The grip that John Locke's concept of liberalism continues to exert upon American society and our politics is tenacious and profound, both because of its codification in the written constitutions, its institutionalization in the legal and political machinery of the federal government and of the fifty states, and because of the widespread, often unconscious acceptance of Locke's ideas in the popular political culture to the exclusion of any other possible political worldviews. Locke's politics continue to dominate the Weltanschauung and the narrative of political discourse in the United States.
To be sure, the adoption and wholesale incorporation of Locke's political ideas into the American psyche has not been not without some positive and very beneficial effects. Locke propounded his political philosophy at a propitious moment in British and American history. In England, the elevation of William of Orange to the throne ensured the Protestant Ascendancy. In the Colonies, with the exception of the Catholic Lord Baltimore's Maryland, Protestant sects fervently embraced the radical ideas of personal freedom and the essential equality of all believers, particularly the non-conforming, low-church dissenters who populated Massachusetts Bay Colony, Connecticut and New Hampshire. The primacy of one's own conscience and one's beliefs, rather than obedience to the dictates of a theology articulated by a centralized hierarchy, were among the fundamental tenets of the Protestant Reformation.
Those Protestant dissenters were predominantly drawn from the ranks of the rural land-tillers and small sharecroppers who were dispossessed by the Enclosures Movement in England and who were emerging into the merchant/trader class. As dissenters, they resented the trappings, the rituals and the perquisites of the ancien regime, along with the ecclesiastical and secular nobility, their titles, class condescension, and their vast holdings of land. Hence, Locke's insistence that liberty consisted of the right of every man to become a king in his own dominion and to create his own destiny proved irresistible and signaled an irreversible and undeniable break with the traditional order of the Middle Ages.
At the outset, then, Locke's political philosophy provided an antidote to the class stratification and duties of fealty and mutual support which exemplified the Middle Ages in Western Europe. The Church's condemnation of avarice was now belittled. Henceforth, aggrandizement and the chance for personal advancement would provide the vehicles by which a future middle class would emerge, one that was thoroughly emancipated from the Catholic worldview - a worldview which had emphasized duties as opposed to rights, and the proper place of each in the Great Chain of Being. Locke's politics provided the intellectual superstructure. That superstructure ensured that a new property-owning democracy would emerge, unhindered by the medieval guilds or later by restrictions upon trade and commerce. These latter restrictions were exemplified by Parliament's mercantilist policies under which many traders and merchants in the Colonies chafed.
The incorporation of Locke's politics into American political discourse, however, has also contributed to the existence of significant institutional and structural problems at the federal, state, and local level. Because Locke's political philosophy has been constructed upon a foundation which recognizes and envisions only solitary selves, a concept of the whole - the public interest, what we owe to one another as citizens--is largely missing from American public discourse. Whether the issue is universal medical coverage, poverty, antiquated labor laws which harm workers and benefit employers, access to education, the need to rebuild our economy and to address decaying infrastructure, or the need to re-establish collegial ties with our European allies, the impediments which are the legacy of Locke's politics remain: parochialism, special interests, and, all too often, an inability to see beyond the refrain of "What's in it for me?"
In contemporary American society, the anti-social individualism which is the essence and legacy of Locke's political philosophy has been given free reign, unencumbered by the restraints, modifications and caveats to which it was subjected in England and in other European political systems. There the ties of the traditional society and medieval ideas which place an emphasis upon cooperation and extol communitarianism have not unraveled and continue to inform and bind the political discourse. As a consequence, in Europe, Locke's individualism was given nuance and context; whereas in America, in the context of the political of the New World, the self has become the avatar.
A willingness to recognize that the self is a social being is central to the concept of citizenship that has been an abiding part of the tradition of conservatism since the time of the ancients. In turn, that recognition carries with it an understanding that each of us, as members of a political community, enjoys rights which depend for their exercise and protection upon the existence of the polis, and an acceptance that we have concomitant responsibilities to one another and to the community.
