Livia: Locke, On the Succession of Power

 

On the Succession of Power

In the Second Treatise of Government, Locke made some controversial claims about the origin and succession of power. Locke opened Book II arguing that Adam’s relationship to God gave him no authority over his children and dominion over Earth. Further, he argued that Adam’s heirs, if determinable, also possessed no right to authority or dominion over Earth. These opening statements reveal Locke’s hesitancy regarding whether people can inherit and transfer authority. To Locke, one’s connection to God, no matter however powerful, does not elevate someone to a supreme status of authority. Additionally, a connection by blood does not entitle a person to control over others. If people cannot, at least originally (true sense of the word), inherit power from those before them, how then do they accumulate power?

Most obviously, Locke answered this question through his comments on labor and property. Throughout his treatise, Locke insinuated that one measure to accumulate power is through the accumulation of property. To do so, an individual needed to place work into cultivating and improving the land to obtain ownership over it. To Locke, “labour, in the beginning, gave a right of property” (Locke 27). While this answer helped illuminate how an individual might accumulate power, it does nothing to explain how power (or property) is transferred. Should the fruit of an individual’s labor be passed down to their offspring? If an individual’s labor serves to define their personal ownership over the land, why should their offspring be entitled to such land? Afterall, Adam was not entitled to dominion over earth despite his relationship with God, nor are his children entitled to the authority which Adam obtained through his time on earth.

While I recognize Locke’s claims serve to answer his thought process on the succession of power at the ultimate origin of earth, I am not sure how he would think about the inheritance of power or property in the modern world. Perhaps once the earth reaches a state of legality in which contracts and currency exist, the notion of power and how it is passed down changes. We get some insight into how Locke envisioned the succession of power in a more modern state from his remarks about slavery in chapter IV. Locked stated that within a compact (between a slave and their master), "no man can...pass over to another that which he hath not in himself, a power over his life" (Locke 18). It is clear here that a man cannot pass on a power which he has never had, but it does not explain if a man can transfer power that he does possess. So how might that work?