Henry: Locke, Harris, and a Basis for Legitimacy

By

Harris presents an account of rights, equality, property, neutrality, and power that differs sharply from Locke's (Harris 1778). While Locke's view raises issues of its own, Harris's account contains a number of lacunae in regard to her basis for what characterizes a legitimate exercise of power.

Harris also rejects Locke's belief that "the beginning of politic society depends upon the consent of the individuals, to join into, and make one society" (Locke 56). Harris discards this premise because "within this framework, social group has no place" (Harris 1762). Harris believes social groups play a key role in determining the distribution of power. If not individual consent, what legitimates government?

Harris also understands equality differently than Locke. While Locke understands equality as the "equal right, that every man hath, to his natural freedom" (Locke 31), Harris describes "real equality" as primarily material: "Formal equality overlooks structural disadvantage and requires mere nondiscrimination or 'equal treatment'; by contrast, affirmative action calls for equalizing treatment by redistributing power and resources in order to rectify inequities and to achieve real equality" (Harris 1788).

Harris explicitly rejects Locke's account of what legitimates property acquisition. Locke bases his argument for what legitimate property possession is on an appeal to the law of nature. Locke explains that the "law of reason makes the deer that Indian’s who hath killed it; it is allowed to be his goods, who hath bestowed his labour [sic] upon it" (Locke 20). Harris argues that Locke's perspective "effectively rendered the rights of first possessors contingent on the race of the possessor" since Locke's conception was more "characteristic of white settlement" (Harris 1722). Harris argues that "the Founders... so thoroughly embraced Lockean labor theory as the basis for a right of acquisition because it affirmed the right of the New World settlers to settle on and acquire the frontier" (Harris 1727-28). 

Harris replaces Locke's account of property based on natural with an account where "property rights and interests are not 'natural,' but are 'creation[s] of law'" (Harris 1730). Here, Harris presents an account where our ideas about property are socially constructed. Harris suggests that "affirmative action could facilitate the destruction of the false premises of legitimacy and exclusivity inherent in whiteness and break the distorting link between white identity and property" (Harris 1789). Harris's construction begs the question: If property is a social construct, what legitimates/delegitimates different types of property ownership?


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Livia: Táíwò and Economic Success in the Global South

By
  Reconsidering Reparations by Professor Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò illuminates the large extent to which racism and colonialism played in creating the current global economic structure, in which the global north dominates the global south. Additionally, this book highlights how current policies implemented by global institutions such as the IMF and the World Bank have further strengthened and reaffirmed this positioning. Taking into account this global historical perspective, we can better understand how “consequences flow from some other parts of the world to other parts, often across national borders, and in ways that complicate geographically and politically narrow ways of thinking about reparations” (24). Thus, some sort of international obligation of social justice must be exist. Táíwò’s emphasis on the role that slavery and colonialism played in establishing the current economic order makes me think about the signal which this sends to the Global South in the development of their p...
Read more

Carlos: Response to Henry's Conclusion

By
I've spent way too long trying to argue against Henry's point because it just seems wrong to conclude with "there is no current social framework by which we might call their lasting effects socially unjust–at least under the political conception of justice". Yet, the more I thought about it, the more I felt I had to agree with Henry's argument regardless of how strange it felt to do so. Still, I did have a few ideas as I was thinking of how to refute Henry's conclusion: -------------------------------------------- 1) With the hypothetical situation Henry provides, if we were to fully extend its logic to our current world, I think Prof. Hurley would have also created a division between the A and B group that would have maintained even into Tuesday. I think were that division were to have taken place, even after Prof. Hurley disbanded the government, the division would have remained and the hierarchy of power would continue into the rest of the week. It seems fa...
Read more

Smith, Locke, Harris, and Justice

By
 On page 79, Smith writes, "the violation of justice is injury: it does real and positive hurt to some particular persons," and thus it is a virtue that, unlike beneficence, warrants resentment if we fail to fulfill it. Upon reading this, I immediately thought, well how are you defining justice?  It became very clear in the following pages that Smith's conception of justice is nearly identical to Locke's Law of Nature. On page 80, he writes, "Among equals each individual is naturally, and antecedent to the institution of civil government , regarded as having a right both to defend himself from injuries, and to exact a certain degree of punishment for those which have been done to them." He continues to say that justice is only those transgressions which spectators would have the right to, and would be compelled to, punish whoever commits them. After this, he explains that no one has a right to advance their own happiness at the expense of someone else's...
Read more