Here is the Lockean concept I was referencing. Let's discuss!
Sec.140. It is true, governments cannot be supported without great charge, and it is fit every one who enjoys his share of the protection, should pay out of his estate his proportion for the maintenance of it. But still it must be with his own consent, i.e. the consent of the majority, giving it either by themselves, or their representatives chosen by them: for if any one shall claim a power to lay and levy taxes on the people, by his own authority, and without such consent of the people, he thereby invades the fundamental law of property, and subverts the end of government: for what property have I in that, which another may by right take, when he pleases, to himself?
Ah. I think we're talking about different aspects of Locke's theory. The discussion of tacit/implicit consent is at 119-122.
ReplyDeletehttp://constitution.org/jl/2ndtr08.htm
He sets up the problem in 119: "Every man being, as has been shewed, naturally free, and nothing being able to put him into subjection to any earthly power, but only his own consent; it is to be considered, what shall be understood to be a sufficient declaration of a man's consent, to make him subject to the laws of any government... The difficulty is, what ought to be looked upon as a tacit consent, and how far it binds, i.e. how far any one shall be looked on to have consented, and thereby submitted to any government, where he has made no expressions of it at all."
This is the problem I was trying (maybe unsuccessfully!) to articulate in the lecture and in class. If we start from the premise that people are free and must be respected as such, then it's not clear how the laws of the state can be binding at all - given that most of us have no explicitly consented to them.
The solution comes in 120-122. If you enjoy the protection of a state, and in particular if you own land under its laws, then you've tacitly consented to be bound by the laws.
Interestingly - and this is something that tends to get glossed over (including by me, having not looked at the Second Treatise with fresh eyes in a while) - Locke does imply in 122 that *full* citizenship requires active and explicit consent. Many of us (unless voting counts as active consent) would be more like, on his theory, resident aliens - bound only so long as we happen to reside here.
See also the discussion here: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/locke-political/#ConPolOblEndGov
(cont...)
I think there are two things at issue here. The first is that in many countries there wasn't a mode of consent available in the government in the seventeenth centure, hence Locke's work provides the foundation of abandoning mother countries and forming democracies. As to our use of consent, I would say we exercise consent beyond just voting (and if we neglect that duty are we providing de facto consent?). Three quarters of Americans belong to an interest group, be it a teacher's union or a conservation group or the NRA. Among those, a majority belong to more than one. When American's join these groups they are seeking to actively change the status quo according to a common will or to maintain it.
DeleteI will say that there is a basis for individualism in the passages you cited, but as he clarified in the later section I sited, there is an individual but also an important collective element in consent and individualism, recognized by John Locke, that is forgotten in modern individualistic theory.
When I visit other countries I see that more, though it is foreign in modern America. If you want to ask to do a survey in some nations, it is most fair and legitimate to ask in a community meeting rather than in individual houses. It is in the collective that decisions are made.
Nothing in Locke's *methodological* individualism goes against the importance of groups to people. But, as I think he's clear about at 2.119-122, ultimately what gives the collective any moral standing is the individual's decision to join it.
DeleteThis is in contrast to, e.g., communitarian thinkers, who hold that groups have independent moral standing and have interests that can trump the interests and decisions of their members. It's one thing to say, e.g., that the teacher's union is an important entity because it's important to individual teachers - another to say that it would be important to defend the interests of the teacher's union in a case where doing so did not serve the interests of the individual members (can't think of a good example for teacher's unions off the top of my head, but think of, e.g., an NGO that has achieved its policy goal).
I think Locke is trying to deal with a separate problem at 2.140. 119-122 is about the question of why we are bound by the laws at all. In Ch. XI generally, he's talking about what kinds of laws a government to which we consent could legitimately pass. For Locke, unlike, say, Hobbes, the legitimate scope and power of government is *not* simply whatever we contract it to be. A social contract must, to be valid, also be in accord with natural law. Hobbes' rejection of any natural-law constraint on the sovereign was one of the things that Locke rejects ("This is to think that Men are so foolish that they take care to avoid what Mischiefs may be done them by Pole-Cats, or Foxes, but are content, nay think it Safety, to be devoured by Lions." 2.93)
ReplyDeleteI think what's going on at 2.140 is related to the issue of consent to the government as a whole, but not quite the same thing. 140 is talking specifically about the need for consent to taxation, and argues that you need majority consent to tax.
So I think what Locke is on about there is to say that, I could *never* be asked to pay a tax that did not have the support of a majority vote, even if the government otherwise has legit authority over me. Just as, no matter what I say or consent to, any legislative act not aimed at the common good could be valid/binding (135).
But this is about what kinds of rules a polity could have, once we grant that it has some consensual legitimacy.
Maybe think of it this way: There's a big jump from saying that you can take my property if *I* consent to the taking, to saying that you can take my property if a *majority* consent to the taking. If I voted against a tax, when the police come to take my things by force, I might reasonably say, "why am I, who do not agree to this particular tax, bound to pay it?" The answer would be 119-122: "You didn't agree to this particular tax, but by living in the nation, you *generally* consent to taxes imposed by majority rule."
On the other hand, 140 is part of a different discussion. Here, the problem is as if a King says, "look here, I want to tax you, and by living here, you consent to follow my rules." Then Locke says, "no, regardless of any general consent to be ruled by the territorial government, no tax imposed without a majority vote is legitimate."
Does that make sense? Am I still getting it wrong?
I would still contend that Locke in particular would make the argument that a majority has a right to make laws that affect the whole. Modern America has improved that view to be majority decisions with minority protections. Locke frequently makes reference to this majority. Such as in Chapter 10 of the second treatise.
Deletehttp://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/politics/locke/ch10.htm
Right - I just think that Locke's points about majority rule and implicit consent are responding to different challenges.
DeleteLocke is enough of a contract-theory-liberal that some rule being adopted by a majority is not enough for it to be binding - it has to also be adopted by majority vote within a system that you consent to. But he's enough of a natural law theorist that some rule being adopted via whatever procedure you've implicitly consented to isn't enough - only majority-rule procedures can be legitimate. With a bit more jargon, majority rule and implicit consent are separately necessary and jointly sufficient conditions on some law being legitimate (and hence binding).
Locke does *not* think that "it was voted on by a majority" is a good enough reason *by itself* for you to have to follow some rule. This is why, for instance, even if a majority of people outside the US voted that people in the US should pay a 10% wealth tax to poor countries, it would not make it binding on USians to pay.