The recognition of this duality of citizenship becomes an essential predicate to the idea of a public interest, one which is separate and distinct from the definition of society propounded by Locke, Bentham, and Mill. Because of their nominalist limits, proponents of classical liberalism continue to insist that society is a mere aggregation of social atoms and personal interests; and they have thus been unable to posit or to entertain the possibility of the existence of any universal or collective entities which are more than the sums of their parts.
The absence of a concept of citizenship and of the public interest is one of the core deficiencies of contemporary American political culture. John Dewey, in his book The Public And Its Problems, argued that, in a consumerist, capitalist culture, "The political elements in the constitution of the human being, those having to do with citizenship, are crowded to one side." It has contributed to the emergence of the anomic man depicted by Emile Durkheim and chronicled by David Riesman.
Perhaps one place to look for wisdom and guidance on how to meld the private and the public interests in a liberal culture is to be found in communitarianism of T.H. Green, his students, L.T. Hobhouse and Bernard Bosanquet, and, later, A.D. Lindsay. By reaching back into the conservative political theory of antiquity, Green was able to reformulate classical liberal doctrine. Although his effort to modernize liberalism remained, at its core, firmly supportive of individual rights, Green sought to restore the recognition that rights and obligations were reciprocal and he argued that they were based upon mutuality and societal recognition. Green also reminds us that each of us derives meaning as citizens, and not as solitary beings. For that reason, too, freedom becomes not a "freedom from," which enables individuals to erect walls and barricades around themselves, but rather a positive power or capacity to do something worth doing in concert with others.
"The self," Green insisted, "is a social self," and, for that reason, government, as the agent of society, should be viewed as positive instrument for the public good. As Hobhouse succinctly put it, "Democracy is not founded merely on the right or the private interest of the individual. This is only one side of the shield. It is founded equally on the function of the individual as a member of the community. It founds the common good upon the common will, in forming which it bids every grown-up, intelligent person to take a part."
The systematic efforts of T.H. Green and his students to redefine the liberalism and to instill within its core a commitment to the public interest have been largely unknown and unaddressed in American political discourse. Green's vision and that of the Oxford Idealist Movement he inspired provide an essential foundation of any attempt to advance a progressive agenda in the United States that seeks to move our political system beyond the current status quo in which it is mired and its corruption by self-seeking, unaccountable special interests.
To be sure, the adoption and wholesale incorporation of Locke's political ideas into the American psyche has not been not without some positive and very beneficial effects. Locke propounded his political philosophy at a propitious moment in British and American history. In England, the elevation of William of Orange to the throne ensured the Protestant Ascendancy. In the Colonies, with the exception of the Catholic Lord Baltimore's Maryland, Protestant sects fervently embraced the radical ideas of personal freedom and the essential equality of all believers, particularly the non-conforming, low-church dissenters who populated Massachusetts Bay Colony, Connecticut and New Hampshire. The primacy of one's own conscience and one's beliefs, rather than obedience to the dictates of a theology articulated by a centralized hierarchy, were among the fundamental tenets of the Protestant Reformation.
Those Protestant dissenters were predominantly drawn from the ranks of the rural land-tillers and small sharecroppers who were dispossessed by the Enclosures Movement in England and who were emerging into the merchant/trader class. As dissenters, they resented the trappings, the rituals and the perquisites of the ancien regime, along with the ecclesiastical and secular nobility, their titles, class condescension, and their vast holdings of land. Hence, Locke's insistence that liberty consisted of the right of every man to become a king in his own dominion and to create his own destiny proved irresistible and signaled an irreversible and undeniable break with the traditional order of the Middle Ages.
At the outset, then, Locke's political philosophy provided an antidote to the class stratification and duties of fealty and mutual support which exemplified the Middle Ages in Western Europe. The Church's condemnation of avarice was now belittled. Henceforth, aggrandizement and the chance for personal advancement would provide the vehicles by which a future middle class would emerge, one that was thoroughly emancipated from the Catholic worldview - a worldview which had emphasized duties as opposed to rights, and the proper place of each in the Great Chain of Being. Locke's politics provided the intellectual superstructure. That superstructure ensured that a new property-owning democracy would emerge, unhindered by the medieval guilds or later by restrictions upon trade and commerce. These latter restrictions were exemplified by Parliament's mercantilist policies under which many traders and merchants in the Colonies chafed.
