Was Locke a liberal?

• Author: Huyler, Jerome
• Position: John Locke

For more than thirty years social scientists have been debating the relative influence of two ideological "languages," liberalism and republicanism, on past periods and important literary productions. Modern communitarians vie with contemporary liberals, hoping to retrieve vital elements of the republican tradition in order to ameliorate what they perceive to be the coarser aspects of liberal, capitalist life. The contributors to this conversation, however, sometimes seem trapped in a quagmire of confusion and dissension. These difficulties are hardly surprising in light of the frequent and simultaneous appearance of the ostensibly competing idioms--firm liberal commitments alongside clear republican concerns--in so many of the same political texts and revolutionary proclamations.(1)

Much of the problem lies in the very conceptual tools we take to our intellectual trades. In exploring the historical influence, exposing the contemporary crises, and debating the moral merits of liberalism as a monolithic social structure, we too often overlook the many important tensions that divide various and unnecessarily elusive liberal visions. And we miss the opportunity to weigh carefully enough the fuller meaning (and potential promise) of the speculative systems many thoughtful theorists labored to leave behind.

In reviewing the extensive literature surrounding the contemporary liberal-communitarian debate, it became clear to me that this much-attended scholarly dialogue is predicated on a peculiar estimate of what liberalism represents and recommends. Having spent a good deal of time reconstructing John Locke's liberal philosophy, I realized that something is definitely amiss. It dawned on me that Locke, so often pronounced the founding father of modern liberalism, would not choose to champion a liberalism that is what liberalism's communitarian critics suggest or say it is. Yet even liberalism's defenders have failed to remove the burdensome baggage loaded onto liberalism's beleaguered back. I propose to reassess the liberalism that has received so much recent scholarly attention by posing the question: If this is liberalism, was Locke a liberal?

In reconstructing the assumptions made about liberalism I shall revisit a number of fairly worn sources, including Sabine, Strauss, and Polanyi. Although many of their conclusions have been challenged and rejected, their formulations have been highly influential in shaping current attitudes and presuppositions about liberalism, capitalism, and Locke.

In this paper, then, I shall focus on Lockean liberalism precisely because a more careful reading of Locke's life and thought will reveal a socially active, intellectually commanding liberal theorist thoughtfully rejecting many of the major premises and features now commonly associated with liberalism (and, all too often, with Locke). In Locke's words and deeds, we encounter a leading liberal openly embracing and sometimes demanding human activities and relationships now commonly considered illiberal.

The practical usefulness of this kind of inquiry should not be underestimated. By more cautiously considering the complex, intellectually comprehensive vision of so thoughtful a liberal theorist, we may not only equip ourselves to resolve perplexing public disputes but also find a powerful tool for reforming some problematic aspects of contemporary political practice.

Locke, Liberalism, and Atomism

Essential to much contemporary discussion is the settled view that liberalism embraces a commitment to a vulgar individualism. Liberal man or woman is often presented as a social "atom," a being bereft of deep or enduring communal ties and obligations. Egoists, wholly preoccupied with their own self-interest and supremely acquisitive, liberals expect government to serve them, not the other way around. The state should be an impartial umpire, tolerating and supporting individuals in the pursuit of their personal purposes or life plans. What would Locke say of such a state of affairs? Traditionally, it has been supposed that he would heartily endorse it. Yes, it is Thomas Hobbes who most vocally depicts the barbarous egoist in the social environment--a war-weary state of "all against all...that ceaseth only in death." But scholars have often failed to find any less bellicose a being or hostile a social environment in Locke's imagined state of nature.

If in nothing else, Hobbes and Locke agreed in their common design to ground civil society in a social contract signed by free and equal men rather than in a patriarchal theory that conferred divine-right grace on any sitting monarch.(2) Locke, far more than Hobbes, emphasized human rationality and the capacity to be guided by reason. The life of reason might even produce perpetual peace and tranquility, were it not for the few degenerate men who turn themselves into wild jungle beasts. But scholars became skeptical of a Lockean dualism that identified human nature as both rational and peaceful and "quarrelsome and contentious." Drawing out the full implications of Locke's discussion "Of Property," two of the twentieth century's most influential Lockean scholars, Leo Strauss (1953) and C. B. Macpherson (1962), projected a resolutely self-serving being inhabiting Locke's natural state. In his highly influential history of political thought, George H. Sabine (1937), schooled generations of budding scholars in the same approach.

