The Political Theories

John Locke and Thomas Hobbes

John Locke

(1632-1704)

John Locke was a British philosopher, Oxford academic and medical researcher, and revolutionary whose cause ultimately triumphed in the Glorious Revolution of 1688. Much of Locke's work is characterized by opposition to authoritarianism. This opposition is both on the level of the individual person and on the level of institutions such as government and church.

For the individual, Locke wants each of us to use reason to search after truth rather than simply accept the opinion of authorities or be subject to superstition. He wants us to proportion assent to propositions to the evidence for them. On the level of institutions it becomes important to distinguish the legitimate from the illegitimate functions of institutions and to make the corresponding distinction for the uses of force by these institutions. The positive side of Locke's anti-authoritarianism is that he believes that using reason to try to grasp the truth and determining the legitimate functions of institutions will optimize human flourishing for the individual and society both in respect to its material and spiritual welfare.

Rubens, His Wife Helena Fourment

1630s

This in turn, amounts to following natural law and the fulfillment of the divine purpose for humanity. Locke's monumental An Essay Concerning Human Understanding concerns itself with determining the limits of human understanding in respect to God, the self, natural kinds and artifacts, as well as a variety of different kinds of ideas. We can, he thinks, know with certainty that God exists. We can also know about morality with the same precision we know about mathematics, because we are the creators of moral and political ideas.

 In regard to natural substances we can know only the appearances and not the underlying realities which produce those appearances.  It thus tells us in some detail what one can legitimately claim to know and what one cannot. Locke also wrote a variety of important political, religious and educational works including the Two Treatises of Government, the Letters Concerning Toleration, The Reasonableness of Christianity and Some Thoughts Concerning Education.  (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/locke/)

Locke's Two Treatises of Civil Government was published after the Glorious Revolution of 1688 brought William of Orange and Mary to the throne, but they were written in the throes of the Whig revolutionary plots against Charles II in the early 1680s. In this work Locke gives us a theory of natural law and natural rights which he uses to distinguish between legitimate and illegitimate civil governments, and to argue for the legitimacy of revolt against tyrannical governments.
Locke wrote on a variety of other topics.   Among the most important of these is toleration. Henry VIII had created a Church of England when he broke with Rome. This Church was the official religion of England. Catholics and dissenting Protestants, e.g. Quakers, Unitarians and so forth, were subject to legal prosecution. During much of the Restoration period there was debate, negotiation and maneuvering to include dissenting Protestants within the Church of England. In a "Letter Concerning Toleration" and several defenses of that letter Locke argues for a separation between church and state. (http://oregonstate.edu/instruct/phl302/philosophers/locke.html)


 In Two Treatises of Government he has two purposes in view: to refute the doctrine of the divine and absolute right of the Monarch, as it had been put forward by Robert Filmer's Patriarcha, and to establish a theory which would reconcile the liberty of the citizen with political order. The criticism of Filmer in the first Treatise is complete. His theory of the absolute sovereignty of Adam, and so of kings as Adam's heirs, has lost all interest; and Locke's argument has been only too effective: his exhaustive reply to so absurd a thesis becomes itself wearisome.
Although there is little direct reference to Hobbes, Locke seems to have had Hobbes in mind when he argued that the doctrine of absolute monarchy leaves sovereign and subjects in the state of nature towards one another. The constructive doctrines which are elaborated in the second treatise became the basis of social and political philosophy for generations.
 Labor is the origin and justification of property; contract or consent is the ground of government and fixes its limits. Behind both doctrines lies the idea of the independence of the individual person. The state of nature knows no government; but in it, as in political society, men are subject to the moral law, which is the law of God. Men are born free and equal in rights. Whatever a man "mixes his labour with" is his to use. Or, at least, this was so in the primitive condition of human life in which there was enough for all and "the whole earth was America."
Locke sees that, when men have multiplied and land has become scarce, rules are needed beyond those which the moral law or law of nature supplies. But the origin of government is traced not to this economic necessity, but to another cause. The moral law is always valid, but it is not always kept. In the state of nature all men equally have the right to punish transgressors: civil society originates when, for the better administration of the law, men agree to delegate this function to certain officers. Thus government is instituted by a "social contract"; its powers are limited, and they involve reciprocal obligations; moreover, they can be modified or rescinded by the authority which conferred them. Locke's theory is thus no more historical than Hobbes's. It is a rendering of the facts of constitutional government in terms of thought, and it served its purpose as a justification of the Revolution settlement in accordance with the ideas of the time.( (http://www.utm.edu/research/iep/l/locke.htm#Two%20Treatises%20of%20Government)

Thomas Hobbes

(1588-1679)

Decades after completing his traditional education as a classicist at Oxford and serving as tutor of William Cavendish, Thomas Hobbes became convinced that the methods employed by mathematicians and scientists—geometry, in particular—hold the greatest promise for advances in human knowledge. Voluntarily exiled to Holland during the years of Parliamentary Rule, the royalist Hobbes devoted much of his time to the development and expression of a comprehensive philosophical vision of the mechanistic operation of nature. Although he returned to England with the restoration of Charles II, Hobbes was for the remainder of his life embroiled in bitter political and religious controversies. They did not prevent the ninety-year-old Hobbes from completing his English translation of the works of Homer.

