Locke: The Contract as a Trust

In one line

Locke says people set up government to fix the three things missing in an otherwise tolerable state of nature, that they hand over only what is needed to fix them, and that a government which breaks that trust may be replaced.

In the wording a student can write in an exam: Locke holds that the state of nature is a state of perfect freedom and equality governed by a law of nature which teaches that no one ought to harm another in life, health, liberty or possessions; that it lacks an established law, an impartial judge and a power to execute judgment, and is therefore inconvenient rather than intolerable; that men therefore consent to form a political society and entrust it with a limited power, held as a trust for their preservation; and that when the trust is broken the power reverts to the people, who may resume it and establish a new government.

The state of nature, and why the difference from Hobbes decides everything

Locke's state of nature is a state of perfect freedom to order one's actions and dispose of one's possessions as one thinks fit, and a state of equality, in which no one has more power or jurisdiction than another.

It is not a state of licence. It is governed by the law of nature, which is reason, and which teaches that being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in their life, health, liberty or possessions.

Two features of that condition matter enormously.

Property exists before government. Locke's account is that a person owns their own person and therefore their labour, so that by mixing their labour with what nature has left in common they make it theirs. Property is thus a natural right, not a creation of the state. This is why a Lockean government cannot simply take property: it did not create it, and it was set up to protect it.

Everybody may enforce the law of nature. In the state of nature each person may punish a transgressor. Locke calls this a strange doctrine and defends it: without it the law of nature would be vain.

The three inconveniences

Locke's state of nature is defective, but not in Hobbes's way. There are exactly three defects, and they are worth memorising because the powers of government correspond to them one for one.

1. There is no established, settled, known law, received by common consent as the standard of right and wrong.

2. There is no known and indifferent judge with authority to determine disputes according to that law.

3. There is no power to back and support the sentence and to give it due execution.