Locke's Theory of Revolutionary Action

• Date: 01 September 1963
• Published date: 01 September 1963
• Author: Martin Seliger
• DOI: 10.1177/106591296301600303
• Subject Matter: Articles

LOCKE’S THEORY OF REVOLUTIONARY ACTION
MARTIN SELIGER
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
HE
IDEA that the liberty of the individual must be safeguarded by the
limitation of governmental power and that, in order to be limited, polit-
JL ical power must be shared, is the common denominator of liberal ways
of thought. However, the latter are adjustable to elitist, authoritarian, and extra-
constitutional notions, because to stipulate multilateral consent as the basis for
sharing power does not necessarily amount to stipulating democratic or invari-
ably constitutionally expressed consent.’ Conversely, the criteria of a demo-
cratic theory are to be found not in the rejection of the rights and responsibilities
of an elite, but in the procedure through which an elite attains its special rights.2
A
fundamental tension results if, as in the case of Locke, universal or majority
consent is postulated as the fount of legitimation but general suffrage is restricted.
In Locke’s case this tension is solved -
or partly solved as many tensions are -
by admitting an occasional outburst: revolution.
Concessions to elitist or authoritarian prerogatives are usually predicated
upon a specific evaluation of the character of the common run of men. The
attempt to overcome the contradiction between the acceptance of the principle
of popular consent and that of political inequality, by admitting the right of
popular resistance, therefore, invites the following query. If one holds the ma-
jority of the people to be unfit to participate equally in the election, and hence
in the judgment, of their representatives in more-or-less normal circumstances,
how can one at the same time admit the people’s umpirage when they are ill-
treated and made miserable to the point of despair: that is to say, when the
last thing one can expect of the people is a judicious judgment?
To investigate whether Locke faced this problem by extending his distrust
of the majority to its revolutionary umpirage, involves consideration of whether
his views on revolution add up to a consistent theory of the nature of revolution-
ary action. The general agreement on the importance of Locke’s advocacy of the
right of revolt has so far not led to such an attempt. On the contrary, it has
been assumed that Locke failed to estimate the practical implications of his
defense of revolution. We shall try to disprove this contention by dealing with
the following questions, which are pertinent to any theory of revolution. First,
to what extent was Locke’s argument in favor of revolution intended to grant
to the majority the competence of judging the policies of their representatives
and rulers? Secondly, did Locke assume that the majority’s power is only used
and invariably prevails in support of just causes; and, what is the nature of the
majority decision implied in the appeal to heaven? Thirdly, does Locke’s justifi-
cation of the right of revolt amount to advocating frequent revolt?
1
See my "Napoleonic Authoritarianism in French Liberal Thought," in A. Fuks and I. Halpern
(eds.) Studies in History, Scripta Hierosolymitana, 7 (Jerusalem, 1961), 254-95. This essay
and the present paper are intended to form part of a study on Liberal Politics.
2
Cf. H. D. Lasswell and A. Kaplan, Power and Society (3rd print., New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1957), p. 202.
548

