Calvin,
Locke, and Liberal Economy
David Bozarth
Sonoma State University
POLS 315
10 June 2004
“… great robbers punish little ones to keep them in their obedience, but the great ones are rewarded with laurels and triumphs, because they are too big for the weak hands of justice in this world, and have the power in their own possession which should punish offenders.” (John Locke. Second Treatise on Civil Government, in Social Contract, p. 104)0
Niccolo Machiavelli, writing during a time of reborn
interest in classical antiquity1,
foreshadowed liberal thought in his recommendation of republican government and
rule of law, and in his mistrust of monarchy. These notions were picked up by
prominent 17th century Englishmen (James Harrington, John Locke) and
by the architects of the U.S. Constitution.
The Protestant Reformation refuted mediation of the
Roman Church between God and humans - faith and Bible became more important
than traditional religious formalism, in the eyes of 16th century
Protestants like John Calvin. Later, widening interpretations of Protestantism
encouraged believers to begin trusting their individual consciences to guide
them along the path of right living, and thus to heaven.
John Calvin theocratized Geneva, and acquired a long
following. Unwittingly, by propounding
certain ideas, Calvinism taught reason to pray - forming a basis for the
development of classical liberalism.
Sin and selfishness abound in the Calvinist world, and
Satan is everywhere to be resisted. God also is everywhere and knows all,
specifically attending the believer in his struggle to work hard and live a
morally upright life that reflects God’s grace. While greed is sinful, a
principled prosperity might well indicate God’s favor on the individual in
return for his faith and diligence. Work has value beyond provision of need;
poverty is associated with sloth.
For centuries the Church had condemned usury and
mostly tolerated Jewish lenders who were unhindered by the doctrine.
Pre-Industrial Protestants were in a mood to reform affairs of the world in
coordination with the rise of towns, merchants, and craft guilds. Calvin said
that while “excessive” interest charges were sinful, we shouldn’t be bound by
papal doctrine (which was, after all, a doctrine of sinful men). So, reasonable interest gains were in
keeping with a devout man’s worldly affairs.
Increasingly Calvinist-Protestant traders and
officials revised, according to market conditions, traditional sanctions on the
“fair price” of goods. The stage was
set for profit-taking and wealth creation, with their bracing sense of
this-worldly inspiration, to acquire status among the dour elect. As individuals achieved some degree of
social mobility based on changing economic status, the communitarian values of
western European and Atlantic societies began to weaken. New patterns of exploration and trade
encouraged innovation in finance, and exposed the weaknesses of mercantilism
and monopoly.
Conscience, meanwhile, was found by Calvinists to
imbue the upright religious community with authority to resist an intransigent,
infidel government. Where Calvinists
had emphasized the sin of the individual and its effects on the community, they
began to examine the effects of a sinful world on the community and on the individual.
If one has a duty to express divinity on earth through rectitude and
prosperity, one may have to battle sin external to self, using internal
spiritual resources cultivated through faith, prayer, and community. Individuals including Calvin himself, left
one region to found religious communities elsewhere. Communities, including the
Pilgrims and a group of Puritans, migrated to practice their religion
unmolested by evil from the larger society.
Thomas Hobbes was a Calvinist, a Puritan, and the “proto-liberal”
who recognized an equality of humans based on their shared original sin, and
freedom in the sinful and destructive state of nature. As free and equally
sinful agents in this dismal state, each individual strives selfishly to
promote his own interests, thereby furthering chaos and ensuring the most
misery for all. Using reason, humans consent to a social/political contract
wherein they trade some freedom for some security. A ruler is endowed with full
authority as long as that power is used to protect the interests of the people.
If the ruler abuses the power, the contract is void and the people may resist
or revolt.
The scenario by which free, equal, and potent
individuals consent rationally to submit to a government – and retain the right
to depose that government for cause – was a revolutionary paradigm. John Locke
developed this notion in his Second Treatise on Civil Government, widely
recognized as the foundation manifesto of classical liberalism.
