Essays On Liberalism Part 1: Locke's Second Treatise of Exploitation

Alec Blockis
History of Political Theory

Final Essay
05/02/13

Lockes Second Treatise of Exploitation
An Essay on the Settler Contract and the Evolution
of Liberalism in the United States

1
Introduction
John Lockes liberal theory can readily be regarded as a defense for the
recognition of a universal equality and liberty that permeates the human race. Yet,
the basis for such universalities is a progress towards radical privatization and lifes
necessary preservation through privatization. This progress is commonly referred
to as Lockes Labor Theory of Property: the natural imperative to cultivate unsown
land and, through such labor, this land becomes your own property, which nobody
but yourself has the right to. Aside from ones own life, all property can then be
relinquished through social contract, the agreement in which a group of people is
immersed, allowing them to circulate property as well as establishing a civilized,
legitimate society that adheres to natural laws and respects natural rights.
For Locke, this may very well be utopic, but Carol Pateman argues in her
essay, The Settler Contract, that the complicit imperative to colonize, disenfranchise,
and kill indigenous populations is underwritten in Lockes social contract (amongst
other similar continental theories) and carried out by European states, including the
United States. Because many aspects of the U.S. political foundation mirrors Lockes
liberalism (e.g. the inalienable rights to life, liberty, and property in the Declaration
of Independence) it is worth exploring the settler contracts emergence in
contemporary U.S. history, especially within the states self-preserving actions. This
essay argues that the U.S. functions as a settler polity and consequentially utilizes
tempered colonization as a means for its own preservation.

2
Early America
Lockes liberal theory is founded upon an infallible state of nature, that all
pre-societal men are born in the state of nature, wherein all men are free and equal
in terms of their right to acquire and retain property in any way they choose.
1
Ones
own life is considered property in this sense. In this state, no man is obliged to
succumb to another mans Will nor is any mans life more important than his
neighbors. Mans deliverance from the state of nature is marked by their obeisance
to the law of nature, through which they are thrust into society. The law of nature
stands in order to preserve the state of nature (equality and liberty) and states that
no human has the right to destroy himself or anything else in his possession. It also
stands that you cannot take anothers life or destroy their possessions.
A community living in obeisance to natural law forms, through social
contract, a civilized society paramount in morality and righteous existence.
2
The
social contract, as briefly explained in the introduction, materializes as
interpersonal agreements between men, in accord with natural law, that preserves
property and liberty while limiting the contractors freedom to encroach upon one
anothers freedom. Along with regulating interpersonal agreements and civilized
society, the social contract stands as the basis for a societys legitimate government.
Here, a government mobilizes only as arbitrators between men and their disputes
and generating positive legislation (in accordance with natural law) that precludes
the disputes reemergence.

1
Locke, John. Early Modern Texts, "Second Treatise of Government." Last modified 2008.
Accessed March 31, 2013. http://www.earlymoderntexts.com/pdf/lockseco.pdf.
2
Ibid, Second Treatise of Government.
3
What is essential here is that groups of people congregate upon an a priori
belief that property must be preserved and that it is an inalienable right (if not the
definition of freedom, a property-proxy) to acquire property. Its here where we see
that it is moral to replace the state of nature, where one can constrict anothers
freedom through property-proxy, with a civil society to both protect a moral
community from the wanton of those still in the state of nature and preserve that
communitys freedom to produce property. This imperative to proliferate and
produce a society where state of nature exists is what Pateman sees as the basis for
her settler contract.
In fact, the Lockean society-production imperative is a crucial aspect to what
Pateman call the strict logic settler contract: the thought implicit within social
contracts that presupposes a conception of civil society that must replace states of
nature, territories that have been previously untouched by such a society.
3
She
avers that,
Colonialism in general subordinates, exploits, kills, rapes, and
makes maximum use of the colonized and their resources and
lands. When colonists are planted in a terra nullius, an empty
state of nature, the aim is not merely to dominate, govern, and
use but to create a civil society. Therefore, the settlers have to
make an original settler contract.
4
(pg. 38)

