“This is the perfect condition of slavery, which is nothing
else, but the state of war continued, between a lawful conqueror and a captive.”
As I read Locke’s description of the state of war, I began
to wonder: how will he be able to justify what is clearly a perpetuated state
of war – the enslavement of Africans and Native Americans by Europeans settling
in the New World. The Second Treatise
was published in 1690, and slavery in the New World was well established, so he
could not possibly neglect to mention it, or at the very least put forth his
two cents on slavery and whether or not it is justified. Locke posits that
anyone who is put into slavery (or is subject of an attempt to do so) must for their
own preservation act according to the state of war, since that is the sphere in
which the aggressor is acting. By this logic, Africans and Native Americans,
then, should have had the authority, under the state of war in which the
Europeans were acting, to retaliate fully by killing them.
I read on, turning the page to discover that the fourth
chapter dealt specifically with slavery, hoping to see Locke address this
head-on and at least provide some justification for slavery, but was
disappointed to find no such rationalization. I can only assume that the
rationalization would be that Africans and Native Americans did not fall into
the same level of humanity as Europeans. His example of the Jews willingly
selling themselves into “drudgery” in Exodus
would not, in my mind, be sufficient to explain the enslavement of Africans or
Native Americans.
I was thinking similar things during his mentions of slavery! I think your conclusion ties in with Kyla's post earlier about what Hobbe's really meant about "all men are created equal" and the implications of whether he meant humanity or just white men.
ReplyDeleteIn our pursuit of truth, rather than the impossible pursuit of Hobbe's actual intent (however much that matters), it's interesting that the phrase "all men are created equal," which was incorporated into the U.S. Declaration of Independence, eventually paved political grounds for emancipation during the Civil War in the Gettysburg address. While Hobbe's may have lived in his arrogantly masculine, white tower, the reasoning behind his words were extended/transformed into a rhetorical battlecry for equality to extend to all people.
I think your reasoning is sound, that slaves - non consenting and under no valid covenant - have the authority to act out of self preservation. Once society recognized that all people were created equal, the flagrant violation of the state of nature caused by slavery - even according to Hobbe's principles - became too difficult to ignore.
A particularly relevant passage here can be found in Chapter V, in which Locke suggests that much of the New World is unowned. The suggestion seems to be that because it is unowned, Europeans can come to own it by mixing their labor with it. If Native Americans resist, then they are violating the property rights of Europeans, and can legitimately be subdued by conquest. As Cheryl Harris points out in a piece we will be reading shortly, this line of thought in Locke was taken up by the courts in the United States to provide a rationale for their rulings.
ReplyDeleteAlso, Jackson, be careful with your reading of Hobbes. When the Declaration says all men are created equal, it is talking about equality of rights. When Hobbes talks about equality, he is talking about equality of mental and physical ability. Is it Hobbesian equality, or Lockean equality that is in the Declaration?