Buffalo Souljah
5th April 2010, 06:54
Hello comrades,
Since I have a test on him Monday and I need to clear this ideas up in my head anyways, I figured I would post my understanding of him here and enlighten some of my brothers and sisters as to one of the most important figures in mainstream political science. Here goes;
John Locke is a highly influencial figure in modern political philosophy and his most influencial works, the Two Treatise on Secular Government been called, among other things, "the blueprint for capitalism."[sic] I wanted to write a few words summarizing some of Locke's most fudnamental principles and relate them to contemporary political ideals.
Locke advocated that property (ie. estate) is the most fundamental right and privelage in (and outside of) human society. He justified this on the basis of Biblical Scripture, arguing in the Second Treatise that
God and his reason commanded [man] to subdue the earth...thereby annex to it something that was his property, which another had no title to, nor could without injury take from him. (21; $32) In addition to biblical Scripture, Locke was one of the first advocates of the labor theory of value, which proposes that things derive their worth (what Marx was later to call exchange value) from the amount of labor that was put into them. Locke, furthermore states that
labour, in the beginning, gave a right to property (28; $45)....One additional feature of Locke's theory on property is his notion that what an individual could not put 'good use' to, he could not possess (ie. avoid spoilage). This has been called the Lockean Priviso by contemporary political scientists (notably Robert Nozick). This notion is qualified in the following passage:
The greatest part of things really useful to the life of man... are generally things of short duration; such as, if they are not consumed by use will decay and perish of themselves...Now of those good things... every one had a right... to as much as he could use...He was only to look that he used them before they spoiled, or else he took more than his share[I], and robbed others.(29; $46[emphasis added])There are some interesting historical interpretations of the last portion. During the Sandistina revolution in Nicaragua, the revolutionary governmrnt apparantly addressed several wealthy land owners who had fled to Miami that if they did not return to their land and cultivate it, it would be taken from them and nationalized. According to Locke, this would be perfectly legitimate. This argument opens the door to alot of radical (or at least liberal progressive) thinking, which is interesting given the context in which the book was written.
All of the foregoing refers, more or less, to what Locke believed referred to "natural" conditions in man--conditions that were prior to and antecedent of society. This is what is known as the state of nature, and is believed by Locke to be a state of "perfect freedom...equality" and "liberty" which is governed by reason. Whatever can be said about such a hypothetical state, (and many do have reservations about postulating such a point ex nihilo--we will get to this in time...) Locke argues later that men seek naturally by means of their own agency to divest themselves of the hardships of the state of nature; they do this, according to him, by mutually entering into a state of society, by means of which justice and peace may be arbitrated according to whatever dictates are established. (One can see obvious problems in this formulationg, but, again, we will return to this in a moment) Locke proposes this establishment in the following manner:
Men being... by nature, all free, equal, and independent, no one can be put out of his estate, and subjected to the political power of another, without his own consent. The only way whereby any one divests himself of his natural liberty, and puts on the bonds of civil society is by agreeing with other men to join and unite in a community, for their comfortable, safe, and peaceable living one amongst another...When any number of men have so consented to make one community or government, they are thereby presently incorporated, and make one body politic, wherein the majority have a right to act and conclude the rest.(58; $95)Human agency begins in nature, according to Locke, and moves to transfer its wealth to a more organized level. This Locke shares with his predecessor, Hobbes, and is a departure from traditional models of civil society, which propose the state as a natural extension of human agency. (This is the model taken out of Plato's work on politics, most notably the Republic, and Aristotle's Politics as well as his Ethics, all major works on "political science" that dominated the field for nearly two millenia.)
