed to it that excludes the common right of other men. For this ‘labor’ being the unquestionable property of the laborer, 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” (5, 16).
For Locke, labor represents initiative, productivity, and enterprise, which are imperative to not only the survival of the individual but also his well-being and success. “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.… God, when He gave the world in common to all mankind, commanded man also to labor, and the penury of his condition required it of him. God and his reason commanded him to subdue the earth—i.e., improve it for the benefit of life and therein lay out something upon it that was his own, his labor. He that, in obedience to this command of God, subdued, tilled, and sowed any part of it, thereby annexed to it something that was his property, which another had not title to, nor could without injury take from him” (5, 31). Moreover, Locke explained that the wealth created and possessed by one individual does not prevent another individual from creating and possessing wealth. “Nor was this appropriation of any parcel of land, by improving it, any prejudice to any other man, since there was still enough and as good left, and more than the yet unprovided could use. So that, in effect, there was never the less left for others because of his enclosure for himself. For he that leaves as much as another can make use of does as good as take nothing at all. Nobody could think himself injured by the drinking of another man, though he took a good draught, who had a whole river of the same water left him to quench his thirst.…” (5, 32)
Indeed, Locke explained that the individual’s productive labor improves the entire society. “Nor is it so strange as, perhaps, before consideration, it may appear, that the property of labor should be able to overbalance the community of land, for it is labor indeed that puts the difference of value on everything; and let anyone consider what the difference is between an acre of land planted with tobacco or sugar, sown with wheat or barley, and an acre of the same land lying in common without any husbandry upon it, and he will find that the improvement of labor makes the far greater part of the value. I think it will be but a very modest computation to say, that of the products of the earth useful to the life of man, nine-tenths are the effects of labor. Nay, if we will rightly estimate things as they come to our use, and cast up the several expenses about them—what in them is purely owing to Nature and what to labor—we shall find that in most of them ninety-nine hundredths are wholly to be put on the account of labor” (5, 40).
Locke also reproves the apathetic, lethargic, and envious against interfering with and making demands on the conscientious and hardworking, for they have not contributed to their own well-being or that of society. “God gave the world to men in common, but since He gave it them for their benefit and the greatest conveniences of life they were capable to draw from it, it cannot be supposed He meant it should always remain common and uncultivated. He gave it to the use of the industrious and rational (and labor was to be his title to it); not to the fancy or covetousness of the quarrelsome and contentious. He that has as good left for his improvement as was already taken up needed not complain, ought not to meddle with what was already improved by another’s labor. If he did, it is plain he desired the benefit of another’s pains, which he had no right to, and not the ground which God had given him, in common with others, to labor on, and whereof there was as good left as that already possessed, and more than he knew what to do with, or his industry could reach to” (5, 33). Clearly, therefore, Locke’s notion of equality diverges fundamentally from the utopians’ radical egalitarianism.
Locke described the natural evolution and rational behavior of man in commerce. “The greatest part of things really useful to the life of man, and such as the necessity of subsisting made the first commoners of the world look after—as it doth the Americans now—are generally things of short duration, such as—if they are not consumed by use—will decay and perish of themselves. Gold, silver, and diamonds are things that fancy or agreement hath put the value on, more than real use and the necessary support of life. Now of those good things which Nature hath provided in common, everyone hath a right (as hath been said) to as much as he could use, and had a property in all he could effect with his labor; all that his industry could extend to, to alter from the state Nature had put it in, was his. He that gathered a hundred bushels of acorns or apples had thereby a property in them; they were his goods as soon as gathered. He was only to look that he used them before they spoiled, else he took more than his share, and robbed others. And, indeed, it was a foolish thing, as well as dishonest, to hoard up more than he could make use of. If he gave away a part to anybody else, so that it perished not uselessly in his possession, these he also made use of. And if he also bartered away plums that would have rotted in a week, for nuts that would last good for his eating a whole year, he did no injury; he wasted not the common stock; destroyed no part of the portion of goods that belonged to others, so long as nothing perished uselessly in his hands. Again, if he would give his nuts for a piece of metal, pleased with its color, or exchange his sheep for shells, or wool for a sparkling pebble or a diamond, and keep those by him all his life, he invaded not the right of others; he might heap up as much of these durable things as he pleased; the exceeding of the bounds of his just property not lying in the largeness of his possession, but the perishing of anything uselessly in it” (5, 46).