She uses an ancient legal term, terra nullius, to denote the pivotal concept that
facilitates this righteous colonialism. Terra nullius designates uncultivated or
wasted land that is therefore open to common usage and individual privatization. In

3
Carol Pateman, and Charles W. Mills, Contract and Domination, (Malden, MA: Polity Press,
2007), chap. The Settler Contract.
4
Ibid, The Settler Contract
4
this way, occupation and settlement can be seen as the act of legally claiming terra
nullius.
Low and behold, terra nullius is central to Lockes labor theory of property.
The labor theory of property explains how anything residing within the commons,
uncultivated or wasted
5
earth, is open to occupation and settlement and through
cultivating these commons; by putting ones labor into an unsowed space you make
that labored space your own and this proprietorship is protected by natural law and
a civil societys government.
6
To not cultivate common land would complicitly allow
it to waste and, consequentially, knowingly rob mankind (see footnote 5).
Pateman calls this righteous imperative to privatize, what a political theorist
or society understands as, uncultivated land (in other words, terra nullius or
commons) the right of husbandry.
7
She continues by showing that those without a
proper government or property, such as the Native Americans, are subject to
colonization due to the right of husbandry and the societys presumed illegitimacy of
occupying land subject to husbandry. Patemans argument concords with Lockes
disregard of a Native American governments legitimacy because they dont preside

5
For Locke, the term wasted delineates cultivated land that has not been consumed or utilized
but, instead, become useless due to neglect or greed, ultimately robbing mankind: So he who
encloses land, and gets more of the conveniences of life from ten cultivated acres than he could
have had from a hundred left to nature, can truly be said to give ninety acres to mankind [his
italics]. For his labour now supplies him with provisions out of ten acres that would have needed
a hundred uncultivated acres lying in common. I have here greatly understated the productivity of
improved land, setting it at ten to one when really it is much nearer a hundred to one, (Locke
2008, pg. 14).
6
7
5
peacefully nor is their power substantiated by a contractual societys universal
agreement to its presence and authority.
8
Per Locke:
And thus we see that the kings of the Indians in America
are little more than generals of their armies. They
command absolutely in war, because there cant be a
plurality of governors and so, naturally, command is
exercised on the kings sole authority; but at home and in
times of peace they exercise very little power, and have
only a very moderate kind of sovereignty, the resolutions
of peace and war being ordinarily made either by the
people as a whole or by a council.
9
(pg. 35)

In more succinct language: if a society is founded upon and governed by a
population devoid of social contracts, thus respect for natural law, they lack
morality and cannot be reasoned
10
with, therefore crippling the possibility of
handling land disputes diplomatically.
11
In conjunction with the labor theory of
property and the right of husbandry, the designation of Native American
government as illegitimate delineates a strict logic settler contract within Lockes
liberalism.
If New Englands Native Americans did not cultivate their land proper to the
determinations made in the Second Treatise of Government, the British colonists
were within their rights to put their own labor into American soil regardless of what
tribe occupies it. If a tribe responds to this labor with armed force, whether its for