Hobbes's first systematic statement of a political philosophy, Elements of Law, Natural and Politic (1640), relies heavily upon the conception of natural law that had dominated the tradition from Aquinas to Grotius. But his views had begun to change by the time he reissued portions of his work in a Latin version known as De Cive (1642).

The Leviathan (1651) is the most complete expression of Hobbes's philosophy. It begins with a clearly materialistic account of human nature and knowledge, a rigidly deterministic account of human volition, and a pessimistic vision of the consequently natural state of human beings in perpetual struggle against each other. It is to escape this grim fate, Hobbes argued, that we form the commonwealth, surrendering our individual powers to the authority of an absolute sovereign. For Hobbes, then, individual obedience to even an arbitrary government is necessary in order to forestall the greater evil of an endless state of war. http://www.philosophypages.com/ph/hobb.htm)

Leviathan (1651) was clearly Hobbes's masterpiece.  Man is not naturally good, Hobbes claimed, but naturally a selfish hedonist -- "of the voluntary acts of every man, the object is some good to himself".  As human motives were, in their natural state, guided by unenlightened self-interest, these could, if left unchecked, have highly destructive consequences.  Left unrestrained, humans, propelled by their internal dynamics, would crash against each other.  Hobbes tried to envision what society would be like in a "state of nature" -- before any civil state or rule of law.  His conclusion was dispiriting: life would be "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short", a "war of every man against every man".  
Nonetheless, as all people are equal (in a physical not a moral sense), possessing a passionate love of survival (right of nature) and some degree of rationality (law of nature); Hobbes concluded that a viable, working society would arise as equilibrium between these competing forces.  The logic is simple.  Any person's right of nature justifies violence against everybody else. Consequently, in the interests of personal survival, people will come around to agreeing that they should renounce their right to use violence.  However, this yields up a tense and unstable equilibrium.  The moment one party deviates from their promise, all will deviate and war restarts.  

James Stuart

Duke of Richmond and Lennox, ca. 1634–35

To keep society going with peace and confidence, then an artifice -- a Leviathan -- must be worked into the social contract.  This Leviathan is the State -- whether in the form of an absolute monarch or a democratic parliament, it does not matter.  The important point is that the State will be given a monopoly on violence and absolute authority.  In return, the State promises to exercise its absolute power to maintain a state of peace (by punishing deviants, etc.)  Realizing that its power depends wholly on the willingness of the citizenry to surrender theirs, the State itself will have an incentive not to abuse it.  Of course, there is no guarantee that it won't.  But when it does, it must brace itself for the consequences.
One of the interesting elements of Hobbes's story is that concepts like morality, liberty, justice, property, etc. have no natural, intrinsic or eternal meaning.  They are pure social constructions.  They are generated and imposed by the Leviathan, through his laws and institutions, to keep war and social disorder at bay. As history has shown, no set of values will last forever but will evolve as circumstances change.  
Hobbes is particularly keen to note that law itself is completely dependent on power.  A law without a credible and powerful authority behind it is just simply not a law in any meaningful sense.  Hobbes is thus one of the progenitors of "legal positivism", i.e. that justice is whatever the law says it is.  An "unjust law" is simply an oxymoron.   
 In the context of the age, Hobbes's theory seemed to argue that Parliament's rebellion was illegitimate as long as Charles was king.  But once the head of King Charles I fell, then all rebellion against the Parliament becomes illegitimate.  For Hobbes, power legitimates, power is justice. The State -- whatever its form -- is always, by definition, right, as long as it is capable of maintaining civil peace.( http://cepa.newschool.edu/het/profiles/hobbes.htm)

