The Best of Locke

John Locke was a great classical liberal theorist. Truly, he was one of my first inspirations in terms of turning me into who I am today. After I first read his Second Treatise on Government at age 16 I turned away from the nationalist and authoritarian ways of my youth and became fully a classical liberal minarchist (with a Burkean quirk, of course!). Modern libertarianism is eternally indebted (I speak figuratively here since everyone knows my position in IP!) to Locke. This is true despite the fact he is largely responsible for the development of social contract theory which the modern monstrous Leviathan - the State - is based on. Chief among his achievements are his assertions that all humans have natural rights (something I believe in as a follower of another great liberal - Jefferson) and, most importantly, his theory of property acquisition through what we now call LOCKEAN HOMESTEADING. To quote Locke directly on this:

"Though the earth and all inferior creatures be common to all men, 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."

Beautifully said, if not for the error of 'common ownership' of the earth and inferior creatures by humans... These things are not owned in common by any group - to say so would be a strange assertion.

However important homesteading may be, I think there is one concept from the Second Treatise which I like even more: "A criminal who, having renounced reason ... hath, by the unjust violence and slaughter he hath committed upon one, declared war against all mankind, and therefore may be destroyed as a lion or tyger, one of those wild savage beasts with whom men can have no society nor security. And upon this is grounded the great law of Nature, 'Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed.'" For future generations this principle might prove all the more important. It asserts the right of revolution. The right of a group or an individual to fight back against his oppressor. And let me ask rhetorically: Who is our oppressor today?