Locke on consent, membership and emigration: A reconsideration
| Date | 01 April 2022 |
| DOI | 10.1177/1474885119852709 |
| Published date | 01 April 2022 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Article EJPT
Locke on consent,
membership and
emigration: A
reconsideration
JK Numao
Keio University, Japan
Abstract
This article revisits long-standing questions about consent, membership and emigration
in Locke’s thought. Commentators such as A John Simmons have argued that Locke
opens political membership to both express consenters and some kind of tacit con-
senters, and not just to the former, as some have suggested. Simmons’s reading seems
to render Locke more sensible in that it does not exclude large numbers of people
from membership or burden the few members with all the civic duties, and also in that
it allows at least tacit-consenting members the right to relocate, while this right is
denied to express-consenting members. Against this reading, the article shows, by
resolving seemingly conflicting claims in the text, that people become members only
by express consent. It also responds to the criticism that the express-consent-only
reading would limit membership to a few and so would render Locke’s account implau-
sible from a practical point of view. The article then addresses the purported restriction
Locke imposes on express consenters’ right to emigrate, arguing that the restriction
concerns the change of membership and not the right to relocate.
Keywords
Citizenship, emigration, express consent, Locke, membership, right to relocate,
tacit consent
Corresponding author:
JK Numao, Department of Foreign Languages and Liberal Arts, Faculty of Science and Technology, Keio
University, Japan.
Email: kei.numao@keio.jp
European Journal of Political Theory
!The Author(s) 2019
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DOI: 10.1177/1474885119852709
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2022, Vol. 21(2) 211–229
Introduction
Back in 1990, GA Den Hartogh (1990: 105) commented that what Locke says about
consent and political obligation is ‘tolerably clear’ and that the problem seems to be
more that ‘his interpreters cannot bring themselves to believe that he means to say it’.
Roughly three decades after the publication of Hartogh’s article, I wish to make a
similar claim: Locke’s view on consent and political membership is clear, yet com-
mentators resist accepting it as Locke’s, due in part to what seems to be internal
tensions within Locke’s text, and also, I suspect, due in part to the implications of
the views being impractical and untenable. I will be arguing that, on Locke’s
account, people can only become members of a political society by giving their
express consent. Moreover, I will be arguing that this does not lead to completely
indefensible consequences and constraints as commentators have suggested.
Over the past 30 years, the view I defend in this article has come under heavy
criticism from commentators, including most notably A John Simmons. Simmons
(1993, 2001, 2016b) has made a very strong case against the reading that says
express consent is the only path to citizenship. He has also noted the difficulty
of making sense of the alleged restriction imposed upon the members’ right to
emigrate. By contrast, Simmons’s own reading that people can become members
through both express consent and some kind of tacit consent makes Locke seem
more sensible: large numbers of people would not be excluded from membership;
the political society would not be run by only a fraction of the population; and at
least some members would retain the right to relocate, namely tacit consenting
members. While Simmons’s account does indeed look more attractive, in the rest
of this article, I will be defending my interpretation of Locke on consent, mem-
bership and the right to relocate against Simmons’s and like accounts.
1
The more specific questions I will be considering are as follows. First, while I will
be arguing that only express consent can make people full members of a political
society, does not Locke in places suggest that tacit consent can also make people
members? I argue that he does not, noting that these passages are not what they seem
to be. Second, if this is the case, and supposing also that express consent was not so
common, does this not lead to a problem that only a small number of people would
be members in the political society? I argue that the charge is not as fatal as it seems.
Thirdly, while Locke seems to deny the right to relocate to express consenters, is this
really the case? I argue that Locke in fact does not deny this right, and can distin-
guish between change of membership and emigration.
Membership by tacit consent?
Let me begin by laying out the views I argue Locke puts forward concerning
consent, membership and emigration. On Locke’s account, nobody is born a
member of a particular political community. When people become of age (in
Locke’s case, 21),
2
they can freely choose whichever community they wish to
join. Alternatively, they can create a new one with others in an unoccupied land
212 European Journal of Political Theory 21(2)
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