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549
SUFFRAGE AND THE NATURE OF THE PEOPLE’S JUDGMENT
Few interpreters have made it clear that Locke had no implicit faith in the
majority,3 and that he ought not to be regarded as a radical or a democrat
merely because he maintained the right of revolt.4 The majority of interpreters
have in one way or another come to efface the distinction betweeen the revolu-
tionary and constitutional participation of the majority in politics, in that Locke’s
statements on consent, majority decision, and the supremacy of the people have
been accepted at their face value and taken in a democratic sense. The criterion
of general suffrage (or, in deference to historical development, at least universal
manhood suffrage), which is a necessary, though not sufficient, condition of
democracy, has been ignored by some interpreters.5
5
Others have attributed to
Locke the intention of advocating general suffrage;6 or have asserted that Locke
merely failed to make his acceptance of general suffrage sufficiently plain.7 It has
also been maintained that Locke ignored the need to work out techniques for
forming and revealing the will of the majority, because majority-rule and uni-
versal suffrage seemed to him sufficiently accounted for by the equal right of
individuals to form part of a revolutionary majority.’ In interpretations of this
kind, the liberties taken with the notion of general suffrage amount to equating
a residuary revolutionary power with the residence of legal sovereignty.
Since a proper appraisal of Locke’s theory of revolutionary action hinges
upon the distinction between the constitutional and the extraconstitutional rights
of the majority, it bears considering briefly that there is little cause for misinter-
pretation in this respect, Locke’s frequent reiteration of the view that the con-
sent of the people is the only justifiable basis of political society notwithstanding.
3
Leo Strauss, Natural Right and History (2d impr., Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1957),
p. 233 and P. Laslett, Locke’s Two Treatises of Government (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-
versity Press, 1960), note to p. 96. I have used Laslett’s text but rendered the quotations in
modernized English. All quotations from Locke are from the Second Treatise, unless other-
wise stated; italics in the quotations are mine. I have followed Laslett (
ibid
.,
pp. 35, 61)
in regarding the Treatises as composed in the course of the Exclusion controversy.
4
J. W. Gough, John Locke’s Political Philosophy (corrected reprint, Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1956), pp. 39, 41, 59, 68, 113, 131-33; M. Cranston, John Locke, A Biography (Lon-
don : Longmans, Green, 1957), p. 211; and Ch. Bastide, John Locke, ses théories politiques
et leur influence en Angleterre (Paris, 1907), pp. 238, 240. The claim of C. B. Macpherson,
"The Social Bearing of Locke’s Political Theory," Western Political Quarterly, 6 (1954), 7,
that Locke denied the right of revolt to laborers is, however, unsubstantiated.
5
Cf. B. Smyrniades, Les doctrines de Hobbes, Locke, et Kant sur le droit de l’insurrection (Paris,
1921), pp. 71-72, 83; C. E. Vaughan, Studies in the History of Political Philosophy before
and after Rousseau (new ed.; Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1939), Vol. I, pp.
166, 168; Ch. H. Monson, Jr., "Locke and His Interpreters," Political Studies, 6 (1958),
129, 131, 138; R. H. Cox, Locke on War and Peace (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1960),
pp. 117, 133-34.
6
H. Laski, Political Thought in England from Locke to Bentham (New York: Holt, 1919), p. 18;
R. Polin, La Politique morale de John Locke (Paris, 1960), p. 151, 235-36.
7
S. P. Lamprecht, The Moral and Political Philosophy of John Locke (reprint from Archives of
Philosophy, No. 1, New York, 1918), p. 140. This did not prevent Lamprecht from stating,
correctly though somewhat contradictorily, that Locke did not expound a doctrine of popu-
lar sovereignty (p. 148).
8
This is implied by Lamprecht, op. cit., pp. 136-37, 149, but is an essential argument in the elab-
orate attempt of W. Kendall, "John Locke and the Doctrine of Majority-Rule," Illinois
Studies in the Social Sciences, 26 (1941), 121, 124, 130, to show Locke, especially in con-
nection with the right of revolt, as a collectivist majority-rule-democrat in all but one
respect (
ibid., pp. 53, 67, 99, 108, 113, 119, 124).

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550
By consent, &dquo;that equal right every man has, to his natural freedom&dquo; 9 is turned
into the rule of law and that of its makers and officers. Laws make men politi-
cally free in that they prevent men from pitfalls and guarantee the independence
of each from the arbitrary will of the other This might mean more than
equality before the law, especially since Locke repeatedly stressed the necessity
of the people’s consent in the major issues that confront political society. Con,
sidering these issues, Locke spoke of the consent of the people or of its repre-
sentatives, that is, he equated both.~l If government by consent in a demo-
cratic sense means, besides other things, that the right to govern depends on a
majority decision elicited through a formal expression of will on the part of the
governed, 12 the answer to the question of who elects the representatives deter-
mines whether any identification of the consent of the representatives with the
consent of the people is consonant with democracy or not.
Far from ignoring the question of who elects the representatives, Locke stated
in the first paragraph of the Second Treatise that his object was to suggest an ap-
propriate &dquo;way of designing and knowing the persons&dquo; that have political power.
Locke did not fail to make it clear that the masses are to be excluded from the
election of their representatives. &dquo;Every one who enjoys his share of the pro,
tection, should pay out of his estate his proportion for the maintenance of it.&dquo;~3
3
However, each &dquo;proportion&dquo; does not entitle each one to the same rights. For
the right &dquo;to be distinctly represented ... no part of the people however incorpo-
rated can pretend to, but in proportion to the assistance which it affords to the
public.&dquo;14
Locke...