John Locke on the Right of Revolution

From a debate at Stanford over revising its Great Books program for Freshmen         An introduction to the concepts in and background of John Locke's Two Treatises on Government are contained in this audiotape set (of 2) from Knowledge Products. TWO TREATISES OF GOVERNMENT by John Locke - Lock's ideas on individual liberty, government by consent and the right of revolution helped set the stage for the English Revolution of 1688, the American Revolution of 1776, and the French Revolution of 1789.       Back to NCPA Debate Home Page

John Locke's Revolutionary Ideas by George H. Smith [Excerpted from Cato Policy Report, July/August 1989. George Smith is a fellow of the Institute for Humane Studies at George Mason University. The excerpt below is from a larger essay on the push by Stanford University to change the core texts taught to incoming freshman. In this section Smith is comparing John Locke and Franz Fanon.] While in college, I imbibed my John Locke through a professor who was under the spell of C.B. MacPherson's book, The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism. I was told that Locke was a political conservative, a defender of a nascent capitalist class, and a member of the "bourgeoisie" (i.e., "middle class" uttered with a sneer). Even this mangled view, however, is a cut above an interpretation based on Locke's culture, race, sex, and time. We may concede the point: Locke was Western and white and male, and he died a long time ago. If these flaws expel him from Stanford classrooms, so be it. Whether Locke should be included in the Stanford program narrows to a single point: Should freshmen read one of the most influential philosophers of the modern era&emdash;a man whose philosophical, political, and educational writings profoundly influenced leading thinkers in England, Scotland, France, America, Germany, and elsewhere? Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding set the stage for modern empiricism, and it was deeply admired by the luminaries of the French Enlightenment, such as Voltaire. The impact of Locke's Second Treatise of Government is difficult to exaggerate. Reading that tract is essential if students are to understand the ideological background of the American and French Revolutions&emdash;two of the most cataclysmic events of the modern era. In short, it is virtually impossible to understand the past 250 years of Western civilization without referring to Locke. He upheld natural rights, government by consent, religious tolerance, the right to resist unjust laws, and the right to overthrow tyrannical governments. These principles have become indispensable to our vision of a free and open society. Nevertheless, in the mind of Junkerman, Fanon may "get us closer to the answer we need" in the search for social justice. Ironically, Fanon occasionally sounds like Locke. "The land belongs to those that till it," Fanon asserts. Locke agrees wholeheartedly: "The labor of man's 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." Fanon tells how Algerian revolutionaries refused "to tolerate any encroachment of this right of ownership." The Algerians, he boasts, "are men of property." Locke would have been very pleased indeed. Locke, like Fanon, was a revolutionary. Wanted by the English government for sedition, Locke spent six years hiding out in Holland. And his Second Treatise is one of the most vigorous and compelling defenses of violent revolution ever penned. Who decides when a revolution is necessary? Locke answers: "The people shall be judge." In a passage later drawn upon by Jefferson for his Declaration of Independence, Locke writes: "If a long train of abuses, prevarications, and artifices, all tending the same way, make the design [to oppress] visible to the people, and they cannot but feel, what they lie under, and see, whither they are going; 'tis not to be wondered, that they should then rouse themselves, and endeavor to put the rule into such hands, which may secure to them the ends for which government was first erected." What if a revolution involves considerable bloodshed? In this event, argues Locke, the fault lies with the oppressors, not with the oppressed: "If any mischief come in such cases, it is not to be charged upon him who defends his own right, but on him that invades his neighbors. If the innocent honest man must quietly quit all he has for peace sake, to him who will lay violent hands upon it, I desire it may be considered, what a kind of peace there will be in the world, which consists only in violence and rapine; and which is to be maintained only for the benefits of robbers and oppressors. Who would not think it an admirable peace betwixt the mighty and the mean, when the lamb, without resistance, yielded his throat to be torn by the imperious wolf?" Perhaps [Charles] Junkerman [assistant dean of undergraduate studies at Stanford] can explain why these and many similar passages no longer apply to the modern quest for social justice. Locke, far more than Fanon, provides a philosophical justification for restoring the rights of life, liberty, and property to oppressed peoples everywhere. Reprinted from Cato Policy Report, July/August 1989. George Smith is a fellow of the Institute for Humane Studies at George Mason University.