This article introduces the idea of ‘dependence subtexts’ to explain how the stories that we encounter in property theory and public rhetoric function to make some actors appear ‘independent’, and thus capable of acquiring property in their own right, while making other actors appear ‘dependent’ and thus incapable of acquiring property. The argument develops the idea of ‘dependence subtexts’ out of the work of legal scholar Carol Rose and political theorist Carole Pateman, before using it as a tool for contrasting (...) the canonical property stories of John Locke and Pierre-Joseph Proudhon. We argue that the link between property and dependence provides a useful starting point for understanding issues of economic justice that share a common political problem: how do we choose to govern the relation between dependence and independence through the institution of property? (shrink)

It is morally impossible, Locke argued, for individuals to consensually establish absolute rule over themselves. That would be to transfer to rulers a power that is not ours, but God’s alone: ownership of our lives. This article analyses the conceptual presuppositions of Locke’s argument for the moral impossibility of self-enslavement through a comparison with other classical social contract theorists, including Grotius, Hobbes and Pufendorf. Despite notoriously defending the permissibility of voluntary enslavement of individuals and even entire peoples, Grotius similarly endorsed (...) divine ownership of human life. He could do so coherently, we show, because he denied that despotic power gives rulers rights in the lives of their subjects. Masters do not own slaves in the way we own material things (which we may destroy at will). Reworking received Roman law categories, Grotius maintained that ‘perfect slavery’ consists in masters having a personal right to the slave’s perpetual service; a condition equivalent to what Locke called ‘drudgery’ and deemed permissible. Our analysis of this unpalatable set of ideas reveals that Locke’s argument is premised upon idiosyncratic conceptions of slavery and absolutism, disavowed by prominent defenders of absolutism in the classical social contract tradition. It is hence less powerful than commonly believed. (shrink)

This paper seeks to argue that Locke proposes a coherent theory of restorative justice regarding historical crimes. In two cases that he sets out in the Second Treatise, that of the Greek Christians living in the Ottoman Empire and Englishmen living in the wake of William I’s conquest, the preliminary standard of historical redress is whether the descendants of the conquerors and conquered possess equal political rights. Conquered peoples cannot simply be subsumed or annexed into an existing political order. They (...) must have some say in articulating or agreeing to the laws that govern them. In this respect, Locke’s theory of historical redress emphasizes the redemptive power of contract to overcome historical crimes. Furthermore, the disposition a community has to reimagine its body politic, to enfranchise the dispossessed by forming one body of people, speaks to the degree to which historical injustice is likely to occur. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Set within the framework of international intellectual history, the present article focusses on the propaganda campaign undertaken by the Company of Scotland to prove the legality of its settlement in the Darien province. It first shows how a group of Scottish authors appropriated sixteenth-century natural law arguments from Spanish sources to reject the claims based on the Bulls of Donation and conquest, which underpinned Spain’s sovereignty over its American territories. Acting individually and collectively, anonymously and under pseudonyms, pro-Darien propagandists (...) instrumentally quoted and restated the contents of major works from Francisco de Vitoria and Bartolomé de Las Casas. Additionally, the Scots also deployed the theories elaborated by Hugo Grotius and Samuel Pufendorf to refute discovery and occupation as further means of acquisition of American lands. In contrast with Spanish expansionism, the Scottish colony eventually grounded its claims on the consent of the indigenous Cuna rulers and on the official treaties recognizing the latter's sovereignty over Darien, emulating the Dutch commercial model of empire and colonial practices. (shrink)