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 4thof July by Learning American History: Leibniz, not
Locke, Inspired the Declaration Of Independence”