Locke versus Hobbes

Premises

Issue	Locke	Hobbes
Human nature	Man is by nature a social animal.	Man is not by nature a social animal, society could not exist except by the power of the state.
The state of nature	In the state of nature men mostly kept their promises and honored their obligations, and, though insecure, it was mostly peaceful, good, and pleasant. He quotes the American frontier and Soldania as examples of people in the state of nature, where property rights and (for the most part) peace existed. Princes are in a state of nature with regard to each other. Rome and Venice were in a state of nature shortly before they were officially founded. In any place where it is socially acceptable to oneself punish wrongdoings done against you, for example on the American frontier, people are in a state of nature. Though such places and times are insecure, violent conflicts are often ended by the forcible imposition of a just peace on evil doers, and peace is normal.	no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.
Knowledge of natural law	Humans know what is right and wrong, and are capable of knowing what is lawful and unlawful well enough to resolve conflicts. In particular, and most importantly, they are capable of telling the difference between what is theirs and what belongs to someone else. Regrettably they do not always act in accordance with this knowledge.	Our knowledge of objective, true answers on such questions is so feeble, so slight and imperfect as to be mostly worthless in resolving practical disputes. In a state of nature people cannot know what is theirs and what is someone else's. Property exists solely by the will of the state, thus in a state of nature men are condemned to endless violent conflict. In practice morality is for the most part merely a command by some person or group or God, and law merely the momentary will of the ruler.
Epistemology	The gap between our ideas and words about the world, and the world itself, is large and difficult, but still, if one man calls something good, while another man calls it evil, the deed or man referred to still has real qualities of good or evil, the categories exist in the world regardless of our names for them, and if one man's word does not correspond to another mans word, this a problem of communication, not fundamental arbitrariness in reality.	It is the naming, that makes it so. Sometimes Hobbes comes close to the Stalinist position that truth itself is merely the will of the ruler.
Conflict	Peace is the norm, and should be the norm. We can and should live together in peace by refraining from molesting each other's property and persons, and for the most part we do.	Men cannot know good and evil, and in consequence can only live in peace together by subjection to the absolute power of a common master, and therefore there can be no peace between kings. Peace between states is merely war by other means.

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Conclusions

Issue	Locke	Hobbes
The Social Contract	We give up our right to ourselves exact retribution for crimes in return for impartial justice backed by overwhelming force. We retain the right to life and liberty, and gain the right to just, impartial protection of our property	If you shut up and do as you are told, you have the right not to be killed
Violation of the social contract	If a ruler seeks absolute power, if he acts both as judge and participant in disputes, he puts himself in a state of war with his subjects and we have the right and the duty to kill such rulers and their servants.	No right to rebel. The ruler's will defines good and evil for his subjects. The King can do no wrong, because lawful and unlawful, good and evil, are merely commands, merely the will of the ruler.
Civil Society	Civil society precedes the state, both morally and historically. Society creates order and grants the state legitimacy.	Civil society is the application of force by the state to uphold contracts and so forth. Civil society is a creation of the state. What most modern people would call civil society is "jostling", pointless conflict and pursuit of selfish ends that a good government should suppress.
Rights	Men have rights by their nature	You conceded your rights to the government, in return for your life
Role of the State	The only important role of the state is to ensure that justice is seen to be done	Whatever the state does is just by definition. All of society is a direct creation of the state, and a reflection of the will of the ruler.
Authorized use of force	Authorization is meaningless, except that the authorization gives us reason to believe that the use of force is just. If authorization does not give us such confidence, perhaps because the state itself is a party to the dispute, or because of past lawless acts and abuses by the state, then we are back in a state of nature.	The concept of just use of force is meaningless or cannot be known. Just use of force is whatever force is authorized

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Locke versus Hobbes

by jamesd@echeque.com

Locke and Hobbes were both social contract theorists, and both natural law theorists (Natural law in the sense of Saint Thomas Aquinas, not Natural law in the sense of Newton), but there the resemblance ends. All other natural law theorists assumed that man was by nature a social animal. Hobbes assumed otherwise, thus his conclusions are strikingly different from those of other natural law theorists.  In addition to his unconventional conclusions about natural law, Hobbes was fairly infamous for producing numerous similarly unconventional results in physics and mathematics.  The leading English mathematician of that era, in the pages of the Proceedings of the Royal Academy, called Hobbes a lunatic for his claim to have squared the circle.