8
9
10
Locke understands reason, the respect for natural law and contractual obligations, as a mutual
necessity between warring parties. His example is that of a thief: when an individual breaks into
anothers house by force and attempts to steal property, the thief has willed to not live by natural
law and is therefore not capable of reason. Because he cannot be reasoned with, there is no
assurance that thief will not also use the force, exerted to break into the home, to kill the
homeowner. The thiefs violent unpredictability permits the homeowner to kill the thief in order to
preserve such a moral individual (Locke 2008).
11
6
vengeance or land reclamation, the tribe is actually using unjustified force to steal
the colonists property. In this situation, it would be reasonable to assume that the
colonists lives are endangered and, in that moment, the Native Americans have
declared themselves to not live appropriate to the law of nature.
These Native Americans can now be killed and whatever small amount of
land that they may have cultivated can be repossessed by the colonists through
conquest
12
, as reparation for British casualties and damage done to British
settlements. Because Locke has determined that the Native Americans do not have
a legitimate government, a state of war may continue until all Native American
combatants are killed. As long as the British colonists continue to cultivate land
occupied by other Native American tribes and the displaced tribes unjustly retaliate,
the colonists can continue to kill off Native Americans and take what little property
they may possess. Additionally, if a tribe does not unjustly retaliate to the colonists
cultivation of their territory, the colonists can negate the tribes prior sovereignty
and absorb them into British law (assuming that the British law concurs with the
law of nature) as tenants of the territory they once freely inhabited. All of this
righteously occurs within Lockes moral sphere and classifies itself as a strict logic
settler contract.
This mode of property acquisition is evident in the American Revolution. In
an effort to distance their colonial practices from Spains, [t]he British agreed with
international lawyers that conquered peoples should retain their customs and

12
Lockes conquest does not entitle the colonizer to large tracts of the colonizeds cultivated land
because that land would have been more valuable than any damages that its cultivators could
have incurred upon the colonizer (Locke 2008). Remnants of this modus operandi are manifest
in the emergence of Native American reservation.
7
property,
13
(pg. 45). The Crown was effectively acknowledging Native American
sovereignty against the colonists own designation that the Native Americans
governments were not as legitimate as colonial government, which was followed by
a decree demanding that colonists halt land accession unless it was fairly purchased
and that all land must be purchased for The Crown.
14

This decision eventually helped incite the American Revolution
15
; The Crown
was claiming land that the colonists had put their own labor into. The colonists
were making large profits off the lands and they didnt want this constrained by
government that both limited husbandrys expedience and claimed that colonists
property as its own. When the colonies officially agreed to secede from British rule
in 1776, we can see the imperative to unrestricted property acquisition realize a
clear victory over the respect for law; the desire to colonize underwritten in a bid
for apparent freedom.
The privatization of terra nullius victory over British authority is further
supported by the fact that property owners predominantly supported the revolution
(rather than the U.S. populations at large). In the Peoples History of the United
States, Howard Zinn shows that general enthusiasm for the Revolutionary War was
weak; the war itself was primarily supported by wealthy white men (e.g. John
Adams, Alexander Hamilton, George Washington) who undertook the challenge of

13
14
15
8
convincing the American populace to join the revolution.
16
The Continental
Congress, a legislative assembly also dominated by rich white men, guided the
colonies through the Revolutionary war, exemplifying this undertaking.
After the war, the newly formed United States continued to colonize land
occupied by Native Americans under the auspices of governments ran primarily by
men who were affluent in property, as well.
17
Various Supreme Court cases
compiled by Natsu Taylor Saito illustrate this campaign.
18
In Cherokee Nation v.
Georgia (1831), the Cherokees were deemed domestic dependent nations, those
who occupy territory entitled to the U.S. The Standing Bear (1879) case resulted in
a military arrest of the Poncas, who were attempting to return to their territory
from the reservation that they were originally relocated to. In the first case we see
an evolved right to protect ones property employed as a pretense: the United States
has acquired Cherokee land, therefore the Cherokees have the right to live there but
their land belongs to the U.S. The second case exhibits an evolved property
protection right as well; the Poncas cannot rightfully reclaim the territory that now
belongs to a legitimate society nor can their abhorrent societal practices interfere
with civilization proper.
These case also show, what Pateman calls, the tempered logic settler
contract: the aftershock of colonial expansionist practices where the conquered

