Of Slavery

Locke opens with a definition: the natural liberty of man is to be free from any superior power on earth, governed only by the law of nature. The liberty of man in society is to be under no legislative power but that established by consent in the commonwealth. To be subject to any other power is slavery in the precise sense: subjection to the arbitrary will of another.

A person cannot, Locke argues, consent to be enslaved — because no one has the power to destroy their own life, and therefore no one can give to another the power to take it at will. This is the point where Locke's self-ownership argument has its sharpest edge. The right to one's own person is not a property that can be sold or surrendered; it is the condition of all other rights, and without it no compact is possible.

Slavery, then, is not a legitimate institution but the continuation of a state of war. The conqueror who has the conquered man in his power has not legitimately enslaved him by conquest; he holds him in the state of war that began when the captive fought unjustly. If the captive deserves death, the conqueror may hold him in this condition. But the moment either party makes a compact — the moment the captive agrees to labour for the conqueror in exchange for his life — the state of war is terminated, and the relation between them is no longer slavery but something else. Real slavery, in Locke's usage, admits no compact and no relief.