Write on the Locke’s Social Contract. (2022, 10 Marks)
John Locke‘s contract, set out in the Second Treatise of Government (1689), answers Thomas Hobbes‘s Leviathan (1651). A milder premise and narrower terms yield a limited state. Its technical novelty is a double structure: a compact among individuals, then a trust placed in government.
The State of Nature
- A state of perfect freedom and equality, yet not a state of licence (§6). The law of nature, which is reason, forbids harm to life, health, liberty or possessions.
- It is pre-political, not pre-social, and each person holds the executive power of natural law, the right to punish offenders.
- The state of war is separate: force used without right (§19). Killing an aggressor in self-defence is lawful (§16). With no common judge to appeal to, a war once begun continues (§20).
- Hence three inconveniences: no settled law, no impartial judge, no power to enforce judgments.
The Terms
- The compact. Each person agrees with every other to form one body politic. The only thing surrendered is the private executive power; life, liberty and estate are kept.
- Majority rule. Having consented to join, members consent to be bound by the majority (§§96–97).
- The trust. The community appoints a legislature holding a fiduciary power for set ends (§149). Government is a trustee, not a party with rights of its own against the people.
- Consent. Express consent makes a member. Tacit consent is given by anyone who enjoys any part of a government’s dominions, even by travelling its highway (§119).
The Outcome
Rights are secured, not created. The great and chief end is the preservation of property in the broad sense of lives, liberties and estates (§§123–124). A ruler who breaches the trust forfeits power, which reverts to the people: limited, accountable government, with the individual first.
Critique
- David Hume (“Of the Original Contract”, 1748) held that most governments began in conquest. A poor peasant “consents” by staying about as freely as a man carried aboard ship asleep.
- John Plamenatz found tacit consent circular: obedience becomes proof of the consent that obliges obedience.
- C. B. Macpherson read it as a pact among property-owners, the charter of market society.
Indian Illustration
The Preamble records an act of express consent: We, the People of India… give to ourselves this Constitution (26 November 1949). Going beyond Locke, universal adult franchise from the 1951–52 election lets every adult renew that consent.
Conclusion
As history, Locke’s contract fails. As a test of legitimacy it endures: authority is held on trust, for defined ends, and answerable to those who grant it.