Locke draws on Hobbes for a less dismal state of
nature and a consent-based social contract. He posits a law of nature, equated
with reason, as the source of the right of each individual to be free and left
in peace with his own “property”.(p5) Human liberty in the state of nature is
unlimited under the law of nature, but constrained by petty conflicts between
equally free persons who may not be equally disposed to reason. Human liberty
under social contract is limited by consent, and thereby approaches an ideal.
Such liberty accords with reason (natural law) and the law of God.
Locke outlines an extended, concentric meaning of
property: “… every man has a property in his own person … the labour
of his body and the work of his hands, we may say, are properly his.
Whatsoever, then, he removes out of the state that nature hath provided and
left it in, he hath mixed his labour with it, and joined to it something that
is his own, and thereby makes it his property.”2
Locke specifies land itself as the “chief matter of property”, acquired through
labor as well. (p20)
Property may extend so far as remains plenty of common
good for others to appropriate through their own labor, and all have a common
right to appropriate in this manner. (p18) God gave the world and its products
to “the industrious and rational (and labour was to be his title to it).” (p21)
This is an expression of the labor theory of value,
which Locke emphasizes by repetition throughout the section “On Property”.
In the state of nature, there was a time when
availability of property was no problem, since the world was large and its
inhabitants few. Also, property being defined in real terms led to practical
limitations on acquisition, and sanctions for those who appropriated more than
they could use. But with the invention
of money came a facility for amassing property out of proportion to its use,
and people once having agreed to assign value to precious metals and gems, were
then obliged to regard money too as property.(pp27-29)
Locke invokes, for each member of a commonwealth, a
“double right” of personal freedom and heritable property. Confiscation of
property by the state must be done only with consent of the owner, and
according to established law that reflects the will of the people. (pp111-112)
Only in the case of a just conquest, can the victor exact reparation from the
“labour and estates” of the vanquished whom actively opposed the just conquest.
(pp112-114)
Locke devotes most of the Second Treatise to the forms
of power, the consent-based contract between members of a commonwealth and
their government, and the structure of good government. His theory was
prominent among influences on the formation of the U.S. Constitution. His Declaration
of the Rights of Englishmen (1689) served as a model for the U.S. Bill of
Rights. We in the U.S. owe much to Locke’s good Calvinist upbringing.
Locke’s Calvinist bent and his fresh perspective show
up in Adam Smith’s theory of free-market capitalism. Labor imparts value to
goods, and the individual should benefit from his own labor. Self-interest moderated
by reason is the engine of wealth creation. We associate to further our
self-interest. By reason we find that labor specialization best serves our
needs. Free competition is good; excessive restraint by government is bad. Much
reverent lip service is paid to Smith’s ideas by modern capitalists and by
advocates of “free trade.”
Add to these the writing of John Stuart Mill on
limited government intervention in the markets, and on individual liberty and
free thought – and we have the economic core of classical liberalism.
Classical liberalism has underpinned the development
of the modern democratic republic, and continues to inform and sustain today’s
democratic-leaning civilizations, including the United States. We use money to make money, and acquire
mobility and status through economic gain. Profit has supplanted labor as the
prime determinant of value, but structurally the process of “property”
acquisition is similar – a person or corporation appropriates the goods of the
earth, symbolized by financial instruments, through profit-making. Periodically
at the ballot box, we renew our consent to be governed, and our choices are
free and private, yet constrained by the availability of candidates for office
who represent our interests. The
ethical relations among citizens and government, and the structure of
government, tend to resemble in form the prescriptions outlined in the Second
Treatise. In the U.S., individual liberty and free expression are protected
by the Bill of Rights and by the courts.
Calvinism, moreover, is not dead. We are dreadful
sinners, and we feel guilty for enjoying it. We maintain an active interest in
the sin and suffering of others. We work hard to look good and prove our worth.
We care deeply for the bonds of family and community. We love to champion a
perceived good cause. And we have become adept at modifying certain rigid ideas
in order to better fit the real world, because we believe that flexibility
reflects some kind of grace.