Locke’s minimalist state foundation structurally generates the austerity dilemma
Evidence
Remember that these arguments are being developed in seventeenth-century England, where public debt is the debt of kings, kings who invoke rights given by God to appropriate the property of others willy-nilly. That Locke deploys equally specious rationales for why he and his brethren in the commonwealth should have as much of the world as they want is beside the point. Rather, his point is to defend those gains from the state at all costs and to minimize the state’s ability to extract further resources. It is this minimalist foundation for what the state can and should do, bequeathed by Locke, that later liberals built upon. Such a foundation has a hard time, by design, supporting any view of the state that extends beyond the protection of property. But even this narrow activity costs money, and this requires that the state raise it. Thus the liberal dilemma that generates austerity is born. The state: can’t live with it, can’t live without it, don’t want to pay for it. — Mark Blyth, Austerity, 283
Categorization
- XREF: Core precursor to Mattei’s critique of austerity-as-neoliberal-state-shrinkage; the state-wary-liberalism thread runs throughout the austerity literature. — connects to: Austerity is not a coherent doctrine but derivative of scattered state-role beliefs — Mark Blyth, Austerity: The History of a Dangerous…, 66; Locke grounded legitimate rule in individual property rights, separating state from market — Mark Blyth, Austerity: The History of a Dangerous…, 278; Neoliberalism abolishes classes, the individual, and Lockean property in one move — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 164 (+1 more)
- SEED: Essays on how contemporary tax revolts and austerity politics inherit Locke’s framing of taxation as governmental rebellion against property.
Broader Connections
- Locke grounded morality in the voluntary action of a sovereign subject
#expands(0.85) — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular, 639 - Neoliberalism abolishes classes, the individual, and Lockean property in one move
#qualifies(0.80) — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 164