JOHN LOCKE (1588-1679)

If Hobbes championed the absolute sovereignty of the monarch, John Locke, another
English political philosopher, espoused the cause of limited monarchy in England. His theory was, in
fact, a justification of the Revolution of 1688, and deposition of James II. The theory of John Locke is
found in his two Treatises on Civil Government published in 1690, wherein he defended the ultimate
right of the people to depose the monarch from his authority if he ever deprived them of their
“liberties and properties”.

The State of Nature:

Locke, too, started with the state of nature. But his state of nature was pre-political and
not pre-social and, as such, it did not present to him such a dismal state of affairs as it did to Hobbes.
Unlike Hobbes, whose state of nature is little different from the jungle in which force and fraud
reigned supreme, Locke takes an opposite view. In the state of nature, men were free and equal. Each
lived according to his own liking independent and subject to no other will. Locke’s man in the state of
nature was neither selfish, nor self-seeking, nor aggressive. He was social and sympathetic towards
others, because the law of nature, which was the law of reason, directed him to be so. In it men lived
according to reason without any magistrate. In it, the earth and everything that grows upon it and
animals that feed upon it, all belong to men in common. These things are given to men for their
preservation and welfare. No one can assert an exclusive claim to any thing that nature offers. In
Locke’s state of nature men were equal and free to act as they thought fit, but “within the bounds of
the law of nature”. And the “bounds of the law of nature” enjoined upon them not to harm another in
his life, health, liberty, or possessions. Locke’s state of nature was, therefore, “a state of peace,
goodwill, mutual assistance and preservation,” as he himself put it, in contrast to “a state of enmity,
malice, violence and mutual destruction,” as he described Hobbes state of nature. In the state of nature
there are no privileges, no government and no one to prescribe laws for others. Children are, to a
certain extent, under the control of their parents. The natural duty of the parents to educate their
children implies that they may command and discipline them. But this right is exercised by the parents
for the good of children in order to promote their physical and spiritual development. This right ceases
when children are grown up. Similarly, the husband has no unlimited right to govern his wife, though
the husband and wife have a common end.

Thus, the vital difference between Hobbes state of nature and that of Locke is that in
the former there is no natural law but a natural right, each individual doing what he can for his self-
preservation and for the enhancement of his powers. In Locke’s state of nature men lived together
according to reason without a common superior on earth and without authority to judge between them.
The state of nature is a perfect state in which there is freedom, freedom to order one’s own actions and
to dispose of their possessions. It is a state in which there is equality. No one has more than the other.

But there are certain imperfections in the state of nature. When men are judges in their
own case, three imperfections come into existence, partial judgment, inadequate force for the
execution of the judgment, and variety in the judgments, passed by different persons in similar cases.
Therefore, three things are necessary to remedy these imperfections, a judiciary to administer law
impartially, an executive to enforce the decisions of the judiciary and a legislature to lay down
uniform rules. In order to secure these things, men surrendered their natural rights.

1
Social Contract Theory & Civil Society

In the state of nature, peace was not secure. It was constantly upset by the corruption
and viciousness of degenerated men. This ill condition was due to three important wants which
remained unsatisfied in the state of nature: 1) the want of an established, settled, known law; 2) the
want of a known and indifferent judge; and 3) the want of an executing power to enforce just decision.
In order to gain certainty and security men made a contract to enter into civil society or the state. The
social contract put an end to the state of nature and substituted it by a civil society or a state. Each
individual contracted with each to give up some of the rights he possessed in the state of nature. The
social contract was accordingly, no more than a surrender of certain rights and powers so that man’s
remaining rights would be protected and preserved. Secondly, the contract was for limited and specific
purposes, and what was given up was surrendered to the community as a whole and not to a man or to
assembly of men, as Hobbes said. In this way, Locke recognised and established the sovereignty of the
people, and that the state existed for the people who formed it, they did not exist for it.

If man were objects for which the social contract was necessitated, that is, to create an
authority to enforce just decisions, the society in its corporate capacity established the government and
authorised it to make positive laws consistent with the law of nature, appoint impartial judges to
decide disputes, and to enforce their decisions. There were, thus, two contracts according to Locke,
though he did not say so explicitly.

1. The first was a social contract which brought into being the civil society or state. The
social contract put an end to the primitive state of nature. Society is organised for protecting
human life and safeguarding its property and freedom. According to Locke, each individual
contract with each to unite into and constitute community and this compact was made to for
the protection and preservation of property. The contract involves an agreement by each of the
individuals to give up his natural rights, not all, but some. Moreover, the rights given up were
not given up to any particular person or group of persons as in the case of Hobbes but to the
community as a whole. Thus, society is vested with political authority.

2. The second contract or the governmental contract was subordinate to the first inasmuch
as government was “only a fiduciary power” to act for certain ends and its authority was
confined to securing those ends. It was limited, moreover, to the condition that it was to be
used in the exercise of “established known laws”. If the government failed to secure the ends
for which it was created and to which it had agreed, or did not exercise its authority according
to the “established known laws”, the community might dismiss it and appoint another
government in its place. Here Locke establishes the inherent right of the people to revolt
against the authority of the monarch, if he abused the terms of the contract to which he is a
party, and ruled arbitrarily ignoring the “established known laws” made by the representatives
of the people.

