[quote]hspder wrote:
Locke, in particular – which, by all accounts, was THE greatest influence during the drafting of the US Constitution – specificaly defended limits to accumulation and redistribution of wealth.
Paine – who General Washington himself found it so uplifting that he ordered it to be read to all his troops – was amongst the earliest proponents of social security, universal free public education, and a guaranteed minimum income.[/quote]
I wouldn’t use Washington as a character witness for Paine: they weren’t exactly fond of eachother. Washington had Common Sense read to his troops and it says nothing about social security or guaranteed minimum wage. That Washington found Common Sense inspirational says nothing about Washington’s views on wealth redistribution.
One of Locke’s central themes is that for the preservation of the public good, the main function of government is the protection of private property: “The great and chief end, therefore, of men’s uniting into commonwealths, and putting themselves under government, is the preservation of their property.” He does say that private property is private, “at least where there is enough, and as good, left in common for others.” That does not mean he belevied in wealth redistribution as it is now practiced by governments.
He explains that by one’s labor, one creates private property out of what was once common to all, and each man has a right, so far as his labor provides, to as much as he can use:
“And if he also bartered away plums, that would have rotted in a week, for nuts that would last good for his eating a whole year, he did no injury; he wasted not the common stock; destroyed no part of the portion of goods that belonged to others, so long as nothing perished uselesly in his hands. Again, if he would give his nuts for a piece of metal, pleased with its colour; or exchange his sheep for shells, or wool for a sparkling pebble or a diamond, and keep those by him all his life he invaded not the right of others, he might heap up as much of these durable things as he pleased; the exceeding of the bounds of his just property not lying in the largeness of his possession, but the perishing of any thing uselesly in it.”
"And as different degrees of industry were apt to give men possessions in different proportions, so this invention of money gave them the opportunity to continue and enlarge them…But since gold and silver, being little useful to the life of man in proportion to food, raiment, and carriage, has its value only from the consent of men, whereof labour yet makes, in great part, the measure, it is plain, that men have agreed to a disproportionate and unequal possession of the earth, they having, by a tacit and voluntary consent, found out, a way how a man may fairly possess more land than he himself can use the product of, by receiving in exchange for the overplus gold and silver, which may be hoarded up without injury to any one; these metals not spoiling or decaying in the hands of the possessor.
Once establishing the role of government–the protection of private property–and defining private property, he sets a limit on the power of government:
"First, It is not, nor can possibly be absolutely arbitrary over the lives and fortunes of the people: for it being but the joint power of every member of the society given up to that person, or assembly, which is legislator; it can be no more than those persons had in a state of nature before they entered into society, and gave up to the community: for no body can transfer to another more power than he has in himself; and no body has an absolute arbitrary power over himself, or over any other, to destroy his own life, or take away the life or property of another.
" The supreme power cannot take from any man any part of his property without his own consent: for the preservation of property being the end of government, and that for which men ente r into society, it necessarily supposes and requires, that the people should have property, without which they must be supposed to lose that, by entering into society, which was the end for which they entered into it; too gross an absurdity for a ny man to own. Men therefore in society having property, they have such a right to the goods, which by the law of the community are their’s, that no body hath a right to take their substance or any part of it from them, without their o wn consent: without this they have no property at all; for I have truly no property in that, which another can by right take from me, when he pleases, against my consent. Hence it is a mistake to think, that the supreme or legislati ve power of any common-wealth, can do what it will, and dispose of the estates of the subject arbitrarily, or take any part of them at pleasure…for a man’s property is not at all secure, tho’ there be good and equitable laws to set the bounds of it between him and his fellow subjects, if he who commands those subjects have power to take from any private man, what part he pleases of his property, and use and dispose of it as he thinks good.
Locke does point out that governments must be supported by the poeple they protect, and therefor must levy taxes for that purpose if agreed to by the majority; however, nowhere does he spell out any definitve argument for wealth redistribution–he simply doesn’t see it as his job to do so. Given that, I don’t see how Jefferson’s like for Locke, or any other founder’s for that matter, says anything about his belief in wealth redistribution.