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Premises

Issue	Locke	Hobbes
Human nature	Man is by nature a social animal.	Man is not by nature a social animal, society could not exist except by the power of the state.
The state of nature	In the state of nature men mostly kept their promises and honored their obligations, and, though insecure, it was mostly peaceful, good, and pleasant. He quotes the American frontier and Soldania as examples of people in the state of nature, where property rights and (for the most part) peace existed. Princes are in a state of nature with regard to each other. Rome and Venice were in a state of nature shortly before they were officially founded. In any place where it is socially acceptable to oneself punish wrongdoings done against you, for example on the American frontier, people are in a state of nature. Though such places and times are insecure, violent conflicts are often ended by the forcible imposition of a just peace on evil doers, and peace is normal.	“no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”
Knowledge of natural law	Humans know what is right and wrong, and are capable of knowing what is lawful and unlawful well enough to resolve conflicts. In particular, and most importantly, they are capable of telling the difference between what is theirs and what belongs to someone else. Regrettably they do not always act in accordance with this knowledge.	Our knowledge of objective, true answers on such questions is so feeble, so slight and imperfect as to be mostly worthless in resolving practical disputes. In a state of nature people cannot know what is theirs and what is someone else’s. Property exists solely by the will of the state, thus in a state of nature men are condemned to endless violent conflict. In practice morality is for the most part merely a command by some person or group or God, and law merely the momentary will of the ruler.
Epistemology	The gap between our ideas and words about the world, and the world itself, is large and difficult, but still, if one man calls something good, while another man calls it evil, the deed or man referred to still has real qualities of good or evil, the categories exist in the world regardless of our names for them, and if one man’s word does not correspond to another mans word, this a problem of communication, not fundamental arbitrariness in reality.	It is the naming, that makes it so. Sometimes Hobbes comes close to the Stalinist position that truth itself is merely the will of the ruler.
Conflict	Peace is the norm, and should be the norm. We can and should live together in peace by refraining from molesting each other’s property and persons, and for the most part we do.	Men cannot know good and evil, and in consequence can only live in peace together by subjection to the absolute power of a common master, and therefore there can be no peace between kings. Peace between states is merely war by other means.

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Conclusions

Issue	Locke	Hobbes
The Social Contract	We give up our right to ourselves exact retribution for crimes in return for impartial justice backed by overwhelming force. We retain the right to life and liberty, and gain the right to just, impartial protection of our property	If you shut up and do as you are told, you have the right not to be killed, and you do not even have the right not to be killed, for no matter what the Sovereign does, it does not constitute violation of the contract.
Violation of the social contract	If a ruler seeks absolute power, if he acts both as judge and participant in disputes, he puts himself in a state of war with his subjects and we have the right and the duty to kill such rulers and their servants.	No right to rebel. “there can happen no breach of covenant on the part of the sovereign; and consequently none of his subjects, by any pretence of forfeiture, can be freed from his subjection.” The ruler’s will defines good and evil for his subjects. The King can do no wrong, because lawful and unlawful, good and evil, are merely commands, merely the will of the ruler.
Civil Society	Civil society precedes the state, both morally and historically. Society creates order and grants the state legitimacy.	Civil society is the application of force by the state to uphold contracts and so forth. Civil society is a creation of the state. What most modern people would call civil society is “jostling”, pointless conflict and pursuit of selfish ends that a good government should suppress.
Rights	Men have rights by their nature	You conceded your rights to the government, in return for your life
Role of the State	The only important role of the state is to ensure that justice is seen to be done	Whatever the state does is just by definition. All of society is a direct creation of the state, and a reflection of the will of the ruler.
Authorized use of force	Authorization is meaningless, except that the authorization gives us reason to believe that the use of force is just. If authorization does not give us such confidence, perhaps because the state itself is a party to the dispute, or because of past lawless acts and abuses by the state, then we are back in a state of nature.	The concept of just use of force is meaningless or cannot be known. Just use of force is whatever force is authorized

