Property Rights in Locke and

Property Rights in Locke and the Relationship to Civil Society In Locke's second treatise, his views on property flows directly out of his theory of political and civil society that is based upon natural rights and contract theory.

The dimension or aspect of Locke's theory of equality and/or property that this author will focus upon these property rights as they proceed from a state war because in a state of nature, individuals are under no obligation to obey each other and are themselves a judge of what the law of nature requires. Therefore, a law of nature is ill enforced in a state of nature. Section 123 of the Second Treatise makes notice of this (Locke, p. 40).

The enjoyment of property in a state of nature according to Locke is very unsafe and unsecure. This makes the person willing to quit a condition of nature despite its freedoms due to the fears and continual dangers. This prompts a person to enter into a covenant and charter to establish government to protect their private property in a state of society. Even tyranny is sometimes tolerated to protect property and for reasons of safety and security.

It is the very focus upon this protection that this essay will concentrate upon. In section three, the power of the state specifically grows from the right to make laws for regulating and preserving personal property and to use force for doing so from internal and external threats. In Locke's reckoning, property has a special sanctity, even when a person is seized in response to an unjust war.

The right to property is so sacred that the conqueror can seize the person of the aggressor, but not his property, including the protection of his innocent wife and child for the man's unjust acts. For Locke, civil society was created specifically for the protection of property. In giving property a sacred existence outside of the state, he is relying roots of that includes life, liberty and estate.

By claiming that political society was established to better protect property, he is also claiming that society serves the private (therefore non-political) interests of the constituent members. Unlike in communism or socialism, the good promoted is not just realized in community with others. Interestingly, the smallest community recognized above in a state of war was the family. In this microcosm, property rights are absolute and the greater society must respect them. This property is outside of society in the state of nature.

The state therefore can not be the sole origin of property, declaring exclusively what belongs to whom. Logically, if the purpose of government is for the protection of property, this property and the right to it must have an independent existence from the society as Locke spells out in section 134 (ibid, p. 43). Logically, Locke is dependent upon Roman republican ideas of what constitutes a virtuous society.

This property is therefore dependent upon the dictates of the head of the family who has absolute power over the property and the family that has an existence outside of the state. This father (pater) is the link with the outside civil society. At a minimum, a sovereign person owns themselves, pointing to the idea of individual civil rights that also arise from the state of nature and are independent of the state. Such a philosophy does not automatically translate into democracy.

Indeed, Locke felt that legitimate contracts could exist between citizens, oligarchies, monarchies or tyrannies. However, Locke's idea of civil virtue had deep effects upon the American and French Revolutions. Locke's ideas of rights of the people and the role of central government provided strong support for intellectually for both revolutions and further for the development of the democracy in the western tradition. Indeed, Locke in section 76 of the Second Treatise specifically recognizes the growth of society from the family and that the fathers of families eventually became political monarchs.

While this is the case, he makes the point that monarchs need to be "priests." Certainly, they were to reign, but not to directly rule so that they did not jeopardize the basic property rights that existed in nature (ibid, p. 25). Like any issue of property, it results in contracts. While property has an existence that is independent of society, society spells out the rights of the individual to his property in this contract and the obligation of the state to protect property for the participants in the civil contract.

Certainly, John Locke's philosophy is a direct assault upon medieval ideas of the divine monarch and the absolute subservience of the individual to the state that the monarch symbolizes. While he does not oppose monarchy and oligarchy per se (the Roman Republic that was an influence upon him was hardly a democracy by our standards), such monarchy and oligarchy is limited. It does not own everything since before monarch or oligarchy existed, property and.