Locke “esclavagista”: o lado “negro” de um liberal

A contradição entre o discurso liberal de Locke e a sua prática dá que pensar. Ele foi um defensor dos direitos individuais e contribuiu para a invenção da moderna conceção contratual do Estado ao serviço dos cidadãos. Deu ainda ao cidadão o direito de resistir a uma decisão injusta tomada pelo Estado. Mas, por outro lado, estabeleceu, nas proposições que elaborou para uma “Constituição da Carolina”, o poder e a autoridade absolutos aos senhores fundiários sobre os “servos” (Locke, por deslize de mágica, chamou-lhes “servos” e não “escravos”), que podiam ser alienados, vendidos, estavam privados de liberdade de deslocação e a sua condição de escravatura perpetuava-se aos seus descendentes.

O que está em causa nesta contradição é mais do que uma simples incoerência de vida. A sua natureza enraíza-se no conceito de liberdade de Locke, que esqueceu a sua matriz vital e comunitária constituinte e assim ficou privado de se abrir à dimensão material da própria liberdade, segundo a qual a liberdade é um direito inalienável ao serviço da própria vida individual que deve promover.

Ontem Locke, hoje muitos “liberais” de vários matizes continuam a esquecer que a liberdade para todos só existe quando todos têm os recursos para uma vida digna e boa.  Este legado negro de Locke tem levado autores a redescobrir outras matrizes para a Revolução Americana, nomeadamente Leibniz.

Eis alguns excertos da “Constituição da Carolina” sobre o que se disse: “Ironically for those deluded souls who accept the myth of Locke's influence upon the ideas of American independence, the same John Locke was appointed a founding member of the Board of Trade, and proved himself the greatest imperialist and most implacable enemy of America.

Locke had revealed his intense hostility to American liberties almost 30 years before, as a paid functionary of the aristocrat Lord Ashley, later the First Earl of Shaftesbury. When King Charles II revoked all earlier patents, and granted the territory of Carolina to eight ``lords proprietors,'' including Ashley, Locke became the company's chief secretary. In that capacity, he wrote the ``Fundamental Constitutions for the Government of Carolina'' in 1669, an abominable plan to transplant European-style feudalism to America.

Locke's preamble stated: ``that we may avoid erecting a numerous democracy;'' Locke's ``constitution'' established the eight lords proprietors as a hereditary nobility, with absolute control over their serfs, called ``leet-men'':

``XIX: Any lord of a manor may alienate, sell, or dispose to any other person and his heirs forever, his manor, all entirely together, with all the privileges and leet-men there unto belonging....

``XXII: In every signory, barony and manor, all the leet-men shall be under the jurisdiction of the respective lords of the said signory, barony, or manor, without appeal from him. Nor shall any leet-man, or leet-woman, have liberty to go off from the land of their particular lord, and live anywhere else, without license from their said lord, under hand and seal.

``XXIII: All the children of leet-men shall be leet-men, and so to all generations.''

Black chattel slavery received particular sanction and protection under Locke's law:

``CX: Every freeman of Carolina shall have absolute power and authority over his negro slaves, of what opinion or religion so ever.''

From 1672-74, Locke served as secretary of King Charles II's Council of Trade and Foreign Plantations (at the same time profiting from personal investments in trade with the Bahamas). Locke's Council passed the infamous Navigation Acts, enforced by the punitive Plantation Duties Act of 1673, imposing onerous taxes on colonial trade, restricting it to English vessels, and prohibiting trade with foreign countries by requiring that all colonial goods be shipped ``to England, or Wales, or the town of Berwick upon Tweed, and to no other place, and there to unload and put the same on shore.''

Throughout this period, Massachusetts remained in the forefront of American resistance to Lockean oppression, under the inspired leadership of Increase and Cotton Mather. When the Crown's agent Edward Randolph demanded submission to the Navigation Acts, and the effective revocation of the Massachusetts charter, Increase Mather warned his countrymen: ``We shall sin against God if we vote an affirmative to it.'' He attacked the Crown's demands as a ``Plot then managing to produce a General Shipwreck of Liberties,'' and as ``inconsistent with the main end of their fathers' coming to New England.... Let them put their trust in the God of their fathers, which is better than to put confidence in prince.”

Texto retirado de:  American Almanac, July 7, 1997: “Celebrate the 4^thof July by Learning American History: Leibniz, not Locke, Inspired the Declaration Of Independence”