2.2 John Locke (1632–1704): Liberal Democracy

The book:Two Treatises of Government (1689), the philosophical flag of the Glorious Revolution (and of 1776).The argument's ladder (built to oppose Hobbes rung by rung):1. The state of nature: not war but liberty under natural law — reason teaches that no one ought to harm another in life, health, liberty or possessions.2. Natural rights: life, liberty, property — property arising when a man mixes his labour with nature (the labour theory: a Lockean coin in Marx's pocket too).3. The inconvenience: in the state of nature everyone is judge and executioner of the law of nature — partiality and violence ensue.4. The contract: men unite to preserve their property (life, liberty, estate), each consenting to submit to a government by majority decision — but only a fiduciary trust: government holds delegated, limited power.5. The architecture of limits: a settled, standing law (rule of law); taxation only by consent (of the people's representatives — "no taxation without representation" is Locke's sentence rewritten on posters); separation of the legislative and executive powers (the seed Montesquieu grows); government's ends fixed and finite.6. The right of revolution: when government acts against the trust (arbitrary rule, property seizure), the people may appeal to heaven — dissolve it and reconstitute; resistance is not rebellion but the appeal to the original authority (the people's). Assessment: the founding charter…