2
Limited Government

After society is set up by contract says Locke, government is established not by a

The purpose of Locke is served. By making the monarch a party to the contract, he
limits his authority and sub ordinates it to parliament, “the supreme power of the commonwealth.”
Three conclusions flow from it: 1) that the government exists for the good of the people; 2) that it
should depend on their consent; and 3) that it should be limited and constitutional in its authority. If it
is not for the good of people, if it does not depend upon their consent, if it is not constitutional and
exceeds the authority vested in it, the government can be legitimately overthrown. Locke, thus,
justified the revolution of 1688, and deposition of James II, and accession to the throne of England of
William and Mary.

Locke recognised the existence of three powers in the civil society or the state. There is
first of all the legislative, which he called “the supreme power of the commonwealth.” Legislature, he
held was the instrument through which the will of the community was expressed. Since the expression
of the will proceeded and determined its execution, that department of government which carried out
the laws must be subordinate to the department that made them. Although for Locke, the legislature
was unquestionably the superior power, yet, it was not sovereign. The idea of absolute, unlimited, and
inalienable sovereign power in any human hands found no place in Locke’s theory of the social
contract. Behind the “supreme” legislature stand the people, the final embodiment of power. “The
community”, said Locke, perpetually retains a supreme power of saving themselves from the attempts
and designs of anybody, even of their legislatures, whenever they shall be so foolish or so weakened
as to lay and carry on designs against the liberties and properties of the subjects.”

Secondly, there was the executive which, according to Locke, include that the judicial
power. The legislature need not always be in session, but the executive must be. Hence he concluded
they “come often to be separated”. There should be separation between the legislature and the
executive. This is how Locke enunciates the doctrine of the separation of powers which is enshrined in
the American Constitution, though it is Montesquieu, not Locke who is the author of the famous
classification of powers into executive, legislative and judicial.

The third power that Locke recognised was what he called the federative – the power
that made treaties. Locke has not more to tell us about federative power, except that it is much less
capable to be directed by positive laws and so must necessarily be left to the prudence and wisdom of
those who are entrusted to manage it for public good.
The state of Locke exists for the people who form it. They do not exist for the state.
The state is based on the consent of the people. It is a constitutional state where there is rule of law. It
is limited and not absolute. The dissolution of the government does not mean the dissolution of civil
society. It is a tolerant state. It tolerates differences of opinion. It is a negative state which does not
interfere in the lives of the people. It transforms selfish interests into public good.

3
Sovereignty

Locke does not use the term ‘sovereignty’. He avoids it possibly because of its
association with the arbitrary power of Leviathan but he had an understanding of it. Instead of the
word ‘sovereignty’, he uses the term ‘supreme power’. This term is likely to create confusion because
he applies it to the legislature, to a single person, and to the people themselves. But his meaning is
plain enough. The legislature is the legal sovereign. The King is not the sovereign at all though he is
called the supreme power. The people to which the legislature is responsible is the political sovereign.
But the political sovereign is generally not effective and comes into being when the government is
dissolved. The people exercise their power at the foundation of the state but after that, it remains
ineffective, unless a revolution becomes necessary.

Hobbes sovereign is one man or one assembly of men possessing legally unlimited
power of making laws which no other authority in the realm can challenge or set aside. This is the
essence of the legal sovereign. On the other hand Locke does not recognise the existence of such a
power. Locke definitely refused to allow any body in his state, whether legislative or executive to
exercise unlimited power in the Hobbesian sense. He would have repudiated this as tyranny. This does
not mean that there was no legal sovereign in England. Locke while recognising and recommending
the separation of the executive from the legislature, unhesitatingly asserts that the legislature is
supreme to which all others are and must be subordinate. Though supreme, the legislature is not
absolute. It does not possess arbitrary powers. It is limited by fundamental law. It is limited by the law
of nature. It has no absolute power over the lives and fortunes of the people. It cannot assume to itself
a power to rule by arbitrary decrees. It is bound to administer justice and determine the rights of the
people according to promulgated laws and by authorised judges. These laws are to be equal for all
classes and promote the good of the people. It cannot take away from any man any part of his property
without his consent. It cannot transfer its power to make laws to any body. It has power to make laws
but not to create law makers. It has only fiduciary power to act for certain ends, namely, the promotion
of public good in accordance with fundamental laws of nature, which enjoins the preservation of
mankind. For this reason there remains still in the people the power to remove or alter the legislature
when they find it acting contrary to the trust reposed in it. Thus, the community perpetually retains to
itself the supreme power of saving themselves from the attempts and designs of any body. But this did
not mean that the people are the legal sovereign. The supremacy of the community can never take
place till the government is dissolved. While, government subsists the legislature is supreme. The
community has only a conditional right of revolution in case of breach of trust by government.