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The Grolier encyclopedia contrasts Locke and Hobbes as follows:
Locke’s considerable importance in political thought is better known. As the first systematic theorist of the philosophy of liberalism, Locke exercised enormous influence in both England and America. In his Two Treatises of Government (1690), Locke set forth the view that the state exists to preserve the natural rights of its citizens. When governments fail in that task, citizens have the right—and sometimes the duty—to withdraw their support and even to rebel. Locke opposed Thomas Hobbes’s view that the original state of nature was “nasty, brutish, and short,” and that individuals through a social contract surrendered—for the sake of self-preservation—their rights [...]
Locke addressed Hobbes’s claim that the state of nature was the state of war, though he attribute this claim to “some men” not to Hobbes. He refuted it by pointing to existing and real historical examples of people in a state of nature. For this purpose he regarded any people who are not subject to a common judge to resolve disputes, people who may legitimately take action to themselves punish wrong doers, as in a state of nature.
Second treatise, Section 14
It is often asked as a mighty objection, where are, or ever were, there any men in such a state of Nature? To which it may suffice as an answer at present, that since all princes and rulers of “independent” governments all through the world are in a state of Nature, it is plain the world never was, nor never will be, without numbers of men in that state. I have named all governors of “independent” communities, whether they are, or are not, in league with others; for it is not every compact that puts an end to the state of Nature between men, but only this one of agreeing together mutually to enter into one community, and make one body politic; other promises and compacts men may make one with another, and yet still be in the state of Nature. The promises and bargains for truck, etc., between the two men in Soldania, in or between a Swiss and an Indian, in the woods of America, are binding to them, though they are perfectly in a state of Nature in reference to one another for truth, and keeping of faith belongs to men as men, and not as members of society.
Second treatise, Section 17, 18, 19
And hence it is that he who attempts to get another man into his absolute power does thereby put himself into a state of war with him; it being to be understood as a declaration of a design upon his life. For I have reason to conclude that he who would get me into his power without my consent would use me as he pleased when he had got me there, and destroy me too when he had a fancy to it; for nobody can desire to have me in his absolute power unless it be to compel me by force to that which is against the right of my freedom- i.e. make me a slave. To be free from such force is the only security of my preservation, and reason bids me look on him as an enemy to my preservation who would take away that freedom which is the fence to it; so that he who makes an attempt to enslave me thereby puts himself into a state of war with me. He that in the state of Nature would take away the freedom that belongs to any one in that state must necessarily be supposed to have a design to take away everything else, that freedom being the foundation of all the rest; as he that in the state of society would take away the freedom belonging to those of that society or commonwealth must be supposed to design to take away from them everything else, and so be looked on as in a state of war.
This makes it lawful for a man to kill a thief who has not in the least hurt him, nor declared any design upon his life, any farther than by the use of force, so to get him in his power as to take away his money, or what he pleases, from him; because using force, where he has no right to get me into his power, let his pretense be what it will, I have no reason to suppose that he who would take away my liberty would not, when he had me in his power, take away everything else. And, therefore, it is lawful for me to treat him as one who has put himself into a state of war with me- i.e., kill him if I can; for to that hazard does he justly expose himself whoever introduces a state of war, and is aggressor in it.
And here we have the plain difference between the state of Nature and the state of war, which however some men have confounded, are as far distant as a state of peace, goodwill, mutual assistance, and preservation; and a state of enmity, malice, violence and mutual destruction are one from another. Men living together according to reason without a common superior on earth, with authority to judge between them, is properly the state of Nature. But force, or a declared design of force upon the person of another, where there is no common superior on earth to appeal to for relief, is the state of war; and it is the want of such an appeal gives a man the right of war even against an aggressor, though he be in society and a fellow-subject. Thus, a thief whom I cannot harm, but by appeal to the law, for having stolen all that I am worth, I may kill when he sets on me to rob me but of my horse or coat, because the law, which was made for my preservation, where it cannot interpose to secure my life from present force, which if lost is capable of no reparation, permits me my own defense and the right of war, a liberty to kill the aggressor, because the aggressor allows not time to appeal to our common judge, nor the decision of the law, for remedy in a case where the mischief may be irreparable. Want of a common judge with authority puts all men in a state of Nature; force without right upon a manSRC="s person makes a state of war both where there is, and is not, a common judge.
Hobbes, on the contrary, asserts that without subjection to a common power, men are necessarily at war:
Hereby it is manifest, that during the time men live without a common Power to keep them all in awe, they are in that condition which is called Warre; and such a warre, as is of every man, against every man.
In on this issue, and also on the meaning of civil society, Hobbes’s position is the same as the fascist position: Peace is actually war in disguise. This is why Hobbes argued that corporations should be suppressed and replaced by the direct exercise of state power. This is why Hitler thought that declaring war on America was merely a meaningless trivial symbol.
It was not merely a symbol. Peace is not merely maneuvering preparatory to predatory attack.
Unlike the communists and the fascists Hobbes had no specific concrete plan for suppressing competition and the pursuit of conflicting goals, and he might well have disapproved of the details of the fascists plans, but he clearly regarded their objectives as a desirable and popular part of any good state
Locke was the seventeenth century precursor of classic liberalism, and Hobbes was the seventeenth century precursor of modern totalitarianism, particularly fascism.
Hobbes argued that what we today call civil society should exist only by the power of the state, and to the extent that it existed independent of the state, for example private associations, corporations, and political discussion, it should be suppressed. This measure is the distinctive characteristic of modern totalitarianism, both communist and fascist, though Hobbes’s reasoning in favor of this measure is fascist, rather than communist.
Chapter 29 of Hobbes’s Leviathan:
For men, as they become at last weary of irregular jostling and hewing one another, and desire with all their hearts to conform themselves into one firm and lasting edifice
[...]
I observe the diseases of a Commonwealth that proceed from the poison of seditious doctrines, whereof one is that every private man is judge of good and evil actions.
[...]
Another infirmity of a Commonwealth is the immoderate greatness of a town, when it is able to furnish out of its own circuit the number and expense of a great army; as also the great number of corporations, which are as it were many lesser Commonwealths in the bowels of a greater, like worms in the entrails of a natural man. To may be added, liberty of disputing against absolute power by pretenders to political prudence; which though bred for the most part in the lees of the people, yet animated by false doctrines are perpetually meddling with the fundamental laws, to the molestation of the Commonwealth, like the little worms which physicians call ascarides.
Hobbes’s theory has far more in common with fascism, than it does with Locke’s theory. To say that they were both social contract theorists is like saying that Adam Smith believed in the labor theory of value and Karl Marx believed in the labor theory of value, therefor Smith was a Marxist or Marx was a Smithian.
Locke’s social contract had as much in common with Hobbes’s social contract as Ricardo’s labor theory of value had with Marx’s labor theory of value.
Fascism is largely corporatism, indeed many fascists argued that fascism simply was corporatism, that race theory was irrelevant. Certainly Mussolini and Franco held this view. Corporatism derives from “one body” (corpora=body), not from corporation. Same metaphor as Hobbes’s Leviathan, and the cover of Hobbes’s book, and, in the case of fascism, the same rationale. The race, the nation, the folk, or whatever, are to be welded into a single entity, by the application of whatever force necessary
Hobbes favored unlimited power for the state, and he favored it for the purpose of ending all conflict and contention. He saw all non-state society as simply bad happenings that should be suppressed.
If people go about their material lives freely they will come in conflict, and Hobbes regards it as the duty of the state to prevent such conflict.
Locke argues that government is legitimate, but only legitimate in so far as it acts within the limits of this implied contract.
Like any unwritten contract, it is not at all clear just what precisely the limits of Locke’s contract are, and Locke clearly considered that his contract could stretch a long way, but is equally clear that modern twentieth century governments are substantially breaking it, for the majority of disputes that an ordinary citizen finds himself involved in are disputes with the state, and in these disputes, for example with the IRS, the state acts as judge in its own cause, a clear violation of the Lockean contract. A state cannot be as large and intrusive as modern states are without finding it necessary to substantially violate Locke’s implied contract in many ways.
Locke’s contract was for a judge. Hobbes’s contract was for a master. While in some situations the distinction between these two roles may be fuzzy, it is clear that vast majority of people today encounter the state in the role of master, rather than judge, thus the modern state is far more Hobbesian than Lockean, though it is still very far from the absolutist government that Hobbes commended.