One thing that distinguishes Locke from Hobbes, and this we will cover before getting onto contemporary critiques of Locke, is in the nature, role and "right to revolution." Whereas Hobbes argues that revolution leads invariably to chaos, and returns us to the "state of nature" (which for him was defined by chaos, another distinction between him and Locke) Locke, on the other hand, argues that any person or group of persons who 1) consists of "the majority" and 2) has legitimate issues with the existing government--these stem primarily out of a failure of the government to meet the needs of "protection of life liberty and estate"-- has the right to "appeal to heaven", which, for Locke, is code for revolution. This can be seen especially in the chapters Of Conquest --where Locke makes allusions to the biblical figure Jeptha--and Of the Dissolution of Government, where several examples are brought forward to desigate necessary and sufficient conditions for revolution,a mong which are tyranny,usurpation, foreign invasion or any sort of "arbitrary rule" (132, $214)
Contemporary problems with Locke begin with Roussaeu and continue through the American pragmatists to today, and consist mainly of attacks against his a priori argumentation for the formation of society. Dewey, for instance, argues that '[t]he fact is, however, that the theory of the "social organism," that theory that men are not isolated non-social atoms, but are men only when in intrinsic relations to men, has wholly superseded the theory of men as an aggregate, as a heap of grains of sand needing some factitious mortar to put them into semblance of order." (Dewey, "The Ethics of Democracy", 5). Rousseau, before Dewey, implicitly critiques Locke in his notion of the "general will", to which he believes people ascribe out of selfish principles, ie. law is an expression of our collective values and, while not necessarily "overriding" personal egoism, is agreed to provide a "superior" basis for determining what is and is not just. Thus, people join society because it it is ultimately in their own selfish interest to, in certain cases, put aside their own selfish interests, "for the sake of the collective". Though this is not necessarily in contradiction to what Locke writes, Rousseau places the emphasis on the primacy of the collective over the individual rather than property, unlike Locke. For Locke, society's very purpose is to protect the right to property, while for Rousseau it is a natural form of human life that is coextensive with human relations.
Other critics of Locke include Marx, Nietzche & Freud, all of whom believed, in a nutshell, that Locke did not take his analysis of society "far enough". Marx subscribes to much of Locke's fundamental beliefs (eg. labor theory of value, limitations to government, etc.) but believes that, in addition to Dewey's aforementioned issue of understanding society as a mere aggregate of individuals, if we adopt a viewpoint exterior to mere immediacy, we will see that labor can be abstracted from, (something he argues Locke does not do) thus producing concepts like "socially-necessary labor time" and surplus value.
Marx rejected the social philosophy underlying political economy, which saw society as an aggregation of individuals, each engaged in his individual labours, each tied together by market forces. Marx once more sees Locke’s philosophy as the source of this view, ‘because it was the classical expression of bourgeois society’s idea of right as against feudal society’ [Theories of Surplus Value] (Marx’s Capital – Philosophy and Political Economy. Geoff Pilling 1980)Robert Nozick has utilized Locke for his own version of libertarianism.
Any thoughts? Comments? Aside from the usual
I:wub: Locke, he's such a hottie!!?
Since I have a test on him Monday and I need to clear this ideas up in my head anyways, I figured I would post my understanding of him here and enlighten some of my brothers and sisters as to one of the most important figures in mainstream political science. Here goes;
John Locke is a highly influencial figure in modern political philosophy and his most influencial works, the Two Treatise on Secular Government been called, among other things, "the blueprint for capitalism."[sic] I wanted to write a few words summarizing some of Locke's most fudnamental principles and relate them to contemporary political ideals.
Locke advocated that property (ie. estate) is the most fundamental right and privelage in (and outside of) human society. He justified this on the basis of Biblical Scripture, arguing in the Second Treatise that
God and his reason commanded [man] to subdue the earth...thereby annex to it something that was his property, which another had no title to, nor could without injury take from him. (21; $32) In addition to biblical Scripture, Locke was one of the first advocates of the labor theory of value, which proposes that things derive their worth (what Marx was later to call exchange value) from the amount of labor that was put into them. Locke, furthermore states that
labour, in the beginning, gave a right to property (28; $45)....One additional feature of Locke's theory on property is his notion that what an individual could not put 'good use' to, he could not possess (ie. avoid spoilage). This has been called the Lockean Priviso by contemporary political scientists (notably Robert Nozick). This notion is qualified in the following passage:
The greatest part of things really useful to the life of man... are generally things of short duration; such as, if they are not consumed by use will decay and perish of themselves...Now of those good things... every one had a right... to as much as he could use...He was only to look that he used them before they spoiled, or else he took more than his share[I], and robbed others.(29; $46[emphasis added])There are some interesting historical interpretations of the last portion. During the Sandistina revolution in Nicaragua, the revolutionary governmrnt apparantly addressed several wealthy land owners who had fled to Miami that if they did not return to their land and cultivate it, it would be taken from them and nationalized. According to Locke, this would be perfectly legitimate. This argument opens the door to alot of radical (or at least liberal progressive) thinking, which is interesting given the context in which the book was written.
