Tentative Response: Locke's Social Contract and the Right to Revolution

4. Locke is one of the main 'social contract' theorists, a main support for thinking about limits on government power. Is the contract a real, negotiated agreement? If not, why should a fictive 'contract' be thought of as a central idea of human and civil rights?

To answer the question as it's stated, the social contract is not necessarily a written and negotiated agreement. The contract is an unspoken agreement that exists as part of the political structure; government, by design and in effect, should serve the people, and if it doesn't, the people reserve the right to revolution under the social contract. In essence, Locke's idea of a social contract revolves around the consent of the governed, where a government is only legitimate if it is working for the people with their consent. This is particularly important when it comes to human rights and civil rights, because even if a tyrannical government removes the rights and privileges of its people, the social contract maintains that the people still hold ultimate power over the government and are justified in any attempt to remove tyrannical power and regain their rights as individuals to "life, liberty, and estate," as Locke put them.

This idea of a fictive social contract is best explained through its application, such as in the Declaration of Independence. The Declaration states in its preamble that "to secure these rights [of Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness], Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, [and] That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it. . ." This is a written and applied explanation of Locke's social contract; the Founding Fathers determined that the tyrannical rule of England violated the unspoken social contract between the government and the people and exercised their right to remove that tyrannical power.

For me, this right to revolution under the social contract is the biggest distinction between Hobbes and Locke. Hobbes, in listing off the rights of the sovereign power, claims in chapter 18 that the sovereign cannot be accused of injustice by the people, cannot be removed from power, and cannot breach the covenant establishing the commonwealth by his own action. All of these rights of the sovereign power effectively remove the right to revolution and leave the people powerless to change their government should that government no longer be representative of their true best interests. For Locke's social contract, the right to revolution is established and given to the people, enforcing some measure of accountability on those in power.