ABSTRACT
As a result of arbitrary rule and subsequent revolt against it, political society finds itself intermittently in the state of nature as a state of war. If John Locke had maintained with regard to property relations that the limitations of one’s capacities were the sole limits of one’s rights, it would follow that a sphere of relentless warlike competition were part of political society. Most of the talk of Locke’s contradictoriness stems from the failure to recognize that he had no need to overthrow the natural limitations on property acquisition in order to justify economic inequality. Having acknowledged that the postulate of natural equality is modified by men’s unequal capacities, he quite logically placed unequal appropriation from outset within the bounds of these limitations. Egalitarianism was not realized ‘in the first ages of the world,’ when property limitations were fully observed. The argument offered by Locke is no credit to man who was a theoretician and practitioner of public finance.