16
Howard Zinn, A People's History of the United States, (New York, NY: HarperCollins
Publishers, 2003), chap. A Kind of Revolution.
17
Zinn uses Maryland as an example by citing that the governor was required to have at least
5000 worth of property and a senator needed at least 1000 (Zinn: A Kind of Revolution 2003).
18
Saito, Natsu Taylor. "Interning the "Non-Alien" Other: The Illusory Protections of Citizenship."
Law and Contemporary Politics. no. 173 (2005): 175-213. http://law.duke.edu/journals/lcp
(accessed May 3, 2013).
9
state of nature remains recognizable post-colonization and the status quo
instantiated through colonization is retained, utilizing a multitude of tactics.
19
In
other words, colonized populations that had inhabited territory deemed terra
nullius, particularly the Native American tribes, have assimilated their presence
within society (to varying extents) yet their presence is still perceivable and this
perception is still tainted by the prejudices held by the colonizing body. In order to
maintain the colonial status quo (e.g. the higher moral caliber of the European way
of life), colonial practices and ideology ensue and evolve into a more tacit
mechanism, even if these practices are undergone completely unconsciously.
Cherokee Nation v. Georgia has shown that the U.S. has secured Cherokee territory
yet the Cherokee people remain not only distinct from U.S. society; they are now
dependent upon it for survival. Standing bear showed the limits between the
Ponca people and U.S. society: land officially reserved for the development of
American society shall not be occupied by an abhorrent population.

Post-Colonial America and the Global Terra Nullius
U.S. colonial practice, as hinted at in the aforementioned cases, has taken on a
new form in the late 19
th
and early 20
th
centuries and has retained the crucial
component, terra nullius, from which a tempered settler contract circumscribes.
John Lockes theories on increasing production beyond the producers ability to

19
10
consume the entirety of his labors product set the stage for this evolution of
colonial practices.
20

As discussed in the previous section, one would be incurring an injustice
upon humanity by overproducing and, consequentially, leaving unused product to
spoil and waste. The problem of overproduction, though, comes into conflict with
the natural prerogative to cultivate as much arable terra nullius as one may come
into contact with, for the very sake of mankind. Locke reconciles this problem with
his theory on the origin of money.
21
Money has value upon agreement and, unlike
uncared for land, it can be kept without worrying about it spoiling. In this way,
money allows one to produce as much as they can and therefore, accumulate as
much capital as they are able, regardless of whether or not they will use it. Locke
writes that,
If he traded his store of nuts for a piece of metal and had a
pleasing color, or exchanged his sheep for shells, or his wool for a
sparkling pebble or a diamond, and kept those in his
possession all his life, this wasnt encroaching on anyone elses
rights,
22
(pg. 17)

Within Lockes framework this is, in fact, very unlikely to encroach upon anybody
elses rights to cultivated land as the value of such land has been frozen for the
laborer in an immutable chasm of capital and consumed elsewhere.
Despite this, what money does allow for, whether in Lockes liberalism or in
late-Modern American liberalism, is the expansion of markets into territories
previously isolated from liberal society. This expansion, commonly known as

20
21
22
11
Globalization, refers to the European and American practice of opening markets in
places such as China and Africa where the U.S. and European countries can sell off
surplus product and extract cheap labor and goods. The consequence of this
practice (amongst many others), which has a plethora of defenses that I wont
bother with here, is the introduction of previously nonexistent economic control
upon vulnerable regions. Globalization is the new colonial lens; rather than
conquering territory and governing it, the settler contract has tempered into
claiming a region is withholding a market terra nullius and colonizing a peoples
economic system.
While globalizing efforts had existed since at least 1853, where the U.S.
deployed warships into Japanese ports to coerce Japan into opening its economic
frontiers to a liberal agenda and international trade, globalization noticeably took
off in the 1890s. Upon the aftermath of the Battle of Wounded Knee (1890), the U.S.
Census Bureau had officially declared that the internal frontier had closed; no more
mainland would be colonized.
23
For the United States, this had marked the steep
decline in conquest wars, refocusing military engagements on opening markets
overseas in hopes that this economic expansion would remedy domestic
underconsumption and prevent future recessions. This position was embodied by
an Indianan Senator, Albert Beveridge, in 1897 when he declared that, American
factories are making more than they can consume. Fate has written our policy for
us; the trade of the world must and shall be ours,
24
(pg. 299).