Locke and Hobbes, two contrasting views of the English Revolution

Locke and Hobbes, two contrasting views of the English Revolution

During and after the English Revolution (1642-88), different English thinkers reacted differently toward the revolution, based on their own life experience and philosophical outlook. Of them, Thomas Hobbes and John Locke stood out as two outstanding thinkers who argued in opposite ways, one for absolute kingship, and one against. On one level, their differences showed how historical experiences shaped one's outlook and influenced one's argument. On the other hand, they were remarkably similar in their approach to the question, which was the use of reason, not divine rights, to justify or oppose absolute kingship. They both represented a growing trend in European society in the 17th and 18th centuries to use reason as the final judgment of things, including the conduct of kings.

1. The state of nature vs. society

Thinkers of the 17th-18th centuries often hypostasized (made out of nothing) a state of nature, as a way to discuss the conditions of society and government. The logic is that whatever good things people had in the state of nature should not be lost when one entered into society.
This would be the condition upon which they evaluated governments: whether a government would bring better results to people than they would to themselves in the state of nature or worse would help justify or invalidate a government. Both Locke and Hobbes used this trope in their arguments.


2. Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679): mathematician and social thinker.

Hobbes’ relationship to the royal family: tutor to Charles II in mathematics.

The emergence of the idea of society and its conditionality.

For Hobbes: condition of rule was the cruelty of man in the state of nature.



3. John Locke (1632-1704)

Mathematician, founder of modern educational theories, politician and social thinker.

Served Lord Shaftsbury, chief opponent to James II (r.1685-88).

Similar to Hobbes, adopted the idea of conditionality of society, but with a very different conclusion.


4. Comparing Hobbes and Locke

Views toward the "state of nature"

Hobbes compared the English Revolution to the “state of nature”, which was brutal, and his negative view of the revolution led him to conclude that society needed a strong king.
John Locke, believed that the state of nature was good. Hence if governments could not do as much for people than they did for themselves in the state of nature, government could be dismantled.
Views toward human nature

Hobbes has a negative view toward human nature “nasty, brutal….”;
John Locke’s view: the human mind is like a blank slate.
Comparison and contrast of views on government

Hobbes: a contract exists between the king and the people; but once the king becomes king, he cannot be overthrown and obtains absolute power.
John Locke: government conditional and can be overthrown if it does not represent the people

UK 1600s Diggers English Civil War

A history of the radical movements the Diggers and the Levellers which sprung up around the English Civil War.




The political and social upheaval that resulted from the English Civil War in the seventeenth century [effectively two conflicts between 1642 -1646 and 1647/48] led to the development of a set of radical ideas centred around movements known as ‘Diggers’ and ‘Levellers’

The Diggers [or ‘True Levellers’] were led by William Everard who had served in the New Model Army. As the name implies, the diggers aimed to use the earth to reclaim the freedom that they felt had been lost partly through the Norman Conquest; by seizing the land and owning it ‘in common’ they would challenge what they considered to be the slavery of property. They were opposed to the use of force and believed that they could create a classless society simply through seizing land and holding it in the ‘common good’.