[Locke's] theory, in all its social and political implications, was as

egoistic as that of Hobbes.... [t]he two men fastened on social

theory the presumption that individual self-interest is clear and

compelling, while a public or a social interest is thin and unsubstantial.

Perhaps the influence of Locke, precisely because it was

less aware of its principles, was the more insidious.... Instead of a

law enjoining the common good of a society, Locke set up a body

of innate indefeasible, individual rights which limit the competence

of the community and stand as bars to prevent interference with

the liberty and property of private persons. (528-29)

This ready identification of liberalism (and Locke) with a stark individualism proceeds from more than just the association with Hobbes. The emphasis on egoism would become a staple of post-Lockean liberal thought. At first, though, it would be identified with a common good. The greatest good of the greatest number could be had, Adam Smith and Jeremy Bentham believed, if only individuals were set free to pursue their own good and allowed to enjoy the fruit of their labors. Permit such liberty, Bernard de Mandeville had urged, and private vices could be transformed into public virtues. The passions could be tamed and put to sound social use if people were allowed to pursue the peaceful commercial trades (Hirshmann 1977; Myers 1983). It was an outlook that later liberalism would progressively overturn (J. S. Mill [1838] 1962, 78-125; Bramsted and Melhuish 1978, 25-29, 271-78). In the era of early industrialization many looked with dark foreboding on the development of the individualist proclivity.(3)

In the same vein, many contemporary scholars who associate egoism or self-interest with liberalism, and liberalism with Locke, are also critical of its or his influence on human affairs. The division of labor might be economically productive (periodic panics and plunges aside), but the fracturing of society that accompanies liberalism's "progress" makes it a breeding ground for alienation and social conflict. "To separate labor from other activities of life and to subject it to the laws of the market," Karl Polanyi (1944) wrote, "was to annihilate all organic forms of existence and to replace them by a different type of organization, an atomistic and individualistic one" (163).

To allow the market mechanism to be sole director of the fate of

human beings and their natural environment, indeed, even of the

amount and use of purchasing power, would result in the demolition

of society. For the alleged commodity "labor power" cannot

be shoved about, used indiscriminately, or even left unused, without

affecting also the human individual who happens to be the

bearer of this peculiar commodity. In disposing of a man's labor

power the system would, incidentally, dispose of the physical, psychological,

and moral entity "man" attached to that tag. Robbed

of the protective covering of cultural institutions, human beings

would perish from the effects of social exposure; they would die as

the victims of acute social dislocation through vice, perversion,

crime, and starvation.... But no society could stand the effects of

such a system of crude fictions even for the shortest stretch of time

unless its human and natural substance as well as its business organization

was protected against the ravages of this satanic mill.

(73)

In short, Polanyi (1944) concluded, "The Industrial Revolution was causing a social dislocation of stupendous proportions, and the problem of poverty was merely the economic aspect of this event" (129).

More recently, Theodore Lowi (1969) predicated his famous prophecy (his "end of liberalism" thesis) on a similar psychological estimate. For Lowi, liberal capitalist society is rent with atomizing impulses. The perpetual process of "differentiation" shatters not only liberal society but the individual personality. Thus "we are led to a confrontation with the two central sources of disequilibrium in industrial societies. They cannot be eliminated, but rather must somehow be controlled. These are alienation and conflict. They seem to be as much a part of capitalist practice as is the market" (19). As society splinters into a Heraclitean flux, a kaleidoscopic maze of roles, statuses, and interests, the toll taken on the human personality mounts:

Specialization [i.e., the steady multiplication of roles and statuses]

reduces a person's chances of developing a whole personality; it

can twist and depersonalize him or her...