capitalism

432 Revolution, Right of
assaults on their lives, liberty, and property, governments lack
legitimacy if either they fail to offer such protection or attack
the individuals they were created to safeguard. In such cases,
individuals owe their government no loyalty, have no obligation
to bow to its unjust measures, and may choose to dissolve
the old regime in order to create a new government that
performs its legitimate role. Thomas Jefferson stated this
argument most famously when, in the Declaration of
Independence, he wrote, echoing Locke, that “governments
are instituted” to secure “inalienable rights.” If a government
“becomes destructive of these ends,” he asserted, “it is the
right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute new
government, laying its foundation on such principles, and
organizing its powers in such form...most likely to effect
their safety and happiness.”
The ancestors of classical liberalism writing in the 17th
and 18th centuries frequently cited historical instances in
which people exercised the right of revolution. In his
Discourses Concerning Government, Englishman Algernon
Sidney mentioned Greek and Roman revolutionaries such
as Epaminondas, Publicola, Valerius, and Marcus Brutus,
as well as biblical figures such as Moses, Gideon, David,
and the Maccabees. In his famous outburst against George
III’s sanction of the 1765 Stamp Act, American statesman
Patrick Henry proclaimed before Virginia’s House of
Burgesses that “Caesar had his Brutus, Charles the First
his Cromwell, and George the Third may profit by their
example.”
Henry might have added that England’s King John had
his Magna Carta. Forced to sign the document when noblemen,
clerics, and commoners united in protest of his disregard
for the customary obligations of the monarchy, John
agreed in 1215 to strict limits on his power to tax, incarcerate,
and dispense unequal justice. He also agreed that, were
he or his heirs to violate these rules and ignore subsequent
complaints, a council elected by barons had the right, “by
taking our castles, lands and possessions,” to “oppress us in
every way in their power.”
Such historical precedents exemplify the theoretical
basis of the right of resistance, which is predicated on the
idea of a social contract entered into to achieve certain
ends. Writers such as Sidney and Locke developed their
ideas within a tradition that included the political philosophies
of Thomas Aquinas, Marsilius of Padua, William of
Ockham, Juan de Mariana, and Richard Hooker, all of
whom maintained that government, authorized by either the
governed or their ancestors, exists for specific purposes.
They shared the belief that governments existed for the purpose
of permitting individuals to collectively secure the
safety that was lacking when all lived independently in—as
they described it—a state of nature.
Locke wrote that the fundamental “Law of Nature” proscribed
anyone from harming another “in his Life, Health,
Liberty, or Possessions.” Yet solitary individuals found
themselves open to murder, injury, enslavement, and theft
when confronted with superior force. Thus, reasonable,
self-interested people joined together and formed governments
to protect themselves. As Thomas Gordon, coauthor
of Cato’s Letters, explained, “What is Government, but a
Trust committed by All, or the Most, to One, or a Few, who
are to attend upon the Affairs of All, that every one may,
with the more Security, attend upon his own?”
Proponents of the right of revolution had their critics.
Thomas Hobbes had a particularly negative view of the
anarchic state of nature and was prepared to support even
the most absolutist of governments provided they imposed
order. Once an individual entered into a society, Hobbes
maintained, he could rightfully defy the orders of the sovereign
only in defense of his life. In contrast, David Hume
rejected the idea of a social contract, although he acknowledged
“the agreement by which savage men first associated
and conjoined their force.” Hume contended that in nearly
every instance this agreement was “so ancient” as to have
been “obliterated by a thousand changes of government and
princes”—in other words, “it cannot now be supposed to
retain any authority.” Regimes, he said, were founded on
conquest far more often than consent.
Those who posited that governments rested on the
consent of the governed, but denied that a right to revolution
existed, rebuked their opponents by pointing out
the problems faced by those who accepted an alternative
theory. Men could no more permanently give away their
liberty, Locke asserted, than they could take their own
lives. People who question the right of revolution, he
thought, might as well cast doubt on the propriety of men
who “oppose Robbers or Pirates, because this may occasion
disorder or bloodshed.” In other words, without such
checks on political authority, the wolves of government
might feed freely on the sheep they governed. In such a
scenario, Sidney asserted, “forests would be more safe
than cities.” Both Locke and Sidney identified themselves
with the opposition to the Stuart depredations on
English liberties, and Locke was a firm supporter of the
post-1688 establishment. In that year, members of
Parliament had deposed James II, who on several occasions
had overreached his authority, and installed as monarchs
William and Mary. In the tradition of King John,
they agreed to new limits on the power of the monarchy.
They also recognized a number of civil rights, all of
which bolstered the protection of the natural rights to life,
liberty, and property.
Advocates of the right of revolution emphasized that
governments could not be dissolved, as Jefferson wrote in
the Declaration of Independence, “for light and transient
causes.” The American Revolution against British rule,
he maintained, was a case in which “repeated petitions”
for reform had been “answered only by repeated injuries.”
Jefferson assured the world that the American revolutionaries