To this end, a small group [initially 12, though rising to 50] settled on common land first at St George’s Hill and later in Cobham, Surrey and grew corn and other crops. This small group defied the landlords, the Army and the law for over a year. In addition to this, groups travelled through England attempting to rally supporters. In this they had some successes in Kent and Northamptonshire. Their main propagandist was Gerard Winstanley who produced the clearest statement of Digger ideas in ‘The Law of Freedom in a Platform’ published in 1652. This was a defence and exposition of the notion of a classless society based in secularism and radical democracy

The relatively small group of followers of Digger ideas was never particularly influential and was quite easily suppressed by Cromwell and Fairfax.

The most significant of these movements were The Levellers whose revolutionary ideas resonated throughout the succeeding centuries, mostly notably in the demands of the Chartists in the nineteenth century.
The Levellers’ ideas found most support in the ranks of the ’New Model Army’, formed by Oliver Cromwell in 1645 and were largely responsible for the defeat of the Royalist forces led by Charles I, particularly in the decisive Battle of Naseby in June 1645.

By the end of the first civil war in 1646 Leveller ideas were particularly influential and culminated in the Putney Debates where ordinary soldiers debated revolutionary ideas with their generals; it was at this series of meetings that Leveller Colonel Thomas Rainborough argued the case for universal suffrage:
“I think that the poorest he that is in England hath a life to live as the greatest he, and therefore truly, sir, I think it is clear to every man that is to live under a government ought first by his own consent to put himself under that government.”

Unfortunately, this outbreak of democracy within the ranks of the army was relatively short-lived; the outbreak of the second civil war in 1647 allowed the generals to reassert their authority and Leveller influence began to wane. An attempted mutiny by Leveller soldiers was brutally suppressed in Burford, Oxfordshire in 1649; leaders were executed by Cromwell’s soldiers and others were tried for high treason.

Why this brutal suppression? What did the generals find so threatening about the Levellers?

Who were the Levellers?
The Levellers were a relatively loose alliance of radicals and freethinkers who came to prominence during the period of instability that characterised the English Civil War of 1642 – 1649. The most prominent Levellers were John Lilburne, Richard Overton, William Walwyn, John Wildman, Edward Sexby and Colonel Thomas Rainborough.

What bound these people together was the general belief that all men were equal; since this was the case, then a government could only have legitimacy if it was elected by the people. The Leveller demands were for a secular republic, abolition of the House of Lords, equality before the law, the right to vote for all, free trade, the abolition of censorship, freedom of speech and the absolute right for people to worship whatever religion [or none] that they chose. This programme was published as ‘The Agreement of the People’.

These ideas came out of the social classes from which the Levellers originated; they were mainly skilled workers and peasants and the ‘petty bourgeoisie’. Since many of them had fought in Cromwell’s New Model Army they were used to discussion, argument and the free dissemination of ideas; it was this intelligent debate allied to the need for discipline that had led to the defeat of the Royalists and the victory of the republic.

The Levellers were essentially radical idealists; their demands could be seen as a form of early socialism [they were pretty much the same as the demands of the Chartists some two hundred years later], but they had little or no understanding of the workings of a capitalist economy. It is unfair, though, to expect this of them since capitalism as an organised form of social production would only assert itself much later in the development of Britain as an industrial nation.

Indeed, it is important to note that their views on the social order were not particularly progressive; these were rooted in the notion that prior to 1066 and the Norman Conquest a democratic society had existed in Anglo-Saxon times where the land was held in common by the people [perhaps this is in line with Karl Marx’s idea of the concept of ‘primitive communism’; that is, the form of social organisation that existed in pre-industrial society].

The victory of William the Conqueror in 1066 had enabled him to impose a form of foreign [that is, Norman] domination on the people. [1] This enabled him to reward his followers with huge swathes of land seized from the formerly ‘free men’ of England. This was particularly so in the North of England where opposition was brutally suppressed.

The Levellers argued that since God had created all men as equals, the land belonged to all the people as a right. Their programme was, then, essentially an attempt to restore the situation that they believed had existed previous to the Norman Conquest; they wanted to establish a ‘commonwealth’ in which the common people would be in control of their own destiny without the intervention of a King, a House of Lords and other potential oppressors.