As money replaced barter, the individual was able to acquire more than he needed for his immediate use or consumption—that is, he could accumulate assets, make longer-term investments, save and better plan for his future, and pass his wealth on to future generations. “And thus came in the use of money; some lasting thing that men might keep without spoiling, and that, by mutual consent, men would take in exchange for the truly useful but perishable supports of life” (5, 47). Moreover, there could never be equality of economic outcomes. “And as different degrees of industry were apt to give men possessions in different proportions, so this invention of money gave them the opportunity to continue and enlarge them” (5, 48). “But since gold and silver, being little useful to the life of man, in proportion to food, raiment, and carriage, has its value only from the consent of men—whereof labor yet makes in great part the portionate and unequal possession of the earth—I mean out of the bounds of society and compact; for in governments the laws regulate it; they having, by consent, found out and agreed in a way how a man may, rightfully and without injury, possess more than he himself can make use of by receiving gold and silver, which may continue long in a man’s possession without decaying for the overplus, and agreeing those metals should have a value” (5, 50).
Locke emphasized that the right to acquire and retain property is inextricably linked to man’s liberty. In the state of nature, the individual is justified in enforcing that right against transgressors. “Man being born … with a title to perfect freedom and an uncontrolled enjoyment of all the rights and privileges of the law of Nature, equally with any other man, or number of men in the world, hath by nature a power not only to preserve his property—that is, his life, liberty, and estate, against the injuries and attempts of other men, but to judge of and punish the breaches of that law in others, as he is persuaded the offense deserves, even with death itself, in crimes where the heinousness of the fact, in his opinion, requires it.…” (7, 87)
Government is established, with the consent of the members of society, to protect the individual’s liberty and the order of society, in particular property rights, through just and predictable laws and their impartial enforcement. “Those who are united into one body, and have a common established law and judicature to appeal to, with authority to decide controversies between them and punish offenders, are in civil society one with another.…” (7, 87) “And thus the commonwealth comes by a power to set down what punishment shall belong to the several transgressions they think worthy of it, committed amongst the members of that society (which is the power of making laws), as well as it has the power to punish any injury unto any of its members by anyone that is not of it (which is the power of war and peace); and all this for the preservation of the property of all the members of that society, as far as is possible” (7, 88).
But the wrong government—a centralized authority of one or more rulers—is destructive of the individual’s liberty and the civil society. “For he being supposed to have all, both legislative and executive, power in himself alone, there is no judge to be found, no appeal lies open to anyone, who may fairly and indifferently, and with authority decide, and from whence relief and redress may be expected of any injury or inconveniency that may be suffered from him, or by his order.… That whereas, in the ordinary state of Nature, he has a liberty to judge of his right, according to the best of his power to maintain; but whenever his property is invaded by the will and order of his monarch, he has not only no appeal, as those in society ought to have, but, as if he were degraded from the common state of rational creatures, is denied a liberty to judge of, or defend his right, and so is exposed to all the misery and inconveniences that a man can fear from one, who being in the unrestrained state of Nature, is yet corrupted with flattery and armed with power” (7, 91). “For he that thinks absolute power purifies men’s blood, and corrects the baseness of human nature, need read but the history of this, or any other age, to be convinced to the contrary” (7, 92). Locke is not only repudiating Hobbes’s notion of an omnipotent Sovereign, but the philosopher-kings in Plato’s Republic.