The incorporation of Locke's politics into American political discourse, however, has also contributed to the existence of significant institutional and structural problems at the federal, state, and local level. Because Locke's political philosophy has been constructed upon a foundation which recognizes and envisions only solitary selves, a concept of the whole - the public interest, what we owe to one another as citizens--is largely missing from American public discourse. Whether the issue is universal medical coverage, poverty, antiquated labor laws which harm workers and benefit employers, access to education, the need to rebuild our economy and to address decaying infrastructure, or the need to re-establish collegial ties with our European allies, the impediments which are the legacy of Locke's politics remain: parochialism, special interests, and, all too often, an inability to see beyond the refrain of "What's in it for me?"
In contemporary American society, the anti-social individualism which is the essence and legacy of Locke's political philosophy has been given free reign, unencumbered by the restraints, modifications and caveats to which it was subjected in England and in other European political systems. There the ties of the traditional society and medieval ideas which place an emphasis upon cooperation and extol communitarianism have not unraveled and continue to inform and bind the political discourse. As a consequence, in Europe, Locke's individualism was given nuance and context; whereas in America, in the context of the political of the New World, the self has become the avatar.
A willingness to recognize that the self is a social being is central to the concept of citizenship that has been an abiding part of the tradition of conservatism since the time of the ancients. In turn, that recognition carries with it an understanding that each of us, as members of a political community, enjoys rights which depend for their exercise and protection upon the existence of the polis, and an acceptance that we have concomitant responsibilities to one another and to the community.
The recognition of this duality of citizenship becomes an essential predicate to the idea of a public interest, one which is separate and distinct from the definition of society propounded by Locke, Bentham, and Mill. Because of their nominalist limits, proponents of classical liberalism continue to insist that society is a mere aggregation of social atoms and personal interests; and they have thus been unable to posit or to entertain the possibility of the existence of any universal or collective entities which are more than the sums of their parts.
The absence of a concept of citizenship and of the public interest is one of the core deficiencies of contemporary American political culture. John Dewey, in his book The Public And Its Problems, argued that, in a consumerist, capitalist culture, "The political elements in the constitution of the human being, those having to do with citizenship, are crowded to one side." It has contributed to the emergence of the anomic man depicted by Emile Durkheim and chronicled by David Riesman.
Perhaps one place to look for wisdom and guidance on how to meld the private and the public interests in a liberal culture is to be found in communitarianism of T.H. Green, his students, L.T. Hobhouse and Bernard Bosanquet, and, later, A.D. Lindsay. By reaching back into the conservative political theory of antiquity, Green was able to reformulate classical liberal doctrine. Although his effort to modernize liberalism remained, at its core, firmly supportive of individual rights, Green sought to restore the recognition that rights and obligations were reciprocal and he argued that they were based upon mutuality and societal recognition. Green also reminds us that each of us derives meaning as citizens, and not as solitary beings. For that reason, too, freedom becomes not a "freedom from," which enables individuals to erect walls and barricades around themselves, but rather a positive power or capacity to do something worth doing in concert with others.
"The self," Green insisted, "is a social self," and, for that reason, government, as the agent of society, should be viewed as positive instrument for the public good. As Hobhouse succinctly put it, "Democracy is not founded merely on the right or the private interest of the individual. This is only one side of the shield. It is founded equally on the function of the individual as a member of the community. It founds the common good upon the common will, in forming which it bids every grown-up, intelligent person to take a part."
The systematic efforts of T.H. Green and his students to redefine the liberalism and to instill within its core a commitment to the public interest have been largely unknown and unaddressed in American political discourse. Green's vision and that of the Oxford Idealist Movement he inspired provide an essential foundation of any attempt to advance a progressive agenda in the United States that seeks to move our political system beyond the current status quo in which it is mired and its corruption by self-seeking, unaccountable special interests.