All of the foregoing refers, more or less, to what Locke believed referred to "natural" conditions in man--conditions that were prior to and antecedent of society. This is what is known as the state of nature, and is believed by Locke to be a state of "perfect freedom...equality" and "liberty" which is governed by reason. Whatever can be said about such a hypothetical state, (and many do have reservations about postulating such a point ex nihilo--we will get to this in time...) Locke argues later that men seek naturally by means of their own agency to divest themselves of the hardships of the state of nature; they do this, according to him, by mutually entering into a state of society, by means of which justice and peace may be arbitrated according to whatever dictates are established. (One can see obvious problems in this formulationg, but, again, we will return to this in a moment) Locke proposes this establishment in the following manner:
Men being... by nature, all free, equal, and independent, no one can be put out of his estate, and subjected to the political power of another, without his own consent. The only way whereby any one divests himself of his natural liberty, and puts on the bonds of civil society is by agreeing with other men to join and unite in a community, for their comfortable, safe, and peaceable living one amongst another...When any number of men have so consented to make one community or government, they are thereby presently incorporated, and make one body politic, wherein the majority have a right to act and conclude the rest.(58; $95)Human agency begins in nature, according to Locke, and moves to transfer its wealth to a more organized level. This Locke shares with his predecessor, Hobbes, and is a departure from traditional models of civil society, which propose the state as a natural extension of human agency. (This is the model taken out of Plato's work on politics, most notably the Republic, and Aristotle's Politics as well as his Ethics, all major works on "political science" that dominated the field for nearly two millenia.)
One thing that distinguishes Locke from Hobbes, and this we will cover before getting onto contemporary critiques of Locke, is in the nature, role and "right to revolution." Whereas Hobbes argues that revolution leads invariably to chaos, and returns us to the "state of nature" (which for him was defined by chaos, another distinction between him and Locke) Locke, on the other hand, argues that any person or group of persons who 1) consists of "the majority" and 2) has legitimate issues with the existing government--these stem primarily out of a failure of the government to meet the needs of "protection of life liberty and estate"-- has the right to "appeal to heaven", which, for Locke, is code for revolution. This can be seen especially in the chapters Of Conquest --where Locke makes allusions to the biblical figure Jeptha--and Of the Dissolution of Government, where several examples are brought forward to desigate necessary and sufficient conditions for revolution,a mong which are tyranny,usurpation, foreign invasion or any sort of "arbitrary rule" (132, $214)
Contemporary problems with Locke begin with Roussaeu and continue through the American pragmatists to today, and consist mainly of attacks against his a priori argumentation for the formation of society. Dewey, for instance, argues that '[t]he fact is, however, that the theory of the "social organism," that theory that men are not isolated non-social atoms, but are men only when in intrinsic relations to men, has wholly superseded the theory of men as an aggregate, as a heap of grains of sand needing some factitious mortar to put them into semblance of order." (Dewey, "The Ethics of Democracy", 5). Rousseau, before Dewey, implicitly critiques Locke in his notion of the "general will", to which he believes people ascribe out of selfish principles, ie. law is an expression of our collective values and, while not necessarily "overriding" personal egoism, is agreed to provide a "superior" basis for determining what is and is not just. Thus, people join society because it it is ultimately in their own selfish interest to, in certain cases, put aside their own selfish interests, "for the sake of the collective". Though this is not necessarily in contradiction to what Locke writes, Rousseau places the emphasis on the primacy of the collective over the individual rather than property, unlike Locke. For Locke, society's very purpose is to protect the right to property, while for Rousseau it is a natural form of human life that is coextensive with human relations.
Other critics of Locke include Marx, Nietzche & Freud, all of whom believed, in a nutshell, that Locke did not take his analysis of society "far enough". Marx subscribes to much of Locke's fundamental beliefs (eg. labor theory of value, limitations to government, etc.) but believes that, in addition to Dewey's aforementioned issue of understanding society as a mere aggregate of individuals, if we adopt a viewpoint exterior to mere immediacy, we will see that labor can be abstracted from, (something he argues Locke does not do) thus producing concepts like "socially-necessary labor time" and surplus value.
Marx rejected the social philosophy underlying political economy, which saw society as an aggregation of individuals, each engaged in his individual labours, each tied together by market forces. Marx once more sees Locke’s philosophy as the source of this view, ‘because it was the classical expression of bourgeois society’s idea of right as against feudal society’ [Theories of Surplus Value] (Marx’s Capital – Philosophy and Political Economy. Geoff Pilling 1980)Robert Nozick has utilized Locke for his own version of libertarianism.
Any thoughts? Comments? Aside from the usual
I:wub: Locke, he's such a hottie!!?