Locke argued for a representative government but warned that it, too, required restraints, for all forms of government are self-perpetuating. “The great end of men’s entering into society being the enjoyment of their properties in peace and safety, and the great instrument and means of that being the laws established in that society, the first and fundamental positive law of all commonwealths is the establishing of the legislative power, as the first and fundamental natural law which is to govern even the legislative” (11, 134). The legislative power “is a power that hath no other end but preservation, and therefore can never have a right to destroy, enslave, or designedly to impoverish the subjects.…” (11, 135)
Morever, the legislature has as its task to uphold and secure man’s inalienable rights, be informed by the governed, be free of corruption, and constrain itself. “Thus the law of Nature stands as an eternal rule to all men, legislators as well as others. The rules that they make for other men’s actions must, as well as their own and other men’s actions, be comformable to the law of Nature—i.e., to the will of God, of which that is a declaration, and the fundamental law of Nature being the preservation of mankind, no human sanction can be good or valid against it” (11, 135). “These are the bounds which the trust is put in them by the society and the law of God and Nature have set to the legislative power of every commonwealth, in all forms of government. First: They are to govern by promulgated established laws, not to be varied in particular cases, but to have one rule for rich and poor, for the favorite at Court, and the countryman at plough. Secondly: These laws also ought to be designed for no other end ultimately but the good of the people. Thirdly: They must not raise taxes on the property of the people without the consent of the people given by themselves or their deputies.… Fourthly: Legislative neither must nor can transfer the power of making laws to anybody else, or place it anywhere but where the people have” (11, 142).
Locke explains the necessity of an executive to carry out the laws adopted by the legislature “because those laws which are constantly to be executed, and whose force is always to continue, may be made in a little time, therefore there is no need that the legislative should be always in being, not having always business to do. And because it may be too great temptation to human frailty, apt to grasp at power, for the same persons who have the power of making laws to have also in their hands the power to execute them.…” (12, 143) Hence, Locke makes clear the distinction between the executive enforcing legislative acts and the usurpation of the legislature and the people by the delegation of lawmaking authority to other entities.
Locke also argues for the impartial adjudication of disputes as a compelling reason for the acceptance of consensual government. He wrote, “Firstly, there wants an established, settled, known law, received and allowed by common consent to be the standard of right and wrong, and the common measure to decide all controversies between them.…” (9, 124) “Secondly, in the state of Nature there wants a known and indifferent judge, with authority to determine all differences according to the established law.…” “And so whoever has the legislative or supreme power of any common-wealth, is bound to govern by established standing laws, promulgated and known to the people, and not by extemporary decrees; by indifferent and upright judges, who are to decide controversies by those laws” (9, 131).
Consequently, Locke argues that the only legitimate form of government is that which is established by the consent of the members of society; that the only kind of government that can preserve the individual’s God-given natural rights, including his liberty and labor/property, is a representative commonwealth in which there are three branches or at least three distinct responsibilities; that it must operate through just and impartial laws, which are applied equally to everyone in the society, including those in government; and that the extraordinary power of making laws must not be delegated to those who are beyond the reach of the governed.
However, if the government loses its legitimate purpose, its form is irrelevant. “As usurpation is the exercise of power which another hath a right to, so tyranny is the exercise of power beyond right, which nobody can have a right to; and this is making use of the power anyone has in his hands, not for the good of those who are under it, but for his own private, separate advantage. When the governor, however entitled, makes not the law, but his will, the rule; and his commands and actions are not directed to the preservation of the properties of his people, but the satisfaction of his own ambition, revenge, covetousness, or any other irregular passion” (18, 199).
Locke emphasized that even representative governments, of the kind he described, can take on a tyrannical character. “It is a mistake to think that fault is proper only to monarchies. Other forms of government are liable to it as well as that; for wherever the power that is put in any hands for the government of the people and the preservation of their properties is applied to other ends, and made use of to impoverish, harass, or subdue them to the arbitrary and irregular commands of those that have it, there it presently becomes tyranny, whether those that thus use it are one or many” (18, 201).
