Hobbes and Locke Revisited: The Foundations of the Modern Liberal State,

Part I

“Individualism,” as Etienne Balibar reminds us in his seminal essay, “‘Possessive

Individualism’ Reversed: From Locke to Derrida” is a relatively recent, early nineteenth-century
term: “It replaced such notions as self-love and selfishness, amour-propre and égoïsme in
French, Eigenliebe or Selbstsucht in German, progressively shifting from a moral to an analytical
discourse,” says Mr, Balibar.

The essence of the idea, of what it came to mean to be an individual, emerged in the course of
writings by political philosophers a century or two prior, starting with Thomas Hobbes and
culminating with John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

C. B. MacPherson coined an apt phrase, “possessive individualism,” when he referred to the fruit
of those labors, highlighting thus the crucial element of the resulting definition: individualism
was declared to be inextricably bound to the idea of property, ownership or possession (of land,
the fruits of one’s labor, the self).

Though mostly skeletal in form due to its many omissions, MacPherson succeeded in articulating
a full-blown, state-of-the-art theory of modern-day liberalism: “the political theory of possessive
individualism.”

Its singular success appeared to derive from having merged, almost seamlessly, the economic,
market-related features of a modern-day society with the political ones.  And as to its many
detractors, says Balibar, 

…those who took it as an index of all the negative characteristics of modernity which should be criticized and
rejected — namely an absolute domination of utilitarian values, the logic of profit and commodification, a
suppression of all collective or communitarian dimensions of human life – [there were also] those who saw it as a
positive definition of the anthropological prerequisites of social and political theory, a counterpart to the
descriptive category of “methodological individualism” and the normative category of “rational behavior” from a
liberal point of view.

As an aside, “the anthropological prerequisites of social and political theory” simply means “an
argument from human nature,” from the way things are, the way we are.

it’s meant to sound more credible, and form thus a sounder basis for social and political theory,
than the rather general idea that whatever transpires between individuals more or less determines
the character of the social (methodological individualism), or the ever-inconclusive argument
from “rational behavior” (coupled with freedom, I hasten to add), to accentuate the values and
the presuppositions of “a liberal point of view.” After all, isn’t it science that we’re all after?
To ascertain we’re on the same page, the following is a list of MacPherson’s seven axioms, the
basis of what he later called the “Western democratic [liberal] ontology”:

(i) What makes a man human is freedom from dependence on the will of others.
(ii) Freedom from dependence on others means freedom from any relations with others except
those relations into which the individual enters voluntarily with a view to his own interest.

(iii) The individual is essentially the proprietor of his own person and capacities, for which he
owes nothing to society. . .

(iv) Although the individual cannot alienate the whole of his property in his own person, he may
alienate his capacity to labor.

(v) Human society consists of a series of market relations. . .

(vi) Since freedom from the wills of others is what makes a man human, each individual’s
freedom can rightfully be limited only by such obligations and rules as are necessary to secure
the same freedom for others.

(vii) Political society is a human contrivance for the protection of the individual’s property in his

person and goods, and (therefore) for the maintenance of orderly relations of exchange

between individuals regarded as proprietors of themselves.

With the qualifications already cited, having to do more with the sin of omission than with
anything else, MacPherson’s postulates do come across as depicting and circumscribing our
everyday lives. For indeed, that’s how we tend to behave, think, and act, if not always, then on
occasions at least. Consequently, the theory of possessive individualism shouldn’t be dismissed
offhand as some crackpot theory aiming at the idiosyncratic but subjected instead to thoughtful
criticism. That’s what I intend to do.
Let this article serve as a brief introduction to this series of essays on the foundations of modern
liberal theory.