Author

Text

Context

Whig

Heroic embodiment of the various roots of liberalism: tolerant Protestantism, trust in reason, scientific empiricism, and so on. Locke was intellectually and in his secretive political involvements a rallying figure for liberal freedom (378f).

This is an epoch-making text by a heroic and charitable author. It fends off absolutist property and patriarchy (242, 248, 306) in order to define the role of government or political power as protection of ‘property’ qua the life, liberty and estate of everyone (262f). Individuals are self-owners (274, 283, 289, 324, 351, 359). Their consent to enter society (cf. Leviathan) (311) and again by majority as members of society to create the legislature is crucial (309, 310, 314, 322). Conquest conversely is always illegitimate (355ff). Powers of government are best divided between legislative and executive (335f) and subject to the rule of law (for rich/poor, court/country alike, and regardless of religious belief) (334) because power corrupts and absolute monarchs are but men (267, 307,308, 335). The people retain the right of d/revolution (328, 337, 373).

Temporary monarchic setback in response to Puritan Revolution is decisively overcome in a Glorious Revolution that effectively makes Parliament primary, and frees the political and economic energies of individuals.

Marxist

Author

Grandfather was a wealthy clothier, father was a lawyer and small land-owner who loses money. Patronage of one of father’s clients gets Locke into Westminster school. Attached to university, not ordained as priest but instead becomes medical doctor. Becomes assistant to a radical landed aristocrat, Shaftesbury. Locke preoccupied with, and as a personal matter wants to justify, his own financial security and success.

Text

Text reveals the ideological duplicity of liberal regime yoked to capitalist agenda. It replaces political absolutism with absolute property right (253) and repeats claim that politics exists to protect property (262f). Though it affirms labor as the basis of property, it regards manual work as drudgery, assumes servants do it (275), and justifies the riches of entrepreneurs and investors (279, 285). Spoilage proviso (276) is a ruse, since money entails consent to wealth acquisition (286). Affirms freedom and equality for all, yet claim that ‘everyone’ wants government to provide ‘guards’ and ‘fences’ for property (327, 360, 373) does not make sense for the landless poor who own only their labor power. Text seems to suggest that both taxation (334) and representation should be proportional to wealth (343). Text also justifies enclosing and improving wastes and natives of America (281, 284) albeit not through [Spanish] conquest. Earlier Carolinas constitution defends rule by the propertied, alongside hereditary indentured servitude (210, 211, 224, 226, 230).

Context

Civil War was a class war. English revolution was a bourgeois revolution that relied upon Puritanism because it rationalized their values, at the expense of the landed aristocracy and the established church. It thus reflects the transition from feudalism to capitalism, i.e., the growing predominance of urban mercantile economies and post-guild social relations over rural and landed economies and relations. (Christopher Hill).

Feminist

Author

Lifelong bachelor.

Text

In refuting absolutism and patriarchy, text argues that Adam/husband does not have dominion over Eve/wife, that power over children is not paternal but parental, and that what is allotted father is shard with mother (292, 357). Marriage is a mutual contract with right of exit (300-2). However, Locke acquiesces to de facto reality of ‘abler and stronger’ husband(299, 302) even though he rejects de facto monarchy (313, 319). Indeed, he affirms role of ‘nursing fathers’ (318). In addition, Locke endorses a masculinist relationship to the extraction of use-value from nature (250, 287, 357).

Context

England remains a deeply patriarchal society in which the authoritarianism of king, father, husband and master are understood to echo each other and manifest divine intent as given in Bible.

Post-Modern

Author

Conservative convictions of his youth give way under exposure to anxieties of radical skepticism but are resolved in a minimalist Protestantism that everyone must find reasonable so that he can feel secure.

Text

Text is notably insidious in that while it stresses freedom and equality, these values are only for those who not only have economic wherewithal but who more basically measure up psychologically. Liberty is not license (263, 292). Locke’s liberal regime is for safe, stable, sober, mature, rational and industrious adults (277) who have internalized both a grateful (to God the maker 264, 289, 293, 300, sa 228f) and disciplined work ethic in the world and a motivating anxiety about the Day of Judgment (272, 278, 386). The text justifies the denigration or exclusion of the poor but also the psychologically different, Catholics, Negro slaves, and the Indians of the Americas (290, 326, 331, 351)

Context

Conversion of protestant reformation into superficially secular tolerant culture and mores, so that sublimated assumptions about individuality and ethics in the world enables a ‘civilizing’ agenda of capitalism domestically and colonialism abroad. In both cases, goal is creation of the austere self..

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