Should government turn tyrannical, discarding its original purpose, it ceases to be legitimate. Locke declares, “The reason why men enter into society is the preservation of their property; and the end while they choose and authorize a legislative is that there may be laws made, and rules set, as guards and fences to the properties of all the society, to limit the power and moderate the dominion of every part and member of the society. For since it can never be supposed to be the will of the society that the legislative should have a power to destroy that which everyone designs to secure by entering into society, and for which the people submitted themselves to legislators of their own making; whenever the legislators endeavour to take away and destroy the property of the people, or to reduce them to slavery under arbitrary power, they put themselves into a state of war with the people, who are thereupon absolved from any farther obedience, and are left to the common refuge which God hath provided for all men against force and violence.” In such circumstances “the people, who have a right to resume their original liberty, and by the establishment of a new legislative (such as they shall think fit), provide for their own safety and security, which is the end for which they are in society.… What I have said here concerning the legislative in general holds true also concerning the [executive].…” (19, 222)
Locke also insisted that the right to revolt is not to be exercised imprudently. “[S]uch revolutions happen not upon every little mismanagement in public affairs. Great mistakes in the ruling part, many wrong and inconvenient laws, and all the slips of human frailty will be borne by the people without mutiny or murmur. But if a long train of abuses, prevarications, and artifices, all tending the same way, make the design visible to people, and they cannot but feel what they lie under, and see whither they are going, it is not to be wondered that they should then rouse themselves, and endeavour to put the rule into such hands which may secure to them the ends for which government was first erected, and without which, ancient names and specious forms are so far from being better, that they are much worse than the state of Nature or pure anarchy; the inconveniences being all as great and as near, but the remedy farther off and more difficult” (19, 225). “But if they have set limits to the duration of their legislative, and made this supreme power in any person or assembly only temporary; or else when by the miscarriages of those in authority, it is forfeited; upon the forfeiture of their rulers, or the determination of the time set, it reverts to the society, and the people have a right to act as supreme, and continue the legislative in themselves or place it in a new form, or new hands, as they think good” (19, 243).
Locke would undoubtedly consider the modern-day political declarations about “spreading the wealth” or “redistributing the wealth” or “leveling the playing field,” and the government’s application of its statutory, regulatory, and taxing powers to pursue them, as a miscomprehension of man’s nature and an assault on the individual’s inalienable rights and the civil society. Underlying Locke’s view of man, society, and government is the individual’s right to the value he creates with his own labor and in his own property (which may be physical and/or intellectual) now and in the future, for it is central to his nature and existence. The right of all individuals to try to acquire property, and once acquired to secure it, is a right that no man or government can legitimately deny him, and which just governments are instituted to preserve and protect. Although some will become wealthy and some will not—that is, the result will be unequal when comparing individual to individual—the poorest man can become rich and the richest man can become poor depending on how each applies his labor. Furthermore, the protection of private property applies not only to that which exists today, but to that which is earned in the future, thereby encouraging industriousness and the expansion of wealth in successive generations, to the good of the individual and society.
Moreover, whereas Marx and Engels later argued for the destruction of what they called the bourgeois, or the feudal lords and later capitalists, insisting there can otherwise be no justice for the laborer, Locke explained that the coercive redistribution of wealth through government’s abuse of law and misapplication of rights destroys individual liberty; ambition, productivity, and wealth; and the purpose of the commonwealth. Instead, society and government should ensure that all individuals, regardless of their circumstances of birth, are unmolested in their inalienable rights. If all are free and secure in this regard, there can be no predestined or official class structure or caste system. In this sense, property rights are the great equalizer—not of outcomes but opportunity. This is the surest way to expand economic opportunity for the greatest number. Communism, and its socialist progeny, is tyranny. And it is tyranny without end since equality of economic outcomes is an illusion, requiring constant repression and plundering.
Locke summed up the purpose of government this way: “Absolute arbitrary power, can neither of them consist with the ends of society and government, which men would not quit the freedom of the state of nature for, and tie themselves up under, were it not to preserve their lives, liberties and fortunes, and by stated rules of right and property to secure their peace and quiet.… For all the power the government has, being only for the good of the society, as it ought not to be arbitrary and at pleasure, so it ought to be exercised by established and promulgated laws, and the rulers too, kept within their bounds.…” (11, 137)
Locke’s extraordinary insight into the nature of man, the sovereignty of the individual, and the ideological threats that have and will menace the civil society by those who exercise governmental authority is much more than an academic undertaking. Few before Locke or since have had such a thorough grasp of the human condition and enormous influence on Western civilization.