Comment: “The great and chief aim of men’s uniting, into a Commonwealth and putting themselves under Government is the preservation of property.” (Locke) (1999, 2008)
The sentence opens §124 of John Locke‘s Second Treatise of Government (1689), where the text reads great and chief end. It is a teleological theory of the state: government is defined and judged by the purpose for which men create it. Its strength is the logic of limited, purpose-bound authority; its weakness, an end too narrow for modern democracy.
What the Sentence Says
- Two acts. Men first unite into a commonwealth by unanimous consent, then put themselves under government as a fiduciary trust. Both are means to one end.
- Property in the wide sense. It covers lives, liberties and estates (§123), not land and goods alone.
- Why the state of nature fails. Property there is very unsafe, very unsecure (§123), for want of an established, settled, known law (§124), a known and indifferent judge (§125) and a power to back and support the sentence (§126). Government supplies these three wants and nothing more.
What the End Implies
Because authority exists for this end, it is bounded by it (§§135–142):
- No arbitrary power over lives and fortunes; rule by promulgated, established laws, with one rule for rich and poor, for the favourite at court, and the countryman at plough (§142).
- No taking of property without consent of the majority or its representatives.
- No delegation of law-making power to other hands.
- Separation of legislative and executive, since lawmakers who also execute may exempt themselves.
- Forfeiture. A government that invades what it exists to protect dissolves itself, and there remains still in the people a supreme power to replace it (§149).
Rival Accounts of the State’s End
| Thinker | End of the state |
|---|---|
| Aristotle, Politics | Not mere life but the good life |
| Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (1651) | Peace and security of life |
| Locke | Preservation of life, liberty, estate |
| Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract (1762) | Civil and moral freedom under the general will |
| Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Communist Manifesto (1848) | A committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie |
Locke’s end is thinner than Aristotle’s or Rousseau’s: the state guards a pre-political order rather than forming citizens.
Critiques
- Too narrow. Thomas Hill Green saw the state as removing obstacles to moral self-realisation, so property can be limited when it obstructs others’ freedom; Harold J. Laski (A Grammar of Politics, 1925) made rights depend on social function.
- Class. For Marx, “preservation of property” means preserving the owners’ dominance. C. B. Macpherson (1962) reads the sentence as the charter of possessive individualism.
- Communitarian. Charles Taylor‘s essay “Atomism” argues that the individual’s capacities for autonomy develop only within society, so the state cannot be a mere guard over pre-social rights.
- A defence. Locke himself wrote that in governments the laws regulate the right of property (§50), and he allowed majority taxation (§140): the end fixes purpose, not a freeze on holdings.
The Indian Illustration
The Constitution keeps Locke’s form and changes his end. The Preamble promises social, economic and political justice, and Article 38 and Articles 39(b)–(c) direct the state to distribute resources and prevent concentration of wealth. Minerva Mills (1980) required harmony between Fundamental Rights and Directive Principles. B. R. Ambedkar held that political democracy cannot last without social democracy. The Code on Social Security, in force since 21 November 2025, extends protection to gig and platform workers: a state that secures livelihoods, not only estates.
Conclusion
Locke’s great achievement is making the state answerable to its purpose, so power beyond that purpose is usurpation. But preservation is too modest an end; a democratic state must also enable citizens and correct unjust distributions. India keeps Locke’s limits while widening his purpose.