23
Publishers, 2003), chap. The Empire and the People.
24
Ibid, The Empire and the People.
12
The U.S. proceeded to open markets throughout the world, including Chinese
and Philippine territories.
25
The 1898 Spanish-American War is a particularly
notable venture in globalization. Prior to U.S. intervention, Cuban rebels had been
fighting Spain, Cubas colonial governing body, for independence. The New York
Commercial Advertiser was noted for rationalizing U.S. entrance into the war as,
humanity and love of freedom, and above all, the desire that the commerce and
industry of every part of the world shall have full freedom of development in the
whole worlds interest,
26
(pg. 304). The Commercial Advertisers (plausibly
accurate) imagination of American intent towards our role in Cuba and the war
played out, at the very least, as ostensibly prophetic. Indeed, the U.S. was offered
sovereignty over Cuba upon Americas triumph in the Spanish-American war. In the
spirit of globalization, the U.S. granted Cuba autonomy instead and opted to
intervene in Cuban affairs and supervise their finances.
27

The U.S. expansionist tendency should be clear. Whether the U.S. expands
into markets territorially or economically, the notion of terra nullius and spreading
civil society dominates this aspect of foreign policy. Forcing states, such as Japan,
into trade with the U.S. is a lucid exhibition of creating an international market
where it hadnt once existed while claiming that new market for the U.S. (we
wouldnt open Japanese ports by force to not have Japan particularly exchange with
us). The Commercial Advertisers sentiment exemplified a desire to spread civilized
society. This civil society was, of course, defined by the concordance of humanity,

25
26
27
13
freedom, and industry, clearly mirroring Lockes conflation of property
accumulation and preservation with freedom and equality. In deeming that the U.S.
has the right to open foreign markets under the auspices of humanity and freedom,
we find the same principles in a settler contract applied to non-territorial
colonialism and, by the very action of subjugating nations and populations to U.S.
economic policy, the familiar yet tempered visage of U.S. exceptionalism that
coincided with the Native Americans dehumanization. Globalizing ventures
continued into the end of the 20
th
century (at the very least) and has now been
accompanied by a tempered liberalism (neoliberalism) that facilitates unrestricted
exchange across international markets.
Michel Foucaults discussion on liberalism and neoliberalism in The Birth of
Biopolitics offers a comprehensive analysis on the global implementation of
liberalism, the nations that profit from it, and what nations profiting from neoliberal
commerce must do to sustain themselves.
28
Foucault begins his discussion with the
concept European Equilibrium. This equilibrium is a bipartite: dominant European
nations must perennially strengthen themselves economically while preserving the
current imperial configuration (the status quo between nations such as France and
decolonized West African nations).
Globalization is proffered as a response to absence of a self-sustaining
national market.
29
European and American liberalism contemporarily supports
itself by extending markets around the world in order to position the world as its

28
Michel Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics, (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), chap. 24
January
29
Ibid, 24 January.
14
economic domain. By lifting as many international trade restrictions as possible,
goods and liquidities can then be siphoned from labor countries and regions into
financial centers, predominantly (but not exclusively) concentrated in the U.S. and
western Europe.
Foucault also argues that these international economic arrangements, in
accordance with neoliberalism and globalization, are imbued with a sense of
naturalism, that neoliberal economics is the supreme morality and the very edifice
of liberty.
30
In the spirit of John Locke, Foucault has observed that neoliberalism-as-
freedom compels individuals to see exchange, when unmediated by governing
powers, as a civil and legal obligation that is guaranteed by and appropriate to
nature rather than arbitrary law. Just as the U.S. globalized in the early 20
th

