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Published on "Liberty and Justice for All" (http://www2.evergreen.edu/libertyandjustice)

Ian Clement

 

                                                                                                                        Ian Clement

 

 

During the past few weeks I have been reading and discussing the political philosophies of Robert Locke. After reading his Second treatise on government , followed by the Gordon S Wood book; the radicalism of the American Revolution,  It is clear to me how many of the ideas that Locke lays down were either a product of the European Aristocracies, thought pattern or the result of the proliferation of the Locke type or   capitalist form of government.

 

 One could say that Lochs ideas were and are just a representation of European Culture and that the events that took place during the colonization of the Continent of North America would be just an extension of the culture that Locke represents.   Locke endorses a Eurocentric epistemology and seems natural that it be created prior or during the Colonial era in North America. It is useful to think about how Locke's ideas might have been appreciated by the founders of the U.S.

 

In chapter 5 article 27 of Locke's second treatise he refers to the labour of "his" body and that what a man derives from nature or takes from it, becomes "his" property. perhamost important concepts that Locke and the founders of the United States had was, that the land that they had found was unclaimed since it had not been developed. Locke lays down in his second Treatise the sanitized legitimiof what happened in the colonization of North America. After talking at length about how "several nations of the Americans" are rich in land but poor in comfort on page 27 at the bottom.

 

 

             Clearly an argument that appealed to the Founder of the United States as there always was a vision of the land as unused and free to be taken simply because there was no European style agriculture or industrial enterprise on the land. On the same page Locke says plainly, "Thus labour, in the beginning gave the right of property". Another, possibly more direct comment might be seen on the previous page when Locke is speaking of the same in the following passage;

 

 

An acre of land, that bears here twenty bushels of wheat, and another in America, which, with the same husbandry, would do the like, are , without a doubt, of the same natural intrinsic value: but yet the benefit mankind receives from the one in a year, is worth 5l. and from the other possibly not worth a penny, if all the profit an Indian received from it were to be valued, and sold here; at least I might truly say one thousandth. It is labour then which puts the greatest part of value upon land

 

 

                                                                                                Page 26 bottom

 

 

            Besides sounding offensive and wrong if viewed with contemporary logic, This is also the basic foundation of Capitalism, the idea that growth is natural and that money or "Capitol" is worth more than people and is also a prime justification for not only the Colonization of the Eastern portion of the continent but the driving force that expanded the nation to the west. The Gordon Wood book; The Radicalism of the American revolution, chronicles this in a similar but less blatant Euro centricity, but also gives a good idea to how Lock's ideas of property paralleled what happened in the U.S. An example of this is on page 309 when after discussing the importance of population growth in the late 18th century was, Wood's states, "It is impossible to exaggerate the significance of this westward movement of people".

 

            After thinking about the founding of this nation and how Lock's work might have appealed to its leaders the two seem to fit like a glove. What stands out the most to me is the idea of Manifest Destiny, that the U.S. was destined to be the entire East to West expanse of land. Lock simply lays out a rationalization for what was happening around him and before him.

 

 

 

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