Of Political or Civil Society

Chapter 7 works through the forms of association below the level of political society in order to define political society by what it requires. Conjugal society is a voluntary compact between man and woman, founded on procreation but lasting — since children require long care — well beyond the minimum needed for reproduction. Family society adds children and servants, all under the father's domestic authority. But none of this is political society, because in all of it the authority is partial, domestic, and aimed at a specific purpose short of the full protection of all persons' rights.

Political society requires something specific: the surrender of the natural executive power — the right to punish violations of the law of nature, which every person holds in the state of nature — to a common authority. Where a community has erected such an authority with power to decide controversies and redress injuries, there is political society. Where it has not — where each person remains judge in their own case — there is no political society, even if people live together peaceably.

From this definition Locke draws a consequence that was explosive in 1689: absolute monarchy is no form of civil government at all. In an absolute monarchy the monarch is not subject to the civil law; there is no common judge over both ruler and subject; the subject remains, with respect to the monarch, in the state of nature. To enter civil society is to give up one's private judgment of disputes to a common authority; absolute monarchy refuses this on behalf of the ruler. It is therefore not civil government but an extension of the state of nature — or, when it uses force against subjects, the state of war.