The Agreement of the People was drawn up by a committee of Levellers including John Lilburne which was to have been discussed at a meeting of the commonwealth armies at Newmarket in June 1647. In brief this is what they asked for:

· Power to be vested in the people
· One year Parliaments, elected by equal numbers of voters per seat. The right to vote for all men who worked independently for their living and all those who had fought for the Parliamentary cause
· Recall of any or all of their MPs by their electors at any time
· Abolition of the House of Lords
· Democratic election of army officers
· Complete religious toleration and the abolition of tithes and tolls
· Justices to be elected; law courts to be local and proceedings to be in English [not French!]
· Redistribution of seized land to the common people

"[T]here had never been anything like such a spontaneous outbreak of democracy in any English or Continental Army before this year of 1647, nor was there anything like it thereafter till Workers’ and Soldiers’ Councils met in 1917 in Russia" [2]

It is hardly surprising, given this programme of demands, that the rich and powerful felt threatened by the Levellers. This is particularly so, given that some of the Leveller demands, almost 400 years on, have still not been met! Since Leveller demands went so much further than Cromwell and other republican leaders could even begin to meet, then they had to be crushed.

The outbreak of the second civil war gave them the opportunity to do this and so the movement which would have surely rid the people of the parasitical classes once and for all was brutally put down.

The final victory of the Parliamentary forces later in 1648 not only led to the execution of the King, but also the suppression of Leveller ideas for a time.

Leveller ideas, though, posed a real challenge to the power and authority of Cromwell particularly with their attitude to the situation in Ireland. The New Model Army had been set up to defend Parliament at home, not to act as a mercenary force which would advance the imperialist ambitions of the English ruling class. The Catholics in Ireland, it was argued, had a claim to freedom and equality which was just as valid as that which the Levellers were arguing for at home.

In ‘The English Soldier’s Standard’, it was argued that military intervention in Ireland would only mean that the Irish would become a subject people exploited by precisely those who the Levellers were struggling to overcome in England. The point was that influential levellers were implacably opposed to the reconquest of Ireland.

When significant elements of the New Model Army refused to embark for Ireland it was obvious that a crucial point had been reached. Radical elements had to be crushed in order for Cromwell to assert his authority. This was achieved at Burford in Oxfordshire where Fairfax and Cromwell surprised the Levellers and defeated them [albeit it with only a handful of casualties]. From this time [May 1649] the New Model Army was completely in the control of Cromwell.

This does not mean, though, that Leveller ideas were totally eradicated. On May Day 1649, the third and final version of the ‘Agreement of the People’ was published. This is the last collective statement of the Leveller leaders and is their most complete political programme. Its preface stated:

“Peace and freedom is our design; by war we were never gainers, nor ever wish to be.”

In this version of the Agreement, there is a restatement of essential Leveller ideas, though there is a divergence between them and the aims of the Diggers to eradicate the ownership of private property. In all other respects, the programme is not dissimilar to earlier versions; the emphasis is still on universal [male] suffrage, accountable government, religious toleration, civil rights, and so on.

Leveller ideas mainly appealed to the dispossessed in society; that is, those who were most threatened by what the Levellers were proposing were unlikely to be persuaded by appeals to the ‘common good’. Since the Levellers were unable to mobilise their followers to any great degree and, given their defeat at Burford, they lacked the ability to challenge the army or government, it is almost inevitable that they were unable to pose any future threat to the ruling class or [restored] Monarchy.

Nevertheless, this is not to say that Leveller ideas are irrelevant or were consigned to the ‘dustbin of history’. Both the Levellers and Diggers are of crucial importance to the development of working class history since they stand in the proud tradition of English radicalism and challenge to the ruling orthodoxy.

Like the Tolpuddle Martyrs and the Chartists of a later period, the Diggers and Levellers posed a serious threat to the ruling class; their direct appeals to the poor and dispossessed resonate throughout the centuries – whilst the language and mode of expression may have changed, the essential demands of these radicals remain as vibrant and necessary today as they were when they were first put.

Some 450 years after the Diggers established their commune at Cobham, we still need to establish the common ownership of property and the development of society based on need, rather than profit. The words of Winstanley echo throughout the centuries:

“When men take to buying and selling the land, saying ’This is mine’, they restrain other fellow creatures from seeking nourishment from mother earth…..so that he that had no land was to work for those, for small wages, that called the land theirs; and thereby some are lifted up into the chair of tyranny and others trod under the footstool of misery, as if the earth were made for a few and not for all men.”

Our task must to be rescue the words of the Diggers and Levellers from obscurity and to locate them quite firmly in the context of working-class history and struggle; to seek inspiration from their words and actions; to ensure that all of these disparate voices are united under the common theme of working class resistance to poverty and oppression

Jim Fox
From Revolutions Per Minute

[1] See RPM issue 9 - ‘Rich at Play – foxhunting, land ownership and the Countryside Alliance’ which reveals how even today many of the major landowners in Britain are descended from those whom William allocated land to.
[2] P181 – The Levellers and the English Revolution by H.N. Brailsford

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