I really appreciate Ben's comments, especially pointing out that Locke's aggressive ignorance towards the realities of people who were enslaved and colonized tacitly justifies theories of natural slavery. Moreover, I disagree that John Locke can be considered "progressive", or that that is a useful way of thinking about his place in history. Progressiveness relies on a comparison, and when we think of figures like John Locke as "progressive", we often rely on comparing him to an imagination of an openly and violently racist white man -- I think this happens because it's much more comfortable for us to think that John Locke never engaged in what we today would think of as "undesirable racism", rather than forcing ourselves to really understand the fact that he helped build and benefit from the systems of desirable racism and exploitation that still exist today, that so many people still benefit and suffer from. Either way, he was NOT progressive -- he was not progressive in comparison to the people whose enslavement he helped legalize, he was not progressive in comparison to the people who had to suffer for the benefit of people like him. Those people existed, they lived, and resisted, and are often ignored and intentionally forgotten when defending the reputation of figures who have become key to the mythology of Western canon. What I meant before when I suggested this history had to color the way we read Locke was that I feel like it's important to keep asking -- when reflecting on any position he takes and any points he suggests -- who is he ignoring? Who does he miss, or aggressively forget? We can talk all day long about how progressive and awesome his theories are, but they were written and thought up by a man who helped legalize slavery and made his fortune from the Atlantic trade of enslaved peoples. I can't help but feel like there's so much embedded in this text that could help us understand the mythologies about the United States we've internalized; after all, he's the root of so many of them.
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ReplyDeleteWhoops, this is the right version of my comment!
ReplyDeleteI definitely agree that we cannot take Locke's ideas at face value—regardless of any intellectual merit they may have, I don't believe this can outweigh the moral consequences of Locke's implication in the slave trade, that real people were enslaved. I'm actually in a class called Early Caribbean Literature right now, and we've talked about how Locke's focus on labor in particular (to quote Kevin's post, he sees it as what "derives value for humankind") is tied to the practice of enslavement. (Not to mention his explicit sanction of it.) Slavery was driven by a need for labor to cultivate products in the New World, particularly an enslaved African labor force in the Caribbean. Indeed, what we think of as race did not exist until it became a way to categorize and delineate this labor force. This labor by enslaved people enabled the trade of New World products and produced unprecedented quantities of new wealth for European colonial entrepreneurs. One of these colonial entrepreneurs was Anthony Ashley Cooper, the first Earl of Shaftesbury, who was the patron of John Locke. So essentially it's very hard to divorce Locke's ideas from the consequences of their application, as well as from the colonial wealth that enabled him to write.
Also, just a side note: Something else we've talked about in my Caribbean literature class is using the term "enslaved people" instead of "slaves," as it reminds us that we're discussing actual people forced into a state of enslavement. I appreciate that you use this phrasing here, Yuan, and I think doing so in class would benefit our discussions.
Not only do I have difficulties with heralding Locke and his work as a masterpiece for morality and good governance given the real implications his texts held in justifying the enslavement and colonization of millions of peoples, I also am baffled because his theory on labor doesn't at all justify any enslavement of another person. If European truly would have seen the Africans the met and chose to enslave as people, as another whose labor too grants them property, no African would've been enslaved, no labor by enslaved peoples would've been claimed to merely benefit white European masters. In Locke's labor theory of value, labor grants ownership. No human being can be labored by another--its a fallacy. To see another human as property would be an error and impossible. If seen as people, African Locke would suggest those in the Americas and those in their native lands in laboring the land would come to own all its fruits rather than work simply for an imposed upon superior. Locke's greatest wrong thence is not recognizing the humanity of enslaved peoples, not suggesting that enslavement contradicts his own theory, not demanding of those who he wrote for, the merchant class which profited from his theories in the Americas, the they recognize that claiming another human as property will never be justified, and has never been under Locke's labor theory of value. Locke chose to be ambivalent when it came to defending the very life and liberty all deserve by simple humanity. Locke compromised the livelihoods and liberty of peoples for his notions of property, for the benefit of people like him, his government and implicitly himself.
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