John Locke’s Two Treatises of Government, can be regarded as a rejection of the idea that citizens are subordinates of a monarch. Locke argues that instead of being slaves, citizens are free and have the power to decide over their own fate. He says:
“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 other legislative power but that established by consent in the commonwealth, nor under the dominion of any will, or restraint of any law, but what that legislative shall enact according to the trust put in it.” – John Locke[1]
The justification of political power
Locke stresses that every person is either born in a ‘state of nature’ (a situation wherein a person is exclusively subject to the laws of nature)[2] or within a society based upon laws over which the person has had no saying (a society with rules he didn’t choose for). Both of these environments are on a macro-level decisive for the level of freedom and protection a person will experience. The state of nature offers the highest degree of freedom but very little protection (such as protection from others invading one’s property of threatening their life), whereas society offers a lower extent of freedom but more protection from external threats (due to law enforcing entities such as the police). About the latter, which Locke calls ‘Political power’, he says:
“Political power, then, I take to be a right of making laws, with penalties of death, and consequently all less penalties for the regulating and preserving of property, and of employing the force of the community in the execution of such laws, and in the defence of the commonwealth from foreign injury, and all this only for the public good.” – John Locke[3]
Protection of property
The protection of property is something that Locke refers to often throughout his work. For him, it is a vital argument to leave the state of nature and accept diminished freedom in society in exchange for protection. According to Locke, property refers to the result of ones labour. He desribes it as such:
“Yet every man has a “property” in his own “person.” This nobody has any right to but himself. The “labour” 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 labour with it, and joined to it something that is his own, and thereby makes it his property.”- John Locke[4]
The ownership of one’s own production is one of the building blocks of liberalism, which is the reason that Locke is often mentioned as the founding father of liberal thinking. It opposes the idea of communism or an absolute monarch in which the property of the subordinates of the state, automatically becomes the states’ property. Instead, the individual is free, owns what he or she has produced and has the right to enjoy its profits under the protection of the state.
Different interpretations of the social contract
Although more debated, Thomas Hobbes is regarded by many to be another founding father of liberalism. But while both Hobbes and Locke agree upon the usefulness of a ‘social contract’, Locke is strongly opposing the restrictive power of an absolute monarch. According to Locke, an absolute ruler replicates the state of nature whereby the absolute ruler has full power over the citizen.[5] This makes the social contract more beneficial to the ruler than the citizen leaving the latter worse of compared to the state of nature (less freedom due to the societal contract, but without its protective advantages). Hobbes does not agree and stresses the importance of a strong absolute leader (a ‘Leviathan’) to suppress citizens from harming each other, an opinion that according to some is regarded non-liberal.
Children’s increasing freedom
Whether a society is governed by a Leviathan or democratically chosen leadership, does not make a big difference for children being born into it. On the micro-level, life is rather similar since due to the weakness of their infancy, parents have a temporary rule and jurisdiction over their children until they are mature.[6] Once maturity is reached, the child becomes what Locke calls ‘free of any contraints’. Parents have no saying over their children any longer and a society can be traded for another through migration. Locke stresses this argument with the following words:
”For every man’s children being, by Nature, as free as himself or any of his ancestors ever were, may, whilst they are in that freedom, choose what society they will join themselves to, what commonwealth they will put themselves under.” -John Locke[7]
But apart from the freedom to trade one commonwealth for another, maturity comes with other privileges. Examples of these are the right to vote, work for an amount of time sufficient to make a living and the expiration of compulsory education. Adulthood comes with a high level of freedom after many years of limitations in childhood.
Invisible limitations
The far-reaching limitations in the lives of children are felt by many but cannot always be labeled. Altogether I like to call these the ‘Invisible Limitations’. They consist of economic limitations due to a limited right to work, legal limitations due to restrictions to vote (formal laws) and unwritten rules in the household and community (informal laws).
The educational system has a central role to play to create independent critically-thinking citizens, not indoctrinated products of an authoritarian state. In that regard, I personally align much more with the ideas of Locke compared to Hobbes and believe that academic freedom should be protected at all cost.
References
[1] Locke, J. (1823). Two treatises of government: In the former, the false principles and foundation of Sir Robert Filmer, and his followers, are detected and overthrown; The latter, is an essay concerning the original, extent, and end, of civil government (Vol. 5). In The works of John Locke (New ed., corr., in 10 vols.). London: Thomas Tegg; W. Sharpe and Son; G. Offor; G. and J. Robinson; J. Evans and Co.; R. Griffin and Co.; J. Gumming. p.114
[2] Ibid. p.106
[3] Ibid.
[4] Ibid. p.116
[5] Ibid. p.143
[6] Ibid. p.127
[7] Ibid. p.135-136