Comment: “The reason why men enter into civil society is the preservation of their property.” (Locke) (2003)
John Locke‘s Second Treatise of Government (1689) states that the reason why men enter into society is the preservation of their property (§222), the great and chief end of commonwealths (§124). Everything turns on the meaning of “property”: read broadly, the sentence founds constitutionalism; read narrowly, it founds the propertied state.
Locke’s Argument
- Property in the wide sense. Men unite for the mutual preservation of their lives, liberties and estates, which I call by the general name, property (§123): the whole bundle of natural rights.
- Property in the narrow sense. Every man has a property in his own person (§27); mixing labour with what nature left in common makes it his, within the enough-and-as-good and spoilage provisos. Tacit consent to money then permits unequal accumulation without breaching natural law.
- Why civil society. The state of nature is not war but inconvenience: it lacks a known law, an indifferent judge and a power to execute sentences. Men surrender only the right to judge and punish.
- Consequences. Government is a limited trust. It may not take property without consent, given through the legislative majority, and rulers who invade lives, liberties or estates forfeit the trust; the people may resist (§222).
The Case for the Sentence
Broadly read, Locke supplies the grammar of limited government and no taxation without representation. Peter Laslett and John Dunn stress that natural law and the common good still bind accumulation, and Richard Ashcraft reads it as an Exclusion Crisis tract against arbitrary royal seizure. Robert Nozick (Anarchy, State, and Utopia, 1974) revived Lockean entitlement to defend the minimal state.
Critiques
- Class. Crawford B. Macpherson (The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism, 1962) argues money dissolves the provisos, making Locke the theorist of possessive individualism. Oxfam (January 2026) finds the top 1% holding 43.8% of global wealth.
- Inequality. Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Discourse on Inequality, 1755) traced civil society to the first enclosure: the contract secures inequality, not freedom.
- Social origin. Leonard T. Hobhouse (Liberalism, 1911) showed that society’s organised force secures every title, and Richard H. Tawney (The Acquisitive Society, 1920) attacked functionless property.
- Gender. Carole Pateman (The Sexual Contract, 1988): the contractors are male household heads; conjugal power escapes the contract.
- Empire. In the beginning all the world was America (§49). James Tully shows unenclosed land classed as waste, erasing Amerindian property to justify settler dispossession.
The Indian Anchor
India reversed Locke’s priority. Land reform clashed with Articles 19(1)(f) and 31, which the 44th Amendment (1978) deleted, leaving Article 300A: no deprivation save by authority of law. Courts then rebuilt protection: Vidya Devi (2020) called property a constitutional and human right, and a nine-judge bench in Property Owners Association v. State of Maharashtra (November 2024) held that not every private holding is a “material resource of the community” under Article 39(b).
Conclusion
In its broad meaning the sentence stands: governments exist to secure life, liberty and estate and forfeit authority when they invade them. As a defence of existing holdings it fails, naturalising inequality, excluding women and serving colonial dispossession. Property must be subordinated to liberty and justice, not equated with them.