by WALDEN BELLO
How John Locke’s theory of property — and its racist exclusion of Black and Indigenous people — explains U.S. history from 1776 to January 6.
Ideas count — sometimes, they are even stronger than material interests. This is the case with the legacy of 17th century philosopher John Locke in the United States, which is central to explaining why class solidarity is so weak while white racial solidarity is so strong.
Recent events have confirmed the unfortunate fact that there is now in the United States a state of undeclared civil war. Joe Biden’s assumption of the presidency has not changed the uncomfortable reality that the elections of 2020 may well be the equivalent of those of 1860, which triggered the secession of the South. Of course, that’s not to say that a civil conflict today would take the form of a sectional secession as in 1860. But whatever form it takes, it could involve widespread if not systemic violence.
The economist John Maynard Keynes observed that the “ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed, the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually slaves of some defunct economist.”
What Keynes was saying is that ideas count. Received ideas that may initially be rationally articulated can congeal into deep, subliminally held cultural beliefs as they are transmitted across generations. Ideas inherited from the past may, in fact, be so strong that they push people to act against their material interests.
When it comes to the United States, what Keynes says is particularly relevant in relation to the 17th century English thinker John Locke, who cannot be divorced from any consideration of the origins and continuing hold of the ideology of capitalism and the sanctity of the property regime.
Locke was influential in the development of capitalist ideology in France and England. But he was of foundational importance in America.
Lockeanism and Fragile Class Solidarity
Locke is best known as the inspiration of the American Revolution, with his justification of the right to rebel if the sovereign or government violated the terms of the “social contract,” particularly by failing to protect the person and property of his subjects.
But equally influential on the settlers of America was Locke’s related theory of the origins of private property. Locke said that what transformed a person’s relationship to land from non-ownership to ownership was his mixing his labor with it. This is the foundational relation, one that is created in the “state of nature” before the creation of political society via the famous “social contract.” Indeed, the defense of this primordial relationship is the centerpiece of the contract between the sovereign and society.
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