century viz. a modernizing and moralizing international crusade, neoliberal
economics requires the instantiation of international law that preserves free trades
presence under the faade of morality. This, accompanied by the newly porous
borders between nations that facilitate exchange, heralds the worlds immersion
into a disciplinary imperialism. Not only must liberal nations claim territorial and
market terra nullius, they must recognize a disciplinary terra nullius, where nations
previously independent from liberal practices must exchange and exchange in
accordance with the methods specified by affluent, ruling nations (e.g. the 1944
Bretton Woods accord).
The 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) exhibits this
temperament of disciplinary terra nullius and elucidates the emergence of the

30
Ibid, 24 January.
15
tempered settler contract within NAFTAs implementation. NAFTA is a treaty
signed by the U.S., Canada, and Mexico that had deregulated prior trade restrictions,
allowing capital and goods to move freely between the Mexican-U.S. border without
tariffs, obstacles, etcetera.
31
The reduced restrictions between the U.S. and Mexico
are particularly significant because its consequences were the loss of 10,000 U.S.
jobs and an increase in low-wage jobs in Mexico. The accumulation of labor in low-
wage areas and the accumulation of wealth in affluent property-owning areas is the
dynamic championed by neoliberalism and a growing international economic
discipline. Howard Zinn illustrates this dynamic here:
The emphasis in foreign economic policy was on the market
economy and privatization. This forced the people of former
Soviet-bloc countries to fend for themselves in a supposedly
free economy, without the social benefits that they had
received under the admittedly inefficient and oppressive former
regimes. Unregulated market capitalism turned out to be
disastrous for people in the Soviet Union, who say huge fortunes
accumulated by a few and deprivation for the masses,
32
(pg.
658).

While Locke does not outline the consequences of a global liberalism, his
entire theory rests upon a conceptual natural discipline that sets the moral bar for
the entirety of humanity. Additionally, this state of nature and natural law is based
upon the freedom to privatize terra nullius to the greatest possible extent and the
radical equality that presupposes humanitys right to property so long as they labor.
Furthermore, Patemans settler contract exposes that comporting with Lockean
liberalism necessitates the complicit agreement to reclassify occupied territory as

31
Publishers, 2003), chap. The Clinton Presidency.
32
Ibid, The Clinton Presidency.
16
terra nullius, in order to engage in colonial practices, by the occupiers de facto
abhorrence to the arbitrary moral claims that had facilitated colonial practices in
the first place. Whether a populations territory, markets, economic system, or
cultures are exploited, liberal economics have functioned to replace states of
nature (those treated as terra nullius) with a civil societal framework proffering
modernity and morality while evincing global exploitation.

Conclusion
Throughout this essay it has been shown that Lockes liberalism is present in
contemporary U.S. politics and its implicit settler contract, can be recognized in its
tempered form through neoliberalism and international discipline. Ive
chronologically mentioned three manifestations of terra nullius and its
consequential colonization: territorial colonization, opening foreign markets, and
expanding a moral and economic international discipline. All three of these still
exists today (the Israeli occupation of Palestine, Keystone XL, or Wal-Marts
continued outsourcing venture), effectively narrating the sheer ubiquity of
liberalisms accumulative and exploitative apparatuses. What weve found,
essentially, is that liberalism doesnt only facilitate colonialism, it survives off
constant colonial endeavors in their multitudinous manifestations. The American
Revolution was sparked by property owners drive to colonize; early 20
th
century
expansion was engaged to preserve the United States status quo; the late 20
th

century ventures into neoliberalism found international control through globalized
moral and economic standards, as well as capital accumulation in the pockets of
17
those who proffered such disciplines. Foucault had suggested that exploitation
preserves liberal polities and Locke had organized liberal theory as to allow
uninhibited capital accumulation. Both are evident in U.S. domestic and foreign
policy and both can be seen as the very mechanisms necessary to preserve a liberal
nation.

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