Capitalism in the western world is currently facing a crisis of legitimacy in the face of growing inequality. But many forget that the global, capitalist world as we know it today emerged largely during the industrial revolution. Four remarkable thinkers of the long nineteenth century, the Lockean radicals--Thomas Hodgskin, Lysander Spooner, John Bray, and Henry George--responded to the horrid and rampant economic injustices at the time by picking up the loose ends of Locke's property theory and weaving them into two competing strands. Each strand addressed problems of liberty and equality then emerging from industrial capitalism, but each did so in a different way. As Daniel Layman argues, in one camp, Hodgskin and Spooner, libertarian radicals, argued that the world of resources is common to all people only in the negative sense of being originally "unowned" by anyone. According to them, there are no just grounds for state redistribution except to correct past injustices, and governments are typically little more than thieving and oppressive gangs. In the other camp, Bray and George, egalitarian radicals, held that all people have a positive claim to share equally in the world's resources. According to them, states should ensure, through redistributive taxation and other progressive policies, that our institutions respect this common right. Locke Among the Radicals tells the forgotten story of the Lockean radicals and the crucial role they played in addressing problems latent in Locke's theory. Layman argues persuasively that some of the radicals' insights provide a blueprint for a form of liberal distributive justice possible to achieve today.

Locke Among the Radicals: Liberty and Property in the Nineteenth Century

Politics & Social Sciences

Layman, Daniel

Philosophy

Oxford University Press

Product Description 
What gives some people the right to issue commands to everyone else and force everyone else to obey them? And why should people obey the commands of those with political power? These two key questions are the heart of the issue of political authority, and, in this volume, two philosophers debate the answers. 
Michael Huemer argues that political authority is an illusion and that no one is entitled to rule over anyone. He discusses and rebuts the major theories supporting political authority’s rightfulness: implicit social contract theory, hypothetical contract theories, democratic theories of authority, and utilitarian theories. Daniel Layman argues that democratic governments have authority because they are needed to protect our rights and because they are accountable to the people. Each author writes two replies directly addressing the arguments and ideas of the other.

Is Political Authority an Illusion? (Little Debates about Big Questions)

Huemer, Michael

Routledge

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